Love.

Ok. I love this. Kinda teared up when I saw it! I am ordering this tomorrow for her nursery! I cannot wait for the beginning of her "sweet little story" and I cannot wait until her "page meets mine"! And our story already most DEFINITELY reads LOVE! We love you soooo much little one, where ever you may be right now!! :)

A baby actually comes at the end!!

I'm not sure if this is how pregnant people feel or not, but the whole adoption thing is very surreal! It seems so far away that I have a hard time really believing that when this is all said and done we will be getting a baby! I have been following a few people's adoption blogs and they are both in Ethiopia. One for their first trip to meet their baby and the other to pick their baby up. I just got soooo excited this morning thinking about that day for us! It still doesn't really seem real, but seeing others at then end of the journey with their babies was so encouraging and exciting!!! :)

Mom Jobs

I totally have a job that you could call a "mom job". I actually switched my major from Broadcast Journalism to Speech Pathology so I could have a job that lends itself to mommy"ing". Which was also good, b/c I think I was a pretty awful journalism major. Now that motherhood is starting to finally creep in, although very slowly and in an unexpected way, I am thankful for my career choice.

Since we moved to Sugar Land I have been experiencing quite the little commute. Yesterday I left for work at 7:45 and arrived at 9:20 due to 2 wrecks! I had no intention of leaving my current job until recently and an offer literally fell into my lap. So, I will be starting a new job in the good ol suburb of Sugar Land on February 6th. It is minutes from my house, and they are in the process of creating extra space so that the therapists can bring their children to work!!

I am still unclear about what my work life is going to look like when baby J gets here, but I am SO thankful for my job, the flexibility, and the opportunity to help little cutiepatooties learn how to communicate with this big scary world! :)

Not much else is going on around here....HA, yeah right! We are now in the process of getting our 8 hours of agency required training done, 2 hour online seminar, transracial exercises, and discussion questions done. I guess I was skimming when I read this part of our adoption manual b/c I could have sworn we didn't have to do this now. But apparently it must be done before we can submit our dosseir, thus keeping us off waiting lists until it is done. Oh, and one of our exercises is to "experience ethiopian cuisine and write about the experiece". So if anyone wants a unique evening out, feel free to join us. I actually found a place on Richmond in Houston that is supposed to be yummy!

We were also told that right now in Ethiopia, waits for a referral are approx. 6-7 months and that once you get your referral you are still looking at a 6-8 month wait until you can bring the baby home. So assuming we are finally on a waiting list in 2 months or so, we are still looking at some waiting. I am continually floored that it is so darn difficult to get these babies out of the orphanages. But, it is what it is. It will just make that day even better when we fianlly load up our precious cargo into the car at IAH and drive her to her forever home!!!

That's all for now. It is definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Not so much feeling like it, it is 75 and humid today. But growing up in Houston, I have stopped wishing for the cold. 75 degree Christmas feels like Christmas to me! :)

makin a list....checkin it twice!

I must say that we are SO KILLING the adoption to do list! If you read my previous post a few week ago you could see how much paperwork we had left to do. But now we have NO MORE PAPERWORK LEFT!!!! I cannot think of a better Christmas gift! We are still waiting on the final draft of our homestudy to be sent to us, but as for little annoying detailed stuff that we have to run all over town gathering...we are done, done, done! :) Yesterday Lance took a half day so that he could get his physical, "good conduct" letter from the sheriff's office, and we both go lots and lots of shots! We decided to go ahead and get all of our immunizations now since some of them take 6 months or so to complete the series. So once we get our home study back we will apply for immigration and then we will be SO close to being on a waiting list for our baby girl. Once we are on a waiting list it could be as soon as 2-3 months that we get a referral. It could be much longer as well, but we are hoping for sooner! :) Our agency doesn't have a waiting list right now, which is rare for Ethiopia at this time, so we are hoping that means little Jane will be here decked out in red and green by next Christmas. Another random thought, I was looking on pinterest and looking at all of the cute 1st birthday party ideas moms put up and it hit me that little Jane will be quickly approaching 1 when we get her. How fun to get a baby and then get to have a big party so soon! :)

new passport photos....check!

immunizations.....check!!

Doesn't that look lovely.....they brought them in and I said..."Oh look Lance, they are on pretty little trays, this won't be bad at all!" hehe

Happy Saturday! We are laying low today, and recovering from all the shots. I feel a tiny bit nauseous and they said to expect that. But really no biggie!

3 things!!

First thing: This last weekend we had so much fun at the Goforth's land! Ed and Donna (some great friends), have some land outside of Houston and they needed some of their cedar trees cut down AND were awesome and came up with the idea of having Lance and some awesome friends go out and cut down trees starting bright and early Saturday morning to raise some money for the adoption! They worked almost all day and I think had some fun with their chainsaws! They went out Friday night and Donna had them lots of yummy snacks and then made them a huge breakfast and lunch that day. Me, my mom and Betho went out later that afternoon and got everything ready for dinner, celebrated my Dad's b-day and even made s'mores by the fire! It was such an awesome day!! :)

Cuties in their beanies!

no words.

Look at that little nugget. Oh my!

Max loves his uncle Lance!

I love them!

Hanging out

Payton and Martha chillin in their chairs

All ready for bed!

Happy Birthday Dad! We love you!!

Cute Donna and my cute mom fixing up dinner!! Just love them!
Festive little spread!
Awesome tree

Lance and Jason after a hard days work!

All the worker bees on the porch taking a break

Second thing: Baby Girl Agan officially has a name!! We have had this named picked out for some time now, however I never officially announced it! We wanted her to feel connected to us in a special way and decided to give her our names. SO we combined our middle names, and we are naming her Jane Jordan Agan. So for those that are praying for this sweet baby, you can now pray for her by name! We are so hoping that little Jane Jordan is with us next Christmas! We love you so much little Jane!

