Christmas 04

Uncle Tom & Aunt Nancy brought Leyla to Florida for Christmas. We all went to Disney World. What a fun time!
L-R: Aunt Nan, Tommy 14, Taylor 8, dh Mark, Leyla 6, Me, Barb (MIL)

First dossier complete and delivered

A lot has been going on since the last time I updated. As far as the album for the birthmother.....we took some photos from Christmas time that you could see some of the house in and did the best we could. We had only been in the house for about a year and a half at this time so we did not have an abundance of pictures. We could not take any photos of the outside of the house due to a BIG green dumpster sitting in the driveway but that's ok. We concentrated on family photos, vacationing photos and our extended family. It turned out pretty good if you ask me...considering! So the first big step is done. Our dossier should go out today!!! We now just sit, wait and pray for "THE CALL". In the world of adoption, we are officially "Paper Pregnant"! We will be notified by our agency when our family is picked by a bithmother to raise her child.
God is SOOOOOO GOOD!!!!! He knew that I am very impatient and needed a sizeable task while waiting to hear something from Taiwan! What a good sense of humor! I think rebuilding a house will be quite enough to keep me busy. Just trying to get answers from our insurance company is proving to be a full time job in itself so far.

The Plot Thickens

We have just found out that Mark's 6 year old niece Leyla is in the foster care system in Little Rock, AR. We have been praying about what God wants us to do in this situation. We feel very confident that we will be adding another little girl to our family real soon from AR!! We are so very excited and nervous at the same time!! What are we getting ourselves into?? What does God have in store for us?? Stay tuned.....this should be good!

Homeless????

About the time we got moved into Bob & Barbara's home, our agency contacted us and told us that we needed to start working on our photo album, "Dear Birthmom" letter and start our online parenting classes. Oh boy.....exactly how do you take pictures of the inside of your home to show the birthmother where her child will be living when you don't have a home anymore???? YIKES!! We were told by our agency that this would be a first for them so, they really didn't know what to tell us! We also had to notify Dr. Cotton who came to do our homestudy that the house he had been to see looked a tad bit different! I guess I won't be back for updates until we figure out where to go from here. This could take a while.......

Hurricane Frances

Well, needless to say....we are not very happy with Hurricane Frances. On September 4th, she ripped through Melbourne and took part of our roof with her. We left for Atlanta, GA when we heard she was coming and returned home to find out that basically everything in our house that we left behind was ruined. Very humbling to say the least. We will be moving in with Mark's parents until we can get our house rebuilt. Everything must come out. This means down to the framing inside. We are waiting to get the go ahead from our insurance company.

Homestudy complete!

That was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Dr. Cotton is very nice and quite thorough. He will send for our background checks from the state and we have to go to our police station for the local b/g check. We should have a rough draft of the homestudy to proof this coming week. Boy am I glad that is over!!!

Homestudy

These are the first few steps in the process:

We first had to apply to an adoption agency. We decided to go with Commonwealth Adoptions International based out of Tampa, FL. They accepted us into their Taiwan program on and now the next step is the homestudy. This process involves having a licensed social worker come to our house and "interview" us and find out if we are up to the task of parenting another child. He will go into great detail regarding our childhoods, schooling, religious beliefs, dating and marriage views and that's just the begining!! There are also 3 background checks we will go through. This is quite a lengthy and indepth ordeal. He will also be looking at our house to determine if we have sufficient space for another child and speak with our children to find out what they think about adding a child by adoption to our family. Our homestudy is scheduled for August 24th.

Welcome

We will use this site to keep our friends and family updated on our progress to bring home our child. We hope to have her home with her Forever Family by this time next year!! Thank you for praying for our family and the long journey ahead!