My Maw-Maw

Per usual in the Gifford house, we've had a busy two weeks. We're in one of the quiet moments of our adoption. We're waiting for interviews to be scheduled, governments to respond, and paperwork to be accepted.  Despite the quite time, we've still been busy.

Last weekend was an emotional weekend. My grandmother, or Maw-Maw as we called her, passed away September 5th. She lived an incredibly rich life full of handwork, family, and love.  She was and amazing woman, and overcame incredible opposition in her life. She had more fight in her, than any woman I will have have the privileged of knowing.

Mary Magdalene Couvillon Rabalais at 18

Funerals and passing are always hard, but it was the celebration of her life that I loved the most.  One of my favorite stories, is actually the story of her birth.  She was born in August of 1931, prematurely, and weight only 2.5 pounds. From this moment, she started fighting. In a rural parish in southern Louisiana, there was no hospital, and no medical care.  A cow was brought over from the neighboring farm, and her incubator was a box with bricks that had been warmed from the fire placed around it. From that moment she never stopped. There are so many stories of perseverance and resilience in this woman life, I wish I could share them all!

She married my Paw-Paw in 1951, and they had a love story for the ages.  My Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw ran a hog farm, and were a team in every sense of the word.  They had a growing family of 6 children, were active in their church community, raised animals and crops, and in the end had a farm that ran smoothly and efficiently because they worked together. I don't know anyone who could have raised 5 boys, and still manage to do everything she did!  They had a marriage and partnership so wonderful. that I can only hope to emulate it in my own life. 

A young Paw-Paw and Maw-Maw

Every summer of my life, until I was around 16, was spent on their farm with my mother and our Cajun family. By the time I came around the farm was no longer working, the land was mostly leased, and life was slowing day.  Despite that, my time spend in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana are the best of my childhood memories.  The loss of such a strong spirit is always hard, and we will probably always feel that little hole in our heart. I was able to go down to Louisiana for the service, and stayed in my Maw-Maw's home.  At first it was a little weird, I could still see her sitting at the kitchen table, or standing by the stove. I can still her saying "Oh Leah" as she said so many time when I was doing something I probably shouldn't have been doing. (Usually it was high kicks in the kitchen, or trying to bring the farm cats inside.) In the end, it was the best source of comfort I ever could have asked for. That home was a source of safety, comfort, and love for me and all of my siblings.  It was a place we would go and just be loved. From my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, and cousins, there was so much love in that home. I am so blessed to grow up with such an amazing sanctuary, and such an amazing family.

I learned so much from this woman and my time spent there.  I will always be grateful for the lessons on hard-work, compassion, teamwork, and love that she taught me.  I could never have asked for a better Maw-Maw. Above all, I can't be more grateful to have such an amazing woman to raise my own mother.  I see so many qualities of my Maw-Maw in my mom.  She has the same drive and compassion.  She has a sense of hard-work and service unlike anyone I've ever known. So thank you Maw-Maw, for not only everything you've done for me, but everything you've done for my mother.  I will never know two more beautiful and strong women in my life.  I hope to one day have children as wonderful as you both have, and to have a home so full of love that you just never want to leave it.

As we are starting our own journey to become parents, I've noticed the effect the amazing women in my life have had.  Become a mother is terrifying, no matter the route you take to become one.  I've started to think about it often.  How can I handle this? How can I learn to put someone else before me at all times? How do I change my entire life? They say its mostly instinct, which I sure hope it is. Lucky for me, I have so many people and places to reach for help.  Not only do I have my Maw-Maw and Mother as amazing examples, There are so many others. My sister, my mother-in-law, and my friends who are already mom's are just some of the people I look up to.  No one is perfect, but from someone on the outside, thank you all for being examples and for being kick-butt women. You have no ideas how much your love, support, encouragement, and advice means to me. 

Welcome to Our Adventure!

Well, the cat is officially out of the bag.  We couldn't hold it in any longer, and it was time to share.  We figured since we had officially been accepted, there was no time like the present!

A huge thank you to my sister for making this photo happen.  I had jumble of ideas for announcements, and she just saw through my madness and put this together.  She even took the picture for us!

I'm sure a lot of you who are just joining us have a lot of questions. If you go back to one of my first posts, there is a little Q&A, though i'm going to answer a few more.  I love getting to talk about this adoption.  We are so excited to start our family, and the more we get to talk about it, the more real it feels.

Here are just a few basic questions, that I would be asking if I were you:

Why international adoption?

When we first starting considering adoption, we put everything out and decided what fit best with our family.  We are very lucky to have the means to adopt internationally. No, we don't have tons of money, but we do have very supportive jobs that are willing to give us the time off needed for the lengthy amount of time you need to be gone in international adoption. In addition, working for a major airlines has its perks.  We're lucky that part of my benefit package includes positive space travel for all adoption needs.

