Wow!

Prepare for a long post! So many things have happened in the past few days.

Monday I met with the baby's pediatrician. We are very fortunate to have a pediatrician who is an adoption specialist. She seems very knowledgable. When we get our referral she will go over it with us piece by piece and let us know of any concerns she has.

Tuesday I called the agency to make sure they received some paperwork that they needed. While on that call I asked if they had any ideas on time frame with all of the changes that have come about. I told her the last we knew we were number 24 on the list. She looked and said we are actually in the top 10 now that all of our paperwork has been received! It's coming soon! We were on cloud 9 all day. We still don't know an exact time frame because we can never predict how quickly the courts will move and process adoptions. We are close to receiving our referral!

Today I am still excited but the panic has also set in. I have the normal 1st time mommy fears for sure. I have also started to panic about money. Not only do we still have the financial concerns for the adoption itself but also for the money to buy all the things. I asked on FB for a link to a baby buy, sell, and trade page and when I did, ladies just began posting all of the things they wanted to give me. It was amazing, I was crying. God is so good. These people have no idea how much of a blessing they are to us.

Financial needs: I sat down and looked at our budget for the adoption and what is paid and still needs to be paid. The good news is, we have enough money in the puzzle fundraiser and our adoption savings account for the adoption and agency fees! Our focus now is to get money for the two trips we need to take to Taiwan. We'll need to pay for plane tickets, lodging (estimated to be $150-$200 a night), food, and spending money. If you would like to help, we are still doing the puzzle fundraiser. We have sold 112 of 500 pieces. Here is the link for that: https://www.adopttogether.org/theboyds

October 5th

We have now completed all of our requirements for the home study update to our new home. It will take a couple of weeks to be written up. For now I'm filling out all the paperwork and putting all the documents together so we can file the i600A as soon as we get the home study. Once that is filed, there is nothing more we can do to help the process until we have our match. We plan on starting to learn some basic Mandarin. Don't be surprised if you come to our house and see flash cards all over the place. We are doing lots of research to see what traditions and customs we would like to bring into our family. 

There are now 79 puzzle pieces on our puzzle!! We cannot be more thankful!! We appreciate everyone's gifts, prayers, and encouragement. This is not an easy process but you all make it easier. We appreciate you being there when we get discouraged with the process and the waiting. 

Finally Some News

We received word that the orphanage now has their license back! They are down to only three caregivers though and as such are only allowed 9 babies (3 per caregiver). Taiwan has also changed some of their laws since the US has changed theirs. Taiwan has extended the period of time that a baby has to be adopted by a Taiwanese family. As such, there is now a longer wait time from when the baby is brought into the orphanage to when they are allowed to be adopted out by an international family. Since no adoptions were able to be processed during the license situation, it looks like we will not receive a match within a year. Right now we just hold on to the belief that the child God has for us, is not at the orphanage yet. Things are progressing, just not as quickly as we had originally thought they would. Last Wednesday we had our first interview for our home study update. This Wednesday we have our second interview. Once the home study is updated, we'll be able to file our i600A with the government to get final approval from the government to be able to complete the adoption once we have a match. The home study is good for a year and the i600A gives us approval for 18 months. The adoption agency seems pretty confident that we won't have get an update or file for an extension. For now, we wait.....

Update 8/23/14

Still no word on the license for the orphanage. They have a lot of challenges right now so please keep them in your prayers. 

We are currently working on our new home study. All of the paperwork has been sent in (the stack was about 3 inches high!). September 10th will be our first interview for the new home study. We will also have another interview the following week. These interviews check our home and make sure there is enough room, it's clean, etc. We also get what we call an interrogation. We are asked everything from our past, about our family, how we were raised, about religion, about our philosophy of raising children, medical history, anything you can think of, we are asked. 

Puzzle Update: 51 of 500 pieces sold! Thank you to all of you who have purchased pieces!

Waiting......

Waiting is a huge part of adoption. You wait for approval, for homestudies, for your child, and the biggest wait of all, you wait on the government. Right now we are waiting on the government. A new law called the Universal Accreditation Act recently went into effect. Our agency has had to team up with another agency to get the new approval. That is on the US side of things. Now, on the Taiwan side of things, the orphanage has applied for new licensure to continue to operate. While the US side of things has been settled, we are waiting for Taiwan to re-approve the orphanage's license. Because the orphanage does not charge agency fees, the government is giving them a hard time. We should know more in early August. In the meantime, please keep the orphanage in your prayers.

Fundraiser Update

Today we received our puzzle in the mail! It turned out great! I started writing names of donors right away. We have already filled out the top row of the border! We found out about another donation made that was not showing up, we're assuming it will show up after the holiday weekend so we can't wait to see if there are any others. Our hearts are filled with so much gratitude as we write the names and connect the pieces together. We feel so blessed! We pray a blessing over each person as we write the names. Yesterday was Independence Day. It was a time to celebrate our freedoms and our blessings. We are so thankful and blessed to be in a country where we are free and we are so thankful for all of the support we are receiving. We thank you for your prayers, your support, and your donations. 

Superman Was Adopted Too!

Nathan loves Superman and the saying in the post title has become one of our favorites... we consider it kind of our adoption motto. We were told of a fundraising idea called a Puzzle Fundraiser and we loved it. The idea behind it is to buy a puzzle and charge $20 for each piece. When someone buys a piece you write their name on the back. Once the puzzle is completed you get a double sided frame and frame it. We found this picture and created our puzzle. The puzzle is 500 pieces and we already have 5 sold! I can't wait to complete it and show our child all the people who helped bring him or her into our family!

We also found a website called Adopt Together. This website allows people to donate money to you and you can only take out money with receipts proving an expense is adoption related. As you receive donations you can also apply for grants. Our profile was created and accepted and we received our first donation! Here's the link to the website, it's also to the right of the page under "OUR LINKS"  https://www.adopttogether.org/theboyds  Please feel free to share the link! You never know who God might work through.

Adoption Journey

After many requests, I have finally started a blog. Our adoption journey started a little over three years ago. We started by trying to foster to adopt in Missouri, however, due to conflicting schedules, it did not work out. We started looking at agencies and found costs way out of our reach but began saving up money. In California we once again started the foster to adopt program and were ready to have a child placed in our home but Nathan's job had other plans and sent us to Texas for six months. We knew there was no way to foster in Texas being it was such a short amount of time so we continued to save and fundraise for an adoption. During our time in Texas we got a recommendation for an adoption agency in Taiwan that was cheaper than any we had ever seen. We quickly contacted them and were accepted! Since then we have been fundraising and waiting for a call that says we have a match.