Timing

Yesterday someone was in my office while I was tying the ribbon on our adoption profile to be sent to Lifetime for approval. She looked through it and said she had no idea there was so much to adoption. She said she thought you just tell them you want a baby and you get on a list and you get one when its your turn. If only it were that simple. These past few months have been VERY stressful. I remeber talking with someone at Lifetime the first part of December and asking them if we would be ready to be shown to birthmothers within a month. She said it will just depend us. She said it takes couples anywhere from a month to 6 months. I thought no problem, we'll be ready by January 1. Ha! Ha! Ha! We had our first meeting for the home study on December 13th or 14th (I can't remember the exact day). She met with us for 4 hours and we only scratched the surface that night. She then faxed us 20 pages to be filled out by each of us. We filled it all out and faxed it back to her. Because of the holidays and family health issues, she wasn't able to meet with us again to complete the home study until January 30. That afternoon she gave us the information needed to get our background checks done. We already had our physicals set up for the next morning, so we thought we would go ahead and get the background checks done. Little did we know it would turn out to be an all day event. We had to go to our police station for one background check. We were told to go to the DMV to do our fingerprints. Once we got there and waited a pretty good while, only to find out they don't do it, and we were directed to another place. When we got there, we find out that is where we will bring our fingerprints, but they don't do them there. So we had to go to the police station in that town to be fingerprinted. Once we did that we had to get money orders to pay the fees. By this time we stopped for lunch and I called Angie (the lady who did the home study) to find out the address she needed this background check sent to. She just happened to be bringing her son to the library accross the street from where we were. Amen for God's perfect timing. We were able to meet her and sign a release form for 3 of the background checks she was going to have done for us. There are 5 different background checks that are done. All are complete except for the Federal background check. That one takes around 6 weeks, so we should get it back any day.
The profile had to be created. I am not the best with computers, so I had no idea where to start. After a lot of searching we finally found a scrapbooking software to use. It took a little while to get the hang of it, but it wasn't too bad, just very time consuming. One of the hardest things was getting pictures. To say Eric hates taking pictures is a huge understatement. I think he would rather take a beating. My friend Susan took pictures for us in mid December, back when I thought we would be able to get this done quickly. I think it was one of the coldest days we had this year. We nearly froze, and you could see it written all over Eric's face in over half the pictures. He looked like his teeth were chattering. If he had been in a deer stand, you wouldn't have heard one complaint from him. With his schedule, and knowing the fight I would have on my hands each time I suggested we take pictures, it took a while for us to get all the pictures we needed.
Another thing we've had to deal with is refinancing our house to get the money to pay for the adoption. We applied on November 22 to refinance our first mortgage to lower the payment, and then we would do a home equity loan. When we applied, the loan officer told us we should close in around 30 days. Well great, that would keep us on my "schedule" of January 1. We had one thing after another come up to delay the process, and it was February 14th when we finally closed on the first mortgage. We met with another loan officer that day to get started on the home equity, and in my mind I was thinking maybe a week or so. WRONG....it was a month. OK, now for the good part. Monday, while I was preparing the profile to be sent in for approval, I get the call from the bank saying our home equity is ready to be closed. All this time of trying to get everything done, and isn't it amazing how it all comes together at the same time. Again I say amen to God's timing. We will close on the home equity tomorrow. They will hopefully get the profile tomorrow, and I hope to hear from them whether I need to make changes or not. Next week we should be ready to be presented to birthmothers. I am so excited and scared to death all at the same time.