officially waiting!

we have great news to report! we had our in-home visit with cory this morning and apparently we passed with flying colors, because when she left she told us that we are now "officially waiting"! all that hard work cleaning, organizing and finishing up our bathroom must have paid off! (check out heath's bathroom masterpiece - looks good, huh?!)

the visit was actually really easy...cory pretty much sat down with us at our kitchen table for about an hour and we went over a few more 'interview'-type questions and then we verbally described our house to her (i guess this info needs to go in our home study package) and finally she took a tour of the house. all in all, the whole visit lasted less than 90 minutes.

now we will wait for her to send us our I800A form (for immigration) and we will fill that out. sounds like that should be pretty easy compared to all the other fun forms and questionnaires we've completed! :) we will then get a date for another round of fingerprinting scheduled. note to everyone: my fingerprints are much better than heath's! apparently this means he 'works harder' than i do (or at least that's what he would tell you!). oh the little things you learn when going through a process like this!

thanks to everyone for your well wishes, thoughts and prayers along this journey. we're off to the twins game tonight for a little celebration!

ang

meeting #2

hi again! meeting number two is now in the books! heath and i met with cory yesterday afternoon (at lss) and had a great talk. we mostly discussed more of the questions we had already answered on our application like what were our childhoods like, did we enjoy school, how were we disciplined (seriously, i had a hard time with that one...did i ever really get into trouble?!), what are our families like, how did we meet, etc, etc. cory is very easy to talk to and we all enjoyed lots of laughs (mostly when pointing out each other's 'things to improve'....patience for me & organization for heath!).

our next step is...our in-home meeting! this will be taking place next tuesday, april 28th, at 8:00 in the morning. anyone interested in cleaning our house this weekend, please feel free to contact me. ha! :) actually, it sounds pretty 'easy'. we'll answer some more questions and then she'll take a look around our house to make sure we have room for a baby, make sure we have a safe home, etc. you will all be glad to hear that the master bathroom will be fully functioning before her visit! yay!!

the best part about getting our in-home visit completed is that cory can then verbally approve us (assuming all goes well). once we are verbally approved we officially begin waiting! bring it on! this will surely teach me better patience, right?!

that's all for now. get out and enjoy this beautiful weather!
ang

happy easter!

happy easter everyone! what a fun and exciting week this has been...the week started off with birthday celebrations for me with my family and friends. i turned the big 33 on the 3rd - yikes! the baseball season is now in full swing (yay! less than one season left in the 'dome!) and i had a fabulous time hosting a jewelry party on wednesday (now that's something i never thought i would say!). oh yeah, and most importantly, heath and i met with our adoption social worker, cory, for the first time on wednesday afternoon!!

as i had mentioned in an earlier post, we were a little nervous (but mostly excited) for our first in-person 'interview'...well, we shouldn't have been nervous, because cory is super nice and very easy to talk to. we basically sat and talked with her about our application and she asked us many of the same questions that we had already answered in writing. we met for about 2 hours and will meet again on the 21st for another 2 hours or so. cory gave us a couple pieces of 'homework' to complete for our next meeting - signing some waivers and filling out our child's health background checklist (we need to decide what types of conditions - medical, developmental, emotional, etc. we may or may not be willing to accept). following that appointment, we will set up our in-home visit and then......assuming we meet her approval......we will officially begin waiting!!! she told us that they are still telling families adopting from colombia that the wait is 18-24 months, so we must be patient. not easy, but i think we can do it. after 5+ years of trying, what's another 1-2 years, right?! gives us lots of time to prepare and be 'ready' for parenthood.

going to the lss office for our meeting definitely made everything seem more real. seeing the pictures of all the adopted children hanging throughout the office was so amazing. there are so many wonderful stories and happy families that it reassured us that we are making the right decision and it has us even more excited about this journey.

have a wonderful easter weekend!
ang

a big day!

tomorrow is a big day! we have our first official meeting with cory, our adoption social worker. we're meeting at 2:00 at lss and she said these first meetings typically last about 2 hours. we're both really excited...and a little nervous! i must admit, it almost feels like a job interview...our big 'resume' is complete and now we're going in for our first 'interview'. i'm guessing we'll learn a LOT more tomorrow and i'll probably have a much longer update for everyone in the near future. in the mean time, enjoy this spring weather we're finally getting!

we're official!

just a quick update to let everyone know that we were officially assigned an adoption social worker today! her name is cory and we should be hearing from her within a week to set up our first home study appointment. yay! the best part about this is that means we can get our home study going before we complete our adoption workshop in june (we weren't sure on this before). the more we can get done sooner than later, the quicker baby reedy will arrive....and that's great news! and great news was something we were in need of after our good friends the mcintyre's lost their home to a fire yesterday. please keep them in your thoughts & prayers as well.
good night!
ang

thank you for your support!

wow! we are so lucky to have so many amazing friends and family! it's been wonderful hearing from all of you. thank you all for your support and words of encouragement. i'm sure we'll need all of it during this amazing, crazy, long, exciting, stressful journey!

the iowa child abuse registries were sent in today and we're clean! :) another step down...

have a great weekend!
ang

ps - a special shout out to the urban family - they just celebrated one year of noah being home with them. congratulations!! brandon & stacy have been super helpful to us and noah is a source of inspiration! thanks guys.

you have questions, we have answers...

a couple answers to some common questions many of you may have....

• why colombia? yes, we both love coffee and spanish foods, but for some reason we were both totally drawn to this beautiful country when we attended our first adoption informational meeting back in january; colombia is hague accredited which is very important when it comes to adoptions; the colombian government 'plays well' with the u.s. government in regards to adoption.
• why international? we were considering both domestic and international adoption, but after learning more about both, we felt international was the best fit for us. the 'openness' of domestic made both of us a little nervous and we were also concerned about how long domestic adoption can take (with no 'guarantees' that we would be chosen by a birth mother).
• what agency are we using? we chose lutheran social services of minnesota (located in minneapolis) - "lss" for short.
• how long until we meet baby reedy? not soon enough, of course! lss tells us that couples typically wait 12-24 months once our dossier is completed.
• boy or girl? we are open to either.
• what's next? we received an email from one of our adoption support workers stating that she had received our application. we have a few documents we still need to turn in and they are waiting on some of our background check information that is still in progress. we will then be attending a two-day pre-adoption class june 18-19 at lss to learn much, much more about adoption and everything that goes along with it.

like i mentioned before, we are very excited about this process and can't wait to share more with all of you. right now we are just excited to have some of the 'hard' stuff done... there were tons of questions that we each needed to answer on our own for our applications. it really made us sit down and think about how we feel about each other, how much we want to start a family together and how we will welcome a child into our family. if everyone had to go through this process before having a child there would probably be a lot less kiddos running around!

that's all for now... ang & heath