Well, we've been in Idaho for almost a week now and it is so beautiful! I can't believe how much snow there is and how cold I am. We've had a wonderful christmas with our families and are still trying to get everything settled for our move to Tooele, UT! As far as the adoption process, we'd be a lot further if we weren't such procrastinators! We still need to mail in our profile pictures and birthmother letter. Anyway, we hope everyone has a wonderful new year!
We had our 3rd adoption meeting/class last night and it was really good! They had a panel of 3 birth mothers come and share their experiences of placing children for adoption. It was interesting to see how different each of their experiences were and reminded me that there is someone out there who really will be looking for us. It helped us understand that we don't have to try and sound like we are the perfect couple, we just have to be us and everything will work out the way it is supposed to. We are going to re-write our birthmother letter now that we have a better understanding of what the purpose of it is and one of our forms came back incomplete so we have a few more things to do, but we're still waiting for the FBI check so it's not a setback or anything. We are a little crazy here right now still trying to get ready for christmas and moving. The moving part is the crazy, tense, hecktic part. We'll be rolling into Pocatello next Saturday though, and can't wait to see all of the family! xoxo~J & L
Well, we had our 2nd class last night for adoption and it went well. Last night's class was a lot different than the first one. The first was all warm and fuzzy and full of hope and this one was like a reality check. We learned about the new adoption credit on our taxes and then we heard from our social worker about a lot of the things that we have to do that aren't really fun. He talked to us a lot about financially preparing for our adoption and to make sure we plan to have more money than we expect, he talked about wait times, special needs adoptions, interstate adoptions, moving in the middle of the process (which he said won't really effect us because it's such a short time and we'll be coming back to the same house, so we don't need to transfer to the Utah office, unless we received a baby in 2 months which is very rare), home studies, bumps in the road, failed adoptions, openness with birth mothers...wow there was a ton of stuff they covered. All in all we felt good about it. We turned in a lot of our papers, we actually lost Jeff's physical form so we have to get a new one and we forgot to get a money order for our FBI background check so anyway after we turn that in we will be able to schedule our home visit and interviews and then the FBI check takes 8 wks to get back. So we won't actually be approved for adoption until the end of January. Lots to do and wait on, but it will be totally worth it in the end!!!
Our meeting from last night actually got canceled and moved to the week after thanksgiving so we really don't have anything to tell you about. I do know the next thing that has to be done is our FBI background check and we had to turn in 6 non-family references that they have to check. The classes that we are going to are mostly informational and we are required to attend at least 3 of them. We are getting ready for thanksgiving next week, Jeff's whole family will be here and we'll be going to the temple with Michael to take his endowments out! That will be awesome. We'll also be having some pretty exciting flag football games while everyone is here, I should probably stock up on ice and ibuprofen for us. Anyway, we wish everyone a happy thanksgiving and hope the weather is as beatiful as it is here!!!!
Just a quick update really quick tonight. First I just want to say how truly thankful we are to have this opportunity to adopt. We are also so thankful to have such wonderful families. We got a call today from our social worker that they have all of our online information and next they need to get our fingerprints and our reference list, which we have already and just need to turn in. We will be turning them in on Wednesday when we go to our next adoption meeting. We went to the airshow at Nellis Air Force Base on Saturday with some friends of ours who are also starting to adopt and it was so nice to get to talk to them about the whole process. The more and more we do to learn about adoption, the more and more excited and grateful I am for such a wonderful gift. We really do have thankful hearts this month!
