Today was a day I have been dreading for weeks. Last years Mothers Day was horrible, therefore I expected the same from today. Despite what I had expected, I actually had a wonderful day with family.

While still laying in bed this morning  Brian carried in a colorful bag and a card. He told me the bag was from my mom (my parents and younger sister Jackie visited us last weekend, and mom had secretly left the bag with Brian to give to me today).

First, I read the card, that simply stated,

” Dearest Haley, I gathered some items to celebrate your kids this Mother’s Day.”  Love, Abuela Laura/Mom.

I then proceeded to open the bag. The first items I saw were 2 containers of silly putty for the kids, then 2 small canvases painted by my mom of 2, bright-colored abstract cats, a hole punch (which through chatting on the phone a while ago I told my mom I needed to buy a hole punch for art projects with the kids because the girls I nanny for LOVE to use their hole punch, and I thought it would be a handy thing to have around the house.) Then I found an awesome SPA detox item for myself.  Lastly on the bottom of the bag were 2 beautiful small blankets made by a family friend for each of kids.

I put everything back into the bag then buried my head in my pillow and sobbed. It’s funny how emotion will just hit you sometimes. I was so blessed with this gift from my mom, from the hole punch to the blankets, each item my mom had a special reason for placing in the gift bag. Mom’s always seem to know exactly what we need when we need it!

Brian and I headed to church in the morning somewhat dreading what was planned for the Mothers Day service. As soon as I walked thru the foyer doors I was blessed to be met by my friend Sue (who has adult adopted daughters), she proceeded to ask how I was feeling today and we talked a bit. I was rather relieved our pastor did not give a typical Mother’s Day sermon, and enjoyed the service.

After church Brian gave me some beautiful flowers and a sweet card. Then we headed 45 min north of our home to join Brian’s parents, sister, and brother-in-law and their 3 kids. It was a wonderful afternoon with the family. I took a long walk with my mother in law, sister-in-law and 3 yr old niece, then later on in the afternoon the entire family played a fun game of balderdash.

All in all it was a wonderful day!

On a side note: Our family friend Bonnie at Bonnie’s Boutique makes beautiful blankets, quilts, pot holders, bags, and lots more! In fact I am going to have Bonnie make 2 large quilts for the kids beds once we have our referral in hand.

Earlier this week I was having a conversation with my mom on the phone. (My parents live 4 hours away, so we try to touch base a few times during the week.) My mom has always had a heart for adoption and foster care, but never pursued it due to my dad being content with my 2 younger sisters and I. There were a handful of kids who would stay with us from time to time due to their family situations and my parents were always willing to help them out and take them in for a few days. My mom is also a teacher, and has quite a few adopted children in her classes. She is always telling me stories of the kids and about her chats with their parents about their adoptions.

With Brian and I pursuing our adoption, we are also fullfilling my mothers dream of adopting! I think most of the time she is as excited as we are for the kids to come home. She is more than thrilled to have adopted grandchildren, as well as my dad! In fact my younger sister Jacquelyn has a heart for Africa and dreams of adopting African babies someday. So we talk about my parents having grandchildren from around the world, which is pretty exciting to think about!

My parents recently started the process to become a respite care family, which means that on occational weekends they will bring teenagers and children into their home who are in the foster care system. This allows the foster parents to get a break from the kids. My mom has had this on her heart for a long time, and is finally going through the process to make it happen.

 So a few months ago my mom asked me to fill out a thick questionaire (which their adult child needed to fill out) for part of the process. With talking to my mom the other day, she said, ” Haley I can totally understand now why couples want to quit the adoption process while going through all the paperwork and give up!” I laughed, and said, ” Well at least now you understand how Brian and I felt and what we had to go through to get the paperwork done and be approved!” My moms finger prints were rejected from the FBI for being unreadable (I can relate since I had the same problem and had to re do my prints and re send them in and wait for a 2nd time!). My mom also said they needed my 19 year old sister to go in and be fingerprinted since she still lived at home…. oooh the joys of being fingerprinted! This was only 1 of a handful of issues my parents have had with their paperwork.

