Welcome to our adoption journey

Where do I begin...well as many of you know Matt and I are in the process of adopting a baby. We began all our paperwork back in April 2008. We have completed several hours of training/informational meetings and probably cut down a couple trees with all the paperwork we have done. It has been a lot of work and sleepless nights, but definately worth it! After almost 2 years of infertility treatments we have restored hope in becoming a family. We can't explain how excited we are to have our family and be able to share our child with all the fantastic people in our lives who support and love us.

In April we spent the morning at an informational meeting in Maple Grove for Lutheran Social Services. We were impressed with their information, support and encouragement. A friend of Rachel's has also adopted through LSS and we were inspired by her story so thats part of the reason we chose LSS.

The end of May we received our initial adoption paperwork that took almost four weeks to fill out. It included every bit of information about Matt and I, we even had to go to the Sheriff's office to get finger printed - what an experience that was.

June 26-27, 2008 - We had two days of training on various topics in St. Paul with LSS.

July 2008 - We had Outreach Training in St. Paul at Lutheran Social Services office. Their Outreach program is new as of July 2008. Outreach is basically that we as the adoptive parents promote ourselves and get our name out there that we are looking for a baby to adopt. At this training we met our friends Emily and Joe. We are both trying to adopt a baby through the Outreach program. We are very grateful to have met them and we rely on each other for information and support.

July 28, 2008 - We had our first one on one meeting with our Social Worker at LSS in Mankato. We basically sat and talked and she collected a lot of information about us and our family. Our Social Worker has been wonderful - a great resource, supporter and encourages us to keep going but reminds us not to get our hopes up.

August 2008 - Our friend Sarah asked how she could help us with our adoption and since she is such a creative person we asked her to design and print a postcard that we could send out to our friends and family with our contact info. and that we are trying to adopt. Of course it turned out perfect and depicts us and our wishes to adopt. Thanks Sarah - your the best!

August 2008 - We were connected to a lady from New Ulm that does advertising in newpapers across the US for couples looking to adopt. We placed a one week ad in the free newspapers in Kansas - unfotunately we have not received any responses.

August 2008 - We met a lady at one of our training sessions at LSS that has offered to make a website for us. Great, is what we first thought.

August 13, 2008 - We had our Homestudy with our Social Worker at our home. She came to our home and just checked our home out to make sure it was a safe place for a child. We also talked for about two hours about our hopes and dreams for our future child.

September 20, 2008 - We decided to hold an adoption fundraising sale to help with the cost of our adoption. Amber, Sharon, Haley and Michaela came to help set up for the sale - if they wouldnt have been there to help it would have been a disaster. We were blessed with so many donations of items from our friends and family - we even received donations from people we don't even know. It was a crazy busy day, but so worth it! Thanks to everyone for their help and donations.

September 25-27, 2008 - Our fundraising sale was a huge success! We couldnt have done it without the help of such wonderful people - our family and friends! We have no idea how we can thank everyone....one suggestion was that each person who donatated time or items to sell thought that they now own a small part of our child and that they were a shoe in to babysit. We are game for that idea.

October 2008 - We have been contacting the lady who offered to do our website and after several emails and phone calls - no response. I believe we sent her our info. back in August and haven't heard from her in six weeks! I am beyond frustrated! I finally got a hold of her on October 15 and she said she would have two drafts done by October 19 well on October 23 no drafts. Sent out two more emails and called two more times and finally got a hold of her. She said she would have it done by October 28. I guess we will wait and see. But I am not holding my breath.

October 23, 2008 - Matt has had great support from his supervisor Ted and his wife Sue. Sue is a college instructor for an IT class and her class has decided to help us get our information out on the web so we get the maximum exposure. We are so excited to have them help us. We have appreciated their support and we are grateful that Matt works for a company that supports not only their employees but also their family.

Well I hope to keep everyone up to date as we hopefully get closer to our dream of having a family. One day I would like to share this with our child.