Our first post

 Welcome, we're glad you made it!

Surprise! If you didn't already know, now you do. 2023 has brought a lot of changes for us, one of them being, saying "Yes" to God's call to adopt. 

We've had a few people ask how they can follow along so I thought a blog would be the best way. 

We plan to share where we are at in the process, what we have learned about adoption, why we chose adoption, and what God is teaching us through this.  

*Warning, please be advised I am not a writer! I sure don't follow all those comma rules or have great grammar. And I'm sure you're bound to find a few typos 😊 So, here we go! 

Today let's start with the process, where we are at, and what needs to be done. 

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So far we have completed....

✅    Initial application with fee 

✅    Initial in-person meeting to meet our assigned adoption specialist (Diana) and sign about 10 different consents and agreements  

✅   8-week education classes through the agency (about 3 hours each) 

✅    Second in-person meeting with Diana so we could turn in our giant stack of paperwork!  If you're curious of all that we had to submit, I will list that below, if not, keep scrolling. We also created a genogram for each of us at this appointment. Which is basically a very detailed family tree that goes into relationships between everyone. So if your a family member, you were most likely included in that :) 

• Assessment guide (what ended up being 16 pages of answered questions regarding our childhoods, our marriage, our friendships, just about anything you could think of, some parts were filled separately and some parts together) 
• 6 references 
• child desired form 
• couple summary fact sheet
• budget worksheet
• DCS clearance form, one each 
• physician's report, one each
• health disclosure form, one each
• background checklist, one each
• notarized criminal history self disclosure, one each 
• photos of applicants 
• copy of most recent 1040
• proof of income for 3 months
• copy of birth certificates 
• copy of drivers license 
• copy of health insurance cards 
• copy of vehicle registrations
• copy of insurance card for each vehicle 
• copy of marriage certificate 
• copy of Pet license and registration (including proof of rabies vaccination) 
• copy of CPR/1st Aid cards
• copy of level 1 fingerprint clearance cards 

✅  Paid our home study fee 

✅ The online "Prepare/Enrich" assessment which was about 300 questions that we each had to answer, separately, in order to generate a comprehensive overview of our marriage/relationship, and our preparedness and expectations of adoption. 

AND TOMORROW, we have our 3rd in-person meeting to go over the prepare/enrichment assessment. Which we have been told will be a 4 hour meeting! 

Not exactly sure what else we have to do from there. We kind of just do one step at a time, so tomorrow we should find out what the next step is. 

Phew! I think that is all for now, and I have caught you up to speed. 

 As of the 2nd in-person meeting, we officially entered our "home study" process. This is the phase that we get thoroughly interviewed. It gets into all the nitty gritty details of who we are, our childhood, our finances, our marriage, our beliefs, our family dynamics, our future goals/plans. The home study allows Diana (our adoption specialist) to gather all the information she needs so that she can write up a 15-20 page document to present to the court saying we would make good parents. 

At the end of the home study someone will come to the home to complete an inspection making sure it's safe, and follows the state requirements. 

Diana will then present our case to the team at the agency to be reviewed before sending off to the judge. If at any point they identified any red flag(s), this is when it will need to be addressed before moving forward. 

A judge will then review our case and if approved, we will be certified for adoption!

From here we would......

• Get the clearance from Diana to start working on our match letters
• Pay matchbook fee and be entered into the matchbook
• Start fundraising 
• Wait to be matched (no, we don't get to pick a child, we wait for a birth mother to choose us!)

Diana will update and communicate with us monthly from there. It could be days, weeks, months, years, just never know what GOD has planned. Then of course, there are several things that take place after being matched until we get to take the little one home. Typically, the adoption is not finalized till 3-6 months after the baby has been in our home.

So that is the process in a nutshell! I am sure there are some concepts and words that are new to you after reading this. I know we have learned a lot. Maybe in the blogs to come I can go over some of those and explain more on how all this works.

Thanks for reading! Until next time

🧡

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