First meeting of our home study process is 10:30 Saturday morning with our personal interviews. She will interview us together and then seperately.
I am fine with the future visits of our home, I know it will be ok, the interviews scare me.
I know the Social Worker wants to put a child in our home, I need to keep reminding myself of that, but honestly this meeting scares the living daylights out of me. What if I answer a question wrong? What if she writes stuff next to my answer and I ask, "Whatcha writing?" and I'm not allowed to look at it?
What if I just repeat "Be anxious for nothing..." over and over again. And again.
And pray a lot. Which we have been doing already, it's just that this seems like that interview is the make or break. We can get accepted by another adoption agency, I'm fairly certain if we are rejected by social work it's not gonna happen again. Again, praying a lot.
This is the closest we've ever been and tomorrow we'll be even closer. Thanks be to God for His many rich blessings thus far.
We are also working on our profile, which is basically a scrapbook about us and contain letters to the Birth Parents thanking them for making this difficult decision. With other options out there, above all we are thankful that they chose life for the child.
We are having family members and close friends write letters to our potential Birth Mother/Parents as well, so she/they will know us. Think about it this way, if you knew you couldn't take care of your child, and the best option for both of you is for the child to go to another home, wouldn't you want to know that the couple you are giving your child to has a lot of friends and family that support them? Wouldn't you want to know that your child is going to be loved and taken care of by more than just the couple? Wouldn't you want to know that they were going to be safe?
But I am excited and nervous for 10:30. Quite a few things to get done between now and then.
Please pray for us!
Thanks :)
Monday, September 27, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Little Steps.
It's been a week since we talked to our social worker. She's been super helpful so far with our first round of paperwork.
Again it felt like things just kept getting in the way so I decided to put the other things on the back burner and my husband and I started filling out paperwork. Fun times trying to figure out all of our addresses for the last 10 years. All in BG but I don't remember all the exact addresses. Thankfully I remembered we have all of our tax records for the last 12 years so we have all of our addresses.
The next big step we have to do is our physicals and give our Social Worker the forms to get our background checks. Ya know, to find out if we are criminals :) I told her we could save 40 bucks and I could tell her straight up we don't have anything on our records. But alas... still have to do them :)
I am amazed at how much finger printing costs though... whew... gotta do that too!
Also Child abuse check, to make sure neither of us have a record in that area...
I keep reminding myself that these are my labor pains. There are people out there that are horrible, awful, people and we have to prove that we are not those people.
The other part of my labor pains is telling my Advisor, who is 3 months pregnant, telling her that I plan on being a stay at home Mom whenever we get a child. I am dreading it, I don't know why, in the long run it isn't really her call. But I like her, a lot. I am looking at getting an Associates so I can wrap this puppy up.
Because I was in school as a distraciton, a huge, stressful, distraction. But a distraction none the less.
When I was in Kindergarten we had a "What I want to be when I grow up" pageant. I didn't go as a scientist, an accountant, or as a doctor, I went as a Mom.
This is the first time I've been able to let myself hope. This is the first time I've let myself get somewhat excited. Still waiting on quite a few things, a lot of things to fall in line. Lots of things. But this is the closest I've ever been.
I have waited 7 years to do everything that every Mom does. Everything. The good and the not so good. Because even that not so good means I'm still a Mom.
Filled out forms. Didn't sign them all because we need a witness. Good thing we have a bunch of people coming over tomorrow night!
Bible study group at our house! WONDERFUL singing tonight! Thank God for His many blessings!!
Again it felt like things just kept getting in the way so I decided to put the other things on the back burner and my husband and I started filling out paperwork. Fun times trying to figure out all of our addresses for the last 10 years. All in BG but I don't remember all the exact addresses. Thankfully I remembered we have all of our tax records for the last 12 years so we have all of our addresses.
The next big step we have to do is our physicals and give our Social Worker the forms to get our background checks. Ya know, to find out if we are criminals :) I told her we could save 40 bucks and I could tell her straight up we don't have anything on our records. But alas... still have to do them :)
I am amazed at how much finger printing costs though... whew... gotta do that too!
Also Child abuse check, to make sure neither of us have a record in that area...
I keep reminding myself that these are my labor pains. There are people out there that are horrible, awful, people and we have to prove that we are not those people.
