Pass Along Cards!

Remember those Pass Along Cards I talked about? Well, our "marketing materials" pass along cards are ready and being printed even as we speak! I gotta admit, I'm kinda excited. :o) I would love to send these out to all our friends and family, so if you are reading this and you wouldn't mind hanging on to one for us, please send me your address! There are lots of ways to tell it to me - so just pick one :o)

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I'll probably send out a FB invite once we receive the cards in the mail also. Friends - I just want to tell you how much we appreciate all of your support. Everyone has been so kind and encouraging as we've moved ahead through this whole process. We love all of you to death!! Have a fabulous Friday and an even better weekend!

Word of Mouth Adoption?

There's something that feels strange about marketing your "Hoping to Adopt" status... and yet that's what everyone is telling me we're supposed to be doing. Apparently, the best way to get placed is by word of mouth. They say you should be making sure everyone knows you plan to adopt. I mean, that makes sense I guess, and of course everyone knows we're trying to adopt... I mean, I've basically been shouting it from the rooftops, but I guess I should also be trying to make sure I get the word out to as many people as possible.

I have created a blog that is dedicated to our adoption profile, that should be a good start. If you read my blog very often, you may have noticed my new addition in the side columns.. You can now link to our LDS Family Services profile, and to our Adoption Blog from here. I spent quite a bit of time on our adoption blog actually, I'm quite pleased with the final product. :o) If you have a few minutes, you should definitely check it out. I also created a FB page for our adoption called Tim n Leah Adopt, so be sure to send me a friend request! And Pass Along Cards... yep, I ordered them. And it felt weird. Like business cards? Well, let's think about this objectively. I'll try to put aside the fact that I'm ordering "marketing materials" for my adoption and think about it logically. Whoever thought of the pass along card idea is a bloody genius, really. Let's say I'm a senior in a high school; I get pregnant and decide to place my child for adoption. If my teacher tells me about some person she knows who is trying to adopt, dont you think I'm more likely to consider that, then some stranger from a website profile? It's like creating a bunch of little personal reference letters. Well...maybe not quite like that... But the point is - even though I think it feels weird to order them for yourself, I totally get the objective. And if we're lucky, maybe ours will reach someone who uses it.

So we're on the list... and now we wait. Anybody have any ideas? Tips? Maybe you know someone who has done all this before and found something particuarly helpful? I'm totally not above spreading myself around to help our chances of getting placed. Hee hee, that's terrible. But you know what? We're not getting any younger!! Well, in any case - we're just so grateful to finally be officially in the running. From here on out, we can take it on faith and know that when the time is right, we will be chosen. It feels great. :o)

Adoption Blog: www.sannarsadopt.blogspot.com

Our Adoption Profile has gone LIVE!!

We're so excited that our adoption profile with LDS Family Services has officially gone live this morning! Feel free to check us out at the link below. Each profile consists of 4 links on the left hand side: Our Message, Photo Album, Getting to Know Us, and Contact Us. I hope you enjoy it. We loved getting it ready to go and it took us 4 months to finally be live in the internet.

Tim & Leah's Adoption Profile

Now all we can do is hope and pray to be chosen. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Adoption Home Study

Well... it was pretty anti-climactic. I mean she came over and we gave her a tour. She wanted to know where we stored cleaning items, medicines and smoke detectors. After the tour, she left. I mean it was seriously about 15 minutes! But she said everything looked great and that she would have everything written up and submitted to our adoption agent by Wednesday. Dare I hope that we are nearing the finish line??

I'll keep you posted!

"Letter to Birthparents"

Well, it took days of thinking about it and reading examples to get an idea of what on earth to say to future birthparents. How do you convey to them how you feel about them and the incredible decision they are making? But we finally got it all down on paper, bringing us one step closer to being ready to go! I will post it on our adoption blog once we get that up and running. I created one, but haven't posted anything on it yet. I'll post more about that once  there's something to see. :o)

We also finally got our CPR & 1st Aid Certifications done and we're getting fingerprinted tomorrow. Making progress!! I loaded all of our photos into our Adoption Profile last night and it's a strange feeling to put together one page of words and 20 pics in an effort to let someone get to know you... But hopefully, we managed to get a small sense of who we are to come across. We're feeling so blessed to be a part of this process and hopefully have the opportunity to raise a baby together. I hope our potential birthmother can see the many, many ways she will bless our lives with her sacrifice.

