Lilypie Waiting to adopt Ticker

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Smiley

I cannot stop smiling today. I'm sure Dave thinks I am a geek - I keep calling him to tell him how happy I am. I got an e-mail from Karin (our adoption coordinator) telling us that she received all of our paperwork that she needed in order to schedule the home study. She is sending it on to our social worker today - the social worker will take a week to review it, then call us to set up a time to do our home study. We even got our first invoice from Hand in Hand (the adoption agency) - this invoice is to pay for the home study, and even that made me smile and giggle!!

It is feeling so much more real this week. We have almost finished the paperwork, and what we have left is easy-peasy paperwork. It looks like we won't be too far off from sending in our dossier right after my birthday in July - which was our goal date. Yay!!!


Sunday, June 17, 2007

One down, one to go!

This weekend I finished my autobiography. Yay!!!! I rode with my mom and my grandma to my cousin Matthew's wedding this weekend (Congrats to Matt and Holly!!). On the way down I just buckled down and finished the last of the questions I had to answer. It is a great feeling to be finished, but I don't think Dave appreciates that I am finished and he is not. I guess I am being a bit of a nag, but I wanted to have these done two weeks ago. Dave has almost finished his, and as of 9:00 tonight he only had 10 questions left to answer (out of about 75)!! Thanks for your prayers.

The next step is that Karin (our adoption coordinator/counselor) has sent us copies of our referral letters so that we could pick out the ones to be sent to the Philippines. It shouldn't take us too long to finish picking those, we have some awesome referrals. After that, we will get our home study scheduled, and finish up the last piece of paperwork with Karin that needs to go in our dossier for the Philippines. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is getting exciting. It's feeling more real now, so we've been more excited to talk with people about it!

Lots of people have been asking what the next step is... After we have our home study, it will take about 3-6 more weeks to have the home study results finalized, and the rest of the paperwork ready to send in to the Philippines. After that, we wait to be approved for adoption by the Philippines. We are hearing that takes about 1 month. After that, we will wait for a match - which could take anywhere from 12-24+ months. We have no idea how long that will take. That's going to be the toughest part of this whole process. After we are matched, we will have to wait a couple of more months for the details to be finalized in the Philippines, then we will travel over there to pick up our child/ren!!! We will only need to be there for 7-10 days. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers, we really appreciate them!!!


The suavest siblings ever


The triplet cousins (Chad, Rachel and Matt)

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Autobiographies

I know I haven't been great about updating this little bloggy-blog lately. When I sit down at a computer to write something right now, it's my autobiography for the adoption. We did get some good news... we got our psych eval results on Thursday! The psychologist went through the report with us, and she did a great job. She wrote great comments that the Philippines will love to read about our passion for family and thoughts about our faith in Christ. The results from the MMPI showed that I am a slightly fearful person, and it showed that Dave avoids showing frustration when angry or upset - nothing new for either of us to hear. It also showed that we don't suffer from any mental illness - YAY!! This means we are one more giant step toward finishing our dossier to submit to the Philippines. I have a feeling we won't be able to submit it on my birthday as we have yet to finish our autobiographies, but it will be soon after that. The autobiographies are the last step before we can schedule our home study. After the home study it's smooth sailing to finish the dossier. Please pray that God gives us the focus that we need to finish these autobiographies.


Dave and Joel on our golf outing for Dave's b-day

Maddie's spaghetti face at Olive Garden

Gracie's face when she found out Dave turned 29 on Saturday