Sharing the Joy

So we've starting telling more people, including our co-workers.  David sent a very nice email to his co-workers.  I on the other hand... made a cake.  An Africa cake.

I have wanted to make this cake since we decided to adopt from Ethiopia - which has been quite awhile.  I've dreamed of making this cake, and having my family over for dinner. Then I would share our great adoption news by unveiling my amazing cake, and it would be great.

But David had very little faith in my baking/cake carving abilities, and he talked me out of it, time and time again.  But now my time has come.  I am sharing the news with my co-workers, and I get to decide how to do it.   And obviously... I chose this cake. This amazing Africa cake.

Even as the cake was baking, I asked David if he thought I would be able to pull it off.  No was his reply.  Emotionless, and lackluster.  Just plain NO.  Oh ye of little faith.  But I was determined, and began carving away with a photo of Africa next to it.

As sure as he was that my cake would turn out weird and mis-shapen, he was DEFINITELY excited about the left over pieces he would be tackling later.

And then there it was.  Beautiful Africa.

With a heart on Ethiopia :)  Or at least where Ethiopia would be on my slightly "not drawn to scale" Africa.

I paired it with this lovely mock up of the American Express commercial we all know and love....

I'm so excited to bring it to school and see what they think about both my FANTASTIC cake AND our amazing news :)

Sharing our news has been SUCH a fun process.  Its so great to be able to share our excitement with all the important people in our lives.  We are so lucky to have so many amazing, and supportive people in our lives.  Thanks to everyone for being so amazing, and for sharing in our journey with us!

The Paper Chase...

We received our Adoption planner, Home Study binder, and Dossier in the mail last week! Tomorrow we have our Dossier run through phone call. That should give us a little more information on how to begin working on the 2 huge binders we received. We've started a couple things that we know take awhile. One of those things is our FBI background check. That can take some time, so we are sending that in as soon as we can.

Today we shared our great news with some of our family members at my Grandma and Grandpa Sluiter's house. A couple of my aunts, uncles, and cousins were there in addition to my grandparents. It was an amazing experience because after telling them the news, they surrounded us and prayed for us and the newest Stefanich we haven't even met yet!

As we begin to share our news with family and friends, it is wonderful to hear the love and support they have to offer us. I can't wait to introduce our child to the incredible people we have in our lives already. Thanks to everyone for your prayers, love and support as we continue on this amazing adoption journey!

Moving Forward...

I just got off the phone with our agency, and once again we are moving forward! Now that all our contracts have been signed and notarized, we are "officially" starting our journey with the agency. This week we will be getting our dossier, adoption planner, and home study binder in the mail. Next week Monday (the 19th) we have a phone call scheduled to go over our dossier. We also expect to be hearing from our social worker this week to get our home study process started. Once we get the paper work, we can start the LONG process of filling it all out! Our first step will be our FBI background check. We have been told that can take a long time, so it will be the first thing we do. Can't wait to keep moving forward!

Orientation

So its spring break, and David and I are in Florida. We had our orientation call with Tiffany today. It was scheduled for 12:00 so we hung out at the beach for an hour, and then sat in the condo and waited for her call.

She called at noon on the dot, and we went through all our contract information, and other important paperwork. Once again, the second we got of the phone, we decided to get the paperwork signed and sent in. Really, the signing was easy, but most of the paperwork needed to be notarized. To be exact, 13 signature pages needed to be notarized.

We called FedEx, which had a notary. They would only charge us a small fee of $10.50 per signature. $136.50! Unreal. So I did some google research and found out banks do it, often for free if its your bank. So we drove 30 minutes to the nearest 5th 3rd bank and got our 13 signatures notarized. For free. She never asked if we banked there. So we basically could have gone to any bank. Oh well. We had 30 minutes each way to talk about how exciting the process is :)

Then... of course... we overnighted the documents once again. They'll get it tomorrow. Can't WAIT to hear back from AGCI and move forward once again!

