A Test of Faith

I know we've been quiet, way too quiet for an adoption blog.  If you saw our facebook post, you'd see our big news.  We're pregnant!   It has been a rollercoaster of emotions, both positive and negative.  You have all been so supportive of us, and given us so much love and encouragement, I wanted you all to know exactly whats going on.  This post will be long, and probably unnecessary, but just as it a chance for you to catch up on our lives, it's my chance to use this as a little therapy.  So we'll start at the very beginning...

About a month ago life was as usual.  We were anxiously awaiting our i800-A to be processed for adoption, we were working hard and saving money, and nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening.  I had just come home from working a 3 day trip.  It was the most exhausting trip of my life.  It was a great trip, a prime piece of scheduling that my seniority should hold, but I was just so tired the whole time.  I found myself drinking a red-bull a day, and getting nausea from breath mints.  I didn't think much of it.  The next morning I was home and got a notification on my phone that my cycle was a week late.  We've been struggling with infertility for so long, this is a pretty normal occurrence.  A week lake, a week early, whatever.  We've been told by doctors we would never be pregnant without some type of fertility assistance.  Just to be safe, I pulled out an old pregnancy test from under the sink.  This sucker was strait from china, at least 2 years old, and more than a little sketchy.  I had taken dozens of them in the past.  For the first time every, there was  faint pink line.  I went strait into panic mode.  Poor Cory was in the shower.  I stared at him and all I could get out was "I need help reading this."  Poor guy had no context, and probably thought I had gone temporarily blind.  He took his sweet time in the shower, and walked out to a wave of emotions.  We both stared at it.  I fell into a crying puddle on the floor.  Why now? Why after we worked so hard for our adoption? So many things ran through my head.  In the end, Cory had to go to work, and we decided not to place too much faith in a an old, cheap, pregnancy test. Cory then leave for work, and I'm stuck in the fetal position on the floor wondering whats happening to my life. Everything I had been planning for the last year, and had come to know as my truth, had just been turned upside down.

I eventually pulled myself off the floor, went to Walgreens and bought a legitimate pregnancy test and a chocolate milk, and headed to my sisters.  I had texted her with a simple "I'm having a life crisis, can I come over?"  Little did she know what was about to walk through that door.  I just couldn't be alone.  I was so scared.  I finally had the courage to take that test again, and sure enough in big bold letters PREGNANT.  Everything I thought I knew about my life and my body changed in an instance.  I had come to terms with never being pregnant.  I was no longer bitter at everyones pregnancy announcements.  I was so excited to become a mom this summer, and knew that adoption was the way it was going to happen. How could we feel so strongly about adoption, just to have this happen?  In the the end, poor Cory got the news through a picture message of a positive pregnancy test.

We knew when we signed on with our adoption agency that we agreed to place our adoption on hold if we were to become pregnant.  We didn't really think much about it when we signed the papers.  At that time, we knew it wasn't going to be us that had to deal with it.  So although being pregnant is exciting, we knew it meant a loss of the other child we were waiting for. We both agreed we would tell our adoption agency once we were 12 weeks along.  That should have put it right around when our immigration clearances would be coming back.  I will always feel guilty at how unexcited I was to find out i was pregnant.  Something I had wanted for so long, something so many other women dream of and never get, and here I was, wishing the timing could be anything but now.  We were able to get into the doctor that day.  I was so nervous. They confirmed it though, and we tried to move forward, to get excited about this new life.

The next day, we decided to get out of the house, go look at baby stuff, get excited.  It was a great day.  We looked at all kind of things, and started daydreaming and thinking about what it would be like to have a newborn in our home.  When we came home, we went to check the mail like normal.  Sitting in our mailbox was a letter for The Department of Homeland Security.  Our fingerprinting for our adoption had been fast tracked, we now had an appointment in only 4 days.  This sent my down a spiral all over again.  We were receiving an appointment for fingerprinting after only a week and half. it should  have taken closer to 4 weeks.  Why did our home study take an extra 4 months, but our immigration was being done in half the time?  It felt like a slap in the face.  It was everything I had wanted.  Everything I hoped and dreamed of for the last year.  I finally had the paper in my hand, and it felt like it meant nothing.  All our hard work towards our adoption, all the sacrifice, all the love we already had for this unknown child.  In the span of two days, my entire world was turned upside down again, and I didn't know how to handle it. I never thought I could feel so much grief for a child I had never met, and knew nothing about.  Eventually I picked myself up, and we went to our immigration appointment.

