At the meeting in July Hope's Promise notified us that there was a 'hold' on the domestic infant adoption program and they weren't accepting new applicants at that time (due to a high number of adoptive families and not enough babies). The hold was originally set to expire in September but after several extensions, the hold was finally lifted on November 1, 2012!
October 5-6, 2012 - Hope's Promise offers a (required) Home Study training twice per year. We received permission to do the training in October (even though we couldn't turn our application in until November) so that we didn't need to wait another 6 months to take it. It was an amazing training and the most powerful portion of the training was hearing a panel of birth moms tell their stories about placing their babies for adoption. There was not a dry eye in the room.
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| Training At Grace Chapel in Castle Rock Oct 5-6, 2012 |
October 20, 2012 - We had professional family photos take knowing that we would use them in our profile book. The photos taken captured us at home...doing what we do...so our photos would tell a story of our family. It turns out that our photographer (Laura Lee Anderson) was adopted and her story opened our eyes to how important having an open adoption is.God places people in our lives at certain times, for a reason. It was no coincidence that Laura's path crossed ours as we started this journey.
November 1, 2012 - We submitted our application at 8:30 am (the minute they unlocked the door)!
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| Ready to turn in our application Nov 1, 2012 |
November 2, 2012 - We received an email from Beth notifying us that our application was accepted. YAY!
November 30, 2012 - We had our first Home Study meeting with Beth to review the process and paperwork. Immediately after our meeting we went to the Castle Rock police department to get our fingerprints (we knew that would be the paperwork item that took the longest to get approval).
December 19, 2012 - We turned in our Home Study paperwork at 8:30 am (the minute they unlocked the door. I remember that it was a snowy day and I was wondering if their office would be open).
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| Turning in our Home Study packet Dec 19, 2012 |
January 31, 2013 - The fingerprints have been taking almost three-times longer than anticipated so we got approval from Beth to proceed with the Home Study interviews to coincide with waiting for the fingerprints (typically they wait to do interviews until after the fingerprints have cleared). She told us she would assign a case worker the following week.
February 5, 2013 - We have been assigned a case worker - Rachel Wilkins!!
February 21, 2013 @ 1:00 pm - Our first Home Study meeting/interview with Rachel. We were so excited but also very nervous. We had no idea what to expect. Turns out, we had nothing to be nervous about. Rachel is absolutely amazing and put us at ease from the start. She asked us a lot of questions about how we met, what our relationship is like and how we came to know that adoption was right for us. When we left our interview we felt so excited for the journey that lay ahead of us and it confirmed for us that God's plan to grow our family is through Hope's Promise.
March 7, 2013 @ 9:00 am - This was THE BIG interview. We thought we were nervous for the first meeting with Rachel? That was nothing compared to this one! We knew this was going to be a stressful interview. Not because we weren't sure we'd pass, but when you want a baby more than anything else in the entire world, and you know that one day of interviews hold the key to that fate, it is stressful! But, once again, as only Rachel can do, she put us as ease as soon as we saw her. When we got there we each filled out a questionaire, she reviewed/approved our profile book, then she interviewed me first (2 hours), then Eric (another 2 hours). The questions were very similar to the ones in the Home Study packet. She wanted to know about our childhood, our young adult years and our marriage. It was actually a lot less stressful than we had made it out to be, but that is only in retrospect. At the end of the interview she gave us both a 'wink-wink' on being approved and printing our profile book. And now, we wait for our fingerprints....
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| The BIG Home Study interview March 7, 2013 |
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