Yes. It has been another month since I posted last. No. I will no longer make any promises about how often I'll post. :) Apparently blogging is also not my favorite sport ... or at least not the one I'm best at. I actually do really enjoy it. But why haven't I posted?? Because nothing has happened. Seriously.
OK, so maybe that's mostly how I feel and not 100% accurate. I think I mentioned in my last blog that after the journey to ... not end up adopting this precious guy (let's call him P from now on), that we decided we were going to do a home study that would let us adopt not only a child from Ethiopia but one from here as well if God opens those doors. It turns out that was not the simplest of endeavors, however.
I contacted our home study agency (this is different from our adoption agency - since the adoption agency is in another state we have to have a separate agency do the home study) to ask how we should go about doing the home study in order to allow us to adopt from Ethiopia and the U.S.
The response I received nearly made me cry. I was told that they could not, in fact, do a home study for an adoption from Ethiopia. WHAT?? I have already done a bunch of the paperwork ... including getting references sent to them!! Besides that, they are one of the agencies that AGCI (our adoption agency - All God's Children Int.) has listed as a partner for their Texas clients. Also, I called them when we were looking at agencies to do the home study and they told me that, yes, they could definitely help us in getting a home study for an Ethiopian adoption.
After picking myself up off the floor, I emailed her asking for advice on how to go about doing two separate home studies or if she knew if we COULD do just one that would work for both through someone else or any other help with this apparently very difficult situation. To which she replied that, oops, Ethiopia isn't a part of the Hague agreement (an agreement put in place among several countries that is supposed to help protect children and adoptive parents) yet and so they could do it after all. Whew!!
I also learned that what appeared would be the hardest part of doing this double-duty home study, getting medical exams that both countries would accept, actually was no problem at all. Ethiopia accepts the same one as the U.S. Hurray again!!
So things should be moving along swimmingly, right? You would think. But no. I had high hopes that we would be able to send all of our paperwork back to Lubbock (that's where the home study agency is) with my sister when she went back after being here for the summer. That was two weeks ago, and we haven't finished it yet. There are so many little details, and life has definitely gotten in the way. It seems to do that quite often.
So here we are with an almost-complete set of documents and a very limited amount of time to devote to completing it. My hope is that this holiday weekend will be just the time we needed!
I guess I should backtrack just a bit and describe a little bit about the way we're going about this. We decided not long after beginning the process of adopting, that we were going to trust God to provide the funds we need as we need them instead of raising the money first and then beginning. We definitely don't have them right now! It is a super-scary but exciting step of faith for us. Bigger than anything else I've ever done for sure.
We had the option to do the home study first, do the final application to the adoption agency first, or do both at the same time. We decided to do the home study first. Because, for one, doing both at the same time would be HUGE and because we have the money for the home study, and as soon as we submit the final adoption application about 1/3 of the money will be due. And that's way more than we have right now. I know we won't have it all before we're ready to submit it, but since there was the possibility of just doing the home study first, we decided to do that. And then God's just going to have to take care of the rest of the money when we are done with this part! Just like He has so far.
Back to the home study ... Besides not feeling like we've had the time to work on the paperwork, we also have another very messy obstacle in front of us. A while back, we started moving our rooms around to make room for the baby. We had the kids in one room, the office in another and the third was my craft room. We've since consolidated the office and craft room into one and moved the kids into the bigger room. We contemplated for about 15 minutes moving just one of them and letting the baby move in with Hayley ... actually this was when we were thinking we were adopting two and might move P in with Connor and the baby-est baby in with Hayley. But we were informed that that was a completely unacceptable proposition by Sir Connor. He does NOT want his own room, thank you! Not even if only for a while.
So we're in the middle of a room-swap. "The Baby's Room" as it is lovingly called around here is full of office stuff that hasn't found it's way into the new office and part of the stuff that we are selling on Craig's List/eBay for the adoption. (Thank you to my wonderful sister and her sweet, sweet friend who have donated things for us to sell to raise money!) Hopefully this weekend will also allow us a little time to work on that, too. Do you think I might be expecting a bit much from this weekend?? :)
But we do need to get it done before we send in the paperwork because as soon as they receive it, we will be setting up a meeting with the social worker. And currently the poor guy wouldn't be able to even step foot into the room to tell us what we need to fix to make it adequately baby-proofed.
Anyway, that's what has been going on ... or not going on ... around here. And I'm not dealing very well with not having it done yet. So, on a more serious note, if you would be willing to pray for us that we would see what we need to leave undone for a while in order to make the time we need to get the last few things done and have the focus we need as well to finish the paperwork and get the last room ready for inspection, that would be greatly appreciated!!
Coming
