Wow! Just wow!!!!!

WOW!!! Seriously! Last night, we finally made the decision to share our adventure on Facebook. The amount of positive support and love we received in what felt like a matter of minutes was so overwhelming. I can't tell you how blessed I am to receive such a response as I did last night. We are very excited about this journey. I honestly don't even know where to begin. Having spent two months of research and pretty much 30 years of being off and on curious about adoption, we finally get to become parents too! Some of you may have a lot of questions or just a little. . . I'll do my best to answer them in my blog posts. By all means, please email questions or comment on the posts too. I don't think this journey will warrant a daily post because the whole adoption process is drawn out over 24 months at max, but sometimes it can be less than that. ::fingers crossed::

So I'll just fill you in what we've been doing the past two months as we go into March.

THE TALK
Tyler and I really talked about adoption in Jan as a way to extend our family. Some of you know that I struggle with infertility. PCOS and it's fairly common as well as treatable. My concern was with the "what ifs" of pregnancy and it caused me a lot of anxiety that I needed to seek therapy. I wanted a family, but I didn't want to deal with the uncertainty. I know that God gives and takes for purpose. We go through tough times to come out shining bright on the other side. I have always felt this calling to adopt.Tyler came around to it after watching the movie Lion - if you haven't seen it, make that your Fri night movie ASAP - and it really pulled on his heartstrings. We concluded that it's not that we couldn't have our "own" kids, but that there were so many children in this world that need a loving home and we could open our home and hearts to them. So we talked about it and then came the research.

THE RESEARCH
Did you know the average international adoption costs around $42,000.00. $42,000!!!!! I'm sorry, but what?!! It's because of all the paperwork and translation costs. Most adoption agencies tie in program fees that are essential to their admin work and a donations to their organization or the orphanages they support. I'm not knocking adoption agencies at all for their business. They work hard and dedicate a lot of their time to finding homes for the orphans of the world and build families. I love them and all they do; but adoption is hard and expensive. Of course there are so many organizations to choose from and determine if you're interested in adopting from a Hague or non-Hague Convention country. Here's a link for that question of  what's the difference between the two??. We looked at many organizations and just started thinking that maybe we go at this through Private adoption, but even that looked more difficult and we really don't know anyone over in India. So we decided to look into cooperating agencies and found one in Minnesota that will work with our home study provider here in Illinois.

WHAT'S THE PLAN
The plan is to open our home and life up to adopting a girl and/or boy from India somewhere in the age range of 6 months to 4 years of age with minor/correctable needs in an overall span of 1.5years. This is NOT guaranteed by any means.

WHAT ARE WE DOING NOW?
So right now we're filling out applications to Childrens Home Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota (will refer to them as CHLSS) and Illini Christian Ministries(will refer to them as ICM) to get started on program approval and home study appointment(s). A lot of paperwork and paper chasing. Sometimes this part of the adoption is referred to as "paper pregnant". We are being pro-active in gathering things we can like birth certificates, vet certificates for the girls, marriage cert, copies of our IDs and health ins cards. Small things that will help our home study provider when they build our case.
Once we get to the actual home study process that'll be a whole other bag of worms. Think of it as an extremely invasive interview....for us women its like going to the OBGYN, therapist and taking a psychological test all at once. It feels that invasive and to add you don't know any of the doctors. So it's completely unfamiliar.

WHAT'S NEXT?
We will submit our applications and get scheduled for a home study appointment. Normally there's 4 to 5 home study visits and it can take 3 to 5 months. Right now with ICM, there's a 5 month waiting period just to get scheduled. BOOOOO but I've already made contact and built a good rapport with the social worker that will conduct ours.

HOW YOU CAN HELP
Pray. Pray that we can collect paperwork easily without issues. Pray that we can be safe financially and budget properly. Pray that we can get scheduled for a home study and entry into CHLSS's India program.

Looking forward to updating you all after we've gotten through our next step.