Interview

Tonight we had our first interview with our adoption agent. It wasn't as bad as what I thought it might be. It's really hard when someone you don't know is coming to your house and checking you out and asking questions. She asked us questions about ourselves, our families, our relationship with each other, how we grew up, our academics, and so much more. She said there are more questions, but she would email them to us because they may take a while to think about how we would answer them.

She will be coming back next week to do our safety audit. This is where we have to make sure we have a tornado/fire escape plan, our cleaning products are away from where the child can get to them. I don't think it will be too hard to pass this audit. We pretty much have everything taken care of already.

Training

We received a couple more training classes to work on. They are about sexual abuse and differences in culture when adopting children. I have already looked at the quizzes for both & they seem to be pretty easy. Mostly T/F for the sexual abuse which is common sense. And a Q & A for the culture one, they want to know how I would feel in a different culture. This one wouldn't be too hard since we have had two exchange students who lived with us for a while. We dealt with differnt cultures, one was a culture close to ours, the other was completely opposite. We have learned that it is hard for 2 cutlures to mix. It takes hard work on both sides for everyone to be happy and things to work out correctly.

Miscelaneous

Not too much is going on to be updated with on the adoption journey. We are still waiting to hear from our homestudy agency to find out what other classes we need to take. We are wanting to get those over with and are a little curious why they are taking so long. Our fire inspection is stil on the list of things that need to be done. We got our flooring in & our house looks wonderful now. I just need to clean up the leftover trash and put some of the other things back into place. Today I found a leak in our laundry room.. one more thing to fix. I think we have a leaky pipe under the house.

I found out last week that I will be loosing my job as of June 1st. The office I am working at is closing its doors for now. So that means I will be staying home for a while anyway. At least till school starts and I can get a substitute license for the area schools.

I have gotten all the pictures I want to use for mey profile to give to the adoption agency for the expectant parents to look at. My goal is to show the expectant parents what is important to us. Things like family, friends, church, and just spending time with each other. We don't have a lot of extra money to take a vacation somewhere spectacular every year, but we do try to get away even if it is just to visit family in another state. I want the parents to chose us because of the who we are, not because of what we have materially.

Mailed Paperwork

Today, I mailed most of our Homestudy paperwork. YEA!!!!! I checked on our background checks Tuesday & mine had gone through, but Justin's hadn't...yet. There is nothing that should be holding his up, I just think it is taking his longer. We should be getting our fire inspection done next week. I got my lamiate flooring put in the last couple days, it looks really good! Now we just need to put all the furniture back and I think it will look even better.

Adoption Agency

I talked to our adoption agency,Caring for Kids Adoptions in Akron. I told them we are about done with our homestudy and was just wondering what the next step was. They told me that once we finish the homestudy, we will sign a release to send the information to them. She also told me that we will need 3-4 profile books. These books include pictures of our family, outings, vacations, ect. I am excited because I enjoy doing this. I can work on these books while we wait for the rest of the inspecitons and the homestudy to be processed.

I have already started a list of pictures that I will be putting in the books. We also need a letter to the birthparents. This letter could be hard to write. I don't have a clue what to put in there. They want us to tell about our family & our life. What is there to tell other than we are happily married, have family close by & thats about all I can think of. We don't take many vacations because we can't afford them right now. Justin works alot.. I'm home.

Nursery

Ok..so I know that its still a long time before we get the baby, but I have decided on my nursery decorations. I decided to go with Mickey & Minnie because its very nutural...we don't know if we will have a boy or girl. So with Mickey & Minnie we have both. I have found the crib bedding that I want to get! I am starting to get more excited as each day goes on. Now that I have decided on the nursery style, it is starting to feel more like we are going to have a baby.

We got our background checks today! One more step done!!! Its getting closer & closer. These background checks went a whole lot smoother and cheaper then the last. I want to get the rest of our training finished so that its done also. I am in go mode now...I want to get stuff done!!

Background checks

I am so ticked with the people who did our background checks. We went to them today & they were rude.. we did the web version of the state check, but they didn't put in the address of the agency that the info was to be sent to. So we paid for these...$70 total. Then I came home & sent an email to our agency asking if the company that did our checks could send the info to her when they get it, but she can't accept it that way, it has to come straight from the FBI...AHHHHHHHH

so now we are out about $70 and ticked with the people because they didn't do it correctly in the first place. They weren't able to do the federal checks on the web, so they did them on the cards..that was going to take 6-8 weeks to get back and the agency can't process our paperwork until they have them.. I am going somewhere else with in the next couple days. This has been the worst part of our experience!!!!!!!! Make sure if you get a background check, the people know what they are doing!!!!!!!!!!!

Paperwork

We are almost finished with our paperwork. We are also almost finished with our with our training. Everything has been going well and its getting done quicker than I we thought it would. It looks like everythign will be sent in by the end of the month. We have our physicals scheduled for next week. Our background checks will be done this week. We just need to get our fire inspection scheduled and then we will be finished.

The training that I have been working on isn't as bad as I thought. Some of it is crazy.. stupid things that are just nuts.. I'm sure somewhere someone was stupid enough to try it! I don't think the training will be that hard, its just a nucence. I don't really feel that the state should tell me how to raise my kids. I'm not going to go and abuse them, or do something stupid. But i guess there are people out there that do. Its amazing that if you have your own children, you don't need to worry about what the state says you should do, but if you adopt.. its all about the state. I understand that they want to make sure you won't hurt the kids, but there are still those who go through the entire process & still get a kid, then they hurt it or kill it.

Anyway that is my venting for today!!!

Paid

Thanks to God, we got our money for our homestudy. It is all in and we are going to be finishing up the paperwork this week. Well what we can fill out anyway! We still need to get background checks, physicals (calling the Dr. tomorrow), and our fire inspection done, but those are the big things in my opinion. I am thrilled that God has provided the money we have needed so far. I know he will continue to provide as he always does. I will say when I wrote out the check it was for the biggest amount I have ever written a check :)

We are also working on our training.. we need 24 hours of training before we can adopt. Because we are a distance away from our agency, they found us some classes we can take online. First we must read the information, then go back online & do a test. Once we pass the test they will create a certificate that we can print out. These classes consist of half of our total hours. YEA!!!!! I would love to be able to take all of them like this because for me its a whole lot easier, plus with Justin's schedule, its hard to get somewhere to take classes a couple times a week.

The classes we are currently taking;

Positive Dicipline
Lifebooks
Loss and Grief Experienced by Foster & Adoptive Children
Normal Growth & Development (currently working on this one)

So far the information has been the same thing over & over again.

Another wonderful happening is we have found someone to install our laminate flooring before we have any inspections done!! YEAH.. I have been waiting for this for like 4-5 months :) I will upload pictures once it is installed.