home study, fingerprinting and paperwork

I am not sure how much detail people are interested in but since a few of you want to know everything I will try to be somewhat detailed for them and for the rest of you feel free to skim or skip the less "exciting" stuff.

We were contacted by the social worker assigned to us for our home study. We will have three visits over a six week period so we should be done at the end of February or 1st week of March.

We are getting fingerprinted tomorrow for the background checks and I was relieved to hear that the E.P. police do it in their lobby although for some reason it still makes me feel a little like a criminal!

We also need to have a health form filled out by a doctor on each of us. The good news is that since Jacob recently had his 3 yr check up they will just fill out the form for us without him having to go in again which means not having to pay another co-pay - you have to like that! Too bad we can't schedule a joint appointment for the two of us and only pay one co-pay. I guess I am really frugal!

Besides that just need to gather up some certified birth certificates and a wedding certificate. So far it really hasn't been too bad which make me a bit worried that the worst of the paperwork is to come - hopefully not though.

God Provides!

As our first large payment came due we received a call from someone (who wishes to remain anonymous) who had some money to donate and after praying felt led to donate to our adoption fund (and they didn't even know it was tax deductible for them at the time). The amount they had to donate covered all but $23 of our first payment! I love that God often provides in unexpected ways!

Now to wait and see what he has in store for a vehicle that holds three car seats!!

A quick update

Wow, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas really flew by this year! Since I sent out blog address to everyone on our Christmas cards I figured I should at least put a quick update out here while we recover from the great holiday festivities.

We received an invoice for our first substantial payment that is due before we can start our home study - I guess that means that our application was accepted :-)

It is exciting to think that by Christmas next year we may have more little monkeys running around here. Jacob is thrilled and very ready for some "brothers and sisters".

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

It's Official!

After years of praying, months of research and days of paperwork we mailed off our formal adoption application today! We are so excited to finally get this process underway.

For those of you we have not talked to or those we haven't talked to in a while here is the scoop - we are pursuing an adoption of up to two children (younger than Jacob) from Liberia. Yep, sounds a little crazy I know but you just have to follow God's calling and trust him to provide. We are going to have a front row seat to see some God size things happening in our family this next year.

Well I have so much more to share but it's time to go to bed and I really wanted to get this first post done. Hey, my first blog post - cool!