Why Hungary?

We kind of did the same thing as above.  Once we had settled on international, we looked at all the countries, and found out we didn't even qualify for most of them.  You'd be surprised how picky they can be! For example, we weren't eligible for China, because i'm under 30, most other Asian and South American countries wouldn't accept us because Cory takes anti-depressants, I didn't personally agree with some of the ethics of adoption from Ukraine, and Uganda has wait times of over 4 years.  There are so many other countries out there, that i'm not even mentioning! Eventually we had it narrowed down to India, Poland, and Hungary.  We knew we wanted a younger child, and we knew we wanted a child with "corrective or minor disabilities."  This was a big factor in narrowing it down to these countries.  In the end, we turned to prayer and endless research.  We learned most children adopted from Hungary are of Romani Descent.  If you aren't familiar with the Romani people or the struggles, I highly suggest looking it up.  This did play a factor in our decision.  Another one of the big factors was that the country requires an extended bonding period.  You are required to spend at least 30 days with the custody of your child, until the adoption can be finalized.  We loved the idea of getting an entire month of nothing but bonding and learning about each other.  Most families never get an uninterrupted opportunity like that!

Baby or Child? Boy or Girl?

Adopting internationally means the opportunity to have a baby isn't realistic.  The Hague Convention, put in place by the united nations in 2014 greatly regulated the way adoptions are run around the world.  It's a great program that helps to fight child trafficking and unethical adoptions.  Because of this, for a child to be adopted internationally, all reasonable resources must be taken to have the child adopted in country. Children under one year are never eligible, and children under 24 months are rare.  We are open to any child, or sibling groups under the age of 4. As for as gender, we have no preference as long as they get to become ours. Though from Hungary, over 85% of the adoptions are of boys. 

How long will it take? 

We really have no idea how long it'll take, but for now our guess is around a year.  We are announcing it early, because we need all the love and support we can get.  We're still in the beginning, and it's been full of highs and lows.  We love getting to include our friends and family in the planning and everyday of the adoption process.  Plus, if our little blog helps even one person trying to make the same decisions some day, it has been a success. 

What comes next?

Our current tasks are to finish up on our home study, and getting our dossier prepared to be sent to Hungary for translation. In the mean time, we will be doing tons of fundraising and applying for grants. (The total cost of international adoptions is around $40,000, which sadly we don't have) If anyone has great fundraiser ideas, feel free to let us know!  Once our dossier is submitted and accepted, its between a 2-24+ month waiting period for a referral. Since we are both young and have no other children, we're hoping our referral period will be no more than a year.  Once we have a referral, and we have accepted it, we have about a month until we travel.  from there we will spend just under 2 months in Hungary, and then we head back home.  Once we step into the U.S. as a family of 3 (or maybe even 4) our entire family will be U.S. Citizens. 

If you every have any questions about our adoption process, what we've struggled with, and what led us to our decisions, feel free to drop them in the comments or sent them to us privately.  Like I said, we love to talk about it and want you all included in our story.  Just like the old saying, says "It takes a village!" 

Reasons to Celebrate

 August 30th, is always a special day in our house.  It's this hansom man's birthday!

32 never looked so good!

Usually, I like to have birthdays be big events; Cake, tons of food, going out all day, and just an all day party! Well, poor Cory this year had more of a low key birthday.  We had super fallen behind on our adoption paperwork. After we got back from Berlin, we went strait back to work. On my 2 days off for the rest of the month, we found out my grandmother was sick and I ended up in Southern Louisiana on my only days off.  Because of all of this, Cory's birthday was spent running around getting our last minute paperwork done.  We started at the doctors office getting physicals, followed by state finger printing, and rounded it out with our FBI fingerprinting.

We were just finishing up with our final (for now) round of finger printing, and I was bragging to person doing the fingerprint that we were FINALLY done with our home study paperwork.  I was so excited, it was so much work, and I was done! Just as we were paying, and getting ready to head out, we both received emails at the same time. We opened it, and were in for a nice surprise.

We are official!  We have been accepted into our agency's Hungary program, and we are 1/4 of the way through our home study.  The best part about it though? We now have even more paperwork to do! Silly me for being excited that the first round was done.  Though, the real exciting part about this round of paperwork, is it is a lot of stuff that will get set directly to Hungary with our Dossier.  Every day this gets more and more real.

when we woke up the morning of the 30th, I told Cory 32 will be the best year yet.  After getting to celebrate both him and our adoption on the same day, I think it's safe to say i'm going to be right. Be on the lookout for an official announcement soon!