Prince Harry's New Castle

Some of you remember one of my favorite clients, Prince Harry from this post. Harry and his desire for stability and a permanent home began to open our hearts to the idea of adopting an older child. Well, this past week while I was telling my previous supervisor (who is adopted herself) about our verification, I had to ask about sweet Harry. When I left my position as a foster care social worker he was waiting for pre-placement visits with an adoptive family in the north east. Well, Harry was officially discharged from foster care to begin his new life with his forever family the exact same week that we heard we will be welcoming our own precious little one(s)! God is so good to have put Harry in our lives! We are so grateful that he is finally home, but not before being used by God in our journey toward growing our family! Thank you God for your sovereignty and provision in our lives as well as Harry's!

Celebration

Jeff has been working late, so we really haven't had much "face time" to talk about the newest developments in our adoption journey or to celebrate them. Thursday night I got several great surprises, the first of which was that my fabulous hubby was able to come home at his regular time. We started dinner when he got home and I was just chopping bell peppers when I saw these on the counter:

My sweet hubby had flowers delivered to celebrate our news that we are officially verified to adopt! How very sweet and thoughtful he is!! The card reads: "Congratulations on getting verified to adopt. I love you and appreciate all that you do. The most difficult part of attaining perfection is finding something to do for an encore. Love, Jeff"

We enjoyed a fabulous dinner of salmon cakes which Jeff made almost entirely by himself! Then we went to our local town square/shopping area to listen to live jazz music. It was a beautiful evening of celebration!

What's Next

Thanks to you all for sharing in our excitement! We have been flying high all week and I had to take a mental break last night just to calm down enough to function. Many of you may be wondering what's next. Well, we have a couple of initial decisions to make. Our agency would like for us to consider adopting 2 children instead of 1 to allow for the placement of siblings. We are prayerfully considering this and feel God's peace throughout that process. We are trying to take everything one step at a time, but we are truly in full swing of what had previously felt like a very slow process. I'm grateful our agency quickly attempts to place children with families and we are hopeful that it will be sooner rather than later that we will have found our match(es)!

We are going through the straight adoption process, which is different from foster to adopt process. All the children that will be presented to us will have had their parental rights terminated and be legally free for adoption. Once a child's parental rights are terminated they are "broadcast" to all the local agencies for consideration. Next, our agency will present information about children who are currently available that they believe are a good match for our family. We will let them know of our interest. They will then forward our home study to the CPS worker for his/her review. If we are selected as one of four families to be considered, our agency will represent us at the "four way" meeting. At this meeting the agency sings our praises and CPS determines if they think we are the best fit to parent this particular child or children. If we are selected we are able to read the entire CPS record and ask questions to see if we want to move forward. At this point if we are still interested, we attend a "child presentation meeting" to get all of our questions answered by CPS and the current foster parent(s). If we are still a go, we set up pre placement visits to meet the child or children at their foster home. The pre placement visits progress to over night and weekend visits at our home before the child or children are placed with us. They then live with us for 6 months before the adoption will be finalized and we will become a forever family! Oh what a happy day that will be!

It's official!

Jeff and I got an email from "home study man" today that we are officially verified pre adoptive parents!!! I can hardly contain my excitement enough to finish out my work day!! They also already have some kids they want to talk to us about! Please continue to pray for us to experience peace and have discernment in the coming weeks!

Jeff's working late, but I celebrated by getting myself a Sonic and Lil' Man 2 books about how much we already love him! Here's a photo from my solo celebration:

Contemplating...I know it's dangerous!

So, I've thought about writing this post 876 times over the last couple of weeks but was always afraid of offending others or making myself look bad. Well, I've decided that this is my journey and there will be ugly parts and that's okay because I'm human and flawed! What I truly need is you, my lovely readers' encouragement, though I fear your judgement!

I was speaking with my fabulous friend and fellow "momma to be through adoption," Wendy the other day and she shed some light on how some people come to the decision to adopt after attempting to have biological children. I needed this perspective since Jeff and I have not gone through that particular journey.

However, I still feel like an oddity. I don't know anyone that is adopting an older child through the foster care system and I desperately want to. Adoption is our first choice for starting our family and I want to feel like this is unique and special, not just weird. Please, help!

Adoption Update

Well, it's been exactly 2 weeks since our home study and we still don't know if we're verified. However, we did hear from "home study man" yesterday. He said he completed our home study on Tuesday and submitted it to the committee for approval. We should hear something soon! Please, continue to keep us in your prayers while we wait.