The other part of my labor pains is telling my Advisor, who is 3 months pregnant, telling her that I plan on being a stay at home Mom whenever we get a child. I am dreading it, I don't know why, in the long run it isn't really her call. But I like her, a lot. I am looking at getting an Associates so I can wrap this puppy up.
Because I was in school as a distraciton, a huge, stressful, distraction. But a distraction none the less.
When I was in Kindergarten we had a "What I want to be when I grow up" pageant. I didn't go as a scientist, an accountant, or as a doctor, I went as a Mom.
This is the first time I've been able to let myself hope. This is the first time I've let myself get somewhat excited. Still waiting on quite a few things, a lot of things to fall in line. Lots of things. But this is the closest I've ever been.
I have waited 7 years to do everything that every Mom does. Everything. The good and the not so good. Because even that not so good means I'm still a Mom.
Filled out forms. Didn't sign them all because we need a witness. Good thing we have a bunch of people coming over tomorrow night!
Bible study group at our house! WONDERFUL singing tonight! Thank God for His many blessings!!
Friday, September 10, 2010
Ice Cream and Questions
I'm sitting here watching the Coal Bowl and wincing just about every 5 seconds. But mostly thinking about what we did tonight.
Chaney's Dairy Barn in Franklin, KY will be known to me now where we first met the social worker who will do our home study. Her attitude about why she does these home studies is just so humbling. They have a little girl they adopted from Korea. She is adorable! They also have a little boy that is their biological child. She told me that she cannot affiliate herself with a particular agency because there are too many orphans in this world that need homes. 147 million. And she does not want to limit herself to just the kids one agency can help. I don't know her exact age but I would guess shes about my age, 30. She's really sweet and I really like her. She's sending us our first homestudy packet in PDF so we can print it out and print out duplicate copies in case we mess up! :) I have already bought White Out for our application to CFS even though we could just print out another, I just wanted to get it filled out and in and done. Though it ended up being several weeks before we sent it in but oh well :)
I'm SO excited about this but totally overwhelmed with everything else we have going on. I ended up working 7.5 hours today to make up for the hours I missed the last two days. I tried to get us caught back up and the instant I sat down at the end of the day my lower back just started throbbing like "WHY DID YOU DO THIS?!" I have a feeling that after this football game is over we are headed for bed and I'm not waking up to any alarm.
Unless it's the fire alarm. In which case I'll be vacating my house.
Anyway.
Please pray for a smooth process, this is all happening and I'm still kind of in a fog about it. It just doesn't seem real but it does seem real all at the same time.
We are happy with how it's going so far, the Lord has truly blessed us. I'm amazed how things are starting to fall into place. A part of me wonders if we had done this before... but everything happens in HIS time. I wonder if we did this a couple of years ago if it would have been as smooth. We'll never know and I thank God for where we are now.
Inch by inch, step by step.
I love my God and my husband.
Chaney's Dairy Barn in Franklin, KY will be known to me now where we first met the social worker who will do our home study. Her attitude about why she does these home studies is just so humbling. They have a little girl they adopted from Korea. She is adorable! They also have a little boy that is their biological child. She told me that she cannot affiliate herself with a particular agency because there are too many orphans in this world that need homes. 147 million. And she does not want to limit herself to just the kids one agency can help. I don't know her exact age but I would guess shes about my age, 30. She's really sweet and I really like her. She's sending us our first homestudy packet in PDF so we can print it out and print out duplicate copies in case we mess up! :) I have already bought White Out for our application to CFS even though we could just print out another, I just wanted to get it filled out and in and done. Though it ended up being several weeks before we sent it in but oh well :)
I'm SO excited about this but totally overwhelmed with everything else we have going on. I ended up working 7.5 hours today to make up for the hours I missed the last two days. I tried to get us caught back up and the instant I sat down at the end of the day my lower back just started throbbing like "WHY DID YOU DO THIS?!" I have a feeling that after this football game is over we are headed for bed and I'm not waking up to any alarm.
Unless it's the fire alarm. In which case I'll be vacating my house.
Anyway.
Please pray for a smooth process, this is all happening and I'm still kind of in a fog about it. It just doesn't seem real but it does seem real all at the same time.
We are happy with how it's going so far, the Lord has truly blessed us. I'm amazed how things are starting to fall into place. A part of me wonders if we had done this before... but everything happens in HIS time. I wonder if we did this a couple of years ago if it would have been as smooth. We'll never know and I thank God for where we are now.
