Fundraising

Now that I am on fall break, I have had some time to run errands and work more on our adoption process.

Today, I bought 15 bottles to give out for those locally who are willing to save their change for us. I am hoping to have the first 15 bottles out by Monday.

I also found a puzzle for the puzzle fundraiser. I was slightly picky about the puzzle. I wanted it to look nice, be gender neutral, and be something our child will want to have in their room forever. Well, after looking I found a puzzle that covered all of those and is educational! It is a map of the world. The pieces are shaped like the country itself and throughout the ocean are facts about each country in alphabetical order. The teacher in me sees all the possibilities for use of this puzzle in the future.

I also set up our GoFundMe site. This is where you can give a donation for your puzzle piece or just to give a donation in general. Each puzzle piece can be sponsored for $5. Your name will go on the back of the piece. I will post pictures throughout the process of putting the puzzle together. I look forward to seeing the finished product with the names of all our friends and family who are supporting us in this journey. 

Cornwall Adoption Fund

I would just like to say that Michael and I are extremely blessed to have so many people in our lives who are behind us 100% in our journey to parenthood through adoption. We are so thankful for all your love, support, and encouragement. We can't wait for the day when we can share pictures of our beautiful blessing with you right here on this blog.

Thank you again and God bless you and your family!

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork

Want to know the hardest part about adoption besides what seems like never ending waiting? All the paperwork!

I spent about 2 hours last night filling out paperwork and gathering information about references. The only major form we have left to fill out is our financial report. That is Michael's area of expertise, so now it's his turn to work on some paperwork!

We are very lucky in the fact that our ABI/FBI screenings were updated for foster care in June, so we are able to use those with the adoption agency. That is going to save us a lot of time because it can take up to 12 weeks for those clearances to come back.

The agency says that we could have our home study complete in as little as 6 weeks if we can get all our forms and other info turned in in a timely manner.

Our only hiccup is insurance. Changing over to family coverage is quite the financial leap! But, we have to show proof that we will be able to add an adopted child to our policy ASAP, so we can't wait until we get a child to switch over.

I am looking into fundraising ideas now. There are two ideas that I really like so far: give out baby bottles for people to fill with their spare change and/or having people sponsor a piece of a puzzle ($5/piece) that will be put together and framed in the nursery. Feel free to send me your ideas or let me know which one you would be more willing to do.

Thank you to everyone who has been so loving and encouraging during all our trials trying to become parents. I truly feel that we are finally on the path that is going to lead to our child/children.

The Here and Now

Now that you have the background story, let me tell you where we are today.

Today, Michael and I went to meet with an agency in Homewood. There were many pros to this agency:

1. The man who runs the agency is an adoption lawyer, so they will be able to handle all aspects of the adoption through their office.
2. They will do our home study and are willing to send it to any other agency if we choose not to go through theirs.
3. They do not call you with a child until the baby is born and the 5 day period the birth family has to change their mind has passed, meaning you do not have to deal with the heartbreak of being matched with a birth mother who later changes her mind and chooses to keep the baby.
4. They will send a social worker to us in Montgomery to do our home study.

Right now we know for sure that we are going to use them to do our home study. We will see how things turn out after that because adoption is extremely expensive.

I am already looking into fundraising ideas. If you have one, feel free to share it.

I look forward to blogging about our journey!

Let's start from the beginning...

So, I figure if I'm going to write a blog about our journey to adoption I should give the back story of how we came to this place.

Michael and I were married on November 21, 2009. We both knew from the start we wanted a family one day, but we agreed to wait a year before trying to start our family. We made it 9 months before I convinced Michael to go ahead and start trying. We tried for a year with no success, so we went to my doctor to start all the loads of testing. After all the testing, Michael was diagnosed with azoospermia. This, of course, was heartbreaking for us both; however, since Michael is adopted himself we had talked about adopting even if we had biological children.

Of course as soon as we knew adoption was the route we would be taking, we begin researching adoption agencies all over the US. I found one in California and we got as far as being sent the contract to work with them. Because Michael's parents had been through adoption, we had them look over the contract. They realized that this company was more of a facilitator and we would spend tons of money with no promise of a baby. So, we were back to the drawing board.

We took some time away and happened upon an informational meeting about foster care. We went to the meeting and decided this was something we felt might be a good route for us. Weeks later the doors opened for us to go through a private, Christian agency for foster care. So, we went through the classes and home study. We were finally licensed as foster parents in June of this year. Unfortunately, things just did not pan out how they said they would. So, we decided to part ways.

Now, here we are today and we are back to looking at adoption through an agency.