Paperwork!

This is Laura again!
We are knee deep in paperwork - as expected! We have a list of 8 major documents that we have to pull together and then have notarized and then have authenicated. Eight may not sound like many, but each one seems to be a several step process. So far it is going well though. One thing that has been great is that Chris and I are working really well as a team! We each have a different set of strengths to bring to the table and they are complementing each other! I have appreciated how much Chris has been involved!

One of the steps is a completed Home Study. We had our first meeting with a social worker last week and it went well. Next week, Chris and I will have separate meeting with her and then in a few more weeks, she will come to the house. Hopefully the "dossier" (all the paperwork) will be completed somtime in May.

It has been fun to share our news with friends and family, everyone has been so supportive. David understands a little bit about what is going on. I showed him where Guatemala was on the globe and so he got a match box car out and "drove" the baby from Guatemala to Michigan! It was really sweet.

I have spent a lot of time online learning about both Guatemala and adoption - what an amazing resource the internet is! Our agency (CWA) also has an online board where we can communicate with others that are also adopting with CWA from Guatemala.
That's about all that's going on right now! We are excited, yet are preparing ourselves for lots of waiting!

Welcome

Welcome to our Blogspot! We will be using this website to keep our family and friends up to date as we begin our adoption journey. You may be wondering how this all began.

Laura -
We had close friends of the family that adopted a baby girl from Korea when I was around nine or ten. She and I developed a close bond and from that point on I knew that someday I would like to adopt. When I was in college I used to joke that having three boys was my worst nightmare - and that if I had two boys I was going to adopt a girl. David was born in 2001 and then Steven in 2003! Having boys is actually quite wonderful, but I still long for Chris and I to experience parenting a daughter. Shortly after Steven was born, Chris and I began to have some serious conversation about adoption. I knew it was a desire in my heart, but I wanted Chris to be excited about it too. I was amazed at how open to the idea he was! We didn't talk about it much for the next few months and then one day in the fall (2003) we both started looking at adoption websites on the same day. We had a trip to Columbus planned to go to a one day Family Life seminar. Some friends from church that had adopted from China were going as well and we arranged to have dinner with them while down there to ask more questions about their experience. They were more than enthusiastic! The next day at the seminar, Steven Curtis Chapman did a mini-concert. We had no idea that he and his wife had adopted two girls from China and he preformed a song called "When Love Takes You In" which showed their little girls. Of course, I was in tears and Chris and I were getting the feeling that "someone" was trying to tell us something. After that weekend, we felt that God had confirmed to us that adoption was in our future. Then it was a matter of waiting until we felt it was the right time to start the process. Well, that time is now. We have signed with an agency - Christian World Adoption (CWA) and have chosen the country of Guatemala. I'll let Chris tell you how we came to that decision.