Spring Workshop/Addition to the Website

   Billy and I met with Doris for our follow up meeting we needed to have in order to move forward to the next step. She had told us back in February she would like to see us work some on spending more time together as just a couple and also going out to do fun things more often as a family. We listened and appreciated what she had to say in February and we began going to the park for the afternoon/taking a picnic, Billy and me had a couple of date nights and went to a marriage seminar, we went to grandfather mountain spontaneously the other weekend for an awesome day trip/picnic and found a park in downtown blowing rock where we spent the remainder of the day. There has been a lot of fun things going on and wonderful memories being made! I am so glad when someone like Doris takes the time to give you helpful insight about your family. When we went to meet with her the second time of course I was nervous...she is nice as can be but everything is so on the spot and you never know what questions or anything you will be hit with. And of course you want to do good so that you can continue on the adoption process. So she came in and we had small talk about this and that the first half hour it seemed, and then we shared a little about life and she was very happy with the progress we made. We were done in less than an hour and Doris had Debbie come down from her office to tell us about how to get on the website. I was overjoyed just to hear the words WEBSITE. That is literally the absolute final piece and sometimes you are found on the website before the birth mom ever even sees the family profile album you put together. Debbie told us we needed to submit roughly 20 pictures to her through an email and that was it, she uses the info that has already been prepared through your homestudy to write about you on the website. I worked all weekend and got those pictures compiled. I sent them to her on Sunday night. Wednesday April 15th I got an email from her saying DONE!, I was thinking does that mean we are officially on the website? I pulled it up right away and just to see our picture on there and see what was put together about our family sent waves of emotion over me. I couldn't believe how far we had come since last July when we started with an interest meeting. If you want to check us out and see the other waiting families you can go to Christianadopt.org and click on waiting familes. Then you will see our picture, click on it if you want to read more about our profile. The families you see pictures of that say On Hold, that means they have been matched and are waiting on the baby to be born...one day that will be us! :) So exciting!!!!!!

   Next we attended the second of our required workshops through the agency. One is in the fall which we already attended and this was the spring workshop. It was on Saturday and its an 8 hour deal. We literally learned so much. It was awesome! They had a pediatrician come and speak about infants for an hour, we had group break out sessions where we all shared our stories and different things and then met as a whole group again and shared, and as always they had a panel of adoptive families share. This is the part I love the most where we hear stories from people who have already adopted through the agency. There were 5 families on this panel and every story is so different as to how long it took to complete the process, how long you waited before placement, was it open or closed adoption, etc? Out of these 5 the main thing that stayed similar was how quick the turn around time was from going on the website to receiving a baby for placement. We have thought all along that we would be matched with a birth mom who had about 2 months of pregnancy left and that's a short amount of time to get everything ready so you work on things now along the way. Turns out 4 out of 5 of these couples have gotten the call from Doris that there is a baby and this baby was born 1 week later or possibly 3 weeks, or in 1 case it was that the baby had already been born and the birth mom then made up her mind to place the baby and they needed to be at the hospital the next day! This blew my mind that it could be that fast of a turn around. Its exciting and scary all at once just because we are going through life every day right now having no idea what day or time of day WE will be the ones to get this life changing call from Doris, and at that point we may bring home baby brother within a week. Also when she calls this doesn't mean we will be driving to CMC uptown, we could be driving anywhere in NC, to raleigh, the beach, the mountains, etc. You never know where the baby will be born because they work with birth moms all over NC. We left that meeting like WOW we have got to go pick up some baby boy things. So we went shopping and got the diaper bag, a blanket, some onesies that were newborn and 0-3 months, and a pack of newborn diapers. The other adoptive parents just couldn't emphasize enough how ready you need to be with a car seat, fully packed diaper bag, gift for birth mother, etc so that if you were like them and got a phone call and needed to leave your house in an hour to hurry to the hospital that was 3 hours away while the birth mom was already in labor that you can grab your stuff and run out the door. Sometimes it doesn't happen like this but we never know which end of the spectrum we will be on, the one where you have 2 months or the one where you need to GO. Please keep our family and the birth mom of our child in your prayers..this is an exciting time.
   We are in the process of nailing down a spagetti benefit dinner date. We are shooting for a weekend evening in late May to be held at a local fire dept. I will give more details when we know them! Thats all the updates for now : )