What Background Check?

So I've been thinking my next post would be the one where I say something exciting about our background checks coming back approved and being so excited about it. Guess that one's gonna have to wait. I checked in with our caseworker a couple of weeks ago to see if he'd heard anything since we'd been waiting about 6 or so weeks. He let me know he hadn't and Utah is currently taking up to 8 to 12 weeks to do theirs. So I get an email from a lady in the LDSFS office saying if I haven't heard from them in the next week, to email her again and she'll check on them for us. So I get a call from her the next week before I've had a chance to call her. You'd think that'd be a good thing. I knew in my gut it wasn't. Apparently, whoever they send the background checks to (I'm assuming the state...) never got our paperwork. Hmmmm... So she says it could still possibly be on someone's desk in a pile, but to be safe, she wants us to redo our paperwork. I totally agree. So on Tuesday, we get to go back down to the courthouse, wait awhile, get our fingerprints done again, and mail our information back to them, which they will put a note on it that says "expedite." I wonder how well that'll work.

Now, you'd think I'd be freaking out, mad at the world. I'm not. I'm totally calm. How odd for me. Our personal information is floating around somewhere and I don't even care. I think our caseworker and Paulette at LDSFS have done a fantastic job. They didn't lose the paperwork, so they don't get the blame. I actually blame myself and Dan. :) We were too dang fast getting all our other paperwork in and it's just moving too fast. I know from the very depths of my heart that every single thing that has happened with this adoption has happened for a reason. This included. If every single thing went through as quickly as it has, we wouldn't get the right baby. So I figure, this is Heavenly Father's way of getting the right baby to us. It'll all work out how it's supposed to. In the meantime, I'm enjoying life, hanging out with Dan (who at this moment is entertaining me with some awesome dance moves to Beyonce's "Single Ladies"), and just being patient (for once) and letting everything fall into place. It's taken me a long, long time to learn patience, but I think I may just be starting to learn it. It's a good feeling.

Home Study

Today we had our home study! I've been so anxious and excited for this day because this is our last formal meeting, which means we're almost approved! It went so well. It was so much easier than I could've ever imagined. I was so worried - wondering if our smoke detectors were in the right places, wondering if I had to baby-proof anything yet, etc. Our caseworker was so great. He stuck his head in the rooms and that was it. He just made sure we had smoke detectors (which were just fine) and a fire extinguisher. The rest of the time was spent watching a great video he brought. ABC had done a special a while ago that followed birthmothers along their path of placing their babies for adoption. It was so neat to watch. I have gained such a huge respect and love for these special girls that are in these situations. I can't even imagine what they have to go through. I now know that they are such an important part in Heavenly Father's plan to help families grow and I am so grateful for them and their selfless choice to do what they feel is best for their child. I can't wait to meet our birthmother - I already feel such an amazing love for her and her family. I've learned (especially from this video) that this isn't just hard for the birthmothers, but also their families. I feel like I've been so self-involved that I hadn't even started thinking about how hard this is for all those involved. This has been such an amazing growing experience for me - I can't believe how much I've learned in such a short time and how much I continue to learn about Heavenly Father's plan.

So our next step is to get our profile together while we wait for our background checks to come back. We still need to write our birthparent letter and figure our which pictures we're going to use. :) So exciting!!

Pictures

Today we had our friend Brenley take some pictures of us for our adoption profile. We went down to the U of O campus and found some really great spots to take pictures. She did such an amazing job! She was so fun to work with and had great ideas. She has only edited a few so far and I LOVE the ones I've seen. I'll post a few of my very favorites.

This last one is my very favorite! Thank you so much again Brenley!!!

First Purchase

My sister, Jodi, and her kids have been visiting us since last Friday. So Jodi and I thought it would be fun to go on my first baby shopping trip! It was so much fun, but also so surreal. I've been buying baby stuff for the last almost 12 years, ever since Jodi had her first baby. But it's always been things I've given away as presents. I've never bought anything like this for myself. It was so weird to think I got to take it all home and keep it! I'll admit, it was very overwhelming at first. :) I knew there was so much to get, but I felt like I was walking in circles, not really being able to take everything in. :) It's a good thing I had Jodi (who is very wise :) and helpful) there to help me! Once I picked out the first thing, which was a monitor, it was a cakewalk. Here's a picture of all the fun things I got! Thanks again, Jodi!! I had SO much fun!!

