Thankful for a good friend

Today I am feeling thankful for friends.  It was very encouraging yesterday when out of the blue I got an e-mail from a friend who was listening to the song "one less" by Matthew West and decided to e-mail me.  The e-mail was short and sweet telling me that she heard the song and was thinking of us and if we got discouraged with all the paperwork to listen to the song and remember how important this adoption is.  This is just what I needed to help me get through this very long week.

Thank you my friend for being my friend and your encouragement and support.  I know we don't see each other very much but you will always be my best friend.

Pause my playlist at the bottom and you can listen to the song via the link below
http://youtu.be/8nqrvkNywcY

Artist: Matthew West
 

There's a child, been abandoned out on the street
Now she's waiting for someone to be her miracle
There's a wife somewhere halfway around the world
Begging God for a little girl she can call her own

Well, worlds collide and colors fade
And a man and wife brought their little girl home today

And there's one less, one less
One less broken heart in the world tonight
Yeah, there's one less, one less
There's one less broken heart in the world tonight

We are called to the widows and the orphans
But it's easy to ignore their silent cries
Oh, but every single time somebody reaches into the darkness
Makes a choice to help the helpless, we let mercy save a life

And there's one less, one less
And there's one less broken heart in the world tonight
Yeah, there's one less, one less
Yeah, there's one less broken heart in the world tonight

Well, the truth is we are all the orphans
But love has left the 99 just to find the one

So let worlds collide, colors fade
Let your life be the miracle today, whoa

One less, one less
One less broken heart in the world tonight
Tonight I know there's one less, one less
There's one less broken heart in the world tonight, yeah

One less night alone
One less child without a home
One less birthday gone forgotten
One more soul rising from the bottom

One less night alone
One less child without a home
One less birthday gone forgotten
One more soul rising from the bottom

One less, one less
There's one less broken heart in the world tonight

First visit with the social worker DONE!

Last night we met with our social worker for our joint interview.  I was so nervous!!!  She was super nice and made us feel at ease right away.  It was a really long night. We left the house at 5:00 after daycare and our interview was at 7:00.  It lasted about 2 hours so we were home right before 11pm.

I started the week with expectations to get all these interviews done this week but it turns out that we will need to space them out and with the social worker out of the office for awhile it means spacing them out over a month.  I am a little sad about the delay but any delay is leading me to the baby that is meant to be mine so it is what it is.

When we got home I was so tired and wanted to collapse in bed but I walked into the kids rooms to give them kisses and we stumbled upon this.

Carrot in bed hugging our picture.  Sniff  - I love these kids so much.

Trying to make the best of our training

We finished our training on Saturday.  It was a long day.  I hate to say it but I don't feel like I learned that much.  Maybe that is becuase we are already parents and we also haven't had to struggle with infertility.  It seemed that a lot of the session was around how to cope with that.

The best part for us was a 23 year old Korean adoptee came to speak.  It was really awesome to just hear his story and see how accepting of the whole situation he is.

To try to make the day a little better I suprised J with an overnight stay at a city on our way home.  I figured since the kids where already saying over with my sister it would be a nice time to just relax and get a nice dinner and sleep in. 

All I can say is I TRIED :)

It was an old INN on the waterfront and was really neat but old buildings don't do the best on soundproofing so we were woke quite a few times as people came up the elevator at night. 

We ate a this great little spanish restaurant and that was awesome but it was raining so hard as we left we couldn't even walk around and visit any of the shops.

I suppose it is the thought that counts!

First Homestudy Interview!!!

Friday night we got the call from our social worker.  She was hoping to do our home study interviews all this week because she is going to be out for 3 weeks.

First thought - I am not going to get the house in order the way I wanted to.  Second  thought - forget the house it is good enough lets just get this done and over with.  So I made all the necessary calls to my daycare parents to see if it could all be arranged for them to pick up early on Thursday for the homevisit.   It seemed to be working out nicely but today the SW called and said we may need to space the meetings out :(

Tomorrow we have our joint interview.  It is nice of the social worker to allow us to meet at night so I don't need to close the daycare but we are going to be so tired.  We have to leave right at 5:00 after the daycare kids leave and then drive 2 hours for the interview.  I have no idea how long that will take, then the 2 hour ride home.  We are going to be wiped out.

Thursday we will have our home study visit here at the house and the kids and our international students will be interviewed as well.

If we can't piggyback our personal interviews onto those meetings J and I will need to make the two hour drive again another night or possibly two separate trips for each of us. 

Please keep us in your prayer that everything goes OK, that we could possibly get our extra interviews done with these other meetings, and that my poor husband can manage these next few weeks that are going to be so hard with his schedule.

