Adoption news...

Matt and I mailed in most of our Gladney application today..still a few things that I need from Matt and then it will be complete...I think. This means that our homestudy can now be requested. This also means that we decided to let the agency decide the gender of our baby. I had been thinking that it would be so much easier to plan if we knew what we were getting and had thought about choosing the gender, but then we decided not to. This way will be so much more exciting once we get our referral. We also got our appointment for CIS finger printing in the mail today. We go down to Charlotte on July 7 at 8am. I also mailed off some things to Kate who is helping us with our Dossier. Matt called to find out where we need to go for our other finger printing to get FBI clearance. So things are moving along!

Adoption paperwork...

Well I think we have most of the paperwork ready for our Gladney application. Here is pretty much what we had to do and still need to do:

1. Application - completed

2. Adoption risk paperwork - completed

3. Gladney agreement - completed and notarized

4. Service plan - completed and gone over with our program assistant

5. Child preference form - Matt and I are going to let the agency pick the gender, but we did ask for a child under the age of 1 year old

6. Various other agreements - signed

7. Family photo's - we still need to get someone to take a picture of us in front of our house and take some pictures of the rooms in our house. I just cleaned so I should probably take those soon before the house gets messy again

8. Copies of birth certificate and marriage certificate - I just sent off for these (although we have them, we need certified copies from this year)

9. Employer letters - I am getting mine back from my supervisor tomorrow and hopefully Matt will have his completed next week

10. Physician reports - I just got a call today that mine is ready to be picked up so I will do that tomorrow. Hopefully Matt's will be ready next week

11. References - I already heard from one friend that she completed hers, only three more to go!

Then they will set up our home study, and we have to start working on our Dossier documents. I have already started on some of them as many are the same that are needed for the Gladney file. Things seem to be moving quickly and the paperwork doesn't seem so overwhelming anymore.

Last night I started looking at cribs!! There are so many styles to choose from. I can't make up my mind if I want something like this sleigh style or something really simple or even what color to get. What do you all think?

Questions...

Several people have asked the question of why we are adopting. Matt has already written about his reason here. Well for me that is kind of a hard question to answer as there are so many things that brought me to this decision. But here it goes. Matt and I tried on our own to have children. 13 months to be exact..which isn't exactly that long...but month after month of it not working and seeing others around you get pregnant so quickly was very devastating. All I ever wanted to do was be a mama. So in order to do that we started seeing a specialist and tried his advice and pills for awhile with no luck. Over the months I felt God telling me that this is not how he wanted us to have our children. So I started to become more ok with the idea of adopting and of not having biological children. So much in fact that is was all I could think about. This became my desire. I started talking to Matt about it, telling him that this is what I thought God wanted us to do and he wasn't quite there yet, but I began praying that his eyes and heart would open up to it. Not that he was against adopting. We had always talked about wanting to adopt after we had our biological children first. (As a social worker I see all kinds of horrible conditions and know that there are tons of kids out there who need a good home and who need God's love. So adoption was always in my mind.) Matt wanted to keep trying so we did. Eventually Matt started feeling God telling him that we should start the adoption process. He began doing research behind the theology of adoption and became more and more at peace about moving forward with this process. So this is what brought us to adoption.

The other question people always ask is "Why Ethiopia?" When we both decided to move forward with adoption, I began doing research as to where we could adopt. We both knew we wanted to do international adoption. After looking through many countries Matt and I both decided that Ethiopia was the one we wanted to go for. We loved reading about the culture and thought the people from there were beautiful. Something about this country just felt right for both of us.


Matt and I bought our first gift for the baby this weekend! A book about animals that you can touch and feel their fur. Too cute!

our week...

This has been an unusual and stressful week and it is only Wednesday. Adoption news: Over the weekend I tried to organize some of the paperwork as there is a ton!! I finally completed our paperwork to mail in our Immigration CIS forms and mailed it today. Yeah for completing our first set of paperwork only 1 million more to go. Today, I also talked with our Gladney assistant and got some clarification on some of the other paperwork which will be for our Gladney application. I also found out that we can be working on our dossier, so I need to call Kate (who will help me with the dossier) to figure that out. Matt and I both made appointments to complete our required physicals..mine is tomorrow. Pray for me as I hate needles and they have to do blood work. Ugh. Tomorrow I am going to tell my job about adopting as I need my supervisor to write a letter saying how wonderful I am.


