PROGRESS!!! Moving Forward....

While I have been traveling for the last few weeks for work a lot of things have happened with our adoption journey....

Our Home Study is COMPLETE!
Our Family Profile is COMPLETE!
Applications to agencies are COMPLETE!

On Monday, July 1st (which was my goal, and we all know how I like check lists and goals!) we are mailing off our applications, home studies, and family profiles to the different agencies we have selected!
We are so excited to move forward!
Once we apply with the agencies, we wait....we wait for a situation to present itself, we wait to be matched with a birth mother, and we wait for the birth of our child!

Joe and I continue to pray for the birth mother of our future child/children.
We continue to pray for the child/children.
We pray for ourselves as this journey is not for the faint of heart.  It is long, it is hard, and it really makes you examine who you are, what you think and what you want for your future.
We pray for our families as we continue down this adoption journey.

And we pray that God will help us to raise the money that is needed for this journey and his plan for our life!

http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/karen-joe-s-adoption-journey/62934

Happy Times

Praise God

Difficult Times

Seek God

Quiet Times

Worship God

Hard Times 

Trust God

All Times

Thank God!  

Moving in the right direction!

To be Home Study ready we have been waiting on our finger prints and back ground check from the Nebraska State Patrol office.  I called Wednesday and they had mailed it out to our Home Study agency on 6/17/13 and I got a confirmation email last night that our social worker who is working on our Home Study received it and she should have everything complete and mailed out on Monday.  Which means we should have the official stamp that we are Home Study complete very soon!  That is a huge step in moving forward in our journey!

Creative Adoption Consultants has been so amazing helping us navigate each step of this journey.  They are helping us put together our Family Profile and I hope that we will have that complete very soon as well.

Both the Home Study and the Family Profile are 2 key components to being able to apply to agencies and we are so very close!

Please continue to pray with us as we are moving forward on our journey.
Pray that God is preparing the birth mother's heart and the babies that God has picked out for us!
Pray for Joe and I as we are moving toward having a family.
And pray for our families and friends as they wait with us.

Peace and Blessings to you all!

http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/karen-joe-s-adoption-journey/62934
 

Father's Day...

Having lost my father almost 20 years ago Father's Day is bitter sweet.
His smile, his laugh (like Underdog), his kindness, but mostly his love for us are still with me today.
His physical presence is missed tremendously but his memory is alive in my heart every day.
I don't know how many times most each and every day when something happens or someone says something that I think of my daddy.  He taught me so many things and I really attribute a lot of my personality and drive to him.  His primary goal was for me to be able to stand on my own two feet....
Thanks daddy, I have conquered that blessing and curse!

I know he would be so proud of the woman I have become.  He would have questioned some of my choices along the way but he would have loved me through all the good and the bad.

Joe's dad is an amazing man and amazing role model for Joe.  Brent has worked hard, loved his family and given them everything they needed and wanted.  What he gave without even knowing, he gave Joe a desire to be a good father and role model to our children.  Like me, Joe hasn't always made the best decisions in life, but he has been loved through the good and bad.

As Joe and I prepare for being parents, we have a lot of conversations about what we want for our family, how we want to parent, and how life will be in the future.  The one thing that we both know is that we, just like our father's (and mother's)....we will love our children through the good and bad.

Happy Father's Day to our dad's on this day...we celebrate you.
Hopefully next year we will be celebrating Father's Day with our new family!

Peace, blessings and prayers to you all!  K

Hard to wait....

Those of you who know me, know I'm not the most patient person.  I like check lists, process flows, order and control.  Waiting on things that are outside of my control are not my strong suit.  That is where we are now.

We have filled out all of our paper work, we have been finger printed and local background checked, we have provided references and tons and tons of information and paperwork.....and now we wait!
I called the State office that does the Federal Background Checks to make sure they got the paperwork, I called this past week (week 4 that they have had the paperwork) to see where they were in the process...and she told me to call back this week....so we wait!

We have taken all of our pictures, we have uploaded our information and pictures, now we wait for our family profile...don't get me wrong...we are blessed to be working with CAC and they know exactly what to do with profiles..so we gladly wait on our profile!  But we wait!

