The Beginning of Our Journey

Well, I'm excited to say that I'm finally starting this blog to track our lives along our journey to adopt a daughter from china. I'm not quite sure when it all started, but I remember as a child one of my favorite books was called the "Ready-Made Family" or something like that. It was about 3 or 4 brothers or sisters who were adopted by one family. No, we aren't planning to do the same; one child at a time or even just one child, period, is how we want our future family to be.

Back last August and September, we went to informational meetings for a few local adoption agencies. Due to the cost of international adoption, the fact that we had just bought a home several months before, as well as that our 18-year old furnace needed to be replaced, we decided to temporarily put an adoption on hold.

In the meantime, I continued to visit adoption sites, blogs and forums. This spring, we decided that there is no perfect time and that we are going to go ahead with our dreams to start a family. On Mother's Day, we told my parents, brother, and sister-in-law that we were going to begin the paperwork to adopt. We had mentioned earlier that we were hoping to do this, but we were now ready to announce to them we were going further than just thinking about it. My mother of course was thrilled; the only thing better would have been to tell her we were pregnant!

So now the long journey begins. We still have to send the formal application, but we are working on getting the documents that we need. Today, I finally sent off the forms for Kevin's birth certificate to the Michigan Vital Records Office. Next week, when I'm back at work, I will go to the Vital Records Office of Cook County to order my birth certificates. This week, I also need to write to the correct governmental agencies for our marriage certificate and for Kevin's divorce decree. Also, I hope to start writing my autobiography that we'll need to have before the home study, but actually filling out all of the application, should be a priority since that can be sent in while we are waiting for all of our other documents. Of course, I should also schedule physicals for both of us with our doctor since their our several medical forms that need to be filled out. 3 actually - one for the agency, one for DCFS (Dept. of Children & Family Services) & one for China.