Paperwork

We met with our LDSFS caseworker on Friday. He gave us a small stack of paperwork and then he gave us our username and password to work on the rest of our "paperwork" online. I thought I could get it all done this past weekend, but when I logged on - there is A LOT of stuff to fill out. Every question you could possibly think of is on there, and some. He said that our references were great and got in all their paperwork very quickly. I thought that once we started working on all the paperwork though, we would just fly threw it, but I am having a hard time. It seems that with every question, I think about it and ponder my answers for a few minutes each if not longer. I want to say the right thing and speak from my heart, but then I start to over think everything and I can't even remember what my original thoughts were. The thing that keeps going through my head is, "what do you say to someone that might give you their baby - how can you convey your deepest desires to this person and reassure them that you will love this baby more than anything?" And I know that whoever this young woman is, she must be scared and nervous as well and asking similar questions and wondering how she is going to find the right people to raise her child. It's a lot to process and take in.

Well, after we get all our paperwork submitted (which will probably be a few weeks, we need to have our tax returns from this year done, background checks with the FBI and WA State), then we will pay our initial fee and start the interview process. This will involve a 2 hour interview with each of us - then a home visit to determine if our house is safe and meets the requirements of the State and LDSFS. Once that all happens and we are approved, then we wait. During the meantime, we have a lot of fundraising to get done. Adoption isn't cheap and we are kind of starting from the bottom.

We plan to have a few fundraisers. The first one will be on April 10th. We will be having a Garage Sale Fundraiser. My good friend, Katie, is helping me with it. She is kind of like our unofficial "PR" manager. Check out her blog, she is doing some fundraising and selling cookies and other goodies for our adoption fund. It's hard for me to ask for money, but we have already received a few donations and thank all those that are willing to help. It's such a different though process, if we were pregnant, our insurance would cover everything - but with adoption, you have to pay for it all.

We will soon have our pass-along cards available and we will be sending those out to everyone we know. Our caseworker told us that 40-50% of adoptions are done through a Designated Adoption. This means that through someone that knows someone that knows someone that is pregnant and wants to put her baby up for adoption - they then contact our caseworker or lawyer and go through them to let us adopt the baby. That is where the pass along cards come in, they can help raise awareness and let people know of our desires.

We just wanted to send out a little update to everyone. We got a lot of our babies room done, I will be posting pictures by the end of the week. Thanks again for everyone's help and we feel your thoughts and prayers for us.