Completed Home Study

We finished our home study without any problems. After cleaning and organizing for a month, we had our house perfect. I mean, we organized EVERYTHING - my wonderful friend Katie even came over and helped organize my bathroom, now that is true friendship! When our caseworker arrived, we just sat and chatted for about 25 minutes. He asked us all sorts of questions like, how close are the nearest schools, parks, library, hospitals, etc. He looked around downstairs and then he went upstairs. I was so nervous about what he might say when he walked into our baby room, but he was just wonderful. He walked in and with a smile said, "So this is the place!" He very kindly let me show him some of the awesome stuff that we have received and he seemed genuinely interested. After that we went back downstairs and chatted for a few minutes and he said everything looked good.

After he left, we couldn't believe how easy it was. We had been so worried and anxious. Brandon said that he thinks it went so well because we were overly prepared. Our caseworker didn't even look in our cupboards, but at least now we are all done with all our Spring cleaning. We are still waiting for our FBI background checks to come back. It's been almost 2 months since we sent them in. Once we get those back, then our profile goes online and we could be chosen any day after that! It's too exciting to even think about.

On to other events, it's almost time for our garage sale! We can't believe it's only 2 weeks away. Yesterday we started bringing all the stuff people have donated over from our storage unit to our garage. We have accumulated quite a bit, which we are grateful for and we are still picking up donations. We have been so blessed by everyones generosity. At church today, the Beehives (12-13 year old girls) decided to help us out by holding a bake sale during the garage sale. They are such awesome girls and so willing to help - I am amazed by them. So, the countdown is on - 13 DAYS UNTIL THE BIG SALE!

Facebook

We have created a Facebook group - click the link below to join!
Join our Facebook group - Brandon & Hannah Adopt!

Baby Blankets

My good friend, Katie, has been trying to help us as much as she can with our adoption. Well, her sister-in-law heard that we were trying to raise money and made us some beautiful baby blankets to sell for our adoption. We are so blessed to have such amazing people in our lives that want to help us with our journey. It's overwhelming how generous people can be, and even those that don't even know us!

If you want to take a look at the baby blankets, click the link to the left under Special Blog Pages titled "Buy A Baby Blanket". If you want to buy one, just leave a comment and let us know which one you want (or send us an e-mail at brandonandhannah@hotmail.com). Thanks again to all that have given us their support. We are very anxious for our home evaluation on Thursday and we feel your love and prayers for us. Thank you.

Individual Interviews

We had our individual interviews yesterday. My interview was first and I wasn't really that nervous until I got there, then my heart started to race a bit. I just didn't know what we would talk about for 2 hours. But it turned out okay. Our caseworker just asked questions in regards to what we answered on all our paperwork. He wanted to know what I thought my strengths and weaknesses were as an individual and in our marriage. We talked about our families and practically everything else - I like to talk, so my interview was about 30 minutes longer than Brandon's. Our caseworker gave me some counsel and I think he was really just wanting to understand where we are at physically, emotionally and spiritually. I felt really good after we talked and he answered a few questions I had about the rest of this process. Most importantly, I wanted to know what our next step is. He said next we will do the home evaluation. In 2 weeks he will come to our house and spend about 45 minutes walking through it and talking with us. After that, we wait until he has received our FBI background check. If I have any advice for anyone adopting, it's to turn in your FBI background checks FIRST. Don't even bother working on any paperwork until that is completed and mailed in. I guess it use to take about 3 weeks to get the background checks back, but lately it has been taking 3 months! He told me that the FBI receives over 10,000 applications for adoption background checks each month. Unfortunately though, we can't move forward with our profile going online until that is received - so right now we are in a waiting game.

In the meantime, he told us to work on "publicizing ourselves" and continue to be actively engaged in the efforts of finding our baby. It sounds so strange to be searching to find our baby, but I feel that he/she is trying to find us as well. I feel that they are somewhere watching and waiting for just the right moment to come into our life. I am now a smidgen worried about our home evaluation. Is it sad that we already have a baby's room all set up? It's hard to explain to some people how we are trying to put our Faith in God, and by having our baby's room all set up, it's to show that we KNOW we will be able to have a family and someday our rooms will be full of children. I can't wait for that day. After we got our baby swing, it really hit us how much we wanted this. Adopted or not, we will have a family. A friend of mine sent me this quote by Neal A Maxwell - it states, "Faith In God, Includes Faith In His Timing." We have so much to look forward to, but it's so hard to wait. For now though, we continue to press onward diligently.

Gift Registry

We have officially received our first gift off our baby registry! My brother and sister-in-law (Christopher & Jen) got us our Travel System and Swing. We are beyond excited and grateful. My nephews have been showing us how the swing works - they are like "the baby sits here, you can play music by pushing this button, and you can swing them really high by turning this all the way up!" Our nephews are also trying to figure out what we should name the baby so that its initials would be BYU - it's kind of hard to think of names that start with a Y though. We are very blessed to have such a wonderful family - our baby, wherever it may be, is already very loved - we didn't know we could love something this much and not even have met him/her yet. At times it feels surreal to think about the fact that we could possibly have a baby this time next year - *cross your fingers*. Also keeps your fingers crossed on this Thursday the 25th, we have our individual interviews with our case worker. We don't really know how to feel about it, we are just anxious to get it done and move on to the next step.

We are still working away on our garage sale - we have already had a few people donate items for it. Our church has been so amazing and supportive - we can't thank all of them enough for their kind words and donations. If anyone else has anything they would like to donate to our garage sale; just give us a call or send us an e-mail at brandonandhannah@hotmail.com - we will come and pick up whatever you have. My parents have been awesome and are letting us store our garage sale items in their storage unit, so we have plenty of room left for more stuff!

A Little Update

Well, we didn't quite get our paperwork mailed in last Monday - we had a couple hiccups with some stuff, but we got it all mailed in yesterday with our first "payment". We mailed it exactly 2 months from when we first requested information from the agency. We have our next appointment with our case worker on February 25th for our 2 hour individual interviews. This should be fun - he said that we will be going over our responses to all the questions we answered from our paperwork. Things seem to be moving right along. Besides a few emotional moments and some frustrating ones as well, we are hopeful that everything will work out and the right baby will come to us. We just can't wait!!! :)

We do have a question for whomever wishes to answer - we need some ideas for fundraising. It's easy for me to help others raise money, but when I am doing it for myself - not so easy. But we need help - So, if anyone has any ideas, post a comment and let us know. THANKS!!!