WoW!! What a week!

This week has been filled to the rim! We started the week with sickness in the house. I went to bed Sunday (our 12th Anniversary.. more on that later!) congested and feeling groggy only to wake up Monday to more of the same. My work day was cut off short. We did however get to begin our online classes for AGCI. We plowed away two each night at the beginning of the week. We currently only have 1 left to go! Yippee!!

Notice the essentials of the night: caffeine (to keep this groggy momma awake), toilet paper (the "tissues" my hubby brought me), and ice cream (the only snack, we know of)

Wednesday night we spent over 4 hours working on rummage sale items to get them ready for this Saturday. We are having our second rummage sale fundraiser. I am so excited!!! Not only does it help us to raise money to bring our baby home, it also gives us the opportunity to talk to others about our adoption and why it is so important to us. We have had numerous people drop stuff off or call for us to pick up donations. We have once again been blessed to receive such generosity. I am not sure if everyone understands completely why we feel called to adopt but I think they realize we are passionate about it! HA!

Last night we had our final home study meeting! We completed all the hours of training required by Illinois!!! (Our state doesn't just accept the training we have to do through AGCI... so we have been trained and trained again!) We also passed our walk through!!! Each of our visits/trainings have been done in our home, this time though at the end of our session our caseworker walked through our house to check for state safety requirements and to check the layout. It went well! Our caseworker has been great! She has been so informative and has helped us to understand the whole process. Illinois requires adopting parents to have their home licensed to be a foster to adopt home. So we will soon been issued our license. We will not be put on the foster list at this time, since we are in the process of adopting. The license will be good for 4 yrs. (wink, wink)!

We now are placing our focus on the GIANT workbook that needs to be completed and sent back to our agency. It is 177 pages of reading and questions to answer. When it is finished, we will be done with the training portion of this whole process....wow that will be surreal!!! It has all been worth it. Even though I have done counseling and have worked with adolescents for many years I have still learned a lot. It has been an eye opening experience for both of us and I know this is only the begining of what we will learn!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!! ~Andrea

Moving ahead and some new pics!

At the doctor's office getting our physicals done for state adoption license. 2 doctor's appointments + 1 day + almost 3 hours in the offices = 3 bored, silly little girls + 1 crazy, laughing momma!

What a day! Everything went really well except the fact that this momma got a TDAP vaccination only to return home and remember her ob/gyn had ordered one last spring after delivery. That's right I have been double vaccinated against tetanus and whooping cough!

We also enjoyed some chick-fil-a fun between appointments! It was cow appreciation day! All four of us ate out for $1.53. Thanks to our cow spots and cow mask!!! There was a stand in the parking lot with a live cow and calf. My girls weren't that impressed. ( It is something they see a lot of!) The lady at the booth however, thrilled us! She gave us the stickers and mask to get a free kids meal or sandwich each!

Last night we had our third meeting with the home study case worker. It went great! We talked a lot about what we might see at the orphanage and some of the ways to prepare ourselves. We have one more training session and then our walk through. So we are asking for your prayers, that our background checks for the state come through swiftly and that the final home study will move through certification quickly.

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:25

First Big Steps

The last two days have been busy. Yesterday we received the orientation packet from our agency and began reviewing it. We also went to our local police station to get fingerprinted for the FBI background check. It was neat because the man fingerprinting us stated that he was adopted. As I write this our prints are in the mail headed to the FBI. Woo Hoo!!


Last night was a late night for us. We stayed up preparing for our first home study visit. It was this afternoon and it went great. I had been so anxious about what it would entail and what we would have to cover in the first meeting. But as I said it went great! Our caseworker was super nice and answered all of our questions. Our adoption agency is out of Oregon so we have to have a local agency involved for our home study. I was curious how that was going to work and if they were very accepting of someone getting their adoption done through another place, but she didn't have any problems with it and stated that they contact the adoption agency as much as needed to unsure our home study is written exactly the way they need it to be.

Along with all of these meetings come the beginning of our payments. We have probably paid out already around $1,000 in application, documents, and postage fees. It is only the beginning, in the next 3 months we have payments due that will total around $9,500.and more will follow after that.

We have great confidence that God will provide and we will be able to make our due dates.

July 3rd we will have our first fundraiser. We are planning a garage sale and have had a few people already bring by items for us to sell. The girls are planning on having a bake sale and lemonade stand that day as well!

If the Lord delights in a man's way, he makes his steps firm; Psalm 37:23