Home Study- Check!

I cannot believe it has been this long since my last post.. but I also can't believe it took that long to finish up our home study! We began our home study in March after we completed our application and I thought, "Oh, we'll breeze right through this and be finished in a couple of months.." Well, I definitely spoke too soon! Just finishing most of our paperwork and interviews took us through July, and I still thought it would only take a couple of weeks to finalize everything. Again, I would eat those words! Finally this week after 7 months, 3 interviews, too many phone calls to count, and tons of paperwork, we can say our home study is complete!

I know most of you are wondering what that even means. Basically, it means that we meet the requirements set by the state of Alabama to adopt. Our next step is to be approved by immigration and prepare our dossier for Colombia. These are steps that happen simultaneously. The dossier is just a package of documents that will be sent to Colombia to begin the next part of the process, actually being matched with a child. Compared to our home study, the dossier requirements will be a breeze. Our only hurdle right now is in having to deal with insurance companies and the mental health clinic regarding getting a psychological evaluation. Once that is done, this part of the process is easy. It is expected to take 3 months for us to receive our immigration approval so that we can then forward our dossier to Colombia. Of course we are praying that we will receive approval faster than that.

We are continuing to raise funds since we are still a long way from our goal of $35,000 (the projected amount for our total adoption). At this time we're selling the various crafts that I've been making (coasters, magnets, and Christmas ornaments) and the hand pottery necklaces. If you are interested in any of my items please let me know or you can visit my Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/skthomas15. We are also looking for new ideas for fundraisers so if you have any great ideas please let us know! In addition to fundraisers, we are now also able to apply for grants so this will likely become my new hobby. Grants are very limited because of the high number of applicants so please pray that we will be able to get at least one or two to help with our expenses.

We want to thank everyone for your continued support thus far and ask you to keep remembering us in your prayers!

The light at the end of the (first) tunnel

Hey folks! I hope everyone is having a great summer so far! I wanted to write an update just so everyone knows how things are going with our adoption.

It has been such a whirlwind summer that our home study has taken a few weeks longer and I haven't had any time to write a post. Thankfully it's been all great things- DR mission trip, VBS, CBF national assembly, chaperoning youth PASSPORT camp,  and Samford friends reunion- that have kept me/us busy all summer long! With the summer winding down, it is our goal to have the home study FINISHED before I start back to school (or at least our part of it- it will take our social worker a couple of weeks to write up our huge 20 page report!)

Since my last post, we have had 2 more interviews for the home study. There are 4 total, 3 together and 1 individual plus a home tour. So a couple of weeks ago on July 19 we went to Lifeline in Birmingham for our individual interviews. Before having this interview we had to complete our autobiographies. This may sound like a simple task, but wow, it was a lot of work (at least for me!) There were all sorts of questions for us to answer about how we were raised, what kind of parents we hope to be, information about all of our immediate family, what we were like as a child, teenager, early adult, etc. At the interview she basically asked us about some of the same stuff that was in the autobiography to kind of clarify some details.

And today, we had our third interview and home tour. Just fyi, for anyone who has heard that they look inside your dryer, closets, or any of that stuff during the home tour (we heard all of that from various people), she didn't do anything like that! We literally just showed her every room in our house, which took less than 5 minutes. The main thing she needed to see was a fire extinguisher and count how many smoke detectors we had. So it was definitely not a very big deal! For the interview, we talked a lot about parenting techniques/mistakes/goals/etc. and about discipline.

Thankfully all we have left for our home study is our fourth interview which is scheduled for next week and to answer a couple more pages of questions about international adoption/transracial adoption and get our medical exams completed! That may sound like a lot, but if you knew all we had done already it feels like a piece of cake! So hopefully our home study will be complete by the end of August! The next step will be to apply to immigration, which will take another 3 months. As you can tell, the journey to adopt includes a lot of hurry up and wait. Sometimes all the waiting can be very discouraging, especially when we are so ready for our child to be here! I am often reminded of the song "While I'm Waiting" by John Waller. The main lines of the song are: I will serve you while I'm waiting and I will worship while I'm waiting. These are the things I try to focus on as we wait for our child to be home. I know, too, that this time is necessary as I can see God continually molding me (as He always is) into the mom I need to be.