Lots of reading!

This weekend we need to travel back to our agency for our all day required adoption training.  Wishing it was not a 2 hour drive each way on top of our 9 hours of training :(  It should make for a long Saturday.

We also have a pile of reading that needed to be done before the class.  This has been a little challenging here for us since J does not have a lot of free time.  Here is J's schedule LOL

Sunday - church, 3 hours in basement doing church work, 2 hour break for dinner and some time with kids, 5 hours more in basement.
Monday - work until 7, basement for church work until 11
Tuesday -work until 4:30, basement for church 2 hours, church meeting 3.5 hours
Wednesday - not home from work until 8:30 because had to catch up because from leaving early on Tuesday

Sigh! Makes it hard to fit in required reading.  I am hoping we can do it on our way down to the training.

I read your blog...

Written by J
I had a good friend at church make a comment to me this week that he had read my adoption blog.  After he said that, I thought to myself that perhaps I should read it too.  :)

My wife has been advertising to me for a long time that we had this blog.  She even emailed me a link so that I could post something, however, I haven't really had the time to write but I wasn't quite sure what a blog was either.

I finally invested some time tonight to read some (I guess all) of her postings.  Isn't it amazing how life passes so quickly and likewise how quickly you forget life?  This post is my encouragement to her to keep up the good work.  Maybe I'll even post some things from my perspective in the near future.

God connects us!

I touched briefly on our international student Ooney and JonJon (Blog names) in my autobiography and I get quite a few question on how they joined our family so this is the story about how we became a family of 6.....

Last summer J and I were discussing the adoption....in fact we attended the required open house for the agency but J was still not 100% on board that the timing was right.  J was on a regular banking call to the school the boys attend and the financial manager told him about the need for host families and told J that if anyone in our church was interested to let her know.

Since we were planning to eventually start the adoption process J thought what a great way for us to learn the culture so we would have that knowledge to share with our baby one day.  J called me and ask what I thought????  J gave me the number to the school to ask questions and literally two weeks later we were at the airport picking the boys up.  I quick made pink room into more boyish colors and we were set. (BTW the rooms is not that clean anymore)

It is awesome to see how God has a hand in all of this.  When we were presented with this idea school started for these boys in only 3 weeks.  They were unsure if they would be able to come as a family had not been identified....but God knew.

 Under normal circumstances a host family would need to go through the required background checks and fingerprinting which would take quite a while but due to my daycare all that was done and on file and the school was able to take copies of all that....GOD. 

Second the week they needed to fly in we already had scheduled vacation so we were able to be available for errands and all the things they needed to do to get ready for school and take a little mini trip to the shore which was great initial bonding for the family....GOD.

Third when the representative from the school came out to interview us for a host family she told us there was a monthly host family allowance to help with the cost of food, gas, etc.  Now you can imagine the additional cost of feeding two teenage boys but we were still able to figure a way to set some of the money aside to begin saving for the adoption......Hello there is GOD in the details again.

Fourth we have made wonderful connections in country and one of the boys families said he would like us to allow him to show us around in his country if we come.....GOD.

I could really go on and on about how God is in the details of this whole adoption, we are learning the good, some words and phrases and so on. 

It is really awesome to just sit back realize you never need to worry in life because God has all the details worked out.  You step out in faith and he provides.  I often wonder how many times He looks down at me and says "Child why are you fretting over that.....just leave it to ME because I already have a plan in place".

Over Christmas one of the boys went home to Korea for the holiday's and I must have had my kids ask a million times when JonJon would be coming home we decided they were so part of our family we could not imagine if they wanted to come back to our house next year having to tell them no so we decided to offer them the option to stay as long as they would like....they are part of our family and we love them.  Next year Ooney is a senior and JonJon a Jr. so if they decide to come they could be here for quite a while.   I can only imagine how many times over the summer I am going to here, "when is Ooney and JonJon coming back"....

So that is how we became a family of 6

One for the United Postal Service

Yeah!!!  I just got confirmation that all our documents where delivered to the adoption agency......One for the united postal service.  Now keep in mind I did pay $18 dollars to have this delivered overnight and guaranteed but I was still nervous. 

I was standing at the post office trying to decide how to send this and I just kept thinking of all those documents that were notarized and envisioning me having to go back to the doctor's office and have all those physical forms resigned........

It was totally worth the money. 

The papers will be reviewed this week and we will be assigned a social worker.

Copies

Ok I should have said Hooray after I made the copy of our documents LOL  Wheew!  That was a lot of standing around on my cold basement floor.

