Impatient

I usually consider myself a very patient person. I don't think I could work as a nurse without an above average level of patience. I also consider myself pretty good with kids who test your patience like nothing else! But, during this adoption process I have become very impatient! My impatience seems to grow over time. We are soooo close to getting our finalized home study and our paperwork ready to submit overseas. But, it feels like this past week has just dragged on. Why is this taking so long? So, that's where we are. Just waiting for other people to do what they need to do. The amusing part is after we get our paperwork submitted, we will be waiting again. For our referral and travel date. The hardest part about waiting is that we know that this child is getting older by the day. Each week that goes by is another week that she is living without a family. This is why the waiting is so hard. I've already backtracked in my mind how we could have sped up this process to where we are now. It's almost been 3 months since we started, but looking back I think, well if we did this again how can we make this move along faster? But, we didn't know at the time. I tend to optimistically estimate everything anyway. I think I assume everyone is on my time schedule. Well, don't we all? It's time to send some emails and make some phone calls.

Home study draft done, thanks, and 3 years!

I've been waiting to write a new post because I was hoping there would be some news on the adoption front! There is, but first I would like to thank everyone for the donations we have received! We truly appreciate it! I'm crunching some numbers and trying to figure out how much everything is really going to cost. It's very difficult because the travel costs are so variable depending on the time of year. And we might be able to use some frequent flier miles I've accumulated for at least part of our flying. But, that will depend on how far in advance we get our travel dates. It looks like we will be doing most of our travel in the winter months. This will be very interesting because I'm not a cold weather person. Snow and I don't get along except for when I'm inside looking outside noticing how pretty it looks. I don't even have a really warm jacket. Hmmm....this will be interesting. The upside of snow and freezing cold is that nobody travels to Eastern Europe during this time! This means cheaper airfare, yay!

So, we finally got our home study draft back from our social worker. The social worker had to send it to the main office and then they go over it to make sure everything complies with the State of CA and then we read it over to verify that everything is correct. Then it is sent to our child placing agency and they read it over and then it travels by email across the ocean and the facilitator in Eastern Europe reads it to make sure it says what it should say according to their standards, and then it goes back to our CA agency for finalization. Yes, there are a lot of people reading this! Hopefully it will be as perfect as possible when it is done.

The reason the home study is so important is because it is the document that approves us adopt a child. Once it's finalized we can get it apostilled along with all our other notarized dossier documents and send it all overseas. This will allow us to receive our child referral and our date to travel!

The last thing I would like to say is Happy 3rd Anniversary to us! Justin and I talk about everything we've been through in our 3 short years of marriage and we can't believe it's only been 3 years! But, like I said on my Facebook post. Having a wonderful partner in life is truly a blessing. And we are very blessed.

What a great day! September 12, 2009, Edgewood Golf Course, South Lake Tahoe, Nevada

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!