Finally, I would ask you to please pray for us as we are at the point in the adoption where we have a decision to make on our program. As you know we are currently in the Colombia program. Choosing a program has been one of the hardest decisions we have made so far. Sometimes when people adopt they have a certain country they are drawn to or a certain region of the world, etc. We were not like that at all! We wanted to adopt as young a child as possible and after a lot of research we also wanted to stay with a country that is part of the Hague treaty. The requirements for adoption in each country is different (age, marriage length, age of child available, length of in country travel, etc.), and we decided on Colombia since it was a match for us. We had also strongly considered China, but at the time were too young. Well, we are now only about 6 months away from being old enough to switch to China if we wanted to. To sum it all up, we need to decide, for sure, in the next couple of months whether or not we are going to stay with Colombia or switch to China or Hong Kong. Next week at our fourth interview, we will probably talk to the Hong Kong coordinator, just to get a feel for that program to see if it is a better fit for us. This is a huge decision and one that we don't take lightly. Please pray that God will give us a strong, clear desire one way or the other so that we aren't second guessing this decision.

Thank you for your continued support and most importantly your prayers. We could not do this without our huge network of support behind us.

Blessings,

Sallie

YARD SALE UPDATE!

Sorry it has been so long since there's been a post! After the last post, I went on an amazing mission trip to the Dominican Republic. I got to spend the whole week loving on some sweet kids and helping out with VBS and/or medical clinics. The day after I returned from the DR we went to a two day training class in Birmingham at our adoption agency called Crossings. We learned more than we ever thought we wanted to know about lots of different things- especially sensory processing disorders, attachment, and dealing with certain behaviors. We'll go into more detail on these things later on, as it seems appropriate. 

As most everyone knows this weekend Chris and I, with the help of our amazing church family, held our Adoption Yard Sale. We are so excited to share how successful the sale was! But first I wanted to give a few shout outs! First, to Almaroad Properties for allowing us to use their lot in Jacksonville. It was a PRIME location and this is definitely a contributing factor for our success. Next, one of my best friends who was also my college roommate, Rachel, for creating the awesome flyer that we put up all around town and to Michelle at JSU Print Shop for printing the signs for us! It was a really great sign that drew lots of attention I'm sure! There are SO many others to thank, but there is no way I could name everyone. For anyone who... donated items, sorted items, priced items, helped put up flyers/signs, let us borrow a trailer or canopy, loaded a trailer, delivered a trailer, unloaded and set up at the yard sale, worked during the yard sale, and helped take down the yard sale... THANK YOU!!! Words can't really express how grateful we are to you for your support this weekend. 

I know what you really want to know is how much we were able to raise. From all of our sales and donations at the yard sale, we raised a total of $4,250! We definitely met and exceeded the goal we had set for the sale! Some have asked if we will be doing another one and we aren't sure yet. It was a LOT of work, but in the end it was obviously worth it. We are going to wait and see how things play out with the rest of the process, but it is definitely a possibility! Through all the crafting, jewelry sales, the yard sale, and generous donations our entire fundraising total is at $10,595!!

I also wanted to say thank you to my sister in law, Stephanie for organizing an online Tupperware party for us. People were able to go on and purchase Tupperware through her fundraiser and we received 40% of their sales! Thanks, Stephanie for organizing this, every little bit helps! 

At this point, we are still in our home study. My trip to the DR and the yard sale have kind of made us slow down on things. And this week we are headed to the CBF General Assembly in Greensboro, NC. I am hoping to still get a few things done for our home study done while we are there. Pray that when we return from Greensboro, we will be rested and revived and ready to really get all this paperwork done!! 