Second Meeting

This afternoon, Dan and I had our second meeting with our caseworker. It went really well again! He's so easy to talk to and I'm so excited we're working with him. We had our one-on-one interviews with him, which weren't really interviews, just advice to us. We went over the profiles we get to put together soon and talked about the letter we write to the birthparents. It was so fun to talk about the profiles because I am SO excited to put that together - to get our pictures taken and put together and hopefully help our birthmother get to know us. :) He showed us some videos from birthmothers on the LDSFS website, which I LOVED watching. I actually came home and watched the rest of them. I feel such an overwhelming love for these women that make this selfless decision! I love the first video by Sierra. If you want to see any of the videos, you can click here. We have our home study in two weeks from today - I'm so excited for it! Each step gets us closer!

Family Temple Session

Dan and I had an amazing experience today. We planned a time for our families to go to the temple and do an endowment session with soon-to-be-our birth parents in mind. It was a suggestion from LDSFS and I LOVED the idea. So most of my family was able to meet in either the Portland, Oregon or Jordan River, Utah temples at 1:00 PST. Dan's mom went this morning because she didn't get the message in time - good thing because the St. Louis temple didn't even have a session at the right time!

I've been feeling the adversary lately trying so hard to work against us! Yesterday, Dan's work offered him two tickets to two of March Madness' NCAA basketball games for today (I'm not sure exactly what it's called...), which is great, except the first game started right when we'd be in our temple session. But Dan didn't fall for that one! Well, actually he went to the temple and then went late to the games. :) Than, we had a rough morning getting ready to leave for the temple. Lost keys, had to get gas, contention, etc. I felt so frustrated because I've been so excited about this temple trip, and it so easily could have been ruined.

We actually ended up being early to the temple and it was great! I've never felt the spirit so strongly as I did today. I thought about our adoption and our sweet birth parents the entire time and I feel so good and excited about it. Every time I thought about my family sacrificing their time, sitting in the temple in Utah for us, for our birth parents, for our future baby, I felt my heart swell until it felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. I was so emotional - it was absolutely amazing! I know I keep saying this, but I still cannot get over how supportive and involved our families are! We are so blessed!

First Meeting

Last Friday, Dan and I had our doctors appointments to make sure we're healthy and have a long life expentancy. We had to choose a new doctor and the one we happened to end up with actually adopted last year. He was great and talked to us for almost an hour - about what the agency would be looking for and asking us about our process and giving us advice. We had to get blood work done on Monday and he personally called me to let me know everything came out okay and he would be sending our documents to LDSFS.

Today, we had our first meeting with our caseworker. He is AWESOME! We both really, really like him. Our meeting was an hour and a half, which was mostly just talking about us (maybe that's why I liked it so much...). He talked about the questions we answered online about each other, our families, growing up, things like that. He answered any questions we could think of. I'm really excited to work with him - I think he's going to be great. We set up our next meeting on April 8. That meeting will be one-on-one. We'll each meet with him seperately and go over more of our answers we filled out online. Then our home study is on April 22 and if that goes well, we'll be approved!!! Once we're approved, we'll be able to get our profile up online! I can't believe how fast everything is happening! We need to get our fingerprints done on Friday for our background check and we need to finish up a few things online, but we're a little bit ahead of schedule, which I'm excited about.

I'm still loving every single step of this process. It was so fun to hear some of the things Dan wrote about and I always love talking about our process so that was fun to do with our caseworker. I get so emotional when I talk about how I knew it was the right thing for us and it was no different today. I could feel the spirit so strongly in our meeting and I have felt it so many times recently that I know of a surety that this is for us. I'm so thankful we get to start our family this way. I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father has chosen us to be a part of this and I can feel His hand in every single thing we've done in this process.

Once again, thank you so much for all of your love, support, and prayers in our behalf! We couldn't have asked for a better family or better friends to be going through this with!