Paperwork Complete!!!!!!

Can we rest now! 

Hooray!!!  First stage of paperwork complete.  This is so exciting.  I will be sending my paperwork back exactly 3 weeks from receiving it..  I don't think that is too bad for everything thing that has needed to be done.  Below is an example of some of what we have had to do.

Background clearance forms notarized for us and the International students
Fingerprinting
Individual Autobiographies
4 page medical form physicals for each of us
Medical report for International students
Medical report + letters for kids from pediatrician
Tax documents
Financial statements + supporting documents
Monthly Expenses form
Marriage certificate
Birth certificates for all of us
Certified driving record for each of us
Notarized Guardianship agreement
12-14 photos of our family, house and community
5 signed policies
Evacuation plan for home
Health and housing inspection results
Pet vaccinations
Service agreement
Release of information
Letter to birthmoter

Employment letters

Fingerprinting

Today we headed off to get fingerprinted.  Not the most fun thing to do on a nice Saturday but at least it is done.  Poor Onney and JonJon had to get fingerprinted too because they are 18 and are planning to come back next year.  Though they will not be living here when the new baby comes it unfortunately still needs to be done.  This is one of the last things we had to do for our first set of paperwork.  I just need J to finish up his autobiography and collect the kids papers from the doctor and we are done papework for now.

Who am I???? My Autobiography Part I

It is interesting how when working on an adoption you really have to pause from your fast pace life and slow down and ponder who you are, where you have been, what you want in life.  I just finished up my autobiography for the adoption.  It was somewhere in between torcher and almost a little fun to write it.  I put it off and off and off. 

I struggled with starting -  mostly the beginning.  I didn't want to just start off and say Hello I am A XXX XXXX  and thanks to my dear sweet niece Meaghan who helped me with the beginning I got started and it wasn't all that bad.  I might post it.....maybe.....do I want the world to really read my story????  I will think on that but it is my story  - uniquely mine.  The best part is it is not that bad.  After I finished writing I paused and thought, "I have had a blessed life". 

I'm pretty sure the social worker wants more that just "I don't know why my marriage works it just does" but for real it just does.  Why do I have to provide my husbands strengths and weaknesses?  Does any of that really matter if it works.  I am going to leave it and see what she says.  I'm sure she will try to dig up the bones in the closet but you know what there aren't any.  I have been truly blessed and feel so thankful that I have had 11 years with my husband and it just works.

Paperwork Paperwork and More paperwork

I have been so busy doing paperwork I have not had time to post that I am in the paperwork phase.  It has been a bit overwhelming at times but is almost done.  I am renewing my daycare license and the good news is I can kill two birds with one stone.  I can get one water test, one Dr. physical, one set of fingerprints (the list really goes on and on) and just take two forms one for the adoption and one for the daycare renewal.  The tricky part is just keeping it all straight.  Tomorrow we head off for our fingerprints.  We have to travel an hour and half for this and are planning to make the most of it and visit some sights.  JonJon and Ooney have not been to xxxxxxx yet so it will be like a field trip.

Initial interview

So I'm not really in the blogging mood today.  I haven't really been in the blogging mood all weekend just too busy with just returning from Disney I guess.  However before too much time gets away from me I guess I need to document that we have completed another step - the intake-interview.  What does that mean....who knows.  I think it is like the baby step into the homestudy.  We look ok on paper to fit into the Korean program so they want to get a look at you and ask some basic questions to see if the process should continue.   I think we can not rest assured that this is definately going to happen until homestudy is said and done and our dossier is in Korea.

The interview went well I think.  J and I were both so tired.  We returned from Disney the night before around 12:00 a.m. and then had to be at the agency by 10:30.  It took us almost 2 hours and 40  minutes to get there.  The interview was almost 2 hours as well so by the time we got home it was late afternoon.  We still needed to do Disney laundry and get a half way decent birthday dinner together for JonJon so no rest for the weary LOL.  J went to the store and got steaks and an icecream cake and I make some mashed potatoes and started laundry and the huge task of the Disney picture download. 

We were sent home with the home study paperwork that I am trying to process as quickly as possible.  The good thing is a lot of the stuff co-insides with my daycare paper work and they are all due at the same time so that will be a real cost savings.  Like we need physicals for the adoption and daycare so only need to go once and can get both sets of paperwork filled out.  That is such a blessing but very hard to organize and make sure I am not missing one little form on our trips to the doctor or inspections to the house. 

Tomorrow I have the water inspection planned and I am praying out well test comes back good.  We have had problems with that in the past. 