So, what is left for us at this point...PRAYING!
Please pray along with us!
Pray that God will wrap Joe and me with His comfort and blessings to know that what we feel called to do, adopt, is a blessing to Him and that He will give us PEACE when things don't necessarily happen in MY time but that all things will happen in HIS time!
We pray for our future family.  Joe and I are so ready to have children!
We pray for our child/children who are out there that God has picked for us to parent.
We believe that through God, all things are possible and He knows who will be our children.
We pray for the birth mother/family who is having to make an extremely hard decision.

We pray that God will move mountains for the children that He has picked out for us...we pray that His hand will move paperwork through the process, that He will speed up or slow down what needs to be done so we will be ready for our children in HIS time!

God is Good...all the time!
But most of all...I will gladly wait on God rather than God having to wait on me!
God's timing is a lot better than me!  :)

Family Profile...

As apart of our adoption journey, we have to create a family profile book.  It is a scrapbook of our family and our story that will be seen by the potential birth mothers and hopefully our story and profile will connect with one of the birth mothers and we will be a match.
The hardest part for me has been gathering the pictures that are needed.  I never realized how many pictures I do take, but more importantly I didn't realize how many events it looks like I have missed out on because I am not in any of the pictures.
Today we had the absolute best morning, even though it was rainy and cloudy here in Omaha!  A friend from work told me about his niece that was a part time photographer who could take some pictures for us.
We put together a plan to take some pictures of Joe and I together and doing fun things like golf, tennis, playing games at a place like Dave & Buster's plus she took some portrait pictures of us too.
I can't wait to actually see Hannah's work.  She was so awesome and just allowed us to be us! There weren't any of the tilt your head just a little to the right or any of that...we were just us!

Once we get the pictures back (hopefully she will add some color to my pasty white legs!) and get them sorted, we can upload them and Cheri can begin working on our profile!  This will hopefully be done about the same time our Home Study will be completed and we will be able to start applying to agencies!

As things are getting checked off the list and we are getting closer to applying, my heart becomes more full and hopeful everyday.  God is good and has called us to adopt.  Following what you feel like God wants for you and your life is an amazing feeling.  Knowing that God's timing is perfect and my timing isn't is the hardest part for me!  I know that things will happen when they are supposed to happen...we just have to believe in God!
Peace and Blessing!    

Considering the costs

Karen and I were working on fund raising ideas, grants and loan applications tonight.  We may be romantic about this process and what the end, or the beginning as it may be, means to us, but we are also realistic.  This will be expensive.  Having said that, what venture that is ever worth it isn't expensive.  And, as I eluded to earlier, this is just the beginning of our families journey.  I think a realistic outlook is necessary because one can get burdened easily by these issues if you don't go in eyes wide open.

Thanks again to those who are following and who will read about us in the future, your support, both spiritually and otherwise means a lot to us.

Checking things off the list...

Adoption = Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork!  

Joe and I have been making a ton of check lists to keep track of all the applications we are filling out, pictures we need for our family profile, documents we need, books we've read, video's we've watched and the list goes on!  

Even with all the hard work, it is such an exciting time for us! 

We are working with Christian Adoption Consultants who are such a blessing to help us navigate this journey.  

We have completed our 3 Home Study visits, we have done our local back ground check, our fingerprinting is done and sent off to be validated and verified, our references have sent in kind words, our employment has been verified, our financials have been verified, our doctors visits have been done, we have done our 10 hours of training, we have proofed our preliminary Home Study approval....now we wait for our FBI background checks and clearance to come back so our Home Study can be completed!  

Check the box....now we wait!  

We are gathering pictures and writing our story for our Family Profile books that will be sent to the agencies for birth mothers to look through and hopefully pick us!  We have to send in approximately 100 or so pictures and this may seem like an easy task, but it isn't when we need pictures of me and I am usually the one taking the pictures, so next weekend we hopefully will get the remainder of our pictures taken so we can send our information and pictures off so we can check that box....

We are also filling out applications for the different agencies we will be applying to once our Home Study is approved and our Family Profile is done...more paperwork!  

We are praying daily that God will be preparing the birth mother's heart so she will be open and receptive to our profile...

We are praying daily for a child/children that will one day add to our family...

We are praying daily for God to be preparing us for our journey!  

Please pray with us!  

Joe and I are also trying to raise money for our journey...if you would like to help, please visit our fund raising website....

http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/karen-joe-s-adoption-journey/62934