First Homestudy Visit

Our first homestudy visit is done!! Corrie, our social worker, came over this morning. We spent a few hours talking about our families, our marriage, and our parenting plan. It was actually a really enjoyable experience. The hardest part of the whole thing for me was when she asked me to describe my parents. I don't know why that was hard for me...I guess they are just "mom" and "dad!" I was a little distraught about the fact that our house is still in a minor state of disarray, but she didn't really even look around, which was kind of nice!! I can take the boxes that I hid out of the closet now. :) Thanks everyone for praying for our visit!

We have one more visit with Corrie down at the agency in 2 weeks. I asked her if she thought we could be on the waiting list by September, and she said that if we weren't on the list in August she'd be suprised. I'm going to start working this week at gathering the paperwork that we can now. Corrie said that the current wait time is 5-7 months for a referral, so the sooner we can get our dossier in to the agency the better (in my opinion). We know, though, that God will work things out so that the right child becomes part of our family and it won't matter if we get our dossier in at the end of July or the end of September.

So, that's the latest update! Hopefully it won't be too long before I can post that we are officially waiting....

Woo Hoo

Aaron got a phone call today from our social worker! We have our first homestudy visit on Saturday!!! Our social worker is technically on maternity leave until early July, but she is going to be in Duluth this weekend and decided to get a head start on us. Isn't that nice? We're excited to get it started! I just hope she remembers that we've lived in our house for a whopping 3 weeks. :)

Another step done!

We finished our pre-adoption classes (PAC)! We had PAC on Thursday and Friday this week. It was 16 hours, most of which consisted of listening to different people talk. We were in a small group with 4 other couples - we were a fairly diverse group of people in how we all decided on adoption. It was good meeting them, and we plan to touch base periodically to tell each other where we are at in the process.

PAC was good - there wasn't too much "new" information for Aaron and me, but there we did walk away feeling more prepared to become a multi-racial family; we have had some really good discussions about things that were talked about which I am sure will continue in the weeks and months to come. It will be interesting to see how all the "in theory..." thoughts end up presenting themselves in real life.

Next step - complete a "self study" (in the midst of packing to move in less than 3 weeks!) and after that we get assigned a social worker and we will start our homestudy.

A timeline....and Amilia

Now that the cat is out of the bag that we are officially adopting we have been getting asked "So where are you at in the process?" I started a timeline of sorts to the right so you can keep track.

On a MUCH more exciting note, our dear friends Anna and Nathanael Bailey are heading to Ethiopia on Thursday to pick up little Amilia. You can check out their blog at www.thebaileygirl.blogspot.com They just posted a new picture of Amilia and she is adorable. We can't wait to meet her!

This is a blog - a what?

This week Aaron and I are the same age -27. I joke that it is my "favorite week of the year." Of course, it really isn't my favorite week, but it's fun to say. That fun fact has absolutly nothing to do with this post, but I thought it would be a fun tidbit of information as we (well, I) start this blog. We decided to start this blog to keep anyone who cares abreast of what is going on in our life, as this year is going to be full of changes.

We are currently in the hunt to find a new house to live in. We are working on getting our house ready to put up on the market - this is sure to be quite the learning experience! We're hoping to be in a new place by early summer...we'll see how that pans out.

This blog will probably mostly chronicle the more exciting of the changes ahead. We are now "officially" in the process of adopting an infant from Ethiopia. We are very early on in the process and we hope to have a little one by late spring/early summer next year. More details on all that later. :)

In the meantime...back to cleaning, painting, and organizing.