So anyway not much time here for a post as I really need to get working on an autobiography....sounds fun huh.  I am totally not interesting enough to write 5-8 pages on :)

Nice little read

Sniff sniff sniff!  This article is such a good read if you have 5 minutes.  It shows such a broad spectrum of emotions from adoptive mother, birth mother, and adoptee. 

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,997807,00.html?xid=fblike

Next Step

Yeah!!! We made it to the next step of intake-interview. Our application has been approved and we have sent back the additional information they requested. Next step we have a rather lengthy interview at the agency. Since my daycare is closed in two weeks for our Disney trip I am hoping to schedule the trip the day after we come home. Wish me luck!!

Almost a month later....

So getting used to more waiting. We submitted out application almost a month ago. Last week we got an e-mail requesting more detailed information? Is this good news meaning we are in the next steps of moving forward or is this bad news that they need more info to approve the application - not sure? It did take us almost a week to have the time to pull together what they wanted but we sent back the forms over the weekend. I guess I will try to make a phone call tomorrow and make sure they were received and find out what is next.  I feel like I really can't allow myself to get too excited or even to share this good news of starting the adoption with too many people for fear we may not be accepted into the program. Looking forward to knowing we can move on to the home study and then also will look forward to completing the home study.

Well we did it!

Well we are here at last about a year from my original post. We filled out our adoption application on New Year’s Day and will mail the application today. It has been quite a wait and really the wait is just beginning. At times it has been so hard to wait and other times I have had doubts about if this was even right for us, but I know it is what I was meant to do.

We over this year we have seen God work in some amazing ways. We have gone back and forth with what country to adopt from either China or Korea. It would be so much faster to go with China and quite a bit less expensive. Korea has a bunch of unknowns right now as well with the slowing of the EPs (Emigration Permits)and with the Korean governments hopes to eventually close international adoption and have all domestic adoptions, however, we have become so immersed in the Korean culture with having two Korean International students living with us right now (a story for another day) we just really feel this is where God has lead us to adopt.

I'm not exactly sure how I'm feeling right now. It is possible it has not hit me yet that we are actually doing this. It is a long wait probably about 20 months from the time we get ur paperwork in (which could be several months from now) just to get our referral then 3-4 months to travel.

At first I intended this blog to be just an adoption blog but I think I plan to begin a family blog as fun documentation of our lives along with documenting our adoption journey. Maybe I will break into two blogs or maybe keep this. I will update on the happenings of this past year during my "wait", our international students and seeing God work in our lives soon as well.

Back to the title of the blog

Well I named the blog well. It is a constant remider to me. After having Jeff come on board I was hoping to start the process in fairly short order as an adoption takes so long in itself. The decision is to wait! Wait and save. I have been protesting the waiting to start for months but I think I finally have come to grips with this and am now able to post that we will wait. Jeff has a certain amount in mind he would like to save before we begin the process. Since our adoption information meeting I have been constantly thinking how to make this happen sooner. I have seen God send me answers to prayers within a day on ways to save and I have also seen that even with those answers to get to that figure I have to wait, but as my friend and neighbor who is also an adoptive mother said to me, you would wait to have Brennan be your son right? You are waiting for YOUR child". She is so right and so I WAIT. I may post here and there on the lessons of waiting that I am learning day to day or the special moments that i want to remember but for the most part I will post after the WAIT.

As a reminder

I named the blog In God's Time...Not My Own to remind me that I can not be in control of this situations. At times this has been a very hard lesson for me to learn.

I have always had the desire to adopt a child from Asia before my children were born even before I was married. For years I would bring this up to Jeff and we were just not on the same page. It would be discussed here and there, life would go on, it would come up again, life would continue. I finally came to the hard conclusion that even though this was what I felt was right for me it would not be the right decision if Jeff was not 100% on board.

Then a few months ago Jeff himself made a comment about adopting. I had pretty much given up on the idea but that comment was enough to get me to thinking about it again (and unfortunately for Jeff me nagging about it). Jeff seemed to be considering and I persisted but he was still not sure. At a party for friends of ours it was brought up and Jeff jokingly made reference to me as sandpaper. It was funny at the time but I felt terrible about it the more I thought about the comment. That was not how the decision was to be made it had to come from his heart.

That is when I decided I had to completely surrender this decision to God. My prayer was for God to please change Jeff's heart or (as hard as it was to say) please change mine. I managed to keep my mouth shut for a while and I dont' even know when or how it happened but he is on board. This has been an amazing year of growth for both of us. In so many situations we have had to step out in faith and to see answers to those prayers has been amazing.