New Day. New Outlook.

Today I woke up feeling better about things. So what if our equity loan didn't get approved. It's probably for the better. I was rather hesitant about pulling money from the house right now anyhow. We really want to buy a bigger house soon, especially with expanding our family and having that extra obligation to the house could be a bad thing.

Now it's time to refocus. Where do we need to make cuts? If we prioritize and sacrifice now to budget for the adoption it will help in the long run. Sure we already have a savings, but we also like to spend money and have the nice things that we work hard for. So any big purchase means something has to give. Strange to think of a baby as a large purchase...

While I am thinking up areas to cut costs and ways to raise funds, the thing that I am constantly thinking about is the home study. Why in the world do they need letters of recommendation from 4 friends and a family member? Why do they need references from our employers? Doctors letters? Fertility statements? Etc. Could you imagine how peaceful and perfect this world would be if everyone that decided to procreate had to go through this process before their eggs or sperm were released to them? Since when did my decision to parent become the business of my company? I find that a little intrusive, but I'll deal with it I guess.

"A child is God's opinion that life should go on."

Author: Unknown

The Start of a New Journey

It's been decided... Joe and I will adopt our baby. After 20 long months of "trying". And each month having the disappointment of a failed attempt we realized that being parents to A child was more important to us than being parents to a biological child. So now we have entered new territory. New emotions. New excitement. New setbacks. New disappointments.

First we began our research online for agencies and started asking questions to everyone we could think of. We quickly found an agency online that had a wealth of information and countless stories from adoptive families and birth mothers. They were upfront with their costs and provided resources about funding. I felt comfortable with them. After a few weeks we decided to send them a our pre-application and payment to get started. Within a few days they shipped us a huge packet of information containing the more in depth application, information on creating our adoption profile, the home study requirements that would meet the 50 states requirements and a book that housed every answer to every question possible. Now we were excited!!!!

Besides the questions we keep asking ourselves of what, if any, limitations of race do we want to have... The major question is, How are we going to pay for this?

In all the excitement that has thus far happened with feeling like we were going to finally get OUR baby... Today we experienced our first of probably many setbacks. We found out that our equity loan was not approved. So, now we must find other methods of financing this adoption. Goal $35,000. Paid so far: $195.

www.americanadoptions.com