Paperwork Overload!!

Okay, Okay - so there's not paper and a pen.... it still feels like the paperwork is never-ending!! These questions took me forever to answer. I'm finally finished with the actual questionnaire part, which is great. It was actually kind of fun to think about all the important things the questionnaire asked about, but I'm glad I'm finally finished. Tim is still working on his, but hopefully we'll be done officially pretty soon.

So onto the next step - I have ordered certified copies of our birth certificates and our marriage license from the state. I also requested copies of our pet vaccinations. Although - our cats need to have their records updated, so I'll be scheduling that appointment on Monday. Then we will be sending a medical evaluation form to our doctor for him to fill out.

There's a lot of stuff to be working on, but that's a start at least. Tim and I will be working together to start writing our letter to the birthparents for our profile. So keep us in your thoughts, we could use all the help we can get!

Computer Trouble...

So we finally get a list of stuff to do in order to move forward with our adoption process and I go home that night to log in. But what do you know... I'm having computer trouble! For some reason - I can't log into the website!! I guess it's always something! I put a call in to our case worker; hopefully we will be able to get that cleared up soon!

Stay tuned for more...

Adoption Orientation

Today was our Orientation with LDS Family Services. We got our log in to the website and went over the process with our caseworker. Looks like we have a long road ahead of us! Tons and tons of paperwork, and research to do. I was surprised to find out that it seems the adoption eduation hours that need to be logged are on your own. They gave us some topic ideas of things we should study and learn about, but the actual research, I think will be left up to us. I'm excited to do some learning and hearing stories from other adoptive families.

Some of the tasks we have to look forward to next are: Providing our marriage certificate, pet vaccinations, getting CPR certified, preparing our parent profiles, tons of paperwork, getting floor plans and room dimensions for our house, taking pictures....

So stay tuned - we'll keep you posted as we move forward!

Adoption Update...

I received a call today from LDS Family Services! They were letting me know they received our paperwork and application information. Now they are waiting on our Bishop's reference letter, which I've already given to him and he is working on, and we have to mail in our application fee. I guess I did sorta save that for the last possible moment... who can blame me?? It's not like it's pocket change or anything.

So now we wait for Bishop to finish the reference letter and once they have those items, we get to meet with an Adoption Specialist and start learning what else we need to do to get moving... like a Home Study, CPR & First Aid Training, and adoption education. I have a feeling the next several months is going to be interesting, to say the least!

Hopefully we will enjoy our time on this journey. I know at least for now, I'm looking forward to it!

Leah + Learning about Adoption = TOTALLY OVERWHELMED

This week, I've been searching the internet through endless websites trying to learn about adoption. I've read articles, reviews, FAQ's, and requested more information packets, then I will ever know what to do with. Over the course of the coming months, I will be posting periodically about our experience with learning about adoption. Hopefully, it will be a happy time for us, although I started off today with a rejection letter right off the bat. Apparently, for this particulary agency (All Gods Children International) you have to have 5 years in remission, which as you know, I dont yet. So, one down 600 billion agencies left to go. Okay, that's a little over the top. Actually, so far there are about 3 options I am looking into. One is a private agency out of San Antonio, one is LDS Family Services, and the other is adopting through the State.

There are so many scam artists out there just waiting to pounce on those searching for adoption agencies and I just dont know how to go about making sure you choose the right one. I guess I'll be relying on faith for that one. Part of me is so excited to start working towards adding a baby to our little family, and the other part is terrified of the letdown, if it never happens. I guess that's the risk we have to be willing to take! We should be seeing the information packets here in the next couple days... Stay tuned for more.