Head vs. Heart

Anyone who know me knows that I'm a thinker. I think about everything! I over think everything! I research everything until no other new information can be uncovered. Our two cars were chosen with the endorsement of Consumer Reports. And I proudly have a subscription that I enjoy reading.

Most of the decisions I've made in my life were made by making a pros and cons list. I weighed all my options and determined which was the most logical and so I figured that must be the best decision.

But, then I starting thinking (again) about how the most important decisions I've made in my life, you know the ones that really matter, were not decisions I made by using my pros and cons list. It wasn't that I didn't think about the pros and cons, it's when it came time to make the decision, my heart was the deciding factor. What did I really want? What is truly important?

Adoption is one of those decisions. If anyone sat down and made a pros and cons list for adoption, I can tell you that the cons would probably always win. For international adoption it costs lots of money, that could be spent on a fancy new car, a down payment for a house, a very luxurious cruise around the world, or tucked away for the future. And the time it takes to fill out the reams of paperwork, have it all notarized and apostilled, and the waiting (for who knows how long) for other people to do their part in the process. And the invasion of privacy when the social worker has to learn every little thing about you during the home study. And the risk that the child we want to adopt will no longer be available for adoption when we finally get all this paperwork, money, and waiting done with. Oh, and if you don't like to travel to countries that speak another language, this would be a con for you too (this is not a con for me!).

But, then you think about the child. The child is on on the pro side. She might be the only pro. So, how do you make this decision? This decision can only be made with the heart.  The heart wins because adoption is one of those decisions; the kind you make with your heart, a leap of faith, life changing and truly important.

More education!

The major news on the adoption front is that we will now be required to complete more adoption education hours before we go to court (many months from now). Recently, an agreement that was signed in the country we are adopting from, increased the hours of required education from 10 hours to 80 hours! This is for all families adopting, whether you are a local or foreigner. But, in reality each region (which are like our states) has the ability to decide how to enforce this. From our understanding, many judges will only want to see you complete about 30 hours. We hope this is the case since it will obviously be very time consuming and expensive to have to complete another 70 hours! This is the nature of international adoption. It is constantly changing and you must be okay with that or you will drive yourself crazy! It is not for you if you are looking for the straight and narrow path. In the end, I know that the intention is in the interest of the children and that is the most important thing.

Another change in the works which is a great one for us, is that the visa rules are changing in this country. They are making it easier to get a visa and most likely cheaper (if you have to travel there 3 times). This is great news! Right now it is relatively expensive and challenging to get a visa to visit this country, so I was super excited about this!

I updated some information on our blog under the Costs page. Some people have expressed concern over the overall cost of this adoption. I decided that maybe a detailed listing of the costs would address those concerns and answer some questions. At the very least it will help other potential adoptive parents know what to expect if they decide to make this journey.

We're giving away a $500 gift card!

While we are waiting for our home study to be written, we decided to do something fun! We are going to be giving away a $500 Amazon gift card. For information about the giveaway, please see the new page I've created at the top right. It has all the details and rules. If you have questions, please email me.

I would also like to welcome any new readers to our blog. Especially, if you were one of the lucky recipients of the letters we mailed today. We appreciate the love and support from our family and friends so we can bring Hadley home as soon as possible!

Follow up to my previous post

I found this great article on our home study agency's Facebook page. It's a good follow up to my previous post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jane-aronson/when-an-orphan-dies_b_1743722.html

Every life is precious

I decided to create a new post for this because it didn't feel right to post something so heartfelt with all that business stuff I just wrote about.

Today, a family who was in the process of adopting a child they found on RR learned that their child had died. This is the second RR child to die in a month. The other child also had a family working to adopt him. Both families are devastated. This makes me so sad. No child should die without knowing the love of a family. I know, I lost a child. Abby has hundreds of people who love her and grieved when she died. Every child deserves that. This is why we're adopting. This is why we already love this little girl. A little girl we've never met. This is serious and important. Every child on earth is a precious and a valuable gift. Not everyone can adopt but everyone can help someone who is adopting. Thank you to everyone who cares about these children!

Almost 3 weeks since...

my last post! That's what happens when you take back to back vacations and then try to catch up with "normal" life. Though life isn't really all that "normal" when you're adopting!

