Nursery

Greetings! 

The last two weekends we managed to complete a lot of the nursery! We have been saying for months that we wanted to paint the trim in our house white, but we wanted to test a room first to make sure it wouldn't chip or look cheap. We finally decided it would be perfect to test it in the nursery! We sanded, primed and painted all of our trim/doors white and painted the walls gray! We had to be neutral since we are unsure if our little addition will be a boy or a girl! We figured we would buy more gender color items once we know for sure:-) We love the way it turned out! 

We still have a couple finishing touches: chandelier, area rug, curtains, and toys of course!

Here are some ideas we came up with: 

Chandelier possibility

Rug possibility

Rug possibility #2

Here is some pictures of our prep: 

trim primer

First coat of paint

Our mess!

Putting everything together

Future Daddy putting the crib together

Our pup enjoying being an only child while it lasts

We did get our completed home study in the mail, and we are just waiting on a written statement from our adoption counselor to get our profile on parentprofiles.com ( an alternative site waiting families pay to go on to in addition to their agency waiting family profile book). Our counselor hopes to have it complete by the end of this week!

In addition we spent the weekend with Jordan's family attending the Little Falls, MN Craft Fair. Missy (Jordan's mom) ,Joselyn (Jordan's youngest sister) , Penny (Jordan's moms cousin) and myself (Kaylah) went to the fair and spent hours walking around in 90+ degree weather! It was soo HOT, but there were so many cute items we found for the nursery! Also we had a couple friends/ family members that allowed us to put out our adoption cards and little posters regarding us adopting! We can't thank them enough for being so supportive! See the display Amber, Linda and Tera did for us with their Papparazi Jewelry stand: 

Here are some things we bought and things we want to buy in the future:

Kaylah's mom always read her the book called " Love you forever" by Munsch/McGraw when she was a little girl. Recently, Pam ( Kaylah's mom) made a recordable version of this book for Kaylah so she will always have it for herself and her future kids. We had to buy this when we saw it: 

We are going to have a wall of different sayings like these

The song Kaylah's grandpa sang all the time

We bought this one with the saying  " i love you to the moon and back" Jordan bought Kaylah one of these ornaments when they first started dating <3.

This was a gift to us from Jordan's mom- She bought it at the craft fair for us: It's perfect! 

This vendor had such unique items! We took her card so we could get this done for our future children!



That is all for now!! What do you think?

Active August!!

Thoughts, adoption cards ordered, written home study received, more pictures edited! 

Thoughts--

We can't help but search and read others adoption stories, it gives us hope that our day will come. It also makes us day dream about the day we get the "call" that an expecting parent (or parents) would like to meet us, and boy do we want to meet them! We have been watching the families at our agency get chosen and see their status go from "Waiting Family" to "Pending Placement" and we get chills every time! We anxiously await the phone call that changes our lives forever. Will it be a call from our adoption worker, will it be a call from an expecting parent directly, is the child already born, being born or still growing in their mommy's tummy?  Does the mom want to be part of our lives just as much as we want her to be a part of ours? 

We would say we can't wait until our story has a happy ending, but what we really can't wait for is until our story has a happy beginning. 

We ordered our adoption cards last weekend and we should be receiving them in the mail on the 28th! 

Here is a picture of the front and back:)

Front of Adoption Card

Back of Adoption Card

Our adoption worker sent us our completed home study rough draft yesterday! We have some minor revisions needed and then we should receive the finalized one so we can get our profile up on parentprofiles.com  :--)

Here are some other pictures we took for our profile!  

This one I thought was hilarious!! Obviously we aren't using it but it really wants to make someone pick us doesn't it!! HAHAH

Small Update

#5

Hello Everyone! We figured we should give a quick update. Last we knew we were number 11 on the waiting list and we wouldn't get notification until we reached number five. WELL... After 1.5 months we reached #5!!  This means six families have been placed in the last month and a half, that sounds promising to us:) After we enter the book, we then have the opportunity to have our profile seen by all the expecting parents that go through our agency :)

This notification kicked us into high gears! We have to start preparing our profile so when we get the invitation to enter the book we are ready. 

We took some photos to put on our profile and make our adoption business cards with. We will probably only use one or two of them on the actual profile itself and the rest will go on our website! Thank you too Kaylah's mom (future grandma) for taking them! 

We have also been patiently waiting for our adoption worker to finish our written home study so we can put our profile up on parentprofiles.com. We received half of it today to review, and it is looking great! She hopes to have it complete this Friday so we can make our edits and send it back !:)


Thanks for listening!

Kaylah and Jordan

Paper Pregnant!!

Finally we can announce we are officially PAPER PREGNANT! 

If anyone knows where i can get this necklace PLEASE TELL ME

We have been home study approved and we are now able to have a child join our home whenever we are found and chosen. This can happen quickly or slowly. Who wants to take a guess how many months we will be paper pregnant before we get chosen? 7? 9? 12? 18? 

We wanted to wait to take some pictures and make a cute announcement but let's face it, we have been waiting for 8 months and that is long enough!  Oh....we will still take pictures so beware ..

Our next steps: 

Throughout the next couple weeks we are going to be preparing all of our outreach materials. Some of these items include: 

• Photo shoot: we will be trying to come up with creative photos that will make us stick out as a couple for our profile photo.
• Business cards with our information on them: we will be handing these out to family, friends, strangers and more! We will be asking everyone to pass them on! I know it sounds crazy, but almost half of the adoptions last year through our adoption agency were through creative outreach techniques.
• Youtube video: My mom has taught herself how to make creative videos for weddings and other major family events. We will be working closely with her to come up with one that represents us as a couple.
• Jewelry: something our family can wear everyday which will cause someone to ask why they wear it. Maybe a unique bracelet or necklace?

Although we will be doing a LOT of outreach ourselves we still put our names on the waiting list for the family book! There are currently 10 families in front of us. The profile book has a list of 60 families that expectant parents look through when they are trying to find a waiting family. 

So far no morning sickness, but the paper cuts are terrible!!

Home Study Completed!!

Sorry for the delay in getting more information up! We've been so busy since the last post that we haven't been able to get a good update up.

This week we finally completed our home study! 

We spent a couple of hours with our adoption counselor last week getting to know her and helping her get to know us better. It was interesting telling essentially our whole life stories in such a short time, but it was actually pretty comfortable and it helped to better understand ourselves as a couple and help her know who we are and what we're all about.

Yesterday our adoption counselor came out to our house and spent a couple more hours finishing with learning about us and touring our home. Over the two-week period we discussed so many topics about our lives including:

- What our immediate and extended families are like
- What it was like growing up
- How we met, fell in love, and got married!
- Our personalities (including strengths, weaknesses, hobbies and interests, and lots more)
- Our values, morals, and beliefs
- What we expect from the adoption process
- How we plan to incorporate aspects of our child's culture into our lives
- Our thoughts about open adoption
-Our support system and how they feel about adoption

And many, many more topics. We really like our adoption counselor and had a great time getting to know each other. It sounds like sometime next week, she will be presenting our family to the agency for a decision about whether or not they'll accept us into the program, but she told us not to worry. We know the challenges that face us in the adoption process, but we're excited to meet them head on and overcome them together as a family.

We're so excited and anxious to officially enter the waiting family group and start getting the word out that we are officially a "waiting family".

The next week or two we will be preparing our materials that will help us get the word out that we are looking for our little one (and possibly some more extended family).

We should hear early next week if we were officially accepted!

Until then, thanks to everyone for your love and support!