Long Time, No Post... Sorry!

So incredibly much has changed since I last posted on here. The last post was on New Years Eve and we were still considering three agencies and we had just gotten our heads wrapped around this whole fundraising deal. Well... A LOT HAS CHANGED!

We have chosen an agency. It's a small one that only deals with birth mothers who live in our state. The positives of using a small agency outweigh the negatives. We are happy to be dealing with an agency that does nonprofit work for all of our state, specifically in the urban cities. Our agency has three locations and one of them is literally 15 minutes from our house. This agency only has a dozen adoptive families waiting at a time. This means you get their undivided attention and they are committed to finding families for each waiting family. Our birth mom will be living in our state. This means that we will not have to travel for the birth of our child, barring the birth mom does not move out of state during the pregnancy. Also, we will have more of an opportunity for our birth mom to build a positive relationship with our child(ren). This will create a closer relationship than if the birth mom lived across the country. Also, our case worker is extremely sweet. She is one of those people you just cannot be worried or anxious with. She answers all of my questions before the day is through and always makes me feel like things will go smoothly, even when I am anxious and nervous about next steps.The only negative that stands out to me is that because our agency only works with birth moms in our state, the amount of birth moms that we will be presented to is smaller than if we were working with a larger agency. Regardless, we are very excited to be working with our agency. From now on I will call them F&C.

So to take a step back here's the timeline so far of what has happened for our adoption:

December 30th - Started our puzzle piece fundraiser on GoFundMe.com
January 1st - Reached $100 towards our fundraiser!
January 3rd - Reached $500 towards our fundraiser!
February 1st - Reached $1000 towards our fundraiser!
February 2nd - Opened an etsy account to raise money for our adoption

February 4th - We attended an informational meeting with F&C. We asked a lot of questions, got many more answers, and felt confident in our decision to adopt through them.
February 14th - Mailed our autobiographies, application, and application fee.

We are very excited to be in the next steps of our adoption journey. We are officially in the "first trimester" of the adoption process. This trimester includes: our home study, adoption classes, and getting our home ready to bring a little one home!

We are planning a spaghetti dinner for April and a tag sale for June so that we can continue to raise money towards our adoption. It's going to be a long journey but the end result is so so so worth it. Just imagine, we might be matched by Christmas. If we get matched by Christmas I honestly would erupt with joy. I cannot wait to have a little stocking hung on our mantle, to get to teach my child about the meaning of Christmas, and to spend the holidays loving on our little one.