Our Adoption Story: The Beginning

I have been meaning to blog about our adoption story for a long time but kept putting it off knowing it would be a long post. But also knowing that many of you haven't heard it or all of it yet. So I have decided to begin because the beginning is a very good place to start.

Jared and I had discussed adoption for years but never felt like the time was right. Then in December 2007 we attended a meeting at our church (Stake Conference) when one of the speakers was from LDS Family Services. When we came home we both disclosed to each other that during the meeting we felt that it was time to begin the adoption process, that Heavenly Father had a special baby in mind for us.

In January we received the first paperwork and asked 4 dear families to be our references. Thank you the Birds, the Carltons, the Christensens and the Dubravacs ! We love you!

The Birds

The Carltons

The Christensens

The DuBravacs

Sorry, I have individual pics of the kids and parents and I considered photoshopping them together to make a family pic :)

Then in February we met with the LDS Family Services social worker over the Indiana and Kentucky area, Dave Pitcher, who does soooo much for the members of those states. We did one interview at this point and were given the second round of paperwork.

We knew that it took a lot of paperwork to be able to adopt but we still felt a little overwhelmed with Jared finishing his thesis and I just starting to get into the thick of things in my Master's program. It takes us all spring to finish the paperwork.

The paperwork involves financial statements, background checks, questionnaires about how you were raised and parented and how you plan to raise and parent your children and lots of releases of information and consents.

Then in the summer we have more interviews and our home study. The home study is where the social worker, Dave, comes to our home and makes sure it is a safe place for a child. Dave reassured us that it wasn't a big deal and it wasn't but we still stressed out over it. So we turned everything in all the paperwork, passed the home study, created our online profile and a hard copy for the binders and we were at the waiting stage of the process by early September 2008.

Here is our picture collage we created for the binders. Sorry it doesn't turn out so well on blogger. We used similar pictures on the online profile.