I was so proud of us.  We drove to the appointment, waited in the lines, and waited for them to call us back while keeping ourselves totally composed.  We knew this wasn't for nothing.  Since we were doing this now, it means that when the time did come to pick up our adoption again at least we would just need fingerprint and immigrations updates, not all new clearances.  We were feeling positive, and finally ready to tackle this. That was, until the immigration officer expressed his excitement for us.  The whole office was excited, they said they didn't get to do these very often.  I managed to hold it together until we got to the car.  It's always the same feelings of why did this adoption feel so right, when something like this was just going to happen?

We managed to move on with life.  I spent most of the time sick, but otherwise things returned to normal.  It wasn't until about a week later we got an email from our adoption agency that our Dossier was officially being mailed to Hungary, and they had already been talking about our family.  It stung a little.  It was one of the emails we had been waiting for.  We tried to think past it.  We wanted to wait until the 12 week mark to tell them, just in case something went wrong.  They still had to mail the paperwork to Hungary, and input it into the system.  We figured we had time, and we just weren't ready to tell them yet.  We stashed it aside and thought "just a few more weeks and we'll tell them."  Little did we know, we would never get to wait.  They'd know sooner than we wanted.

Two days after we were told they had been discussing our family, we received another email.  It was a pre-referral for a child.  Essentially, they were seeing if we would be interested, and if we were, once our documents were in country we would be sent an official referral.  This email was the email we had prayed for for over a year now.  It had a real child in it, a child that could be our child.  The one we've prayed for and dreamed of.  I couldn't even open the email.  I called Cory at work, and all he said was "yeah, I got it too."  We decided to open it, and it was full of pictures of this vibrant little girl.  Her name is Jazmin, and she will be 3 at the end of May.  She was perfect.  We had been told the chances of adopting a girl were slim, but it's what we always wanted, and here she was.  She was real and she needed a family.  She had a heart defect, but was at her age level developmentally.  She loved to music and singing, and she also did gymnastics.  She was everything we had dreamed of.

At that point we knew we had to tell our agency, but what about this little girl?  Could we do both? Would they let us do both?  It was such a big decision. We decided to take the weekend to figure it out.  I knew I wanted to come to our agency with a "we're pregnant, and we need to place it on hold" or a "we're pregnant, but we'd like to move forward."  I never thought my life would be faced with a such a hard decision.  How do you decided what is best for your family?  We knew we had a baby coming in December, but could our family also be set to have a 3 year old coming in August?  We had no idea what to do.  I have never felt more lost in my life.  That night, we went to bed, and I just couldn't sleep.  I just laid there, crying.  I decided to get up and go into the living room, but it just felt too big.  I tried the office, and it was just too bright.  I eventually settled in the room that we had already started setting up to be our child's room.  It has a twin sized bed, bedding, and toys.  I had been strategically avoiding this room for weeks now, it was just too hard to look at.  For some reason that night, it gave me so much comfort.  At that time, all I could think to do was turn to prayer.  I had hit what seemed like rock bottom, and I needed help climbing back up.  We had been using under the bed as storage, and it just so happened that there was an old set of scriptures in there.  You know, those old sets you used during seminary in high school.  It's filled with notes, quotes, and overall super beat up.  I was thumbing through them looking for anything.  Any sort of wisdom that could make this all hurt less.  Anything that could help us make this decision.  I eventually stumbled to Luke 1:37 "For with God nothing shall be impossible."  This verse is what is told to Mary when she is told she will bear the son of god, and that her cousin Elisabeth would also conceive a son, despite her old age.  I've read that scripture a million times.  It's even highlighted and underlined in this set of scriptures, but it had never meant more to me than it did now.  I finally found peace, and was able to sleep.  I slept right there in the bed that was set aside for a child, until around 3am, when I finally made it to my own bed.

The next morning Cory had to work early, leaving just around the time i was getting into bed.   I woke up with a text from him saying that he had decided to check in the kids rooms before he left for work, and saw my scriptures laying open there. He read the scripture as me and reached the same decision.  We needed to attempt to bring this girl into our home. We have been learning that faith in God, means faith in his timing. 

