We finally talked to the agency we want to use today! They sent us an email with lots of details last week and after we went through it all we had a chance to call them back today to get some more questions answered. Things we learned: we definitely want to adopt our son from Poland, and without grants it will be very expensive (but still totally worth it). Luckily we were told today that there are so many programs to help with the costs of adopting children, one person using this agency even funded her entire adoption with grants. There are also a lot of people out there who are able to make money by making things or offering services or something (yall feel free to give us ideas!). That makes it a lot more manageble to us.
We also learned that we will go to Poland twice(probably), once for about a week, and the second time for about 4-6 weeks. The first trip will be to meet our child, but the second time we get to have our son with us pretty much the whole time! We are so excited, but have a little ways to go before we are able to officially be approved to adopt from Poland. We have to get a homestudy done, compile all kinds of documents for the government, and be approved by the US and Poland before this is all done, so it will be a lot of organizing and getting "official" things done. I see why these things tend to take about a year and a half.
We got a lot of other good news the past couple of days, also. Two of our friends had their babies yesterday, both beautiful little girls. My sister is also pregnant and she found out the sex of the baby today (sorry, can't say yet since they wanted to make sure all family members know first before announcing it). I am excited though! We tried to figure out the timing and our kids will end up being about the same age, I think, which is really cool. I am so excited to be able to bring our child into a loving family who will adore him and be able to help him do whatever it is he wants to do in his life.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Crazy Day
Today we got up with a plan. We were both home today so we decided to get some things done, including our taxes and getting the ball rolling with the adoption agency. The day did not stick to our plan.
The morning started off pretty well, Chris went to play basketball early this morning and he brought home breakfast for both of us, which was really nice. Once we decided we needed to start on our day's plan we cleared off the kitchen table, put the dogs out back, and lit some candles in an attempt to keep ourselves relaxed as we started on (dun dun dun...) our taxes. Let's just say I really hate filing our taxes. We have done them ourselves since 2006, but it never really gets any better, does it?
Four hours(!) later we were pretty much done so we headed upstairs to print and file our copy of the tax return when all of a sudden we hear our smoke detector going off from the kitchen. I got downstairs to find one of our candles on fire (as in the whole candle was on fire) and starting to burn our kitchen cabinets. Chris took it outside (using oven mitts) and I threw water on it, but that made the fire explode about five feet in the air! It was crazy, I was almost sure it was going to burn my eyebrows off or something, but once it was all over we couldn't stop laughing. It was just so rediculous! So, if anyone has candles from Bath and Body Works, just use them for decoration or something, don't light them.
Once our taxes and candle fiasco was finally done it was about 5pm so our plan to talk with St. Mary's was clearly not going to happen. We were able to send the agency our information to ask them to contact us, so we hope to hear from them next week. I am excited though, I have heard nothing but good things about them.
Well you would think that was the end of our day, ending on a happy note by making first contact with our potential adoption agency, but we decided to go out to dinner to "celebrate" the end of today. Well, after a 45 minute wait I was told my ID was not acceptable because it expired in November- November, people! Then Chris tasted my fish and confirmed he is, in fact, allergic to fish. Luckily it was nothing to major, mostly a scratchy mouth and throught and upset stomach. It could be worse. Annnnd last, but not least, I rammed a curb in my car, which was just the icing on top. (No real damage, luckily, just a scratched rim) So this day is definitely over for us. On the bright side it was like one big adventure all packed into our day. :) We like adventure sometimes, it keeps things interesting, and makes for funny stories.
As you can see, we are clearly no strangers to crazy-ness. I believe this will bode well for us when we have to deal with the insanity that can be international adoption. And we can definitely keep ourselves laughing through it all. Oh, and blogging about it, of course.
The morning started off pretty well, Chris went to play basketball early this morning and he brought home breakfast for both of us, which was really nice. Once we decided we needed to start on our day's plan we cleared off the kitchen table, put the dogs out back, and lit some candles in an attempt to keep ourselves relaxed as we started on (dun dun dun...) our taxes. Let's just say I really hate filing our taxes. We have done them ourselves since 2006, but it never really gets any better, does it?
Four hours(!) later we were pretty much done so we headed upstairs to print and file our copy of the tax return when all of a sudden we hear our smoke detector going off from the kitchen. I got downstairs to find one of our candles on fire (as in the whole candle was on fire) and starting to burn our kitchen cabinets. Chris took it outside (using oven mitts) and I threw water on it, but that made the fire explode about five feet in the air! It was crazy, I was almost sure it was going to burn my eyebrows off or something, but once it was all over we couldn't stop laughing. It was just so rediculous! So, if anyone has candles from Bath and Body Works, just use them for decoration or something, don't light them.
