It's been forever.....

It has been forever since I have blogged about our adoption process so this blog might be very long. In my last blog I was talking about us trying to make a decision on which adoption agency to go through. I checked out a lot of different companies and I felt God kept bringing us back to Bethany Christian Services. So in November, Josh and made our decision to go with them. We contacted our caseworker and got things moving. We filled out our preliminary application and by Thanksgiving that had been approved. After our preliminary application was approved we had to fill out our formal application. Right before Christmas we found out that we had been approved for this also, so it was definitely a great Christmas present. We met with our caseworker and talked about the next step. We had to do our parenting classes which our caseworker said her classes wouldn't be available until April or May, but she would ask the other caseworker (the lady in charge of the African-American and Bi-racial adoptions) if we could get in her class! When we left our meeting with her I was a little disappointed because I didn't want to have to wait until then. Meanwhile, Josh and I were to work on our Self-Studies (which seemed like a billion questions about our whole entire life!) So on January 6th our caseworker emailed me and said that we could get in on the other lady's class which started on the 9th. We were very thankful that we could go ahead and get the classes out of the way. We went to our first class with so many emotions. I was excited, nervous, and felt like we were getting one step closer to being able to receive our child! Our teacher was amazing....very funny and she made the class very interesting. As I mentioned before the lady that was teaching the class was in charge of the African-American and bi-racial adoptions. So she spoke a lot about this. When class was done Josh and I got in the car and I told him that I felt like God is wanting us to open our hearts to a child of any race and he said that he was glad that I said that because he was thinking about it the whole entire class. So we emailed our caseworker and let her know our decision! It is so cool to see God work in our lives through this whole process. It really seems like we are doing what He has had planned for us!! Last Friday was our last parenting class and I was actually said. It was nice to hear the families that came in and talked to us about their journey of adoption and it was nice to speak to the other couples in our class that are going through the same exact things we are. This Friday we are all meeting up for dinner!! I really hope that we all keep in touch to help each other as a support group!
I talked about the self-studies earlier and Josh and I finally finished them last week and overnighted them to our caseworker. Our next step is to have our individual interviews with our caseworker, which I am VERY nervous about. So the only other things we have left to do are our finger prints, homestudy and our family profiles. We can't do our homestudy until our caseworker receives all of our paperwork back from all the different places (doctor offices, background checks, etc.) and Josh and I are planning on getting our fingerprints done by next week. So the only other thing we have left to do is our family profiles (scrapbooks for the birthparents). I should add...that I am NOT creative...so thankfully my friends Lisa and Andrea are and they are helping me put my thoughts into this scrapbook. We did this over the weekend and have four pages down and six to go! But I am super excited because it is looking just like I wanted it to. Once I get it done I will try to scan some of the pages so you can see it! I promise to be better and updating this is just that so much happened so quickly. I have to thank God for letting everything go so smoothly so far and we are getting so close to being able to wait to be chosen as parents!