Inch by inch, step by step.
I love my God and my husband.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
6pm Chaneys Dairy Barn...
I will be doing something other than eating ice cream because I'm fairly certain the kidney stone I just passed is half calcium and mostly caffeine.
Coffee, Mnt. Dew and anything with caffeine in it is officially off the menu. My head is going to throb for DAYS.
We are meeting with our social worker tomorrow at 6pm for her to give us our packet to get our home ready for the home study process. That will probably take a little bit to get going. We also may be employing a few college students to come make the front of our house look less... weedy.
I will refer to our social worker as J and the social work major that we talked to a few weeks back as C :)
J and C both told us that our house does not need to be spotless but we will need to clean out our closets, have all chemicals and medications out of reach or behind secure doors. We are also going to need a layout of the house, exact square footage, and the agency wants us to have a fire escape plan posted in the house. You know, in case the infant we are wanting to adopt is like, "hey I smell fire... what should I do?" :) I kid. I know that stuff is there for the safety of the child. Like Steph told me one time, the home study will be part of my labor pains since I will never experience them. Some of the steps will seem unnecessary but they are VERY necessary. I get that. A few years ago I just would have ranted and raved but after seeing some of the jerks out there that adopt children to hurt them, I totally understand why those procedures and rules are in place.
It's kind of like when the whole class gets punished in Kindergarten for something someone else did. It doesn't seem right but you know why and you know who to blame :)
But more importantly the birthmom will want to know that the child she is entrusting to us will be safe. These things are for her peace of mind. Having seen adoption from all angles and how hard it is on everyone, I want the birthmom who chooses us to know that we will take the best care of the child she is blessing us with.
I cannot express enough how excited and terrified I am in all of this. This is happening. This is actually happening. I thank GOD that this is happening because He is providing for us. This could take anywhere from a couple months to a couple years, but whats a couple months to a couple years when its been 7 thus far?
In His time.
Coffee, Mnt. Dew and anything with caffeine in it is officially off the menu. My head is going to throb for DAYS.
We are meeting with our social worker tomorrow at 6pm for her to give us our packet to get our home ready for the home study process. That will probably take a little bit to get going. We also may be employing a few college students to come make the front of our house look less... weedy.
I will refer to our social worker as J and the social work major that we talked to a few weeks back as C :)
J and C both told us that our house does not need to be spotless but we will need to clean out our closets, have all chemicals and medications out of reach or behind secure doors. We are also going to need a layout of the house, exact square footage, and the agency wants us to have a fire escape plan posted in the house. You know, in case the infant we are wanting to adopt is like, "hey I smell fire... what should I do?" :) I kid. I know that stuff is there for the safety of the child. Like Steph told me one time, the home study will be part of my labor pains since I will never experience them. Some of the steps will seem unnecessary but they are VERY necessary. I get that. A few years ago I just would have ranted and raved but after seeing some of the jerks out there that adopt children to hurt them, I totally understand why those procedures and rules are in place.
It's kind of like when the whole class gets punished in Kindergarten for something someone else did. It doesn't seem right but you know why and you know who to blame :)
But more importantly the birthmom will want to know that the child she is entrusting to us will be safe. These things are for her peace of mind. Having seen adoption from all angles and how hard it is on everyone, I want the birthmom who chooses us to know that we will take the best care of the child she is blessing us with.
I cannot express enough how excited and terrified I am in all of this. This is happening. This is actually happening. I thank GOD that this is happening because He is providing for us. This could take anywhere from a couple months to a couple years, but whats a couple months to a couple years when its been 7 thus far?
In His time.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Ok... 2 more days.
Yesterday did not go the way I thought it would at all. Shawn ended up staying home from work still sick and I ended up switching sections of Chemistry because my professor was ridiculous. So by the time I got done with class and being on campus it was 7:30pm. Still had to come home and make dinner and had an accounting assignment due by midnight that I had not even started.
I just kept fumbling over the paper work in my back pack but the only thing on campus is USPS and I was NOT going to use them. Not after everything else I've gone through with them. But the fumbling over the paper needing to pull other things out, it just felt like everything was purposly getting in my way.
So I took a deep breath before I fell asleep and told myself and prayed that there would be an opportunity today to send it.
