bought a car seat and stroller

this weekend USAbaby was having a march madness sale and we got a GREAT deal on a travel system for the baby. it is the colours we like and everything we need. don't you like it? after lots of talking with other moms and having our own fun trying to decide we found chicco to be the best. while we were in the store i was making sure i could maneuver the stroller around the aisle, fold it up with one hand, lift it to put in the car, carry the car seat around (that could get very heavy) and anything else you do with a travel system. it was kinda fun. of course because it was a madness sale the ones we picked were out of stock and had to be ordered. well maybe our travel system and furniture will all come at the same time. that would be perfect.

now that we have baby furniture and a travel system we have everything we need to have to bring home a baby. that makes me really excited. after we get approved we will do a baby registry but for now we are just fine.

we heard from our adoption agency over the weekend and they are busy writing our homestudy up for approval. she said it could still be a couple of weeks before she is finished. the waiting is so hard. please pray that brian and i will have continued patience but also pray that our adoption agency would be quick to get our homestudy written and approved. thanks for all your prayers thus far. we love you.

home study being written

so we got the news today that all our paperwork is good to go and our home study is being written up for approval. GOD is great!!!!!!!!!! so we begin the shorter of the two waiting periods. please pray that the write up and approval time would be short. we again thank you for all your support, thoughts, prayers and all that you all mean to us. we love you all.

brian

the letter and profile

tomorrow morning we have our very last meeting (we hope) with our agency before we are approved. we are so excited and so ready to be on the waiting end of things and bring our little boy home as soon as possible. one thing we have to bring with us tomorrow is a profile book. this profile book contains a letter from each of us to the birthfamily and 8 pages of pictures. this has been a very emotional journey putting this together. how in the world can you convey to someone everything that you are in one letter and a couple of pages of pictures. and how do you make yourself stand out above ALL the other waiting families. i'm trying not to stress myself out about it but i also don't want to take it lightly. for the past 2-3 weeks Brian and i have been putting picture together. we have pictures of family, friends, things we like to do, the house, the baby's room, and even jackson (our dog). and the scrapbooking queen in me wants to make it so creative but we have to make 5 copies of this profile and we have to be able to make a copy at a moments notice. so i can't really be that creative besides what we do on the computer. thankfully brian is super computer savy so he can make it look pretty cool.

the hardest part has been trying to write a letter to the brirth family but specifically to the birthmom. brian and i each have to write seperate letters because the agency told us it would be important to get a letter from the soon-to-be dad, which i completely agree with. but anyways i didn't realize how emotional it would be. i think i've written about 6 different drafts and finally last night i just needed it to be over with. in this letter we are supposed to encourage the mom in her decision and thank her for looking at our profile, share who we are, how brian and i met, what our relationship is like, what our family is like, is everyone excited about a baby coming, what do we like to do, what kind of parents do we want to be, what are our values, and so much more. and did i mention this all has to be in a 1 page letter? yeah, i might be able to fit it in to about 8 pages but not one. and then when i condense it down to one i feel like i am leaving out so much that i want her to know. and we've printed out some letters that other people have written and so many of them our the same. but how many ways can you say "thank you for reading my letter"? there just aren't that many ways. believe me i've thought long and hard about it.

well now i am finally finished with my letter. brian is still working on his but it should be finished tonight. our pictures are pretty much complete we just have to finish up a couple of the last pages. then tomorrow morning we have to wake up very early to run by kinkos to get copies made before we have to beat our appointment at 9:30am.

A few prayer requests:
-please pray that our letters will not be full of our own words but what God wants us to share.
-when a birthmother reads our letters that she is filled with peace and joy.
-brian and i would have peace about what we are presenting.
-our appointment tomorrow would be an amazing experience and we would be able to express exactly what God has laid on our hearts for our baby

Individual Interview

As Audra stated earlier, it was more of a conversation rather than an interview. It was a sweet time of sharing who I was and where I came from. How amazing it is to find out how small this world God created really is. Our caseworker went to school with one of the athletes that I worked with during my first stint in Orlando at The First Academy. God is good. So, that is one more step down with only a few more to go. We have our Home Safety Check tentatively set for the 25th. Continue to pray for us as we wait patiently for the remaining monies to come in. We love you all.

brian

couple's interview complete

this morning brian and i had our couple's interview with our adoption agency. it went so well. the lady who is doing our different interviews and home visit is really awesome and so easy to talk with. we pretty much sat in a room with her for about an hour and a half just saying out loud everything we wrote in our self-study (part of our paperwork). i guess they just wanted to put a personality to the answers. she seemed really interested is everything we had to say and loved hearing our story. it's funny to sit there and think that everything i am sharing with this woman is going to help her be able to convey who we are to a birthmother. i pray that we did well. she didn't ask us to explain anything or answer anything more deeply so i guess we gave enough if not more information than they wanted to know.

so the next step will be our individual interviews. i have mine next wednesday at 8:15 and brian is still working out his schedule to fit his in. i'm not really sure what they will ask us in the individual interviews that they didn't ask us today. but i guess we will find out.

i want to thank everyone for covering us with your prayers this morning. we were so excited to finally be moving to the next step in our adoption process and satan was definitely trying to come in and steal our joy. i was feeling really sick this morning and could barely stand up and we also got some frustrating news from our landlord. it all worked out by the end of the day but it made this morning and very satan attacked morning so we are so thankful that we have each one of you praying us through. you're prayers were felt and received. we love you so very much and thanks for continuing to walk this journey with us.

finally some communication

i am happy to inform everyone that we FINALLY heard from our adoption agency today. i was so excited i could barely read the email. this was not an email about upcoming meetings or groups but this was specifically to us. It said "Dear Brian and Audra". how exciting. an email about our specific adoption. whoo hoo!!! it couldn't come at a better time.

the email said that everything is in and all the paperwork has been reviewed. someone will be contacting us next week (because this person is out of the office this week) about setting up our interviews and our home and safety visit. this is so exciting! i'm not exactly sure when our interview will be. we leave for vacation in chicago for the last week in january so i'm really praying that the interviews will be before we go (at least one of them). then the first week in february we are moving two houses down to a one story house so our home visit will have to be sometime after we move. then we just wait.

thank you so much for your prayers. we have been holding on to them like crazy. God has blessed us so much and we are so thankful that you are on this journey with us. please pray for us as we prepare for our interviews. this is when we basically share who we are. all this paperwork we've turned in now will be talked through. pray that God would give us words of wisdom as we share who we are and what kind of family we hope to be. please also be in prayer for the lady that will be giving us the interview. pray that she will come with the right questions and an open mind for us to share with her who we are. again, thank you for praying us through this process. we love you.