Third thing: Here are a few pics of our new casa! We still have some work to do, but I think its starting to look like home! :)

Guest room.....come on over!! :)

Most important room of the house! Baby girl we CANNOT wait to be sneaking down the hall to peek at your cute little self in your crib! Can't wait to decorate and make this room cute for her!
Baby girl's/guest bathroom!
Master bath.....we plan on painting but I haven't gotten there yet.
Master bedroom. I plan on stenciling this wall. Probably a project for after Christmas!
Kitchen
Breakfast room
Family room
another view
Dining room....don't have a dining room table yet so we have our guest room furniture in there!
Living room
Study

The fog has lifted

I have been away from blogging for a few weeks b/c I have been in kind of a fog. I have just had a lot on my plate dealing with life. Not that I have been going through anything traumatic or awful, but sometimes life has weeks or months that a harder or busier than others and this has been one of those times.

I have come to the conclusion that Adoption is really hard. We are in the midst of reading the books required by our agency and I cannot tell you how many times I come across the words "at risk", "sensory integration disorder", "anger outbursts", and "attachment issues". I'm not going to lie. The first three chapters of my first book are now covered with tears. I was initially shocked at the words "at risk" that were popping out multiple times on every page of one book in particular. At risk? Why is she at risk? Then as I continued to read I realized that yes, she is "At risk", but so are all of us. Yes, she will need healing and love and a bit of extra care in the beginning. But so do all of us. Yes, her scars may run deep. But this is not something we can't overcome. Our little baby girl is going to be loved by us, and taken care of, and will have to endure all of her crazy mother's attachment antics (believe me this little chica is going to attach to us!), but in the end we are not in charge, capable, or in control of her "healing". We are going to leave that to the ultimate healer, who makes all things perfect in his time! All babies are "at risk" because they are born into a scary, imperfect world and are given to imperfect people. I have decided that our little one is not so different than the others. She will be a blessing and a challenge, but try to find one mother with biological children that hasn't endured challenges as well. All babies are challenging blessings!! :)

God has taken me from terrified, to cautious, to anxiously optimistic, to excited and prayerful!! I am grateful that God has cleared my mind and allowed the fog to be lifted!!

Also, we had a wonderful weekend doing a little outdoor, tree chopping fundraiser that was called, "Texas Chainsaw massacre-bringing home baby Agan." Left my camera, but will post pics when I get it back!!

Timeline

Lots of people have been asking me about the timeline for our adoption. Considering the number of kiddos needing a home it has been shocking to people to hear how long it takes. Don't worry, I was shocked at first too! But here is where we stand and here is what we have left to do before becoming a family of 3!

DONE:
Locating an agency we feel comfortable with- check
Initial paperwork filled out and notarized- check
Initial phone interview with agency- check
Initial acceptance into the Ethiopia program- check
Location of an out of state home study agency (our agency is based in Alabama so we were on our own here)- check
Initial paperwork filled out an notarized for home study agency- check
Social worker matched with us- check
Location of all marriage licenses, birth certificates, passports, income tax returns, and photos of our home- check
Three letters of recommendation sent to home study agency and three letters sent to us for dossier paperwork- check
First home study visit- check

In process:

*Gathering financial statements from both of our jobs
*Guardianship forms if we were to die in Ethiopia (kind of made me laugh imagining betho with our little cutie)
*Gathering good standing letters from our bank( this has been a chore! I actually lost it a teeny bit with a bank of America rep and told her I was disappointed that such a large agency was not supportive of helping orphaned children find homes. Dealing with the bank has been the single most difficult thing yet as far as paperwork goes! And it's not bc our credit is bad or we have debt or something. They have just been SO hard to deal with!)
*i600 application (form allowing us to travel to become the legal guardians of an orphan- it takes 5-12 weeks to process)

Still to do:

*letters proving health coverage
*letters proving life insurance
*new passport photos
*bank letter notarized ( this may literally take an act of God)
*lots of finished paperwork notarized (no biggie)
*final homestudy visit
*8 hours of education
*2 hour Internet seminar
*2 books to read
*have dossier finalized and home study finalized and notarized and sent to agency head quarters and to Washington DC
*send in completed i600a and wait for approval and fingerprinting appointment
*physicals

SO once this is all completed, and our goal is Dec 10th, we will send it all in and wait for approval. This should take around 6 weeks. Once we are approved we will get fingerprinted and this will take around 4 weeks to be approved.

THEN we are officially waiting for a referral!!!!! This takes around 3-6 months. Once we get our referral( which is a pic of our baby and any history they have) we say yes or no. Of course we will say YES. Once we say yes, we wait for a court date in Ethiopia. The wait for a court date is around 2 months right now. We will then go to Ethiopia and meet our baby and deal with some legal stuff.

We will then very very very very very sadly be sent home and await another court date to return to Ethiopia and appear in court one more time and pick up our baby and finally bring her home!! They wait between court dates right now is 8-12 weeks.

Many have asked me how old our baby will be. We are hoping for an infant and feel pretty confident that we will be referred a young baby. However, as you can see there are several months tied up in legal stuff so some time will pass between the time we see our babies first picture and actually have her home I Sugar Land. Likely 5 months or so. We are guessing she will be closer to 8-9 months old when we get her home.

So in a nutshell (ha!), we are about about 2 months from being on the waiting list and then we will be about 9 months from baby Agan being home. We hope we will have her in less than 12 months, however I think that 12 "ish" months is a realistic estimate. But what's a year in the big scheme of things right!?

Happy week everyone!! It's almost time for Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for?? I know what we are thankful for around here!!