Octoberfest

Sold!

Wow. Where did October go?? Exactly one month ago, we were opening the garage door for day 1 of our adoption fundraiser garage sale. By the way, it went very well and you can read more about it here. It actually continues to go very well as we just sold a few of the leftover items this past week via Craigslist.

Speaking of which, we still have a number of clothes and other items remaining from our sale, but probably not enough to host a third garage sale prior to our activation. If you know of another family looking to host an adoption-related sale in the future, please let us know. We'd love to pass on any of the items we received to help supplement the stock of another family.
 
Back to October. It really did seem to fly by. Between the garage sale, time spent out of town, birthdays, a wedding, and pumpkins, we somehow managed, with some help, to prepare the house for our first home visit. In addition to being ready for the visit, we got a really clean house out of the deal. Well, it was clean for a little while at least. We also ate Shakespeare's three times in the last month, and that's always productive.


Say pumpkin!

The home visit itself went as well as it could. Our home study specialist, Karla, was super friendly and very accommodating to us. She visited with us for a couple of hours as a family to learn more about our history:  how we met, our first impressions of each other, our experience raising Riley, and so on. She also did a home tour which, thankfully, we can say passed her inspection. All in all, it was a great visit and a good feeling to have our home study essentially 50% complete. We have one visit left, and we'll be doing that later this month, just before Thanksgiving. Once that visit is completed (and successful), it's just a matter of us waiting for Karla to finish the paperwork so that the home study can be formally approved. Overall, the process has been simpler than we thought, and it will be great having it completed before the end of the year. 



Hayride at the pumpkin patch

A successful home visit wasn't the only adoption-related milestone we reached in October. We also formally submitted our APQ (more info here). The APQ, along with the home study and the profile, is one of the steps that must be completed before going active. With this document submitted, we can now have a conference call with our adoptive family specialist, Laurie, to finalize this portion of the process. That call will be happening this Wednesday and will represent another big step forward towards being an active family.

All in all, October was super fast, but also pretty productive. We have been fortunate to stay on task thus far, and, as of now, we are still on target for activation as a waiting family in early 2013. Our current task is to complete our adoption profile (narratives, dozens of pictures, and even a video) which will essentially represent who we are as a family to potential birth mothers. This process will likely take us through the end of the year, but it will be fun to watch it come together. Special thanks to Kelso for a last-minute photo shoot yesterday! Once the home study is complete, we'll also have the opportunity to apply for some grant programs and other fundraising resources.

One final thought for today's post. Yesterday was Orphan Sunday and next week is collection week for Operation Christmas Child. If you have not heard of either of these events/efforts, check out the links for more information. These are excellent ways for individuals, families, churches, or other groups to get involved in supporting children across the globe. I hope to post more about this and other things we've been learning through the process in a future post. Maybe we won't wait a month this time.