Officially a Waiting Family!

It's so crazy that we have made it this far in the adoption process already!  I have been nervous, y'all, for weeks waiting for our home study to be approved.  We received a message on Monday that everything was approved & now we were officially a waiting family. 

What does this mean?  I get a lot of questions about the process & hopefully I can clear up some of the mystery behind everything.

The home study isn't just an inspection of our physical home but a look into our finances, health, emotional well-being & how compatible we are as a married couple.  Family, friends & even our small group leader were contacted as references.  We filled out questionnaires, interviewed & completed online courses for adoption.  In summary, it's a HUGE process.  It's easy to get lost in the paperwork, but we just had to push through to reach the other side. 

Now that everything is approved, our profiles will be placed online for potential birth mothers to view. If they like what they see, they can request our book that basically includes lots of photos of our lives, friends & family.  We each wrote letters to the birth mom, too. 

We are adopting from the United States so from this point forward we could get a call at any time saying either a birth mom would like to meet us, or that a baby is available needing a home.  There's really no way we can plan for anything (the average wait time in the U.S. is two years) so it's a good thing we're so laid-back! 
Ideally, we would LOVE to know our child's birth mom & have an ongoing relationship with her...  Ideally, we would LOVE to be picked by someone in their 2nd or 3rd trimester that has a due date planned...

...but we all know what happens when we start talking about planning for things, right? 

Realistically we are ready to wait & have been anxious just to be waiting.  We have gone through so much to become parents, what's another two years, right?  We know God already has the baby meant to be in our little family lined up so we just have to be patient.   

While we wait, we do things like go to amazing concerts, see movies, read books, go on hikes with the pups.  We don't sit around!  We live life!

We can also start preparing a room for a little one.  (That sounds so weird to say!!!)

It's a hot mess right now, but we repainted it & have a few (30-40) books & a couple of little toys in the space we can look at from time-to-time.  Whenever I see the room I pray for our birth mother & it's a great reminder that this story is not over yet!