Hello poor neglected blog!

I had every best intention with this blog. I wanted to write every day and share every detail of our very exciting adventure. So much has gone on since the last time I wrote in August! I feel so bad because the last thing I did before I abandoned this blog was to share the link and invite readers on a few different adoption message boards. Well tonight I am going to make the commitment to more frequent posts. Also I will try to play a little catch up for any readers I may still have.

The very best news is that things are going (so far) exactly like the movie in my head. We had planned to go to Disney World at the end of September/beginning of October and enjoy every last bit of magic that Disney had to offer, and we did! We had an amazing time, all the while knowing the most exciting adventure of our lives would be waiting for us at the end of our plane ride home. We Planned to start looking seriously into adoption agencies. Over the summer we had gotten some preliminary information from lots of agencies and looked it over. Totally confused is what we were. No two ways about it, I felt we were in way over our heads and I felt like we would never figure any of it out. There was one agency that stood out to us though, and I held on to the hope that the agency would be as good as I was hoping it was.

When we got back form Disney on October 3rd the first thing I did was call this agency to meet with them. We had a good meeting with them and asked them a billion questions that we had typed up just for meetings like this. The owner of the agency that we met with was friendly but not overly warm and fuzzy. We really liked everything that she told us about the agency and we especially liked the flat fee that covers ev.er.y.thing, and the fact that it's not due until we take placement of our baby and the birth mother signs the TPR. Actually there is also an application fee and a home study fee, so 3 fees total, but all the amounts are fixed. That will allow us to know what to expect and to plan.

In November we attended the Resolve infertility conference and spent an entire day attending seminars on adoption as well as meeting with other adoption professionals and getting information from the many booths they had available for us. Chris and I divided up and went to two different seminars per time slot, really making the most of our money. We left there pretty pumped and even more excited and sure of our decision. From the things we learned at the conference and the further reading of other agencies paperwork we started to feel more sure about the agency we already liked. On November 20th we officially made the decision to go with them. We had everything all planned out financially and knew that we wanted to get started on January 1st so even though it was hard, we waited until then to call them and request our application packet of paperwork.

January 4th was the first Monday of the year and a day I had been much anticipating. I called the agency and told them that we chose them to work with and that we wanted an application sent right out. My expectations were so high, but the phone call ended up being pretty anti-climactic. They weren't nearly as excited to get the call as I was to make it! It didn't matter, two days later our big packet arrived in the mail and I immediately started filling it out. I went through all 38 pages of it and filled out every single thing I could. I had waited so long to write my name and address and birthday to this paperwork, I happily read through every word.

More to come about the application process in my next post.

-Erin