Adoption Blogs

I have been reading adoption blogs for quite awhile now.  For obvious reasons I like to hear other people's stories and see what could be in our future.  Some stories are beautiful, emotional, and fill your heart with hope.  Others are tough.  The ones where the family is struggling to teach honesty, love kids who have a lot of brokenness, and so much more.

Here are a couple of blogs that I follow:

 It's how you live

 Deutschland

 Jen Hatmaker

With the adoption process comes paperwork, reading and HOURS of training.  I am very thankful for the reading and training.  My eyes have already been opened to what things could look like for us when we bring our kiddos home.  The same is true for the adoption blogs.  I appreciate the honesty of those who are sharing the stories of what is happening with their families.  Who knows what this blog will be to those who read it and for us as we write.  

My hope is that I can learn as much as possible before we bring our new family members home.  I am moving forward with eyes wide open.  I know that we will have struggles.  Everyone has struggles. I am a mom.  I love my kids, I teach my kids, I discipline my kids, and often it is all rolled up into one.  G and J are not perfect.  They make mistakes and so do I.  My next two kids won't be perfect either.  They will make mistakes, and I will too.  My hope is that each of us can love each other and when mistakes are made that we can extend grace.

Another crazy week

photo credit: www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/

It seems that right now major things are happening in our lives on Thursdays.  This time it was the inspection of our house.  If I haven't mentioned it yet, we are in the process of selling our house.  On Thursday February 28th we had the home inspection.  After I got off work, I received a phone call from our realtor telling me to call her ASAP.  When we spoke, she told me we had a major problem.  They found some things during the home inspection that were going to be very costly to fix and she wasn't sure what the buyers were going to do.  Needless to say we felt very dejected.

That same night we were scheduled to have dinner with a coworker of mine.  We were meeting to discuss the possibility of us purchasing his house.  When we arrived for dinner, we immediately told them what was going on.  They are such a blessing.  They suggested that we would probably be able to work things out with the buyer and if we didn't, they were happy to wait until we found another buyer.  What a huge relief.

One of our concerns with the repairs was how much they would cost and how that would affect the adoption process.  We were feeling very attacked during this time.  I don't know if I fully believe in spiritual warfare but I was feeling a lot like I imagine Job felt.  As the weekend started, we found out the buyers were still interested as long as we took care of the problems.

On Tuesday we had another slight low.  The chimney was cleaned and inspected.  They found some cracks in the prefab plates, this was going to be another unanticipated expense.

Around this same time we had some friends offer to help with a garage sale to raise money for the adoption (no details on when yet.).  The estimates for the first part of the repairs came back lower than we had anticipated.  Then on Thursday, March 1st when they did the first part of the work, it turned out that the second part was also going to cost considerably less.

We are still feeling a little reserved in regard to what is to come but we can definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel.

What a week

We were at a Tae Kwon Do belt test for J on the evening of the 13^th.  JB opened his email while we waited for things to get started.  He looked at his phone for a minute and then handed the phone to me.  As I read the first paragraph, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was Chrysalis, the adoption agency, writing to see if we were still interested in adopting from the Philippines.  ICAB, the Philippine government had given them an opening for an adoption slot.  What was so amazing is that ICAB had told all agencies in the US that they were not allotting any more adoptions until April 1, 2013.  The possibility of adoption was finally real and was happening a month and a half earlier than we expected.

We sent off the application on February 14^th while simultaneously putting our house on the market that evening.  Our weekend was a blur as we stayed out of our house for multiple showings throughout Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 

When Friday the 22^nd came around we were in complete shock.  Not only had our house sold in 7 days, but we were officially accepted and were starting down the road to adoption.  We truly felt blessed beyond belief.  There are many steps to be taken both with completing the sale of our house and waiting through the possible 2-3 years until our kiddos come home, and yet we are excited and in awe that it all happened in one week.