May 23, 2012

Next Steps

Time for an update!

A few days after we sent off our contracts, we were told that they had been approved.  Hurray!  Not that we were worried, but it's always great to be official.  We got our Adoption Planner a few days after that.

Tuesday of last week we had our first (phone) meeting with our case worker at AGCI!!  So exciting!  She talked us through most of the steps we'll be taking from now until we turn in our dossier.  Wow!  There's a lot of stuff.  She also told us the things that we should start working on right away.

They have Next Steps to take like FBI checks by 1 week, CPS checks by 2 weeks, etc.  Very helpful ... and a little daunting. :)

It turns out you have to have a CPS check for every state and country you've lived in for 3 weeks or more since you were 18.  It should be interesting getting a CPS check from another country ... especially one not particularly known for it's speed in red-tape matters.  I'll be interested to see how that goes.

AGCI has a rule that we have to have EVERYTHING for the home study and dossier turned in within 6 months of the date of our application.  So by November 15th we have to have everything finished.  That seems like a long way off until you look at the different steps and they say they can take 13-14 weeks, etc. etc.

Thankfully, back when we were planning on doing the home study first, we went ahead and got most of the documents together that we would need and filled out the information about ourselves ... unless you've done a home study, you would not BELIEVE how many questions there are about your life.  It's crazy!  But ... it's mostly done already.  Hurray!

So our home study agency is working on the FBI checks, and we're trying to get the loose ends tied up on the packet for them.  Hopefully we'll be able to send that off in the next few days.

On a tangentially related note ... I know this may not seem that exciting to some of you, but it was SUPER exciting to me!

I got a FB message from a friend that I worked with at Old Navy when Cole & I were in college.  She said she had been following my blog and saw my Etsy shop.  She told me she has a shop, too, and that she has fabric left over that's not big enough for the things she does ... so she offered it to me!  And not a little bit of fabric.  A WHOLE BOX full!

If you have been to the fabric department at Hobby Lobby or JoAnn lately, you know how much fabric costs ... especially the minky dot fabric that she sent me.  It was like Christmas!


Thanks, Laura!  And you all should check out her shop Sweetheart-n-Sunshine.

I'm not sure what I'll do with all of it.  I had been wanting to buy some to use to add texture to my appliqués, so I'm sure I'll do that.  And I'll probably make a lot of these, too.

This one was for my sweet baby niece.  

And just for fun, here are some pictures of the cutest little model I know.  I'm trying to take pictures of everything I make so that I can add stuff to my shop.  This is the first time I've used Hayley as a model though.  I know I'm a wee bit biased, but isn't she adorable!!





And because I just  can't resist sharing their cuteness ...









May 1, 2012

And It's Off!

Can you believe I'm back for the second day in a row?  Yeah, me either. :)

But I need to finish the story, so here it is ... what's happened so far anyway.

Things have changed a bit since we began our journey.  We started off doing the application for the adoption agency, then we thought we would do the home study first, and now we're back to doing the stuff for the adoption agency again.  That was in large part because the home study agency wanted to know if the adoption agency had any specific requirements. And the adoption agency, for some reason, can't tell us their requirements until we are officially clients.  So here we are.

I know I'll probably remember more things that I need to share, but here's what I can think of at the moment from the craft shows until today.

Things got really busy with the craft shows, then keeping up with a new business, then the holidays.  We drove somewhere around 5,000 miles from Thanksgiving through the first week in January.  It was nuts!

We went to New Mexico for Thanksgiving,



then to Alabama for a friend's wedding,



then to Lubbock for a friends' funeral, then the next day we headed for Georgia to take our college group to Passion.



At the end of the week we went to Waco to pick up our kiddos from staying with my in-laws during Passion.

I need to back up a little though.

When we first chose our adoption agency, the expected time for an Ethiopian adoption was around a year and a half.  Not too long after that, it was reduced to about a year.  I was so excited!

A couple of days before Christmas, we got a call from the girl who would be our new contact person.  She introduced herself.  And then she told us that things had slowed down considerably.  They had 250 families in line and the process was slow.  She said we were looking at up to three years!  She asked us to consider changing programs unless we were sure that's what God wanted for us.  We told her we were sure and would just wait.  But our hearts were aching so much!


We had an amazing trip to Passion.  On the way back we were talking about things we could pray for each other for.  Cole's and my prayer request was that we were going to send in our application to the adoption agency and then would have 90 days to come up with the first big chunk of money ... of which we had only a small portion.  


The way we got that portion was pretty awesome though!  When we got home from Thanksgiving, we had gotten an anonymous money order in the mail for $300 along with a beautiful necklace with our kids' names and the phrase "Love Makes a Family."  It also has three pearls, one for each of our kids and one for the one we are adopting ... at least that's what I'm guessing ... that's what it means to me.  :)

A funny side story ... whoever sent it to us did not sign it (part of being anonymous, I'm sure) but since it wasn't signed we couldn't get the money.  Thankfully I went into the bank it was from and talked to some really nice people who were able to look something up about it and they cashed it for us.  Hurray!

Anyway ... back to Passion.  So we asked them to pray that God would provide the money that we needed before our time ran out.  We got home on Friday and found in the mail a gift that covered a HUGE portion of the amount we needed for the first step!  It was AMAZING!  We were  able to tell the students in class on Sunday that God had already answered their prayers!

In February we sent in our application ... and the clock started ticking.  We still needed a significant amount of money we didn't have.

Our application was approved very soon after we sent it in, and they sent us the contracts we would need to sign and send in with the first check.  When we talked to the girl from the agency, we were told that now the expected time was 3 1/2 to 4 years.  Not fun news!  But we still believe this is what God has for us.

We also found out that since we first got the information last year about how much it would cost, the initial amount had gone up by about $1300.  We had managed to get together the rest of what we needed, but now we had to come up with this extra amount.

My parents and sisters had a garage sale a few weeks ago and gave us a portion of the sales for the adoption.  Then a week or so ago, we received another anonymous donation of $1000!  I texted my family and told them that we were now only $125 away from having the extra we needed.  And immediately my mom texted back to tell me that she had $150 that some people from their church had donated!  Oh my goodness!!  It was incredible!

It's sometimes quite humbling to have to ask people for help, especially financially.  But it has been so incredible to see how God has used so many different people to provide what we need exactly when we need it!  God is SO good!!

And it gets better!  Last week we were getting ready to write the check to send in with the contracts, and I got an email from AGCI (our adoption agency).  They were announcing that, in honor of Mother's Day, they were doing a fee reduction for anyone who turned in contracts before June 29th.  A $1000 fee reduction!  What??  SO excited.  I immediately emailed our contact person just to make sure this would still apply to us even though we had already sent in our application.  And it does!!  How awesome is that?!

We have 4 months to get our home study and dossier done ... and now we already have more than half of what we need for the home study!  It's been so fun to get to tell everybody how God is working.  It's so awesome to have people get so excited with us.

So ... yesterday, we sent off our contracts!!






When AGCI approves them, we will officially be clients and will begin our home study and dossier!

We're so thankful to God for His faithfulness and provision!