Smiles

Well even though yesterday wasn't that great of a day, there were some things that made me smile, so I figured I should share them with you.

First, I had a snow day on Friday! Even though I have my program coming up and didn't really want to miss a rehearsal, it was nice having a day off, and I enjoyed being stuck at home with my husband. Here is a picture of the snow at our house.



Second, we (I) were also very productive, and got our extra rooms re-arranged so we were able to fit the guest bed into Nate's room. Once we get a baby, "my" room will turn into the nursery, but I didn't want to have to give up our guest bed since that was the only place we had for anyone besides us to sleep. Getting the bed into Nate's room involved moving a bookcase into the living room, packing up a lot of things into storage totes, moving a bookcase from my room into Nate's room, and moving the bed into Nate's room. This was a lot of work, and my room is still a bit of a mess, but we did accomplish what we set out to do. I don't think we are planning to set up the nursery anytime soon, we just wanted to know that it would work. Here is a picture of my room without a bed in it!



Here is a picture of Nate's room with the bed in it.



Finally, today I finally was able to get set up a fund-raising site a friend pointed me to. This site sells many different flavors of coffee, and was created by a family who adopted. They made it their mission to try to help other families who are adopting or fostering. If you have been wondering how you can help, here is an easy way. Go to our site... http://www.justlovecoffee.com/TheMcCoys and from our site you can search through their many different flavors of coffee as well as t-shirts and tote bags. I know many of you are coffee drinkers so you are going to buy it anyway, and we will get a portion of every purchase!

Ups and downs...or just downs

Sometimes I think that God doesn't want me to have any children. Today is one of those days. It just feels like every time something starts going well, something comes along to mess it up. Yesterday I was working on our tax return and I was getting really excited and starting to feel like this adoption thing was actually going to work because we were going to be getting $4000 back from the government. Then just as I was getting ready to submit our return today, Nate came in with the mail with a "corrected" 1098 T from Harding informing us that there was an "error in the calculated amount for scholarships and grants." This "error" meant that even though we had paid taxes on thousands of dollars we received in tuition, we weren't able to get any of that money back under any of the education credits, because Harding counted it all as "scholarships and grants" even though all the money was used toward tuition so technically it shouldn't have been taxed at all. I would like someone to explain that for me. I don't think it's fair that I should have to pay taxes on money that we never saw and was used for tuition, and then not let us get any of our tax money back. This really infuriates me because I called Harding a few days ago because I had noticed that the 1098 T was different than last year, and I was informed by the PERSON IN CHARGE OF THEM that it was correct. Apparently they are just so incompetent that even people who have done things for years don't know how to do them. This was a huge mistake on their part because I think every single 1098 T had to be corrected. I want to know what they would have done if I had already submitted my return...or if I hadn't bothered to call them and check, because I'm betting that I was the one who brought this problem to their attention. Anyway, enough of my rant.

Now instead of getting $4,000 back that we can put towards our adoption, we are only getting $1,000. I know that if God wants us to adopt he will provide a means to do it, but how am I supposed to know if this is what he wants us to do? Right now it's not looking good. We still need $8,000 more dollars to have enough to cover all the listed adoption expenses by the agency, which still doesn't cover most of the travel or expenses to stay in Kansas City, or any extra medical expenses the birth mother has. Even with our $1,000 we still need $7,000. That number is looking very impossible right now, and I feel very helpless. Sorry for the sad post. Please pray that God shows me what He wants for us, and provides what we need to accomplish His will.

A date set

We now have a date set for our orientation meeting. We are meeting with the agency on Friday, February 19th at 3pm. I think we will try to drive part of the way on Thursday evening, and then drive the rest of the way Friday morning since it is a 7 hour-ish drive. This is the best solution since they weren't able to have the meeting on a weekend, and this is the first Friday we have free after my music program. I'm not sure what to expect from this meeting; I need to email back because she didn't tell us anything we need to bring or what we would cover. It makes me nervous when I don't know what to expect. I'm sure it is mainly just for us to find out more about the organization and about how the process works, and for them to put a face with a name, but it still makes me nervous. Pray that the meeting goes well and we are able to proceed quickly afterward.

