What do I write?

Highlight of my day? Well we sent off our home study & I-600 today! We should be set with our dossier in 6 weeks! Yippee then it is just wait time!  Over the last few weeks we had been pretty stressed about this, not the wait time but the turn in of the dossier, with that we would need to turn in a huge lump sum of money.  We had no idea how we were going to do this, ok well that is not totally true, we had been cutting back on everything the past few months- no Starbucks,no shopping,  only lunch from home....we began a Facebook campaign and saw some nice traction from our friends.  But it was not putting a dent I'm what we needed, so this past weekend we had a garage sale, we were pretty proud of the money we made and Duane sold his entire cd collection- we are talking 20 years worth of music.... But still just a ding in what we needed.  We knew it would happen though R is our son we were just worried if we had to push back another month that leaves him without a family for that much longer, that leaves me without my son.
But...there was nothing we could do.  Well long story long...check out HONY on Facebook! You will see what happened!

R, tonight is no different I miss you so much and I would do anything to have a new picture of you! There are now thousands of people that feel a love for you, I hope you can feel it! You probably don't know what it is but know it is compassion, love, it is humanity.  You are a very special boy and I can't wait to have you in my life!

I miss you...

How do you miss someone you do not even know?  Maybe miss is the wrong word? Long for maybe? What I do know is that I want you home with us, I want our family complete with you in it.  I want to make sure you did your homework, you had a good day at school, that your eating vegetables...

I have images of Chaltu helping you to learn english while you help her to hone her soccer skills.
I can imagine the two of conspiring against your dad and I to get your way for movie night! I think about the mother/son nights we will have.

I want to know your favorite color, what kind of doctor do you want to be?  The learning stage is fun, challenging and always surprising!

Please God let him know, give him a peace, we are coming.  We will be there. He will be home with us soon.  This time next year we will be going to both soccer games, both parent conferences...I will be making enough rice to feed an army (an army of 2!).

I love you R and soon I will be able to show you that.

Brother and sister

As I drove home from work today I started thinking about Chaltu and R.  This time next year they will be officially brother and sister.  I wonder what that will be like. 2 strangers with very similar stories becoming 1 family with the same story.  Will they share secrets, will they fight, will they have a bond that cannot be broken.
I want R home, we are so far away from that at this point and it saddens me.  As he fell asleep tonight did he pray for a mom and dad. Is he wondering why he has not been chosen, I need him to know we are coming. We cannot wait for him to be our son. We are doing everything possible to make this process go quickly, we are saving every penny we have, we have wonderful friends who are donating their money to help.  R we are coming, soon your prays can be for things like a new soccer ball or for your sister to quit stealing your candy, my prays can be changed too, I will finally get to be your mom.  I will tuck you in, kiss you goodnight, keep you safe and love to the end of the world and back.

Age

What does age mean?  It can mean a lot, it can mean you can or cannot stay up until a certain time, it can mean you rely on someone to drive you around if you are not old enough to do it yourself.  It can mean that you are able to be sent off to war to protect our Country.  It might be that you are old enough to make decisions for yourself and have enough experience that some of those decisions are really good!

It can also mean that you have began to understand who you are, but I think even that changes over time with people.

Why am I speaking of this?  As we are trying to move forward in adoption age is a serious question.  Is there a point where age does matter? What does that look like, who does it matter to? How does it matter, what will it effect?

There are a lot of different answers to the above questions, depends on everyone's experiences!

We are considering a journey much different than we had imagined, considering something that at times seems a little crazy, but in my heart feels right.

Those of you that read this that have adopted know that we all have a different calling, that we all have different abilities and that we all have to figure those out and choose them.  It is not easy, I know for me there are some major things that I know that I cannot handle and some that seem ok, but it is really the little things that seem to be harder to know if you can handle. Those are the things you have to let faith lead in though.
We will hopefully be announcing next week what our journey is until then any advice on age or thoughts would be greatly appreciated!!

Back to the Drawing Board!

People ask, why do you post about things that could change, doesn't that make it harder?  Yes, it does, but I want anyone who is about to enter the world of adoption to see that it is hard, there are so many bumps in the road and they are not alone.  I don't want anyone to give up just because the plan changes!  Because in the end you will have a child, a child that is so precious to you and that those bumps seem so minor to what THEY have been through.

So yes we hit a bump at the end of last week, we will not be working with the Agency we thought we would, it is a very strange story but I am ok with it.  I do not want to be part of ANYTHING that does not put the needs of children first.  We had really prayed about it last week, I fully gave it to God and for the first time in a long time I did not have to really listen, it was a NO do not move forward and he put a clear stop to that path.

So now we are back to the drawing board, we are going to speak to the agency that we used when we adopted Chaltu, this week, we also are considering domestic adoption.  There are a lot more things to consider if we move forward in that direction, but there are several (that we have seen basic profiles) children that are school age but younger than Chaltu waiting...I am more nervous about this than international so we have to do some major homework and praying!

The journey continues!

What good is history??

Well- if you learn from it a lot is good about knowing history!!  If you are wondering what I am talking about...well we are just beginning with the home study and we are already running into road blocks.

1. Dr. Appts...impossible to get I had to actually explain myself 3 times of why Chaltu needs to see the Dr. and the person could not understand as it has only been 6 months since she was seen.  She actually did not know how to make an appt  since it had not been a year... What?????? Weird!!!

2. Fingerprints- no Duane did not slice his finger again (for those who don't know that happened the week of fingerprints during our first adoption!) but we were suppose to go on Thursday, now Duane's work schedule has changed...

3. Notary- Due to Duane's work changing this will now have to wait until next week. UGH!!!

So what does all of this mean? Well our home study social worker is available July and September- then she retires! She is gone the month of August!  So all of this means that we may have to wait until September to get our home study completed UGH!!!! Of course we could have a different social worker, but we love ours!!

You might be asking yourself what does all of this have to do with my title?  Well, lucky for me I remember the history of our first adoption, the set backs, the tears, the anxiousness....I am not saying that it is easy to look at the above 3 and be ok with it, BUT all of those set backs  that we had in the first adoption led us to Chaltu!! God always has a plan and even when we think that it is going astray if we will wait we will see just how beautiful it actually is!

On a separate note, we have decided on a Country- Uganda!!  We are very excited to see how this all unfolds.  If anyone has any information or knows anyone that has adopted from there I would love to chat!!!

Heres to making more history!!

Decisions...decisions...decisions!

We went to our intake meeting! All was great! We are now in the process of making a decision on a Country.  

We are going between Ghana and Uganda, they both have their risks and their benefits! We have seen profiles of children from both Countries which can make it a bit harder, but we are trying to put those out of our mind for now and decide on Country.  

The Agency we are using as had great success in Ghana, but it is risky as most other Regions have suspended adoptions, so I am a bit nervous about it.

Then with Uganda it is a pilot program for this agency, so that will incur risk...UGH! Any advice out there or things to consider would be greatly appreciated!!

As for Chaltu in this process?? (I can't not talk about my angel!!) She is very excited! We are providing her with as many answers, details she wants.  We want her to feel comfortable with this, it also shows her what all we went through to get her, I say this in a positive way, she can see how hard we worked to have HER as our daughter!  She asked me the other day when I was working on homestudy paperwork if I had to do ALL that paperwork when we were adopting her...when I said yes, she smiled so big!  How important all these small details are to our girl!  I leave you with an adorable pic of her!! Thanks in advance for any other thoughts or advice!