Adoption- let the journey begin!!
By now most of our friends and family know that we are in the process of Adopting a baby.  (If you did not get our email/letter, we sincerely apologize as we tried to cover everyone).
We are So excited to be beginning this new journey, and we look forward to the day that we are able to bring a little one into our home.  There is SO much to learn through this process, and it can be overwhelming at times, but we are taking it one step at a time.
We have been asked many questions about our adoption, so I thought I would list the facts that we know as of now:
1. We are adopting from a private Adoption Facilitator located in Northern CA.
2. We will be adopting an new born, and will most likely be present at the birth
3. Our adoption facilitor works with birth moms from all 50 states
4. From what we have heard most families working with this organization adopt within a year.
5. We will be adopting either a boy or girl, Caucasian or Caucasian mixed.
6. We are open to twins and sibling groups
7. The birth moms will see our profile, and if she likes us she will ask to speak with us.  If she chooses us, and if we feel like it is a good match for us, then we will have a match and go from there.
8. Birthmoms are only accepted into the program when they are at least 20 wks along in their pregnancy.  They work with the birth moms very closely, and thus the "reclamation rate" is very low for this company. (4-5% as opposed to 20-30%).  Reclamation is when the mother changes her mind after a match is made.
9. In Ca, birth moms have 30 days to change their mind.  In some other states they have 36-78 hrs to change their minds.
10. The facilitator we are working with very rarely deals with birth moms who have drug and alcohol abuse issues.

That is about all I can think of at the moment... did I miss anything?   Please ask if there is something I missed!

Shortly after we sent out our adoption announcements we learned from our adoption facilitator that there were multiple benefits if we were to get our adoption started in the month of December.  The benefits to us were so great, that we felt that God was giving us the go-ahead to get our total payment in, and get a jump-start on the process.  With fear and excitement we took the leap of faith.
One of the main reasons we chose to jump start the process was in hopes that we will be able to take advantage of the Federal Tax Credit/Refund in 2011.  The credit is a very significant amount for 2011 if we are able to finalize an adoption in 2011.  The credit may be cut by half or cease to exist in 2012, and that is why we are doing all we can to get the ball rolling... the rest is up to the Lord.  (More later on what you can do to support the Adoption Tax Credit that George W. Bush worked so hard for!)  We are very busy getting our profile together and the MOUND of paperwork for our home study. (more on that to follow...)

In our Christmas letter we did mention donations to the Adoption Fund through Lifetime (our facilitator).  As we stated, for any donations made, they (Lifetime) will deduct that amount from our total expenses.  They only allow a limited amount that is donated to be deducted.  After we sent out our Christmas letter we found out that during the last two weeks of December Lifetime Adoptions (our facilitator) increased the total amount we were able to donate to the foundation, (and thus have deducted).  We decided to take advantage of this.  When we paid our adoption expenses we chose to go ahead and donate the total limited amount they allowed for donations/deductions.  This means that the Foundation was able to receive more, and we were able to have more deducted. Any future donations (which can be sent to us directly) will essentially go back into our adoption fund for future adoption expenses such as attorney fees and travel expenses.  I hope that makes sense!!  We sincerely did not want to confuse anyone or mislead anyone who may be interested in donating.  We are blessed beyond measure by the opportunity we have to adopt, and we are extremely humbled by our friends and family who have shown us so much love and support. Thank you!!!  Please let us know if you have any questions as we want our friends and family to be "in the loop" as much as possible.  We will do our best to answer as we figure it all out!