A little of this and that...

Here's a little update of what's happening in our world, mostly related to the adoption.

We have our first homestudy visit tomorrow! I'm a little nervous about it...the kind of nervous you get when you're doing something new. I've been cleaning like a maniac! I think everyone does this before the social worker comes to your house; it's normal to want to make a good impression. We don't have time to do everything that we would like to do. We moved into our house 6 months ago and we still have a lot of clutter and rooms filled with stuff. But, our house is clean and safe and I know that's all that really matters. I even bought two new plants to put by the front door which is a big deal for me because I have the opposite of a green thumb! On Friday I'm planning on taking pictures of our house while it's clean, for our dossier. We need to include pictures of our house and neighborhood and I can't think of a better time then right after it's clean and before the cat hair takes over (we have 3 cats!).

We're slowly making our way through our adoption education. We still have 10 hours left! I'll be honest, I'm finding the online education a little boring and tedious. I feel like I'm back in college taking a general education class that I'm not too interested in. It's not the subject matter, but the way it's presented. I've already read quite a few books on adoption that were much more interesting...But, I have learned a few new things and I guess that's the point.

I got an email from the U.S. Department of State and my new passport is on it's way! I was just thinking last night that maybe I should have expedited it...but no worries now. I didn't have it expedited because Justin had renewed his earlier this year and it only took 3 weeks. And it looks like mine will be 3 weeks as well from the time they received my application. It seems like I have been waiting for much longer! I think there's something called "adoption time" where everything seems longer than it actually is.

A few non-adoption happenings...
Last week we traveled to Tucson to visit my mother-in-law. We celebrated our Angel Abby's birthday on July 19th. It was a relaxing day of remembrance for us and I shared the Facebook memorial page I started for her. We're planning to make Abby's birthday a family day of celebration and remembrance of her every year.
The highlight of this trip to Arizona was our overnight to Sedona. Sedona is a an extremely beautiful place and many find it to be spiritual as well. I personally feel that most of nature is spiritual, as there is something magical about being surrounded by God's creation. I would love to post a few pictures, but they're on my phone and we're using a new computer and basically I have to figure out how to get them off my phone!

That's all for now! I'll update with how our visit goes with the social worker.

It's Official!

Welcome everyone who has found our blog through Reece's Rainbow! Our blog isn't public yet to our family and friends (meaning they don't know about it, yet), so I'm assuming everyone who has visited so far found us through RR.

I'm new to blogging so I'm sure this site will evolve over time and hopefully become more interesting and visually appealing. As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, I've really enjoyed reading blogs about different adoptive families. They are informative and inspiring! I'm not sure how inspiring I will be...but I will try to be informative.

We are now officially committed to adopting "Hadley" on Reece's Rainbow. We are very excited and a little overwhelmed with everything we have to do to bring our daughter home. But, mostly we are looking forward to this great adventure of international adoption!

Lost in paperwork

I promise, this whole blog won't be about paperwork! But, that's what I've been buried in during the past week. I've put off doing most other things to make some progress. It seems like a lot when you look at it all at once and when I first looked at the information that the homestudy agency sent, I was feeling overwhelmed. But, most of it isn't too difficult, just time consuming.

We had our Live Scan fingerprints done on Tuesday and started our online adoption education. We're required to do 10 hours for our homestudy and our child placing agency wants us to take another class that's 4 hours. We haven't made much progress with that because Justin and I have to do it together and it's been a busy week! The adoption education reminds me of my continuing education I have to do every 2 years for my nursing license. Meaning that the "contact hours" you receive for doing it usually take me less actual hours; I'm a fast reader! That reminds me...it just seems like yesterday that I renewed my RN license and I have to do it again next July. Maybe I should start working on that now so I don't have to try to cram in 30 hours next July when this year flys by! Even though I'm not working as an RN, it's so easy to keep my license and CPR certification up to date, so I have no plan to let it lapse. That way I can work if I need or want to at any point.

Okay, a little off topic there. The parts of our homestudy paperwork we have left to complete are: our medical exams, getting our 4 reference letters, finishing our education, a resource form, and our personal history forms. I've been working on the personal history form a little at a time. It's the only paperwork that requires some real thought and reflection. It asks about your childhood, relationship with your parents, what you don't like about your spouse; it's like a therapy session! I know that still seems like a lot but believe me, if you saw the list we had to complete, you would agree that we've made a lot of progress in only one week! We're still waiting to hear from our actual social worker so we can schedule our first visit. And because I haven't heard from the social worker, I'm waiting to send in the Reece's Rainbow paperwork.

The Beginning

This is my first official post in what will be our "Adoption Story" blog. I'm hoping I'll continue the blog with updates of our family. So, eventually it will be the "Siebenthal Family" blog. 

I've read MANY other's adoption blogs and found them to be very helpful. I'm hoping that this blog will be a help to others who are considering an international adoption. Justin and I are hoping to adopt a little girl from Eastern Europe. We will be revealing more details as time goes on, but we won't be revealing her country of origin on this blog. Though if you are very close to us or know anything about her country, you will probably figure it out! Justin and I decided that we are going to do everything within our control to make this adoption happen as fast as possible. That way we can hopefully be more patient when the parts we can't control (US and foreign government stuff) takes longer than we would like.

I will go into more details on the steps we've taken so far, but here's a quick rundown and the timeline. On Friday, June 29th we sent our application to the Reece's Rainbow partner agency. We sent it USPS Priority Mail and it made it all the way across the country in 3 days including a weekend. Not bad for the USPS! We were matched by the agency on Tuesday, July 3rd. This is only a match with the agency; not a match in her country. 

We attended a homestudy agency orientation on Monday and though we really liked the agency, they were geared more toward foster/adopt placements and we felt that they wouldn't get the homestudy done as fast as we wanted. We are hoping for no more than 8 weeks. We found another great homestudy agency in the Bay Area who actually places children from "little girl's" country, and they will get started on our homestudy as soon as they process our application. I was waiting to speak with someone from the agency before I sent off the application. I spoke with her and she told me to go ahead and send not only the application but also the retainer agreement (a long, legal document) with checks for the fees, that way they could assign us a social worker right away. Well once she said that, I decided we needed to get this done TODAY. I highly encouraged Justin to drive home as fast as he could from work to sign these extra documents while I put together yet another USPS Priority Mail envelope (3rd this week). Justin made it to the Raley's drop off just in time.

Oh, and I also sent off my passport for renewal. I still had 5 years left on it but it was still in my maiden name so that needed to be changed. Whew! What a busy but productive week. Another week closer to "little girl"!