A Waiting Game

The most difficult part of this journey of adoption is waiting. I feel like we have been waiting to get started then we hurry up and then we wait again. Of course once we reach the point of waiting again it means that we have accomplished something too. Well anyways, so much has happened since I last posted.

We had our home study visit and that went very well. We are so lucky to have a social worker who is so down to earth and understands all of our worries and excitement. Good news is, WE GOT APPROVED! Bad news is, now we just wait.

So in the meantime we are planning so many events to keep us busy over the months while we wait. Who knows, we could be matched tomorrow and we could be matched next year. So for now, we wait and we try to raise the money that we will need to bring our baby home. We have already paid $1,950 for our home study and will be signing a check for $1,500 to be shown to birth moms in the next couple of weeks. From there we just wait. And fundraise. Did I mention we need to fundraise?

In May we are going to host an ice cream social and in June we will have a tag sale. In July we will have a spaghetti supper and in August we will have another tag sale. Fingers crossed that we get chosen by a birth mom before Christmas!

Worth the wait

So we have been making great strides in the home study process! We completed our application and our adoption intake form for the agency. We signed the contract & paid the application fee. We have made copies of our birth certificates, marriage license, tax forms, and Charleigh's vaccination record. We have both been fingerprinted. We both took a six hour long day of classes and we are in the process of finishing up our online classes. We have scheduled our physicals and contacted our insurance company and we should be all done with our paperwork process by St. Patrick's Day. Also on St. Patrick's Day is our home study visit. This is the one where our case worker will come out to the house and do an assessment on the house and determine if we are fit to be parents. It's amazing to me how much we have to go through in order to be "allowed" to be parents. In the meantime, so many people that I know are getting pregnant and don't even want the kids.

Anyways, I digress. We are very excited that our home study process will be finished on March 17th and then we just wait for the clearances to get back to the agency and for our home study to be written and finalized. After that we just wait for a birth mom to pick us :)

So in the meantime we have many things planned to keep us busy and to help us enjoy the wait.

March:
We have our adoption "maternity" photo shoot next weekend with a friend of ours.
We have our home visit with the case worker.
We have a game night for the end of this month.

April:
Easter celebration with our families.
*Crossing our fingers our home study will be done this month!*

May:
Celebrating our anniversary with a weekend away hopefully.
The Annual May Fair at our church.

June:
Our friends' wedding.
Our cousin's shower and stag.
Andrew's birthday.
Our fundraiser tag sale
Hopefully a night away to Vermont.

July:
Beach day trips.
A Camping trip.
Wine festival.

August:
More beach day trips.

Our cousin's wedding.

Hopefully this process continues to go so smoothly. We would love to have a match before next Christmas. That would make the holidays a lot easier...