The Waiting (and wishing, and hoping, and praying) Begins!

Mr. Home Study made a visit to our house at the beginning of August to check and make sure that we didn’t have any crazy dangerous stuff going on. He checked behind every single door to make sure we weren’t hiding anything, all while taking tedious notes on his iPhone. He didn’t tell us what he was typing, but I think he was probably making notes of important things such as where we keep our freshly baked cookies and ice cold milk – essential pieces of information for future visits. He also warned us that if our food storage suddenly disappears in an emergency, his house is the first place we should look. Actually, he didn’t say that, but that is the first thought that came into my head when he talked about the ‘list’ he keeps as he visits various families’ crawl spaces.

The second weekend in August we spent all day Friday and Saturday at the Families Supporting Adoption National Conference. We attended many classes on various subjects and were able to learn and join with others who share our situation of building their families through adoption. Anyone involved with adoption was welcome to attend – classes were held for adoptive couples/families and birthparents/families alike. It was a great opportunity to learn more about adoption and the feelings of everyone involved in it.

That same weekend we assembled our ten hard copies of our profile to be given to prospective birth mothers. This involved a lot of cutting, taping, assembling, and sheet protector stuffing.

After having craft night and getting the hard copies of our profile books put together, the last requirement was to attend one last education meeting.  So, we woke up early Saturday morning (at 4:30 AM) and left our family vacation in Bear Lake to make the drive back to the LDS Family Services office to attend the meeting that would fulfill our last education requirement. We made it with time to spare and enjoyed a delicious breakfast which included Skittles, Starbursts, M&Ms, and Goldfish crackers for dessert. That is my kind of breakfast! We then enjoyed four more hours of classes and instruction.

We returned to Bear Lake later that afternoon and spent five more days with the family – hiking, jumping off rope swings into sub-zero degree waters, lounging at the beach, (pretending to) play tennis, and attempting (mostly unsuccessfully) to fly a kite that I am convinced has some sort of fear of heights.

Wednesday August 24^th we got the phone call that we have officially been approved to adopt and that our profile was put up on the itsaboutlove.org website. You can visit our profile here (Profile ID 26432924). Now the hard part – the waiting – begins! Thank you to all of our wonderful friends who have blogged about us and who have posted our link on your facebook walls to help get the word out. We appreciate you more than you know!