Our next step is the HUGE paper chase that is our Home Study and Dossier. We have been told that is approximately a 4 month process.

Each step we take brings us closer to our little one, and that makes the process so much more exciting! We learned today that at our first trip to Ethiopia (for the court date) we can possibly meet our child's biological mother or care giver. It depends on whether or not they show up to the court date - which we hope they do, because if not, then the process is delayed. I think it would be so wonderful to see who our child comes from, and to learn about their background, family history, health, or anything else we can learn from them! (That is IF we could even talk with them - I have no idea how that process would go, or if somebody could translate for us, or anything. ) But even just seeing them will be wonderful for us!

Stay tuned! We hope to hear back from AGCI soon!

Our Application

We spent FOREVER on our application, making sure everything was just perfect, and making sure we weren't missing any important information. The second we were done filling it out, we decided we needed to send it out immediately. We still needed to get a photograph of ourselves and our house for the application. We had 15 minutes to get to walgreens, AND to Kinkos before it closed to make a copy of everything (thats the anal side of me) and FedEx it. We could have waited until the morning, but we were WAY too excited!

We flew to Walgreens. The picture of the two of us got chopped a little weird, and the top of Dave's hair was cut off. That didn't stop us :) We made it to Kinkos, copied our pages, and sent it on its way. (Overnighted, of course.)

I'm confident the girl at Kinkos thought I was ridiculous when I asked her to take our picture with our mail, but I didn't care. We probably looked like two kids at Christmas. We were SO happy and excited :)

And then, the very day we knew AGCI would be getting our application, they called! Hooray! Our application had been accepted. Dave and I celebrated with a little bubbly in our wedding champagne glasses. Can't wait for the rest of the process to unfold!

We're Adopting!

David and I have started the adoption process through an amazing agency called All Gods Children International. We are SO excited to start this journey! Our adoption application has been accepted, and we will be going through our orientation on Monday, the 6th! Check out our agency's website at http://www.allgodschildren.org/

Why Adoption and Why Now?
Since before David and I got married, we always discussed that adoption would be a part of our family plan. We both agreed that at some point we wanted to adopt. Then one night I had a dream that I brought home a baby from Haiti after the Earthquakes. I mentioned my dream to David, and somehow God used this to get us both thinking about adoption. We both felt really strongly that we needed to adopt before trying to have a biological child. The more we talked about it, the more we realized our child may already be waiting for us. Why would we leave our child in an orphanage until later, when we were ready for them now? So that is what we are doing! Adopting first may not be the most conventional way to start a family for a couple who hasn't even attempted to get pregnant, but we both feel so strongly that this is God's plan for us and our family.

Why Ethiopia?
David and I made the decision to adopt internationally. When we first looked at adopting, we realized there are so many families trying to adopt domestically. These waiting parents are so important to the children in our country, but we felt drawn to children outside of the United States. Many countries do not have the large amount of families that want to adopt like we do in the United States. We decided to adopt from Ethiopia for a number of reasons. One reason was that met Ethiopia's adoption requirements. Some other countries required adoptive parents to be older, or married longer than we have. Another reason was that we watched a video of AGCI's orphanage in Ethiopia. You can watch the video of the orphanage, Hannah's Hope, on AGCI's website. This video was a really big deal for us. The first time I watched it, I was crying. I showed it to Dave, and at that point we pretty much knew we wanted to adopt from Ethiopia. We feel so great about the orphanage, and it gives us such a comforting feeling to know where our child will be cared for until we can come and get them. That pretty much sealed the deal for us in deciding upon Ethiopia.

The whole process will probably take anywhere from 12 to 18 months, and we will have to travel to Ethiopia twice before we can take our child home. Its a long process, but we hope to keep you as updated as we can on this blog! Come back and visit often! I'll update as often as we have more information :)

Coming Soon...

Check back soon to find out what we are up to!