Hanging In There

I've had several people ask me, over the course of the last few weeks, how the adoption was going. Each time the question was responded with a smile and a small explanation regarding the status of the impending legislation changes.

Talking about the adoption has been exceptionally hard for both of us. Post election and still with possible legislation changes, we moved forward with the process regardless of the hurt and confusion that seems to be present. It hasn't been easy, trying to keep a smile on our faces and pretending that politics don't matter. In the world of international adoption, they matter a great deal. USCIS fee increases, that were introduced back in July, are going into effect on December 23rd. 21% on average. That's a pretty big jump and pretty daunting to us right now, but just another way the government is attempting to limit intercountry adoption.

We finished the home study portion. The final draft was sent to MLJ and then we received our IEP. I'll talk more about our IEP a little later on. For now we move on with fundraising. Right now we have a holiday Origami Owl party running with my friend Stacy Schneider. You can find our party link here if you're interested in shopping with us. Stacy is donating a portion of her commission to our Adopt Together account. I'll put together a little something more about this for tomorrow.

We hope everyone is doing well and is ready to launch into the craziness of the holiday season. We're looking forward to spending lots of time with family and friends over the few weeks.

Lots of love,

Much Needed Good News

On Monday, Steve and I applied for a credit line through our bank. We found out this morning that our application was accepted and we've received the full amount we asked for. This is such great news as it will help us start the next leg of our adoption journey!

We're still collection donations for the yard sale, so if you have anything let us know. We'll be happy to take it off your hands.

The next part is agency fees which are essentially costs for lawyers and the agency to start our paperwork and our home study. We've already begun to talk about the home study process and have even sought out information from one agency. Now begins the process of getting all of our official documents together. We're so excited!

"We're going to be parents!"

There is No Knowing Where You Might Be Swept Off To...

We were the kind of people who said we would never have children. All three and a half years of our relationship, we always said that having children just wasn't for us. We enjoyed traveling, movies, going out with friends, and throwing parties for the people closest to us. It seemed inevitable that someone would always ask when we would be having children. It was a question that we always managed to evade. We became experts at giving rapid responses to people who were persistent in finding out about potential offspring. It just wasn't for us and what mattered was, we were okay with not wanting a child. We knew that we weren't destined to have a child biologically and quite frankly, it was no body's bee's wax as to why.

It wasn't until after we were married, in the Spring of 2016, that we first started talking about adoption. There seemed to be so many different options. With all the options available, we realized that all options were risky and costly. We encountered a lot of questions daily. Is this really for us? Could we make this work? Would even be good parents? We continued to discuss it and then we started to get more serious. We looked more closely at international adoptions and soon found ourselves enamored with all the possibilities. We were actually going to do this.

As luck would have it, one of my fellow co-workers is from Russia and I approached her with a question about international adoption. She gave me some valuable information. After 2 months of doing research, looking at different agencies and programs, late night conversations, and talking to new friends, we decided on an agency and the program we wanted to work with.

We were accepted by MLJ Adoptions on July 1st and joined their Samoa program. It was some much needed good news after several months of asking 'what ifs.' We are over the moon excited about bringing home a beautiful child, who we've currently dubbed 'Tiny Human,' to call our own. We've begun to research the culture and aspects of the Samoan society. Our days are spent texting back and forth about different random pieces of information we find regarding the adoption process and what we're getting in to.

MLJ has been an exceptional wealth of knowledge for us. Granted, the initial influx of paperwork was a little overwhelming (boy, how are we going to feel when we get to the dossier?), they were there to answer every single question we had. They painted a very clear picture of what to expect, the problems we may encounter, and offered us a number of tools and contacts for us to utilize. I cannot say enough good things about their outreach coordinator who's been in contact with us since our first inquiry.

We're sure that many of you have lots of questions and we'll try our hardest to answer them. Many of them may be answered in upcoming posts.

We know that there are many, many more steps as we begin this process and that we're only at the beginning. We need the support of our friends and family to help us get through this great adventure. So, now we begin the next part of our lives.