WE ARE LIVE!!!

So excited to let everyone know that we are finally LIVE with our agency’s adoption website…. which means we are available for birthmother’s to choose from!!  I was so excited to see our online profile today!!  Even with a 102 degree fever and a terrible case of Strep, it was quite emotional just to see our picture there!   You can view our online profile by visiting the link below…

http://www.iheartadoption.org/users/robandlesliehorton

I will update more when I am feeling a little better, but couldn’t wait to share this news!!!

Getting closer…

We are still waiting, but think we are getting really close to being available for birth parents to choose from!  Our social worker sent the rough draft of our home study about three weeks ago.  So weird to read an 11 page report about your life and how this person who you have spent a few hours with at most is reporting on your ability to parent a child.  The good news is that she thinks we will be great parents!   The report is now in the hands of our agency’s branch manager waiting for her final approval.    We were also given approval to order our “Dear Birth Mother” letters from the printer.  They arrived on Tuesday and we had to sign 100 of them and get them shipped off to California.  Once the letters arrive in CA and we get the final approval from the branch manager, we “Go on the Books”, and will be available for birth parents to view our information, see pictures of us, and request a copy of our letter.     We are hopeful that this might happen before Thanksgiving!  Please keep us in your payers as we move forward with this exciting journey!

I also wanted to share that there is a new show on The Logo TV called “The Baby Wait”.   Each show follows a couple through their adoption journey.  The first couple worked with the same agency that we are working with.  It is a great show that so far has really done a great job at capturing the process and real emotions and relationships.  I am going to try and include a link for the show.  If you have the time,I think you would enjoy it!   If you end up watching it, let me know what you think!  KLEENEX will be necessary!  🙂

The Baby Wait, Episode 2

Waiting….

Our second Home Study visit went well.  The social worker asked for a quick tour of the house.  She wanted to see that we had a bedroom that would be used for the nursery and that we had the necessary smoke detectors, etc.   She wanted to see the backyard so we stepped out on the screened in porch where our cat Rainey resides.  (For those of you who know Rainey, you are most likely thinking the same thing I was… “Please God, do not let Rainey be in one of her moods and ruin this entire thing for us”.  She must have taken my threats seriously because she didn’t even hiss at us.  The social worker even commented on how sweet she was. 🙂  The social worker told us that she would be in touch soon and would send us the report of her visit by the end of October.

We rewarded ourselves with our first official baby purchase.  We found a great deal on a pack and play on Amazon in a nice neutral green and brown.  Since we have no gender preference, the shopping is a little harder (which may be a good thing).  It was still a huge deal and we were super excited!

This home study report is all that stands in between us and being available for birth parents to choose from. They say the hardest part of adoption is the wait… Especially when  EVERYTHING is out of your control.   I AGREE!   We waited to be sure this was the right decision for us, waited for the class with our agency, waited on the backgrounds, and marriage license copy to be sent to us, waited for our Adoption Coordinator to assign our home study, waited for the social worker to contact us, waited for the social worker to schedule both of the required visits, and now we are waiting for her to write the required report so that we can wait on our agency to approve it, so that we can wait to “be on the books”… That will be when the REAL wait begins!

Please keep us in your prayers as I am sure the waiting game only gets harder from here.