Let me once again say THANK YOU for everyone's support thus far. They say it takes a village to raise a child. We are so blessed for the village that is helping us get our child and will help us raise our child! 

I will leave you with a few pictures from my trip in the DR and the yard sale. 

Blessings,

~Sallie

Yard sales, Tupperware parties, and crafting, oh my!

We cannot begin to describe how thankful we are for the support we have received since announcing our plans to adopt. Kind words, encouraging cards and e-mails, and financial support from many has been such a blessing to us in this exciting, yet stressful time in our lives!

There are so many things going on that pertain to fundraising that I just wanted to write a post that sort of highlights all of them!

First, the awesome women's ministry at our church, FBC Williams, is hosting a yard sale/bake sale on June 21-22. It will be at Almaroad Properties in Jacksonville. We are accepting donations up until the day before and will even pick up if you just let us know when/where. If you would like to help with the bake sale you can also let me know about that. We will need volunteers the week of and days of the sale. Some specific things I know we will need help are: sorting/pricing items, picking up items, transporting items from the church to Almaroad Properties, and helping with customers during the sale. If any of these interest you, please just let me know. We would LOVE for you to help us!

Next, my awesome sister-in-law (Chris's sister), Stephanie, has put together an online Tupperware party fundraiser. From now until June 6, if you order Tupperware from this link, we will receive 40% of your purchase for our adoption! If you need Tupperware or know someone who uses this product, please let them know. To shop the fundraiser just click on the link below and then click on "Find a Fundraiser" at the top of the page. Next find "Alabama" and then you will select "Chris and Sallie Adoption." From there just shop like you normally would! If you have any questions about it, just let me know and I will find out an answer. :)

http://order.tupperware.com/pls/htprod_www/home

There is a really great website that you may not even be aware of. It is especially great for those of us who do a lot of online shopping. It's called Pure Charity. In order to use the website you have to have to create an account, it's free and really easy to set up. Then you shop at TONS of stores online, just like you would normally. Stores like Sephora, Best Buy, Target, the Apple store, Walmart, Forever 21, etc. are on there. All of the stores set their own percentage that they give back to you. It goes into your "giving" account on Pure Charity and then you turn around and choose a charity to give that money to. Our adoption is set up as one of the charities so any money put into your giving account can go to help us! All the money from this goes directly to our agency, Lifeline Children's Services. It would help pay for our agency fees, which include things like our home study. Some people have also asked about just making a donation. This is a great place to make a donation because it will be tax-deductible and you will receive an e-mail for your records.

If you are interested in this, you can create your account at: https://www.purecharity.com/home and our fundraiser is called "Chris and Sallie Thomas's Adoption."

I'm also still making and selling crafts and jewelry. Most of it is being listed on Facebook, but if you are not on there, just let me know and I can show you what I'm selling if you are interested! My latest creation is some Sweet Home art. I can do any state (with whatever phrase you want on it) and LOTS of different patterns/colors are available. A sample is below. They are $10 each. If you are interested just let me know or you can purchase it from my Etsy store.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/152152341/sweet-home-alabama-tile?ref=v1_other_1

Again I thank all of you who are partnering with us on this incredible journey! We are blessed beyond words and can't wait until we get to see who all this is for.

If you have any questions about our adoption, please feel free to ask! Chris will be doing a post next week while I am away in the Dominican Republic on a mission trip!

Blessings~
Sallie

First interview... check!

So I'm a little late getting this post written, but better late than never!

When we started the blog, we decided to be very open about the whole process so that if anyone is interested in adoption they can see everything that goes on with it (which is why there will be posts explaining a lot of what we are doing throughout the process).

