Lets Get This Party Started!

It only took nearly 4 weeks. We finally got our contract with first payment sent in and the home-study application and fee. YAY!

when we received our home-study application the first page was messed up and we could not read some of the stuff we needed to fill out. After two emails to the agency asking for a digital copy emailed to us nothing happened. The following Saturday we went to the WIA annual picnic and had two people promise to get the new page sent to us the following Monday. Still nothing happened, but we were busy that week with 4th of July family fun, so I waited until this past Tuesday to try emailing once more and BAM! not even ten minutes later I had a response with the paper work.

I had also asked about the post adoption payments because we were still unclear on how much they were and when we were to pay that payment. Turns out the $300 per report per child cost I thought we were going to have to pay does not apply to us because we are clients of WIA. So our fee will be $1000 per child. we also don't have to pay that until later.

I feel like maybe we are really getting started. The very few people I have talked to about us adopting have asked what stage we are at. Are you done with your home-study yet? thinking the home-study being the first stage. "Oh, well, um, we are at the home-study application stage" like that is a stage of its own. If it took four weeks for everyone to get that done maybe it would be it's own stage. I know this is a long process, but I feel we are moving slow even for what is expected. I'm ready to tell people we are at the home-study stage. lets get this party started already!

We also received a CD this week with a list of some? most? a lot of special needs out there that these adoptable children may have. It had descriptions and treatments of each one. We went through that and learned about a lot of things we never heard of before and some that we have heard of. We made a list of what ones we felt we could handle taking on. Do you know how hard that is? You go into it knowing you should only pick what you think you can handle, but learning what some of these children suffer makes you feel like a horrible person for not being willing to take on someone in so much need. We stuck to our plan though and only listed special needs we feel like we can take on. After all would we really be helping anyone if we took on more then that?

Now on to the fun stuff. WIA has an annual picnic every year and it just so happened to be a few weeks after we applied. It was really nice to get to meet some of these people we will be corresponding with, online, in person. WIA helps with adoption through several different countries, there were not many people there that adopted from Bulgaria. Apparently most that do go through WIA are from out of state. One of the ladies we met works for WIA and has adopted an older son with autism from Bulgaria. Another one that was there adopted a 2 year old(now 5) three years ago. It was good to finally meet some one who not only has adopted internationally, but from Bulgaria. We were not sure what to ask, but she shared some of her story and it just made me even more excited to be on this journey.