On a side note Matt and I got new phones tonight. Very exciting as my old phone had a huge crack in it. This is the one that I got. I hope I like it...very cool huh??I also upgraded my plan so that I can now get text messages. way to be in the 2009's Laura!!

And this is what Matt got...an iphone :) he has been on it ever since he got it.

Matt and I are leaving for ATL tomorrow for our 5th wedding within 6 weeks!!

Please pray for a dear friend of mine who is in the hospital..she is very sick.

Adoption...

Matt and I decided that we are going to adopt. Isn't that so exciting!! We can't wait. I have been doing tons of research over the last two months...mainly reading others blogs and we have picked our agency and country. The main reason we decided to go with Gladney is because of all the good things we have heard about working with them. The other thing Matt and I decided was where to adopt from. Should we do domestic or international? We decided to go international and chose...are you ready for it...Ethiopia. Yes that's right. After looking at those beautiful kids faces how could we not. We both feel such a peace about our decision and know that this is what God wants for us to do at this moment.

Well where are we at in the process you may be asking yourselves. And that is a great question. We had our orientation with Gladney over the phone last Friday and put in our request for an application. We have since gotten the application and the instructions for moving forward. First thing is filling out our CIS form I-600A which is complete I believe; I just need to mail it off. Tonight I am going to finish printing out all the wonderful documents and instructions and get organized about what Matt and I need to do. We have decided to call the baby "baby E" as we do not yet know what we are going to have. Can't wait till baby E gets here!!

Where it all began...

Many of you already know the story of how Matt and I met, fell in love etc. but for those of you who don't I will tell it to you. In the summer of 2006 a new Sunday School class started at our church in our teachers home. I was a little nervous because it was a, get ready for it, SINGLES class. AHH!! For some reason the thought of being in a Singles class depressed me. I thought I would have been married by now and going to a singles class meant I wasn't. Anyway I got over my fear and decided to try it out as the teachers were this really great couple who I had had before when I was in jr. high. Well after a couple of months the class started to grow and really wasn't as depressing as I thought. Anyway, after a class one day in August I went into the kitchen to throw something away and this guy came up to me to introduce himself. He told me his name was Matt and I told him I was Laura. And then that was about the end of our conversation and our first meeting. (I later found out that once Matt saw that I went into the kitchen he looked around for something to throw away just to talk to me.) The class started to hang out outside of church and I decided to go one day, dragging my friend Rachel with me. We ended up playing games over at Matt's house and this is when I started thinking that this guy was pretty funny. Over the next couple of months I countined to hang out with the Singles class and got to know Matt more and more.

One day in October he decided to ask me out to lunch...over email :) We met up at Fourth Street Filling Station and had a really good time. We continued to see each other pretty much everyday after that...I was smitten. After dating for all of about 2 months we started talking about getting married...crazy I know. But we both just knew that we wanted to marry each other. February 23, 2007, 4 months after our first date, Matt proposed!!

On a Friday night some of my girlfriends decided to get together. Our plan was to meet at a coffee shop until everyone arrived and then decide where to eat. Well one friend was taking forever to arrive, so I started getting a little irritated because I was really hungry. After she arrived we started to walk towards the restaurant. On our way there one of my friends, said that one of her students had painted a picture, would we mind going into this art gallery. Well as you know I was starving so I was not too happy about going in. As we go in, my friend says that the painting is behind this wall and for us to come look. Well as I rounded the wall I see a painting of Matt and I, and a little tag sitting by the painting saying "Will you marry me?" I turn around and there is Matt with a beautiful diamond ring down on one knee. I was in such shock, although I knew the proposal was coming, I thought for sure it was not going to be that night as I was hanging with the girls. Matt had also planned a party for us afterwards with friends and family. So thoughtful!!

Six months later, we were married at Calvary Baptist Church...where I attended with my family ever since I was a baby and where Matt worked as an intern. We have now been married for almost 2 years. Through that time, Matt finished graduate school, got ordained, and got a job working at Calvary. We also bought our first house this year..working on it for about 3 months to renovate it. Still working on getting settled, but love our house. Now we are ready to move on to the next step...to become parents!