After getting accepted into the program, you begin your home study, which is where we are now. The home study is a process that usually takes 3-4 months to complete. It's actually not so much what it sounds like. It's a series of three interviews with our social worker, a home visit, getting fingerprints done, and LOTS and LOTS of paperwork. And then a few more pieces of paperwork! What kind of paperwork you may be asking... Some of it is basic stuff like just copying our IDs, sending pictures of us and our house, etc. Some of it has been forms about the different policies and procedures of our adoption agency and making sure we understand all of that. There was also a form where we identify the type of child we would like to adopt (this has been the hardest thing so far). You select if you prefer a boy/girl or if you don't have a preference and then there is a whole page of special needs that you check either yes/no/maybe on. You also select the age preference. We have decided to to choose a preference as far as a boy or girl is concerned. As far as age, we are hoping to get the youngest age possible, which for our country (Colombia) is 18 months, but until we receive our match we won't know the age for sure.

We also had to do an online questionnaire kind of thing called Prepare/Enrich which is designed to help identify strengths and weaknesses in couples and find areas where we can grow together, especially as we go through this challenging process. After we completed this we were able to do our first interview.

This past Monday was our first interview. We got to meet our social worker, Beth, for the first time (besides just talking on the phone). She is so nice and I'm so glad she is there to guide us through our journey! The interview was basically just us meeting with her and getting to know her and another girl from the agency. She went over our results from the Prepare/Enrich assessment, but mostly it was just conversational. It went really well, and wasn't anything too intense. We came away both feeling more affirmed and encouraged about the whole adoption thing (not that we weren't already certain, just specific details were starting to line up more).

Our next step is to finish writing our autobiographies (which is basically just answering a TON of questions about us and our families) and then we will be able to have our individual interviews. We will also be completing lots of education as part of the home study. Some of it is just reading stuff off the Internet, pertaining to adoption or pertaining to the Colombia. We will also be completing several online modules for couples who are adopting and also reading a book about adoption.

So that is a very quick look at what the home study is. The agency moves at our pace, and we are trying to get through this part as quickly as we can!

Please continue to keep praying for us through this process! We are trying to be patient, but it can be tough!

Last, I wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us so far by buying a necklace or coasters or just giving us a donation. YOU ARE AWESOME!!!

Also, for those that aren't aware, on the side of this page there is an Amazon button. If you ever purchase anything on Amazon and use this link to get to the Amazon page a percentage of what you spend will come to us for our adoption. We got $5 the first day when someone clicked on it and bought a vacuum (so thanks to whoever that was!)

~Sallie

The Beginning...

This is just a little bit of our story about how we were led to adoption. It answers some questions that people have a lot. :)

Before we married, we always talked about having kids one day. It was always in our plans. We talked about the possibility of maybe adopting one day, but that would probably be later on after we had our own kids. We knew we wanted to wait and have kids after Chris finished seminary and was in a full time ministry position. So after three years of marriage and seminary, we moved back to Alabama with the hopes of starting a family that year. Well God had other plans. Without going into a lot of detail, we knew something wasn't right. It only took one doctor's visit to hear the word I had feared- infertility. This wasn't suppose to happen to me! We had our plans, I was suppose to get pregnant that year! We began some local treatments, none successful. Next, we decided to see a specialist in Birmingham. After one surgery and a few treatments later, no progress had been made. The weekly trips back and forth to Birmingham, only to find out, the treatments weren't working were wearing on me. At this point, I was exhausted- mentally, emotionally, physically- exhausted. It was also all I could do, after each trip, returning to my job as a 5th grade teacher, to make it through the day. We decided to take a break from the treatments and continue to pray for the child we had always wanted. At the end of the school year, I lost my job along with the health insurance that was helping to pay for the doctor's visits.