 By the end of the conversation, I basically told her not to give up on the whole thing and proceed. I know my moms heart and what a blessing my parents will be for any child placed in their home. I told her in the end it will all be worth it.

I was asked last week by a church friend of ours who has 2 adult daughters who were adopted domestically if I wanted to attend an Adoption support group in the area. So last night Sue and I drove down to attend this group. We met in a back room at Panera bread. There were 10 women there, which included our speaker for the night who is a therapist in the area who counsels many adopted children. Out of the women, 5 had adopted children from Russia, 1 with a daughter from China, and 2 women who adopted domestically as well as another family who just started the process for a domestic adoption.

Right away I loved being there. The women all pulled out recent photos of their children to show each other, which were fun to look at. Then we went around the table and introduced ourselves and talked about where we were in the adoption process. We covered quite a bit of material such as, the loss children go through being adopted, we talked about how at each age in life children adjust to knowing they are adopted and how they process it. We also talked about RAD – Reactive Attachment Disorder among children who have been adopted. Both Sue and I were rather surprised that almost none of the women who attended the meeting knew about RAD. When Brian and I went through our home study process, our social worker put alot of emphasis on RAD and the signs to watch for in our children. If you are in the process of adopting children or have adopted children and are not familiar with RAD, I strongly recommend that you learn about it. This is a highly recommended book on RAD.

When Love is Not Enough: A Guide to parenting children with RAD. By Nancy Thomas

We also talked about building attachment with our children. One new thing I learned about was Play Therapy which helps bond the parents and children. It deals with sensory issues and helps the kids with proper development of their senses.  There is a large play therapy office in Chicago called, Theraplay. You can check it out and find more info about play therapy below. http://www.theraplay.org

Overall going to the adoption support group was an great experience and I cannot wait to attend their next meeting. I felt at ease being around other adopted parents who understand the ups and downs of adoption.

There was a new wait list posted April 9, 2012.
Remember, the ICBF Wait List applies to adoptions through ICBF only — not through CASAS PRIVADAS. It also ONLY APPLIES TO NON-COLOMBIAN FAMILIES. It DOES NOT reflect special needs children. The definition of special needs are children with disabilities, children over 8 years of age, and sibling groups of 3 or more.
The dates that have moved are in BOLD.

Also, this list only reflects that there are no more dossiers at the national office prior to the date shown. Dossiers from before January 2008 in the 0-23 months category, for example, may still need a referral, but they have already been sent to a region and are no longer waiting at the national office.

I put our current categories in red since we are technically still on the 2 sibs, ages 0-5 list, but are currently requesting to be changed to 2 siblings, 0-6 list. I do not understand how we can go months on end without categories moving at all. The 2 siblings, 0-6 category has been stuck on Sept 2009 since last October!!! Why?! If anyone can explain to me why we go months without moment I would love an explanation.

 
 Age of Child ——- Date of Application Approval by ICBF
Child 0-12 months —— Feb – 2008

Child 13 – 23 months —- Feb – 2008

Child 2 – 3 years ——– May – 2007

Child 2 years ———– NOT LISTED ON NEW FORM

Child 3 years ———– Feb – 2008

Child 3 – 4 years ——– Feb – 2008

Child 4 years ———– NOT LISTED ON FORM

Child 4 -5 years ——– Jan – 2009

Child 5 years ———– Oct – 2009

Child 5 – 6 years ——- Oct – 2009

Child 6 years ———– NOT LISTED ON FORM

Child 7 years ———– Oct – 2011

 
2 Siblings 0 – 4 years — MAY – 2008

2 Siblings 0 – 5 years — Feb – 2008

2 Siblings 0 – 6 years — Sep – 2009 (Our dossier’s approval is Nov. 2010)

2 Siblings 0 – 7 years — Apr – 2010

2 Siblings 0 – 8 years — Mar – 2011

I recently linked my friend Emily’s Etsy store Badge to my blog. If you look to the right side of my blog in the colum you will see a badge for Ellarye Boutique (The Shop).

Emily makes beautiful headbands, hair accessories, and bridal items.

