Caseworker

So we officially have a caseworker for our adoption!! It is very exciting! We had turned in our application last week and got a letter this weekend from Bethany letting us know who our caseworker is that would be contacting us for our homestudy. So we're hoping things go quickly from this point forward. We will still have to do our PRIDE training, which will be interesting given our different schedules. The next training offered at BCS is on the 15th and 22nd of May which would be great because it is so close, but the 15th is the first day of my class this summer urgh. But they are really good about letting people take the PRIDE training at different places, so we'll have to get a really good schedule of all the trainings in the area so that we can find something really soon! After our PRIDE training and homestudy we'll be done with that stuff. Luckily we live in an apartment that already has a lot of the stuff done, we've got the carbon monoxide detectors, the smoke detectors, the adequate room space for a child, and adequate space for play. Plus right outside our building is a kids play set and volleyball court, there are also a TON of kids within our little community. Which makes this a pretty nice area for a kid. On another plus side they said at our orientation that there had been a backlog at Lansing for processing applications, but currently they are up to speed and getting through applications quickly! so yay for us! Just thought I'd give you all an update, so looking forward to this continued movement forward!

Kid's Toys, and More fun

So today I wandered around Wal-Mart and had some fun buying some more specific purchases for our child. It's a little difficult because we don't know whether we'll be getting a boy or girl plus since they will be old enough to have specific personalities. So I was looking for some items that would be generic enough for any kid to like. So these are some of the things that made it into my shopping cart: Crayons, chalk, colored pencils, Yahtzee (since I finally learned how to play), Candy Land, Guess Who (which was ridiculously hard to put together by the way!). I also bought a couple of new kid friendly dvd's: Tarzan, Ice Age, Anastasia, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, and 17 Again.
I also got some more stuff for their room, including an alarm clock and clothes hamper, it's really feeling real when you're buying the everyday things that soon we're going to have a family!
For those of you know don't know, we're planning on homeschooling for at least the first year (longer if I can convince Mark) it's something I'm really passionate about, and considering I'll still be in school it works out well because I'll be home during the day with class at night. By homeschooling we'll be able to ensure that s/he will be up to speed with their class when they go back to school (unless I can convince mark to let me homeschool until High School (if that works for our family) I've been doing a lot of research on different curriculum's and such. I'm such a nerd I know, but I've really been enjoying looking at all the different options and seeing what other parents do.
So we're filling out our application, we both got fingerprinted, we're almost done with it, found a few more references, the hard thing is that we know lots of people that know each of us individually that would love to be references, but most of the people that know us as a couple are family which we can't use, so that's been a bit difficult. But we are very greatful to the those who have agreed to be references. It really means a lot to us that so many people are willing to stand with us in this process! It means so much!

Adoption Orientation

So we have finally made it to our Adoption Orientation at BCS!! YAY! There was really nothing to surprising, we got a TON of handouts that we went over, all of the information was really a lot that we already knew, so nothing new to report there. Mostly gave instances of behaviors and the like to expect, went over the legal rules and regulations, mostly for foster care but because in the state of Michigan the licensing process is mostly the same it was still useful, at BCS they license adoptive families for foster care to help speed up and smooth out the process so that if you get a child from across the state they can come live with you sooner while the adoption paperwork is still going through.
We got our application and are going to be filling it out tonight and scheduling our fingerprinting for as soon as possible, hopefully sometime this week. We got a little nervous because they discusses how long placement can take....they know some people that have been waiting years....but that really was more for people with really specific criteria for the children they are willing to adopt. For Mark and I if things don't work out with Sarah we are open to any children up to age 10 or 11 (we're slightly flexible on that top age, but don't want to get to the point where any child we have would be less than 10 years younger than us because that would be a bit awkward haha....but we'd have a lock on the 'cool parents') we don't have any expectations for gender or race, we're just looking for the child that we feel a connection with and feel God prompting us towards. So as you can tell by the picture we got a lot of papers from them, including our application that is 6 pages long plus the fingerprinting paperwork which is a page long also....after that there is a LOT of paperwork we'll need to fill out during the homestudy, but we're expecting that to go smoothly since we don't have any children or pets they would need to interview (yes they do interview pets!!) plus our home meets all the expectations already *except I'll have to turn down our hot water tank :-( no more super hot showers, water must be less than 120 degrees, which I'm guessing ours is higher than. But outside of that we need to figure out who our 5 references will be and get our doctor to fill out a paper saying we're healthy (glad we both did physicals recently) so hopefully because we plan to be proactive and aggressive about getting our stuff done we can get licensed within the next two months than be praying for a quick placement, but it will all work out in God's time! So love you all can't wait to tell you how our application process goes!