At this point we weren't sure what to do. We figured I would get another job and then start the treatments up again. Again things didn't exactly fall into place the way we wanted. I didn't get a teaching job right away, so our health insurance was pretty basic. This gave us LOTS of time to pray and discern the direction God was leading us in. Of course we knew adoption was an option. For the next several months, we continued praying and we started becoming more comfortable and excited with the thought of adoption. Then in January I was hired as an Instructional Assistant at one of the schools in the same district where I previously worked. With the position came the same health benefits as before. We began thoughts of starting the treatments up again. I began remembering the heartache from before and the cost that went into each visit. After lots and lots of time praying and reading God's Word, we decided that this was not the path God was leading us down. Our verbiage began to change from "we're thinking about adopting..." to "when we adopt..." We began talking to couples we know who adopted to hear their stories and get advice from them. The one overwhelming thing I heard from everyone we encountered was DO IT! This past August we took our first step in the process by attending an informational meeting for an agency in Birmingham we were interested in using. Before the meeting, we were primarily thinking of just domestic adoption. After the meeting, we both felt completely confident that adoption was the route God wanted us on, but we also both felt compelled to go in the international direction. Since August, we have been doing lots of reading about adoption, particularly the various countries that we might choose to adopt from. After lots of research and prayer, we have chosen to begin our adoption process in Colombia!


In an upcoming post, we will share a little more about international adoption, specifically within the country of Colombia!

Announcement Pictures

Just about everybody announces they are expecting with some sort of cute picture. As a Pinterest addict (hey, at least I admit it!), I found several ideas for announcing our adoption! I saved them to one of my boards and shared it with a woman from our new church who does photography and we did a lot of different shots! Chris doesn't exactly love taking pictures, but he was a good sport and knew that it was something I wanted to do. She also took just some "couple" pictures since we haven't had any good pictures since our wedding almost 7 years ago (wow, time is flying by!) There were too many to use in the blog layout, but I just wanted to share a few of them with y'all.

Blessings,
~Sallie

We were getting tired by this time and were acting pretty goofy! Poor Jamie for having to put up with us!

This one is my favorite of the couple pictures!

We were definitely tired by this point. I was trying to think of what to put on this board and this is all I could think of. Chris did not like it! He thought it sounded super country to say "just don't know when." We were all so tired that we couldn't think of another way to say it! I still think it's cute though!

We have officially started our first adoption fundraiser(s)!

We are selling handmade pottery jewelry (necklaces and bracelets) made by a woman in Birmingham. They are $24 each and all the proceeds go to bringing baby Thomas home! If you would like to purchase one, you can click on the button at the bottom and it will take you to Paypal to pay. In the special instructions box, please specify which necklace you would like (they are numbered on the side). If you are local, also put that in the box and I can take off the shipping costs. OR you can just let me know you want one and we can meet up (you don't have to use the Paypal link to pay, it's mostly for people who don't live near here).

We have also set up a Just Love Coffee store. If you are interested in purchasing organic, Fair Trade coffee, just click on the link on the right hand side. They have lots of varieties available!

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Cross Necklace - $24.00

We're Adopting!

Chris and I are both super excited to announce that we have officially applied for an adoption! Many of you know that this is something that we have been talking about for a while, but up until now had not actually applied for. Well, after several months of  praying, researching, reading, and filling out paperwork, our application is complete and the process has begun! Our social worker emailed us our manual and a lot of information regarding the home study, and I got tired just looking at it! I see lots of nights filling out paperwork with reruns of Parks and Rec in the background in our future!

We have decided to begin this blog as a way to share our story and experiences with you. We will try to keep it updated on where we are in the process and specific ways that you can pray with us.

At this point the biggest thing you can do is pray for our home study to go smoothly. We would also ask you to pray for God to provide for us financially throughout our journey. As I'm sure you know, adoption is expensive. This is because of the various agency fees, all the fees associated with preparing and sending our dossier (all of our legal paperwork) to the country of adoption, and travel expenses to and within  the country. We believe that God has called us to adopt and that He will be faithful in providing for us. With that being said, we never want to beg or seem desperate for money, but we will be doing various fundraisers to help with these expenses. If you have any neat ideas for a fundraiser, let us know. We are definitely open to suggestions!

If you would like to make a direct contribution to our adoption fund, you may do so using the Paypal link on the sidebar. We greatly appreciate any support (financial or otherwise) you give us during our journey.

Blessings,
Sallie