Our Family

Our Family

Friday, January 29, 2010

MAILED!!!!

We are official, we are in the adoption process, the application is mailed, hopefully it will be in Indiana by Monday, I am so excited to get this process started. I am already making a list of documents that I need to order and get ready. Namely for Randy and I are new birth certificates. If I have been reading other peoples information correctly we need two new birth certificates for each of us and also two copies of our marriage license. I guess they want to make sure that we are actually married!! I am so excited though. Again please just pray for us, who knows, by this time next year we could be traveling to Russia to meet our new daughter.

With Love
Randy, Denise, and Camden

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Application Ready!

Ok, we have decided on an adoption agency! We are going through the company Families Through International Adoption based out of Indiana. We have the application filled out, check written and will mail out tomorrow. We are getting so excited about this new journey. We have decided to request a girl, so that way Camden gets a sister. Our future daughter will be the first granddaughter on Denise's side of the family, can't wait to buy frilly girly stuff.

It should only take a few days for them to process our application and then we will be on to our true "paper pregnancy" as I have heard others describe their paper chase. It should be interesting!

The only thing that Randy and I ask of you all is to pray for us! Please pray that we make the correct decisions for our family, and for peace as we start this long process. We know it will take at least a year, and I am not a very patient person, to say the least. Also if you could pray that the finances are made available for us. We are unable to apply for grants until after our homestudy is done, but we are ready for this challenge. We are so excited.

Thank you for your love and prayers.

Randy, Denise, and Camden

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Our Big Decision

After a year of trying to have a second child, Randy and I had come to the decision that God is wanting us to adopt our 2nd child. Our plan was to always have two children and then adopt our 3rd child, but I guess were going to adopt our 2nd child and see what God has in store for our future children after that. After much discussion and a lot of research of Hague versus Non-Hague countries, (if you don't know what the Hague Convention is I will explain later), we have decided to go with a Non-Hague country, so we will be adopting our future son or daughter from Russia.

Our next step is to decide on an adoption agency. Many people have stated that picking an adoption agency is the worst part of the whole adoption process, and I have to say I agree, though I will let you all know at the end of the process. We have been researching agencies, getting referrals, talking to people who have used their services before, and of course the very important part, costs. Being a single-income family will make this harder of course, but we are ready for the challenges. I have been researching fundraising ideas, and searching for adoption grants. There is an adoption tax credit that you can take at the end of the adoption process, but that is of course at finalization of the adoption and all monies have been paid. As strict Dave Ramsey followers, we are doing this all with cash, no second mortgage for us!

If you all could pray for us as we encounter this adventure we would greatly appreciate it. Our next step is to select an adoption agency, we have it narrowed down to two companies, and hopefully our decision will come soon.

Hague vs. Non-Hague: In a nut-shell, The Hague Convention was created to protect children and adoptive parents from false information being given to adoptive parents, and to also protect the children from being exploited. The pros are that you know what you are going to get with your adoptive child, the cons, it had dramatically increased the waiting time to get children, sometimes up to a 4-5 year wait as we are now seeing in China. Russia has a good reputation and has their own accreditation policy, so that is why we are going through Russia, and the wait time from submission of your dossier to bring your child home, is less than a year.