And its April..

Well,

Its April! And we haven't posted a single thing since February! Oh my! Not sure if this blog posting will work for us but we will try again!

Whats new since February..

We have our Homestudy done!! YaHH! Valerie is just finishing up the last edits. We will miss seeing her every couple of weeks, she has been amazing and it has been a blessing to have a Christian Adoption Practitioner. She understands even more how our faith defines our choices, parenting decisions, finances etc etc in relation to adopting and how we are led to do so.

We remember the feeling after getting her draft of the homestudy, we just stood there kind of in shock like "Ok, this is done...now what...we get to be on lists!!"

So now we start the dossier with our Adoption Agency (Appel) which is located outside Ottawa who we have been in contact with since November.

Appel will receive the homestudy, send it to the Ministry, more waiting for approval from them (6 wks), while that is going on we will build our dossier with Appel and once the Minisitry approves our homestudy then everything is sent to Colombia officials for their approval!

After all the approvals are done we are then put on the waiting list.

Going through this process we have toyed with the idea of accepting a child with correctable disabilities and whether it could be something we could do. More and more we found ourselves talking about it and  thinking "Well we could pay the extra thousands to adopt from a private orphanage to receive a child quicker (1-2 years as opposed to 3-4 yrs) OR we could adopt a child with correctable disabilities" (on avg takes 1 yr for a referral). And then save the money for our next one! :)

So we have added that to our homestudy and could involve cleft lip and/or palate, hip dysplasia, or strabismus ("cross eyed"-even though I hate that term, sounds mean!) We figured that if we can help our child receive "free" medical care then why not! Yes it will be an added challenge but then we are helping provide a child more opportunities than in an orphanage where they may not have the access to the required healthcare.

We have also seen first hand how great Sick Kids is for cleft lips/palates through our cute nephew Grays' experience!

Many more steps to go but we continue to be excited and know that God has a plan and a time for everything! Even though as humans we want it all and want it now!! :)   We just need to trust that it will all happen in the right time.

One on one

So yesterday I drove to Bracebridge to meet with Valerie (our lovely adoption practitioner) for a one-on-one meeting. To be honest I was a bit nervous, what was she going to ask? was it going to be awkward? Thankfully it went very well! A good reflection on how I was raised and how that will come into play when we become parents! 

During the meeting she was talking about how having biological children affect decisions on adopting and sometimes after people have a biological child that their perspective changes on adoption. This kinda freaked me out, I had never thought or considered that something like giving birth to a child would ever change my feelings about adoption. And you have to understand that sometimes a thought pops into my head and I just run with it, drives me and others crazy (sorry Matt). Then I scared myself into thinking, what if, what if we have a child, then life becomes too crazy and we don't adopt, or that we feel the pressure to have kids because the clock is ticking and then end up not adopting?! I would hate that!  Mentally torturing myself! Why can't we know and control everything!?

However upon calming my thoughts. shedding some tears, and discussing this with Matt I felt a lot better. Sometimes with life events that are big decisions I have these moments of "oh no maybe we are doing this at the wrong time, what happens next, when will it happen?" Thank the Lord that He has told us He has a plan for us, and that we need to trust in Him. I have always been raised to believe this, but it has really become a true feeling and reassurance during this adoption process. That even though we don't know the timelines, there is great peace in knowing that He has a plan and all we can do is trust. 

I will drive myself crazy trying to plan and control all aspects of a process that is soo complex! We know that it has always been a dream of ours to adopt and God has kept a constant reminder in our lives, through work, family and travel that there are so many kids out there who need a stable loving home that we want to provide for them. So that we will do, no matter how long it takes or what changes or challenges we come across. 

Well, that was my first blog post! I could keep going and going but I will not! :) I think I will like the whole blogging bit...

Have a good night!! 

P.S. Having these meetings in Bracebridge is bad for the wallet...can't. resist. sushi...so good!

We are going to be Bloggers.......oh boy

As all of you who are checking this know, we have decided to start the Adoption process with Colombia! This is such a complicated journey that we are finding it hard to keep everyone updated and thought that a blog might help with some of the details. We also thought that it would be a good idea to write down some of our thoughts as we have really enjoyed reading other Adoption blogs. So here we go, lets hope we can keep up! Love you all, Matt and Sara