I updated a few of the pages on our blog: Adoption and The Cost. I wanted readers to know our feelings about adoption and why we chose international adoption, and I felt that there would probably be questions about the costs and well, why is it so expensive? I hope these pages answered some questions.

On the adoption front, the exciting news is that we had our last home study visit with the social worker yesterday! It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders though we still have a long way to go. It feels like progress and I think our social worker understands the urgency of our timing. I'm hoping it will be written and finalized in record speed. She told us she thought at the very latest, the whole entire writing, revising, and finalizing process will take about a month. I'm okay with that, but I hope it's sooner!

We've started working on the documents needed for our registration dossier. This is the paperwork that will be translated and submitted to the authorities in Hadley's home country. Once this is officially submitted, we will receive our official referral and dates to travel for our first trip. Most of the documents are simple to fill out but then (like everything) will need to be notarized and apostilled. The biggest part of the registration dossier is the home study, but we want to have all the other documents ready to go so when the home study is done we can send every thing off. Once I have the the registration documents finished, I'm going to start working on the court documents. My plan is to get as much paperwork done as possible now, so hopefully we won't be rushing around to get it finished at some later date.

One of the reasons that I'm trying to get everything done is because I might be starting a temporary part-time job giving seasonal flu shots. I'm an RN, though I'm not currently employed as one. I was thinking that it might be a good idea to bring in some extra money since this adoption will be very expensive. My education and this adoption will be fighting it out on which one will be more expensive! I'm hoping the student loans win! I've also been thinking about becoming a notary and starting my own notary business...still researching that. My dad is an entrepreneur and I think I inherited the gene "always keeping my eye out for a way to make money".

Justin and I have gone back and forth about the idea of "fundraising" for our adoption. I see all these fellow RR adoptive parents fundraising and I think it's amazing. Everyone is so creative and good at planning events. I'm not really either one of those. But, we will probably try something...Many people have expressed a desire to help us and so I think we will look at it as a way to thank everyone. Because I really can't think of a better gift than to try to help a family save a child's life.

On vacation

*I would first like to thank everyone who has commented and sent us emails. We really appreciate it! I'm still getting used to checking another email account so I am very slow with approving comments and reading emails. At some point, I will reply! I think I've spent more time at my computer in the last month than I ever have with all the adoption stuff, research, news, support groups. Sometimes it's very overwhelming. But, I wanted you all to know that we appreciate your support!*

So, I am officially on vacation! I'm in Lake Tahoe with my family for about a week. This also means that I can't really do much adoption stuff. But, I will probably take the time to do some "work" on this blog. I've been recording all the nuts and bolts of international adoption but I haven't yet really wrote about the emotional aspect of it. Like, why are we adopting? Since I'm in such a beautiful place and without too many distractions (other than my family), I will have some time to address these other aspects of this adoption process.

Before that, I will catch you up with the to-do list and what we are working on. We had our first visit with our social worker a week ago. Just as everyone else says, it was fine and not difficult at all. Our social worker wants us to adopt and have a successful homestudy, so it feels more like she is working with us to make all of this happen. She did bring up a few things for us to think about which is very helpful. Sometimes this process can be very emotional and she tried to give us a realistic picture. She told us that we seemed very well informed about international adoption. All those months of researching and reading other family's blogs has paid off! And of course, she decided to wait to do the house walk-through on the second visit. I knew that would happen just because I cleaned the whole house! Well at least I had a very clean house for about 24 hours...

Justin and I also had our doctor's appointments for our physicals earlier this week. We both have new PCP's because we had to changed our health insurance in January. We both really like our new doc's and they were both very supportive of our adoption. We haven't told many people yet so I'm not sure what the reaction will be, so I guess I was surprised at how supportive they are. It is very encouraging! We can't check the medical exams off the list quite yet. We're still waiting for test results to come back and then the forms can be completed.

So, what's left? Besides the medical forms, we have to finish our education (8 hours left) and we're waiting for two more of our reference letters. Our second and hopefully last visit with the social worker is at the end of August, but we're hoping that maybe we can move it up if we get everything finished sooner. I've already started working on the documents for our dossier. I would like to have everything ready so when we get our final homestudy we can go ahead and send everything off to our agency and then Eastern Europe!

I hope at some point to post some pictures of where we are vacationing. It is my favorite vacation spot and Justin and I got married here too! If you ever visit Northern California, you must make a trip to Lake Tahoe. It is truly a treasure and I never tire of the beauty here.