Some Clarification

I received an email on Saturday with some more information about the orientation meeting/workshop that was confusing me. Apparently they are two different things, but the agency has been having trouble scheduling adoption workshops, and they didn't want to put our process on hold until they were able to schedule a workshop, so they have been scheduling these 2 hour orientation meetings with some additional reading, to make up for not attending a workshop. I'm *hoping* that is a good thing for us that they are having a hard time scheduling the workshops, because it could mean they don't have very many families wanting to adopt, which makes the chances better for us. A friend suggested that the economy could be deterring people from adopting. Not sure if that's the reason or not, but I will keep telling myself that! I emailed back with some days and times that would be good for us, but unfortunately I have a music program coming up on February 12th, so I can't miss any school until that is over. If they have the meetings on weekends then we might be able to get it done soon, otherwise we will have to wait until after my program. Pray for a quick response and a quickly scheduled meeting.

A confusing next step...

Well we finally heard back from the agency that our preliminary application had been accepted and it was time to set up an orientation meeting. This preliminary application was the easiest of the applications I had looked at with the exception of one thing. It didn't include any questions about what kind of baby we would accept (which we still aren't sure of) so that was nice, but I was a little worried because it included a "Statement of Faith" that both Nate and I had to complete separately. It was basically a set of 5 questions which helped the agency prove that the adoptive parents they selected would provide for the child's spiritual needs as well as physical, emotional, etc. The questions weren't necessarily hard questions but they made you think, and I felt like if I answered them "wrong" then that could keep us from being able to adopt. Not a good feeling. Luckily our answers were apparently good enough to proceed! :)

I'm a little confused about the next step. My understanding of the next step was that we would travel to Kansas/Missouri (they are located in Kansas City which is apparently in Kansas and Missouri), and attend an orientation meeting/workshop which would last part of the day on a Friday and all day Saturday. This would involve us taking off work, but I thought that was the only time we would need to do that until we were matched with a birth mother. However, when I received an email from them, the email asked what would be a good day and time for us to do this orientation meeting, and it should only last about 2 hours. I'm trying to figure out if the workshop is really only 2 hours long, if this meeting is a separate thing, and if it is a separate thing, whether or not we have to travel to Kansas/Missouri to go to it. I suppose it could just be a telephone or online thing...not sure. I sent a reply with my questions, but I'm worried my response was just more confusing. It may be time again to contact the family from our church who has gone though this agency and see if they know what this is. Pray for quick answers and a speedy process...

Where we are now...

Step 1: After being told by fertility doctors there was nothing else they could do, and after spending some time grieving, we knew we still wanted to have children so we decided to start the process of adopting a child. We met with two families who have both adopted to get some insight into how it works, the time frame, and costs, as well as what is involved in an "open adoption." I must admit, the open adoption part is probably what scared me the most about the whole thing, mainly because I knew so little about it, but since all domestic adoptions are now open to some extent, and because adopting from other countries is so much more expensive, I decided to find out more about open adoptions. After talking with these families who have gone through open adoptions, I felt a lot more comfortable with the whole thing. I always pictured open adoptions as the birth parents having constant contact with their child, showing up at the adoptive parents' house, and being so involved that the child is confused about who their parents are. I was also concerned that the child would have their birth parents so involved that they would decide sometime it might be better to just go and live with them, no matter what I had done for them over the years. However seeing the experiences these families had, my fears seemed to be unfounded. Open adoption encompasses any communication between the birth parents and adoptive parents at all, not just face to face contact. I can definitely see how contact with the birth parents after the adoption could be beneficial both for the birth parents and the child. Pictures and letters to the birth parents can reassure the parents that they made a good decision, and their child is in good hands. Letters from the birth parents to the adopted child can help answer some of the questions adopted children have, and keep them from trying to search for their birth parents later on, because they already have their questions answered, and possibly even know where their birth parents are located. As far as visits go, that is something Nate and I get to decide with the birth parents and we only agree on something we are all comfortable with. After the birth parents sign their rights over, I am officially and legally the child's parent, and I don't have to allow anything that is not in the best interests of the child. This made me feel a lot more comfortable than the idea I had that the birth parents would just show up at my house whenever they felt like it. This made me more comfortable with the idea of open adoption, and ready to begin pursuing it.
Step 2: We contacted a few different agencies, but so far we have only returned one initial application because each one requires a $100 non-refundable application fee. I understand the importance behind the fee, but it makes it difficult to pursue several different agencies because of the additional costs involved. We decided to pursue a Christian agency that a few other couples from our church had gone through. We are now waiting to hear back from them that our application has been approved, and what our next step is. Please keep us in your prayers that everything goes smoothly.

I've started a blog!

Hello to all my friends and family! After a long process with fertility doctors, Nate and I have begun the process of adopting a child. I decided to start this blog to document the process, and let anyone who wants to know where we are, what we are doing, and how things are going. Please keep us in your prayers, and keep checking back to see what we're up to!