The First Ever Post

Ok, bear with me...this is the first ever post for our blog. I hope that Andy will like this b/c this is an adventerous undertaking for me. I am trying to be a little more adventerous in my older age...

One reason I started this blog was to keep in touch with all of our friends and family. This year I did not make any resolutions...but one thing I have wanted to do the last several years was to keep in better contact with friends & family. Life gets in the way most days - sometimes I only check my email 1-2x a week. Let's also all admit that we think about calling each other but never make the time to do it for a multitude of reasons. No finger-pointing from me b/c I am very guilty of not keeping in touch very well. But no longer...I will try to update this as often as possible.

A secondary reason for starting this blog is to keep people updated on our adoption process.

Adoption timeline:
October 22, 2007 - Attended an informational meeting of Children's Home Society (CHS) & finalized our decision to adopt. Emailed request to begin process.
November 2007 - Received letter from CHS letting us know who are social worker would be & that she would contact us soon to schedule our first meeting.
November 28, 2007 - First meeting with social worker. Meeting lasted a little over an hour & we were given quite a bit of homework to complete before our next meeting - our first home visit at our house.
December 18, 2007 - First visit at our house. For those of you who know me, yes I was a little obsessive in the days preceding the visit to make sure the house was clean (it also helped that we were having our holiday open house that coming weekend - killed 2 birds w/ 1 stone in terms of cleaning). The first visit went well, I think we both had completed our individual 30 page profiles (Andy "loved" doing this) and other paperwork. We also had our fingerprints done & sent to the FBI. Our social worker toured our home & commented that we had a warm, inviting home. Our homework after this meeting included: a fire inspection; a fire escape plan drawing (currently hanging in the kitchen), MAPP training, a family picture book telling our story.
January 2008 to Present- We started our "parenting" classes - MAPP training. We completed 30 hrs required by the state of NC to become licensed as foster parents (30 hrs from Jan 10 - Feb 2). We made some really great friends through the MAPP class. The classes reaffirmed our desire to become parents through adoption.

Andy & I are adopting through CHS - the process we are using is foster-to-adopt. We will initially foster the child we will be adopting. This will be the only child we will foster.

We have completed all of our requirements, and our application was sent yesterday (Fri 02/22/08) by our social worker to the main office of CHS in Greensboro. Hopefully our application will be reviewed by the adoption committee this Tuesday Feb 26. Please pray for us on Tuesday.

Andy & Chris are repairing the kitchen ceiling, while I am typing this, where we replaced the light fixture. Andy would like me to tell everyone he is 6'6" tall & weighs in at 280#...then Chris bursted his bubble & told him I can post pictures on the blog.

We love you all. Talk to you soon.