Emily is a busy mama of 2 beautiful little girls and is simply trying to provide for her family through her Etsy Shop.

Please take a minute to check out her beautiful items.

On Sunday Brian and I joined missionaries from Argentina that our church supports, along with a few other friends for lunch since I serve on the missions team at our church. We had a great time talking about missions and the Latino culture. Through discussion it was brought up that Brian and I are adopting from Colombia and very quickly the topic changed to speaking Spanish. Matt, who is currently our church’s youth pastor and very good friend of ours was sitting next to Brian and said, “Ooh Haley is going to have fun in Colombia with Brian and his Spanish speaking skills!” I laughed, because I very quickly knew what he was referring to.

 In the summer of 2008 Brian and I went on a missions trip to Guatemala along with a team from our church. We were all placed with host families for the week while we were there. Brian managed to get by all week with his basic Spanish, acting, and grunts! Everyday he would come to the work site and ask Jessica (who is Matt’s wife and also a Spanish teacher) a few words he needed to know. One morning late in the week the truck came around to the host homes to pick us up for the work day and Brian jumped in and told Jessica about his conversation from the night before. After saying a few things, Jessica freaked out and corrected Brian because all week Brian was using the word, “tonto” with the host family’s 5 year old daughter. Brian thought he was telling the little girl she was silly, but instead had been calling her a fool all week! Ekk! Brian said the host family just laughed everytime he would say, “Eres un tonto!” – You are a fool.

Also, while in Guatemala, we were out for dinner as a team with the Guatemalan pastor and his wife. Our team wanted to let them know that we would be paying for their meal. Without double checking with anyone first Brian looks over to Pastor David and says in a rather loud voice and points to them, ” Su dinero no es bueno!” which means, your money is no good! The pastor and his wife looked up at Brian with confused looks and questioned what Brian was saying. Jessica very quickly jumped in to explain what Brian was trying to tell them. The entire table broke out in laughter, it still makes for a great story!

So basically Brian and I are in for some good times in Colombia with our Spanish speaking skills. We both took Spanish in high school but its been years since H.S. The past couple of months Brian has started listening to Spanish praise & worship music, and much to my surprise he is now starting to sing the Spanish lyrics. We also really need to dive into our Spanish Rosetta Stone so we can communicate with our children.

Below is information from an Adoption Blog that I follow. As some of you may know there is an Adoption Tax Credit that is a huge financial blessing to many families who have adopted children. This credit is given once the adoptions are finalized in the United States. But, changes are coming which will affect the credit that families can receive. Due to this change I am not sure if Brian and I will benefit from this tax credit. I know many families who are deperately counting on receiving this money back to pay off adoption expenses and help with costs of a growing family or even future adoptions.

I am asking you to please take a minute to click on the link below and sign the Adoption Tax Credit Petition. This will bless many families who have recently adopted or are in the process of bringing home children in the near future. There are currently 25,000+ signatures, but many more are needed!

http://www.change.org/petitions/make-adoption-costs-fully-refundable-in-the-2012-2013-tax-years

Additionally, there is a bill in Congress trying to get passed and if it goes through there will be a PERMANENT tax credit put in place.

There are some key politicians who need to receive letters/emails supporting the adoption tax credit. The following politicians are sponsors of this Adoption Bill, if you reside in one of these states it is extremely important that you send some type of communication to them:

Richard Burr [R-NC] Robert Casey [D-PA] Thad Cochran [R-MS] Kirsten Gillibrand [D-NY] Kay Hutchison [R-TX] Tim Johnson [D-SD] Amy Klobuchar [D-MN] Pat Roberts [R-KS] John Thune [R-SD]

In addition to these Finance Committee members:

Sen. Max Baucus [D-MT] Sen. Orrin Hatch [R-UT] Sen. Jeff Bingaman [D-NM] Sen. Richard Burr [R-NC] Sen. Maria Cantwell [D-WA] Sen. Benjamin Cardin [D-MD] Sen. Thomas Carper [D-DE] Sen. Thomas Coburn [R-OK] Sen. Kent Conrad [D-ND] Sen. John Cornyn [R-TX]

If you live in one of the states listed above, please would you call our representative and show your support?

