Photos of Luke on Facebook..

I just posted some photos of Luke on facebook..no real new ones but some from our Welcome Home party..if you are there, find me!

Babies are busy!

Hi friends! I only have a few minutes..but I wanted to let you all know that we are all home safely and settling in to our new life. Things are really wonderful, it feels so great to have our family complete! Luke is a precious little man..has been having some tummy issues which I suspect are r/t formula (calling MD tomorrow) but other than that he is just a handsome, sweet little boy. He smiles all the time, and when he hears Mama's, Daddy's or Hannah's voice (or Mommom's!) he smiles and looks up at us. We had his first Md appt with our pediatrician and he was weighing a whopping 8 1/2 lbs, up from 7lbs 13oz, at 10 days old..what a great little eater he is, even with the tummy stuff :)
Our first social worker visit is this week..starting or 6 month post-placement reports before the adoption can be made final. We aren't worried..she is the one who encouraged us to go domestic and did our last PPR for Hannah.
We are tired, but life is wonderful! My computer is in the shop (which is the one with the memory card reader) so I can't post photos yet...STILL have not had a free moment to make the blog private..maybe one day I will get a minute!
Thank you so much for your encouragement and prayers and I promise as soon as we get in a routine and I get my computer back I will take some time to post more of our story and some photos..it surely had been the most amazing journey and God has been right with us every step of the way!

email me!

Ok, so things have gone so fast I haven't even had a chance to go through my emails, gather the list and make the blog private!!!! Soo..if you woudl like to be invited to my photo album on snapfish and find about more about our journey, email me!! We have at least a week in the hotel before we get to bring our little guy home, so I should have some time to catch everyone up!!! GOD IS SOOOO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :0)
ANd you are right..lightening fast..and this was the 7th situation we were offered, it was just the "right" one and we knew it.
Debi, you were right..I will tell ya more why later, but just thought you would like to hear that :0) Heading to the hosptial now!!!!!!! Love you guys!
Amysue1112@yahoo.com

Baby Luke

I will catch you all up when everything is finalized!!!!!!

What a differnce this time around...

It is sort of crazy really, how different domestic adoption is from Russian adoption. There are parts that are harder, like making the family profile book. I spent hours and hours and days selecting just the right photos and painfully going over every word I wrote, making sure it would sound good from all perspectives. It ended up being 22 pages, with photos and text. I am thrilled really, it turned out much better than I expected it would. It is very strange though, writing a letter to the birthmother, asking them to consider you to raise their child. Not a bad or good strange, just plain strange. Our facilitating agency AAG went through every word of it with 3 readers and suggested a few changes, but generally they were really happy with it. So $250 later, we have 8 family profile books. We looked into making copies and getting them bound, but GEEZ are color copies expensive!! But that big job is crossed off our list. We also have our home study completed (which includes a lot but only about 1/2 of Russian adoption paperwork).

In DA (domestic adoption) they use the term "situation" in referring to a "situation"...that is clearer now huh?!! What is just amazing is that we have actually had FIVE "situations" offered to us for consideration. We have declined all of them, for various reasons (drug use by BM, extremely high adoption costs etc), but we just can't believe things are happening so fast! These are all situations that are coming through our facilitator...as of this week, we hadn't even signed with an agency yet!!!
As of Friday, we did sign with an attorney in Oklamhoma, Bado and Bado. They are absolutely wonderful, strong Christians, and are adoptive parents themselves of 4. I feel great that we chose them (they were one of the suggestions from our facilitator). They have a few possible situations that they have not been matched yet, so we will see!! I can't believe that one of these days we are going to meet our little boy!!!!!!!
Tomorrow we are going to a picnic with a friend, and afterwards, we are going to go register at Babies R Us!! I wasn't sure if I needed to do that, but she encouraged me to do it, so that's what we are going to do!! I am soo excited..it will be so much fun!!!!!! :)

The cast is OFF!

YAY! Hannah got her cast off today! It is almost impossible to see where the fracture was..we are thrilled!!!!
We had our Back to School dinner at Hannah's new school and it was so much fun. Hannah knows so many of the kids since her cousins go there, so she had a ball.
I ran into an old friend who just adopted a precious baby boy through domestic adoption just a couple of months ago. NOW I am getting really excited :0)

Still chugging along...

Ok, so I still have not gotten around to making the blog private, but I will soon, so if you have not already emailed me and wish to be on the invited, email me
Amysue1112@yahoo.com

No major news to report..just reviewed our home study report and the social worker will be making some changes and send it on to our facilitator. We had our 2nd meeting with them and it went great! I have been working very hard on our Family Profile on Snapfish..boy is that tedious!! For those of you who have not adopted, it is basically a book which includes a letter to the birthmother and then a profile of each one of us, our home, our friends and family, our life our community etc with lots of photos. It has been fun, but pretty challenging too. It is hard to sit down and write the story of your life, especially when you know prospective birthmothers will be reading it and choosing parents for their child. Pretty intense..!
Anyway, I sent the text to our facilitator to review-they have 3 readers including one birthmother. I am thrilled they only suggested a handful of gramatical error changes, and it is all good! So today I spent the day putting in all together with the photos too. I sent it to the facilitator for one last look over before I order it..YAY! We have talked to some agencies too. AAG suggests agencies and then once we sign with them, AAG basically deals with them along with us. One is an Adoption Advertising agency in VA-they do the matching, then their attorney does the final paperwork. There fees are very reasonable, including no upfront costs, so we filled out an application with them. Also, we will likely sign with an attorney in Oklahoma. It is very hrad to explain, but we may also get a "situation" as they call them in Domestic adoption, through AAG. So we will see!!! Our boy is out there somewhere :-)
We are back to the orthopedic tomorrow-hopefully Hannah will be getting her cast off!!!