Los Pisingos!

another quick update...as of today, we officially decided on adopting from the los pisingos orphanage in bogota. lss works with two private orphanages (los pisingos and ayudame) and we had the choice of which one to go through. essentially, they are very similar: wait times are the same (they are telling us the average is 15-23 months), number of families in the program are similar, both are run by former adoptees, etc. if you would like to see some pictures, check out the website at: www.lospisingos.com. most of it is in spanish, but there is a small english section as well. (to see photos of some of the beautiful children, first click on 'fundacion los pisingos' and then click on 'Galeria de fotos'.)

after our selection, bettina, our international adoption worker, then sent us the los pisingos application that we now get to fill out. we have some questions to answer, a letter to write and some photos to submit... "full length photos of mother and father, waist up of both of us, head & shoulder photos of us, pictures of our house, the baby's future room, etc." i can already imagine the two of us roaming around the house taking pictures of each other! a photo shoot at the reedy's... mel, we may need to borrow you and your fancy camera! heath especially loves the fact that they tell you that the father should wear a suit and tie and i'm supposed to wear a dress!

i am also posting another link under our favorite websites. i found it on another couple's blog and it has some good basic info about colombia for those of you who are curious.

summer seems to have officially arrived! stay cool!
love,
ang

Exhausted, But SO Excited!

who knew just sitting through some classes could be so exhausting and yet so exciting at the same time? heath and i again had another great day full of information and excitement. no tears today, but we definitely learned a lot about cross-cultural adoption and how this will affect both us and our future child. so much to learn and think about! i will explain more later but seriously, we are both exhausted...we went to the twins game right after class and (as some of you very observant people may notice) we left after 6 innings because we were so tired! we were able to see the entire ulstad clan before the game so that was very fun & it was special to be able to share some of our stories with them. we can't wait for our little guy or girl to arrive so they can play with their kiddies!

good night for now!
ang

Medium Skim Cup of Kleenex?

for those of you who know me well, you know how i love my caribou coffee! well, today was our first day of our adoption class at lss and, being the caffeine addict that i am, we of course needed to make a pit stop at caribou on our way to minneapolis. let's just say that my empty cup of coffee soon became my used kleenex container! i had no idea how many emotions i would feel this morning, but it was absolutely amazing. we learned so much and it was obvious that everyone in the room was very emotional. we had a great speaker this morning that shared her family's personal journies through infertility and adoption and i'm pretty sure everyone was moved to tears at some point (yes, even the guys!).

neither of us really knew what to expect from the class, but it has been very informational so far. we learned about positive adoption language ("birthparent" as opposed to "real parent", "my child" vs. "adopted child", etc.), how to cope with grief & loss in dealing with infertility, core issues of adoption, information about international adoption and attachment issues that may surround it, and to close out the day a panel of adoptive families shared their stories with us and had their children there. as luck would have it, one of the panel families adopted from colombia last fall! little manny is an absolute cutie and it was wonderful talking to his parents about their journey to colombia. at one point, manny's dad passed manny over to heath and said, 'here you go!'. manny enjoyed some fruit puffs in heath's arms and then was ready to start running again. we can't wait to learn more about them and hopefully connect with them again in the future.

speaking of connections, i was also able to have dinner with my friend angie's friend's co-worker's sister (how's that for a connection?!) heather on tuesday night. (from here on out, i think i'll just call her my new friend heather! :) ) she and her husband also adopted from colombia last fall and have a beautiful son henry that turned one in february. we had a great conversation about their journey and experiences in bringing henry home and i look forward to sharing more stories with their family.

tomorrow we head back to lss for day 2 of our training. i'm sure we'll make our caribou run on the way down and then i think i'll make sure to sit at a table with a box of kleenexes....just in case!

good night!
ang

I Thought June Meant Summer?

hi again! the calendar says june, but with the weather we've been having it feels like football season! if only time went that fast when one is waiting for their baby... :)

we picked up the crib from babies-r-us last night and it looks as beautiful in person as it does in the picture! we haven't set it up yet, but we did take it out of the box and i put the stars on the posts. i love it! it looks exactly as i had hoped.

we also found out earlier this week that we are back on for our two-day adoption training class at lss next thursday and friday (june 18th and 19th). they were going to cancel the class due to heath and i being the only parents-to-be signed up for the international portion, but apparently a few others have now signed up, so it's back on. (heath immediately thought it was a good sign that no one else was signed up - he was hoping that meant no one else was waiting and that things would move quicker! awww!)

that's about all to report for now. time to go play softball!

ang

Our First Purchase!

we made our first baby purchase tonight! i fell in love with a crib online the other night and decided to do some research on it...it checked out well and we found a great deal on it, so off to babies-r-us we went! they didn't have it in stock, so we placed our order today. i have to admit, this makes things seem much more real now (and that much more exciting!). check out a picture of it below.

nothing else new to report. the waiting begins...let's hope things happen sooner than later!

have a great weekend!

love, ang & heath

"LSSMN hereby approves...

heath and angela reedy as adoptive parents," so states the official draft of our home study! we have now completed our I-800A (immigration) forms and will be submitting those to LSS tomorrow (once my 'office mom' ginger notarizes everything for us!). another big step finished. yay! now we wait for a date for the next round of fingerprinting... fun, fun!

that's all for now. hope everyone had a great mother's day!

ang

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