Every call and signature does make a difference!

There are 163,000,000 reasons for signing this petition! Please pray for favor!

It was recommended to us a while ago by another adoptive family who have 4 adopted daughters from Colombia that we purchase an arepa maker. So for Christmas Brian’s parents blessed us with an Arepa maker, which we found online on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Miallegro-6007-Miarepa-Arepas-Sizes/dp/B0028BT5NM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1334869947&sr=8-2

Earlier this week I was emailing back and forth with another bloggy friend who is Colombian and in the process of adopting children from Colombia. I asked her about arepas, and she responded that she loves arepas, and was actually eating one while reading my email, ha. She makes them by hand. I told her that we had an arepa maker, which she had no idea they even made arepa makers. I told her I would share some pictures of ours and the arepas we make at our home.

You start with pre cooked white corn meal that you can buy on Amazon, but have seen it in grocery stores in the specialty sections. You simply add water and salt to the corn meal. Then knead all the dough into a ball until smooth.  Make sure the arepa maker is warmed up and ready, then press balls of the corn meal into each section. Add a little butter to both sides so it doesnt stick. We bake for about 12-15 minutes until the arepas are done.

 You can eat arepas with many different foods.

The first time we made arepas my family was here visiting and we served them for breakfast with eggs.

Today I ate my arepa for lunch with ham and cheese. They can be served with any meat or vegetables.  You can find many different arepa recipes here – http://www.mycolombianrecipes.com/?s=arepas

Last fall Brian and I started to reconsider the direction with our Colombian adoption.

We met with our social worker and talked to our rep from our agency about a few different options. We decided to change our paperwork to pursue a sibling group of 3 children. Those plans were short lived when we were given more info on adopting a larger sibling group from Colombia. We decided that pursuing a larger sibling group at the time was not the best option for Brian and I. We talked about our options and quickly decided to make changes to our paperwork (dossier), to up our age category for 2 siblings, ages 0-6 years. We originally were (and currently still are) approved for 2 siblings, ages 0-5 years.

As time goes on the wait is slowing down more and more. . .

Currently, the waiting list for 2 sibs, ages 0-6 years is about a year in a half faster then 2 sibs, 0-5 years.

In November our social worker updated our home study with new information from Brian and I. We submitted our change in age forms to Immigration, and wrote a new letter to Colombia stating why we were requesting to be put on the new waiting list. On Thursday we finally received the last forms in the mail and then mailed everything off to our agency.

Today I got an email from our rep letting us know our paperwork was being mailed out to Colombia! WOOHOO!

 This is always a great point to get past when dealing with the stress of changes and paperwork.

So what happens next - The ICBF in Colombia will receive our paperwork and look through it. They could always come back and ask for more info, which would not be fun. But for now we will wait for a few weeks up to a few months to find out if and when we get re approved for 2 siblings, 0-6 years.

Now here is the catch; Our original approval date is Nov. 5th, 2010. When Colombia re approves us for the new category they could either stick us on the bottom of the 0-6 list (which would basically put us right where we would have been sticking to the original list of 2 sibs, ages 0-5 years) or they can keep our original approval date and stick us on the 0-6 waiting list with all the other families who were approved in November 2010.

So with that being said, our prayer is that they will keep our original approval date, which could give us a possible referral by this Winter or next Spring 2013. However, with international adoption things can always change, this is only an estimate of timing in our minds.

 For now we will continue to keep an eye on the movement of the ICBF waiting list

Pray to be approved for our new category with the old approval date.

and

WAIT

This is my first memorial box post, I actually shared this story a few days ago. I follow an amazing blog called, A Place Called Simplicity. Years ago Linny started a memorial box, and started sharing storys of God’s faithfulness. You can find out more about Memorial Boxes here.

The past weekend we spent time in Madison with my family to celebrate Brian and my mom’s Birthdays.