ARTastic!

Jeff and I went to an art gallery the other night to see my long lost childhood friend, Jenny M and her gorgeous paintings! This one's my favorite!!! SO pretty!!

This one was Jeff's favorite!

I wish we could have supported her monetarily, but am glad we were able to see her and encourage her new career! Check out her art site to see more of her work!

The Waiting Game Officially Begins

Well, Friday July 3rd was the day we've been preparing for the past 7 months, our home study! The "home study man" who will remain nameless, arrived 20 minutes early as we were eating our donut breakfast. Perfect. We rushed to stash it away to finish later before answering the door. We spent the next 2 1/2 hours answering the rest of his questions. He had already sent us 32 pages to complete before he got here, in addition to the 25 page application we already gave them. These people are nothing if they're not thorough and for that I'm thankful. Jeff bought these awesome flowers to make the house look extra homey. I think it will put us over the top!

Our house was in tip top shape, even though he didn't look at any of the things we expected him to, except Lil' Man's room. Oh well...we were prepared anyway. We are done and now we wait to hear the verdict.

In the meantime, we finished Lil' Man's room by putting up the vinyl lettered scripture we purchased from the sweet lady at Say It On the Wall! She sent us a hand written note and several e mails to make sure we stayed informed. I definitely recommend her!

Anyway, this lettering took us 3 1/2 hours to put up!! Here's Jeff burnishing the letters to the transfer tape. Let's just say the Texas heat made this way easier said then done!

This is me pretending to use the level. Truly my hubby is the leveling expert. If it had been up to me, the wall would have been left with only, "This is what the Lord says" and Lil' Man would have to fill in the blanks!

Proud Papa putting on the finishing touches!

Harvey was no help, but he sure looks cute resting on Lil' Man's bed!! He runs and jumps on there every chance he gets. We think it means they will be the best of friends! I can't wait to see them there together!

Snowflake was "helping" pull the tape off...silly kitty!

The finished product...I'm in love!

Now begins the first phase of the waiting game. The "home study man" said he should have an answer for us in two weeks about whether or not the agency approves us. Once we get our approval in the form of a verification certificate we wait to be matched and selected to parent our precious guy!

Independence Day

So Jeff and I had Friday off. We spent some of it with the home study guy (stay tuned for a separate post) and then went to my parents' house for good food, pool time, and a great visit!! My dad grilled for us...twice and we had a relaxing day!

We planned to sleep in and hang around the house on Saturday before going to a BBQ/carnival/fireworks display in our neighborhood. We always go to a big downtown fireworks show, but decided to stay closer to home this year. We're trying to get more involved in our community. Anyway, the community affair cost $10 a person, and the full page ad in the community paper made it seem like it was worth every penny. Well, imagine our surprise when we pulled up and there were like 3 cars there. That can't be it we thought, it has to be a family reunion or something....but it was the event we were looking for. Needless to say we decided not to stay and instead went to eat Mexican food (so patriotic, I know). We couldn't handle another disappointment so we decided to go see the BIG fire works display they have down town. But we did not want to fight the crowds and pay for parking. So we watched the fireworks from a nearby Target parking lot for FREE. Even better because we went shopping while we waited for them to start and you could see a pretty view of the skyline.

Us before the show
This is my first time ever to get good pictures of fire works
and believe me I've tried.. a LOT!
The BIG finale!!

I will devote a whole post to our adoption update and pics of our addition to his room! But I'll tell you the interview and inspection went well and we're glad it's over! I should have the other post up by tomorrow.

Last Minute Thoughts

This is much like the night before a final exam. Eventually you've done all the preparing you can and all that's left is to pray and get some rest! Please keep us in your prayers! Thanks!

100 Blessings and More to Come

It has taken us a couple weeks shy of 2 years, but we are finally up to our 100th post!! I was looking forward to this and hoping we would have something exciting to blog about.

Well, we do!! Our home study is scheduled for this Friday, July 3rd at 10 am!! That's right, less than 2 days from now we will have our inspection and interviews. We still have a few things to do, but have all the supplies we need, so we should be fine. We will be working on it tonight and hopefully won't have much if anything to do tomorrow. It was also 8 months ago today that I wrote this post about my thoughts on the foster care system. God was really working on my heart and directing it towards His for our precious little man!! Since then God has given us confirmation after confirmation of His plan for growing our family!! Here's to many more blessings to come!!