2 Weeks & Counting

....well hopefully anyways. In 2 weeks were crossing our fingers that Aaron will be done with this 3rd shift job. He's more than ready and I'm ready too. Sunday nights and Friday nights seem to be the hardest for the both of us. Its always hard to go into work on a Monday for us "normal" 1st shifters but even harder to go in on a Sunday night. On Fridays he typically doesn't sleep but for a few hours so he's actually pretty crabby and ends up falling asleep early.

The other plus is we can finally take down that dreadful blanket we've had as a "curtain" for the last year. Its been used to block the sunlight and we're ready to take that down, open up the window and let in some sunlight!!!!!


So, yay, we should be back on a "normal" schedule here soon! It can't come soon enough!

Smile

I got an email from one of our adoption references this week and something she said really made me smile and touched me. Here it is:

"How exciting it is to pray about this even wondering who your son or daughter will be and what they will look like!"

Just that one sentence makes me smile SO big and brings tears to my eyes every time I read it.
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A Month Later & Only One Snag

Aaron and I are super stoked to say that we have finished ALL our adoption paperwork and our home study. We had to have our paperwork done before Amanda came for the home study but just this last weekend we finished our profile/photo book.


The photo book is on order and once we get it and drive it over to Amanda she can start showing us to birthmoms. YAY!!!!!!!!! Thats super exciting. However, Amanda did say that if a situation came up (and she still didn't have our book) that she felt we should be considered for she would let us know so we could get one to her asap.


We were talking yesterday about how fast this process has been so far. Its been just a little over a month since we had our first meeting with Amanda and we're pretty much just waiting to be matched. The matching process is what can take quite a bit of time. There are a lot of variables in this and you could be matched for months and then the birthmom change her mind. In that case, we would be back at square one.


The only snag we've hit so far is the photo book. No big snag though. Thanks to my sister's help our book looks great!! We were planning on using Shutterfly only when we went to order it we found out that Shutterfly will print a minimum of 20 pages. We didn't need that many and for some reason they still will put all those blank pages in there. How tacky would that be to show the birthmom? So, I called my sister and we ended up finding a different place to do the book. It costs about $25 more per book but its worth it. This one should be a better quality as well. That was the first snag. After my sister ordered it I asked for her login info to see how it looked on that website. When I opened it I noticed one of the pages was missing some writing. I called her right away and she immediately said, "Let me call you back." She called back and said, "Well they've already printed them and they are already in the packaging department so we'll have to reorder. So, instead of having 2 books we'll now have 4 only 2 of them will be missing some writing. Somehow, when it uploaded some of the writing decided not to get on the page.



Everything else has gone smoothly and even those things were no big deal.


So...now we wait.....

Home Study = More Like People Study

More like tell me why you are the way you are. We had our home study on Friday and despite what we were thinking it really DID last 4 hours. We knew it would be a couple hours but assumed the 4 hours was just allotting extra time if need be. As soon as Amanda came inside and said we would be sitting for a while we decided to get settled in the living room. She started with going over some of our paperwork. She didn't split us up and ask us questions without the other one in the room but she did ask us individual questions. For example, she said, "Samantha, you said that one of your weaknesses you think you would have as a parent would be worrying too much." "Can you elaborate on that or tell me what you meant there?" She did the same thing with Aaron. It was pretty much a question and answer session. The actual walk around the house and look at things was super short. Aaron and I felt a little nervous about this but Amanda is great at what she does. She makes you feel comfortable and at ease even when divulging all your personal info and having you explain negative aspects about yourself. Once we finished going through all that and signing some more forms that was it. She said the only thing she needs from us is our photo book/profile and then she can start showing us to birth moms. We should be able to finish up our photo book this week and hopefully get it to her in less than 2 weeks!!!! That's exciting because once we do that we could be matched any time after that!!! Its the waiting and uncertainty with adoption that is the hardest. The paperwork and home study is the easier stuff. We're so thankful the Anderson's told us about the adoption conference in February. We're thankful we saw them in the gym that day and they told us that the agency that did the home study for their second daughter was there and had information available. Aaron and I walked into the conference that day with absolutely NO intentions or any thought of changing agencies. We had barely started working on forms with Bethany Christian when we went to the conference. When we walked over to ABC's "booth" Amanda asked us a few questions, answered a few questions for us and gave us some information. We immediately liked Amanda and her personality and ended up discussing using ABC as our agency. I think it was the best decision!!! So now we wait until who knows when.