Everythings coming together:)

                                       Once again its been quite a while since my last entry.   We have finished our part of our homestudy except for Reuben needing to email the dog's shot records to the social worker.  I'm so relieved that the interview stuff is officially done as far as I know!  We recieved the paperwork for our Dossier a couple weeks ago and are working on that.  A lot of what we did for our formal application carries over to the Dossier so that is nice!  I had to write a letter of intent to the Chinese Goverment saying that we will not abuse or abandon the child and such, I totally procrastinated on that but finally wrote it tonight in about five minutes.  We both applied for and recieved our passports in the mail. yay!  So we are reallly hoping that by monday we could be prettty much ready to send in our papers to the adgency:)  Next step, waiting to get logged in with China and after we are logged in we are officailly "waiting"  for a child to be reffered to us!  Sorry if a lost anyone with all this mumbo jumbo. Ha, just wanted to give an update.  It's definetly starting to feel more real :D

moving along...slowly

               Happy sunday evening!  I'm enjoying the last couple of hours before bed and then three days of work in a row:(  We have been seeing all these American couples with Asian children lately!  Its so neat to see them at different ages and wonder what our child will look like!  Since I last blogged we have each done our individual homestudies and are waiting on our final session which will be on September14th!  If I understand right Vicki, our caseworker will have our complete homestudy typed up and ready.  We also visited an adoption clinic in Akron Childrens Hospital and talked to a Dr. Kempf who will examine our child within a week or so of returning from China depending on what medical need our child has.  For those of you that don't know we are planning on going with a special needs child.  We are hoping for something mild or correctable but we know that God is in control!  We talked with Dr. Kempf about some medical conditions that we would be willing to consider.  She was very helpful by just helpng us to understand excactly what some of the conditions consist of.  So other than that we have been doing alot of reading that is required, and probably for good reason.  Some of the things we read are not so rosey and its easy to get discouraged but we are just trying to be realistic but yet optamistic about what to expect:)  Oh and also...we pretty much have our names picked out for the baby!  Buuuuut... it's a secret:)  I feel like I should be doing something else to get prepared, like starting on the child's room, or buying a diaper bag, or toys, or something!  But the reality is, we don't kmow if it will be a boy or a girl or even what age the child will be, so until we get the refferal I REALLY can't do too much:(  Well I'll keep you all informed of any progress but as you can see we are moving along...slowly!

many things to remember

Well ever since our first home study I've had so many things to think about!  It's amazing the questions the social worker asks,  some I hadnt even thought about.  Who is gonna be your pediatritian, life insurance for the baby etc.  It's definetly sent my mind into a tailspin thinking of all the things we need to do.  Reuben and I have been talking names again also, I never realized what a responsibility naming some one is!  Wow, our child has to live with this name forever!  Not as easy as i thought:)  I had at least one night that I didnt sleep very well thinking of what China is gonna be like.  The social worker gave us a stack of DVD's to watch and one of them is called " China's lost girls"  It was so good!  It's a documentary by Lisa Ling and she follows a group of American couples to China to get thier babies and disscuses some issues such as the one child policy with the Chinese people.  It made the journey and what it will be like so much more real.  Very exciting!!!  So for right now we are working on getting the reading done we need to do and watching these dvds and trying to soak up and remember all of this info.  My next homestudy is the ninteenth and Reubens is the twentieth.  I also have to get another letter from the doctor concerning my medical problems and work on a long list of names of proffesionals we will use for the baby.  I just keep reminding my self that every little thing is one step closer to meeting our little one;) 

An awesome adventure

So this is my first atempt at blogging so bear with me for a while!  I wanted a way to share this journey we are on with everyone.  Reuben and I decided sometime in March or April that we wanted to pursue adoption once again. A few years a go we had a major let down with trying to adopt throught the foster care system.  Due to a situation beyond our control our lives were turned upside down and we decided not to continue with our foster care liscence.  It took a few years of healing, especially for me, before I was ready to try again.  We looked into different ways of adopting and decided that the china special needs program was a good fit!  So as of now we have submitted our formal application and had our first homestudy visit. I have to say that I knew this is a very long and detailed process going into this but it is definetly more than I realized!  I know in the end it will all be worth it so we just press on even though I feel very overwhelmed and frankly like I dont have a clue what I'm doing most of the time.  I'm very proud of Reuben for really stepping up and taking the reigns with this:)  I hope to be able to blog through every step of this journey to becoming parents!