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.