HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Here's a peak at our halloween costumes this year! We had fun going to 2 trunk-or-treats this year....2 nights of chili dogs, yum yum.

Mission Accomplished

As of today, our paperwork is complete!!! Unless of course when we take it in, we've missed something. I took my paper to the doctor yesterday to have her fill it out and she was like "this is it? Usually the adoption papers I have to do are like a book!" I know this has seemed like a lot of paperwork to us, but I guess other agencies have WAY more. Anywho, just wanted to keep you posted, all of our papers are done and now we can start with more meetings and evaluations. Small steps lead us to great destinations!

More Info

Our next monthly adoption meeting is the 2nd Wed of November. I really enjoyed going to the 1st meeting. It was nice to be able to hear from people who are at different stages in the adoption process with us. It is really helpful in answering questions that we have and helping us to think about some of the difficult things we will have to deal with. We left there feeling even more excited about the decision we've made to adopt. I hope if any of you have questions about it, you'll ask or attend a meeting there or read some of the articles from the Ensign or New Era about it. We are still pretty on track for our October 31 paperwork deadline and I'll be happy to have that part out of the way...it makes my brain tired. : )

First meeting done...three to go

Liz and I attended our first monthly adoption meeting at the LDS family services center here in Las Vegas last night. It consisted of several other couples preparing to adopt some for their first time and others for the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time. A lawyer who has spent 14 years primarily woring on adoptions was there and spoke about what needs to take place to finalize everything. It is basically a two-fold process. The first step is the termination of parental rights by the birth parents which can't occur for the mother until 72 hours after the child is born, but varies somewhat for the father. If the father is not married to the mother his parental rights can be terminated at any time. If the father is married to the mother than it cannot occur until 72 hours after the birth. The kind of tricky part is if the father is unknown. In this case, all children placed for adoption with unkown fathers are listed in a legal publication here in Las Vegas which serves as notification and if no father responds to the listing within a short time period than the paternal rights are terminated and the adoption can be finalized. The second part of the process is the actual adoption. The adoption can be finalized 6 months after the child is born. It takes place in a family court and altogether takes about 5-10 minutes. It is the only time cameras and children are allowed into the courtroom and the lawyer said it is almost as much of a celebration for the judges and bailiffs since they spend 95% of their time dealing with broken families. The rest of the meeting included a panel of 4 adults who had been adopted, 1 of which has since adopted 3 of her own, and another who is attempting to adopt her first. They each shared their eperiences and answered several questions.

It was a learning experience for Liz and I and we are looking forward to the next meeting. We have all of our questionaires done and just have a few things left to do such as physicals, fingerprints, and a picture collage. We are truly excited for the possibilities that lie ahead and know that the Lord's hand has been present throughout this process.

GOOOOAAAALLLLL!!!

We have a goal set to have everything completed and turned in by the 31st of October. I know, some of you are thinking why the heck is it going to take that long? Well, now we're down to the hard stuff that I have to think about a lot. Which means I have to concentrate which I'm not very good at. So anyway, we still have one of our meetings on the 17th which Jeff will be posting about. The weather is great here and I've been riding my bike to work all week, it's pretty fun. I'm gonna have buffer legs than Jeff!!! Talk to you all soon, Love liz