I woke up, my husband was feeling a lot better so he said he was going to go to work after Wednesday morning Bible class. So we ate breakfast and he dropped me off at work on his way to the church building to work on the stuff he missed out on doing over the weekend because he was sick. I was elbow deep in work whenever I got his call, so I checked it and to my horror he sounded awful. He sounded like he did the last time he was sick and passed out. I had no car, no way to get to him immediately. I had to yell to get him to pay attentioin to me because it sounded like he was trailing off, which is what he does whenever he passes out. So I called his doctors office and got an appointment for an hour from when I called and then called my sister to come get me.
Upper respritory infection.
I had taken the paper work out of my backpack and moved it to the front seat so I would remember to do it today. So I asked Shawn if we could just go to the UPS store and get it in the mail because I felt like stuff keeps coming up and we just need to do it. He said he was feeling a bit better so it should be ok as long as it didn't take a long time.
I pulled it out and checked all the signatures and all the places I needed to check and made sure for the 200th time that it was filled out. Amazingly it was all done just the same as it was last time. I took a deep breath and Shawn said a prayer, and then I started crying. I've not experienced the happy and terrified at the same time feeling in a while.
So took the paperwork into UPS and they got it all addressed and sent. Tracking number and insurance included. It should be there Friday which means I probably wont hear anything from them until next week at least. But its out of our hands now. In His hands.
So step one of 2003929202 done :)
Next up. Scheduling our home study :)
We covet your prayers on our behalf through all this.
I just kept fumbling over the paper work in my back pack but the only thing on campus is USPS and I was NOT going to use them. Not after everything else I've gone through with them. But the fumbling over the paper needing to pull other things out, it just felt like everything was purposly getting in my way.
So I took a deep breath before I fell asleep and told myself and prayed that there would be an opportunity today to send it.
I woke up, my husband was feeling a lot better so he said he was going to go to work after Wednesday morning Bible class. So we ate breakfast and he dropped me off at work on his way to the church building to work on the stuff he missed out on doing over the weekend because he was sick. I was elbow deep in work whenever I got his call, so I checked it and to my horror he sounded awful. He sounded like he did the last time he was sick and passed out. I had no car, no way to get to him immediately. I had to yell to get him to pay attentioin to me because it sounded like he was trailing off, which is what he does whenever he passes out. So I called his doctors office and got an appointment for an hour from when I called and then called my sister to come get me.
Upper respritory infection.
I had taken the paper work out of my backpack and moved it to the front seat so I would remember to do it today. So I asked Shawn if we could just go to the UPS store and get it in the mail because I felt like stuff keeps coming up and we just need to do it. He said he was feeling a bit better so it should be ok as long as it didn't take a long time.
I pulled it out and checked all the signatures and all the places I needed to check and made sure for the 200th time that it was filled out. Amazingly it was all done just the same as it was last time. I took a deep breath and Shawn said a prayer, and then I started crying. I've not experienced the happy and terrified at the same time feeling in a while.
So took the paperwork into UPS and they got it all addressed and sent. Tracking number and insurance included. It should be there Friday which means I probably wont hear anything from them until next week at least. But its out of our hands now. In His hands.
So step one of 2003929202 done :)
Next up. Scheduling our home study :)
We covet your prayers on our behalf through all this.
Monday, September 6, 2010
What's one more day when it's been 7 years?
I keep staring at my back pack wondering if the papers are still there, if they have somehow disappeared, if someone has stolen them... I keep checking to see if they are there and they are, every time. I forgot today is a mailing holiday so I don't want them sitting around at the Kinkos FedEx office for 24 hours before it goes off to Florida. I might sleep in the parking lot if I drop it off today. After a two week hiatus because of various other problems going on and copious amounts of White Out because I can't read questions, we are pushing forward, we have to get this ball rolling. I need to know we are finally on that path, a path we have been waiting literally YEARS for.
So today I clean and then sit, clean and then sit, because I'm trying to remind myself that this is my day off... maybe I should relax a bit.
This week will be filled with chem & accounting homework, WKU postal services routes, and I will be thinking and praying about where that paperwork is, what the answers from CFS will be. So it begins!
September 7th, 2010
So today I clean and then sit, clean and then sit, because I'm trying to remind myself that this is my day off... maybe I should relax a bit.
This week will be filled with chem & accounting homework, WKU postal services routes, and I will be thinking and praying about where that paperwork is, what the answers from CFS will be. So it begins!
September 7th, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)