ketchup, catsup, catch-up

I've been putting off blog updates for almost 6 months. There are a couple of reasons why:
1. I wanted to have more confidence in the new agency before blogging about it.
2. The last situation was kinda draining.
3. For a long time we were unsure what direction we were going to take.
4. The longer I went without updating, the harder it was to gear myself up to start again.

There are probably more reasons, but that was mostly it.

So, yeah. Where do I start?

We started looking at places to move in October, I think. We decided that we really had no room in our 650 square foot student housing, and were afraid that would be a problem with any future homestudy. We looked into renting something, but realized that we could buy a house and pay less per month than renting something.

The first house we had a contract with came back with a foundation report that it was "slowly sliding off the hill", so we ended that contract. We ended up finding a house that is way better, in a better neighborhood, and about the same price. We moved in a week before the semester started.

We decided to attend an informational meeting with an agency in December (I think). We were invited to start training early in January, but we missed the first one because we both had something like the flu.

Matt went to Puerto Rico (with the flu), and I stayed home and packed the house (with the flu).

Our training was four Saturdays and two week nights, but we were able to use some of the past training we've had for the weeknights. Since we missed the first one, we just completed training this past Saturday.

So....

Our plan has changed from our private infant adoption that we were going to do with HC.

A long time ago, like 2 years, we were convinced that we would adopt from foster care. Over time, this began to freak us out and that is why we switched our plan to international and then private domestic. We said that maybe we would adopt from foster care later...

Well, it's later. The thought of adopting from foster care kept coming back to me. I messaged a friend of a friend about her experience and had lunch with her. She had an attitude that was so much more encouraging about it than anyone else, even with the struggles. She is how I found out about our agency.

We have told the agency that we are adoption focused (meaning that we are not looking to foster at this time) and will accept up to age 4/5 and sibling groups.

We are crazy (in the best possible way, I'm sure). In my head, I'm imagining we are going to get 3 kids right out the gate: a 4 yr old, a 2 yr old, and a 6 mo old. This is based on nothing factual, just how I am "preparing" myself.

I humorously refer to this idea as our "Insta-family". Matt and I had a discussion about what we were going to do if we have to suddenly buy a car with 3 rows of seats. I kinda stared off into space, wide-eyed, for a minute.


I'm trying to think about what people would want to know about this new process. Our training has been for foster, foster-to-adopt, and straight adoption from foster care. If anyone who reads this has a question for a blog update, let me know and it will help me out by giving me some direction.

Also, just fyi, we have finished our training, but we still have to do some paperwork, drug tests, fingerprinting, observation, and homestudy.

**edited: 10:50am: Also, because we are adopting from foster care, we will only have the legal fees in adoption finalization. That means all the fundraising we did has already covered it!**