Once our taxes and candle fiasco was finally done it was about 5pm so our plan to talk with St. Mary's was clearly not going to happen. We were able to send the agency our information to ask them to contact us, so we hope to hear from them next week. I am excited though, I have heard nothing but good things about them.
Well you would think that was the end of our day, ending on a happy note by making first contact with our potential adoption agency, but we decided to go out to dinner to "celebrate" the end of today. Well, after a 45 minute wait I was told my ID was not acceptable because it expired in November- November, people! Then Chris tasted my fish and confirmed he is, in fact, allergic to fish. Luckily it was nothing to major, mostly a scratchy mouth and throught and upset stomach. It could be worse. Annnnd last, but not least, I rammed a curb in my car, which was just the icing on top. (No real damage, luckily, just a scratched rim) So this day is definitely over for us. On the bright side it was like one big adventure all packed into our day. :) We like adventure sometimes, it keeps things interesting, and makes for funny stories.
As you can see, we are clearly no strangers to crazy-ness. I believe this will bode well for us when we have to deal with the insanity that can be international adoption. And we can definitely keep ourselves laughing through it all. Oh, and blogging about it, of course.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
First Post
Welcome to our blog. This is the beginning of our journey to parenthood- we have decided to adopt! First things first, though, who are we? We are, according to my husband, "an average american couple, madly in love" (he's so funny). Really, though, we are Chris and Sarah Adams, we live in the Austin, TX area, we have three adorable dogs, and we have been married for almost three years. I work in financial services, and we have just started our own business working with forclosed properties. We have owned our home for a little over a year and "are ready to start using one of our extra three bedrooms" (from the hubbs). Both of us have always known that at the very least if we couldn't concieve children that we would definitely adopt. Over the last few years of our relationship, however, we have come to decide we just really want to adopt.
There are so many children all over the world that are orphaned and we would love to provide at least one of those children with a home and loving family. After looking at all kinds of websites and other peoples' blogs we decided to adopt our child from Poland. Both of us have European and Native American heritage, but out of all those countries Poland seems like the best option. Why Poland? It just feels right. Plus, we think that what would work best with our little family of five is a young child under 2 or 3 years old. We could adopt a child with minor health issues, but nothing huge, and adopting from Poland is one of the more affordable countries we could adopt from (though we are a loooong way away from that $20-something-thousand goal).
Since we have decided on a country, our next step is to find an agency. We thought about trying to adopt without an agency, but after a ton of research (I am the queen of researching things to death) it looks like we need to just find those extra thousands of dollars to make sure things are smooth and done right. There is also only one agency in Poland that will adopt children to Americans without an American agency, and that means we have 1/3 the opportunity to find our child. So far we are narrowing down our agency search to just a couple of agencies that we want to research a little more before making our decision and taking the plunge (and I have made a spread sheet to organize our finds- see how organized we are). So far our front runner is St. Mary's, but we haven't contacted them or anything yet.
As we have never done this before, we are always looking for any information and advice from anyone with experience in adopting, especially from Poland. This is just the beginning of a long journey, but we are both so excited, and can't wait to see what happens!
There are so many children all over the world that are orphaned and we would love to provide at least one of those children with a home and loving family. After looking at all kinds of websites and other peoples' blogs we decided to adopt our child from Poland. Both of us have European and Native American heritage, but out of all those countries Poland seems like the best option. Why Poland? It just feels right. Plus, we think that what would work best with our little family of five is a young child under 2 or 3 years old. We could adopt a child with minor health issues, but nothing huge, and adopting from Poland is one of the more affordable countries we could adopt from (though we are a loooong way away from that $20-something-thousand goal).
Since we have decided on a country, our next step is to find an agency. We thought about trying to adopt without an agency, but after a ton of research (I am the queen of researching things to death) it looks like we need to just find those extra thousands of dollars to make sure things are smooth and done right. There is also only one agency in Poland that will adopt children to Americans without an American agency, and that means we have 1/3 the opportunity to find our child. So far we are narrowing down our agency search to just a couple of agencies that we want to research a little more before making our decision and taking the plunge (and I have made a spread sheet to organize our finds- see how organized we are). So far our front runner is St. Mary's, but we haven't contacted them or anything yet.
As we have never done this before, we are always looking for any information and advice from anyone with experience in adopting, especially from Poland. This is just the beginning of a long journey, but we are both so excited, and can't wait to see what happens!
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