During the weekend Brian and I both felt God leading us to different people for very specific reasons. Both stories are built around adoption! I will let Brian share his story with you tomorrow, but for now I wanted to share with you what transpired for me this weekend.

This story goes back to a few months ago. My good friend Andrea who lives up north in my home town where my parents live, texted me about a woman who was going to be having a baby and wouldn’t be able to keep the baby. She told me that the baby would be up for foster care/adoption once it was born. At the time, I talked briefly to Brian about it, but kind of put it behind me and went on with life. On Sunday while out for lunch with my family on my moms birthday, I received a text from Andrea telling me that the baby, a boy, was born and they were looking for a family who had an approved home study done to come forward to take the boy or he would be placed in foster care within 48 hours. She was asking if Brian and I wanted to take the baby.  My heart dropped, and I was flooded with emotions.

I texted Andrea back and forth a bit to get more details, and she sent a photo of the precious baby boy. Brian and my mom noticed I was glued to my phone and was rather quiet, so I handed my phone to my mom and told her to read it. She read it, then as soon as she looked up at me I just started sobbing. We discussed the situation, and Brian and I quickly decided that we needed to stick with Colombia. We knew that we needed to follow through with my dream and what was placed on my heart a long long time ago. I knew in my heart we were making the right decision, but was still horribly torn knowing that if we just said, “YES” this baby could be in our home the following day!

Just to clarify – I wish we could pursue another route while waiting for our kids from Colombia, but we simply cannot pursue any other adoption while waiting or Colombia will drop us off the wait list. The rules and regulations of adoption are tough, and it just killed me knowing that couples wait years and years on the domestic adoption list to get a heathly infant and he could have been ours, but apparently God had other plans.

After lunch we said goodbye to my family and started our 2 hour trek home.  The ride home was quiet, Brian drove while my mind was stuck on this baby boy. I felt stuck on the whole situation and was feeling rather upset about life and waiting for kids. I knew I couldnt dwell on it forever cause it was just making me feel worse. I quietly laid back, closed my eyes and started to pray for the situation. It was then that God put a couple on my heart. I remembered a few months ago, my mom was telling me about a young couple from their church who were having a fundraiser to raise money for their domestic adoption. I knew no other details than that. I really didnt know the couple, except for that I had gone to highschool with the guy, but never really knew him.  I had seen them around my parents church from time to time when we visited. At that point I sat up and went straight to facebook on my iphone and looked up the couple. I sent them a friend invite and also a quick message bacially explaining the situation to him and his wife and asked if they were interested in the baby boy!  Within 2 minutes, I recieved a message back from them saying that they were interested, and wanted more details. After going through a few people I was able to get them the social workers number. On Monday they got in touch with the social worker, and started looking more into the situation together.

After not hearing anything back from them since yesterday morning, I simply sent them a message this afternoon asking if there were any updates with the baby? I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, and while shopping decided to see if he messaged back, and sure enough I had a message from them saying,

“We spent all day up at the birthing center, and we brought him home this afternoon!”

I could hardly contain my tears. I quickly finished up my shopping and drove home. Once I got home, I just started sobbing. Brian happened to be home early from work, and didnt know what was going on. I told him that they took the baby home today! They are stepping out in faith and have become foster parents to this precious baby boy. The social worker believes that in 15 months the parents rights will become terminated. So for now they are blessed to be able to take home this baby boy and we will continue to pray for blessings on this new family and that everything will work out in the end. I know that God has a plan for this baby boy, and for this couple.

I am in complete AWE of God this evening as I sit here thinking about how this whole situation played out. As much as I would have loved to bring home that baby boy, God placed it on my heart for the couple to have him, and I couldnt be happier for them. I cannot wait until Brian and I get to head up to my parents and can formally meet them and the baby. I will probably break down crying, but I am honored knowing that God used me to build this new beautiful family. I also know that God is working on building mine and Brian’s family. I know he is up to something, and when the time comes he will place the perfect Colombian children in our arms.

When they see among them their children, the work of my hands, they will keep my name holy; they will acknowledge the holiness of the Holy One, and will stand in AWE of the God of Israel! – Isaiah 29:23