We drafted our email, explained everything.  How we felt, how early we were in our pregnancy, what we thought timelines would be like, and we sent it to them.  We knew at this time, that we had made the right decision and it was no longer in our hands.  We felt good about it, and new that no matter what way this came out, we still ended up a with a child.  We expressed to them that we knew any decision they make would be for the child and our families benefit. We sent it out to them, and we waited.  Finally, on Monday afternoon we heard from our Agency.  They Congratulated us on our pregnancy, and assured us they see this kind of thing happen all the time.  The reminded us of their policy, but said they would take it to their committee and talk to our social worker about it.  Our social worker has been awesome.  I immediately shot her an email, and she was quick to respond.  She expressed her excitement for us, and she fully supported us.  She thought the little girl would be perfect for our family, and said she would advocate for us as best as she could. Now I was starting to get excited! Could this really happen? We talked to our agency again, and they said we should have an answer by Thursday.  We waited, and we waited, and waited.  All of a sudden Friday is here, and still no answer.  We email them, and they let us know that they've all met and discussed, but they've decided to take it to the Childrens Ministry of Hungary, and get their take on it.

Each country you adopt from has a different set of laws and regulation that pertain to the adoption of children.  Hungary has a very strict rule, that the child must be the youngest child at time of adoption.  They are very strict on birth order, as studies show that children thrive best when their current birth order is respected.  We didn't think much of it.  We'd bring her home in August, and have a baby in December.  Sure, it's not a ton of time, but we felt confident that it wouldn't be a problem.  We knew it would be hard, but we knew even more that it would be worth it.  However, once we heard that they had got the country involved, we felt an overwhelming sense of dread.  Things were starting to feel impossible.  We knew it wasn't in our hands, and what was going to happen, is what was supposed to happen.  We knew we had made the decision we felt we needed to, and God had a bigger plan for us.  We knew the correct plan for our family would be delivered to us.

I am so grateful that we had plans to visit my best friend that weekend.  We had planned it even before we knew we were pregnant.  We thought it would be our last trip to see Marissa and Cody before our adoption went through, so we were even staying a day longer than usual.  I left for the trip feeling like if they said no to our adoption it would destroy me, and I came home feeling very understating that what was going to happen would happen, and there were positives for both.  Spending the weekend with the two of them and their 6 month old, Oliver, was amazing.  We spent a lot of time just being together.  Getting to spend it with their perfect baby, made me more excited to get to do things with our future baby.  Marissa and I took Oliver swimming for his first time.  It was the most adorable thing in the world.  Getting to be there for one of his first meant so much to me, and it reminded me that we soon would get to do all these first.  It wasn't how we had imagined our family would start, but we were still starting a family.  I can't explain why, but after our weekend with them I felt ready for their answer.  No matter what the outcome was.

Fast forward to the next Wednesday, and we finally had our answer.  Because of the laws on birth order in Hungary, they would not allow us to bring Jazmin home.  We expected it to come, but it was still like a punch to the gut.  We knew that at this time, there was nothing else we could do.  Our adoption journey was officially on a hold. I sobbed as we signed the official paperwork. We know in our hearts that adoption is still the correct path for our family, our timing just must have been a little off.  We have not given up on our adoption. We have some great people in our corner fighting for us.  Our social worker here in Arizona has made sure we're eligible to adopt any child in the U.S., and are eligible for the foster system.  Our adoption agency has agreed to hold our funds for 2 years.  We may not be able to get back into the Hungary program because of their birth order laws, but we know there are so many other countries out there.  We are already considering Bulgaria and India. Our currently plan is to re-address our adoption in exactly one year from today.

This has been the hardest thing we have ever done.  In the span of a month we have been overjoyed, terrified, grief stricken, and excited.  We've had to make decisions, and receive answers we never thought we would have to. This entire thing has been an incredible test of our faith.  Our entire life plan has made a 360 degree turn, and we're still trying to adjust from that. I've asked had to ask "why now?" about a million times during this process.  We are so excited to be having a baby, but are still mourning the loss of our other child that we felt was ours too.  I've never had a miscarriage, but I can imagine it feels a lot like this.  Losing someone you hadn't known yet, but already had such big hopes and dreams for, and so much love for.  We know our adoption journey isn't over with this, it's just taking a little detour.  When i was telling a family member about everything, they said something that really stuck with me.  She said "If you already would have had a baby, would you ever had pursued adoption?"  I had to really think about it, and honestly said "probably not."  She replied, "Then maybe this is gods way of making sure you bring home your child that's out there, your timing is just a little off."  I don't know why, but I haven't been able to shake that.  I know we will adopt.  We probably never would have considered it if  we already had a biological child.  Now that our hearts have been given to adoption, we can never get them back.  We don't know what are next step will be.  It may  be picking up our international adoption, it may be a domestic adoption, or it may be the foster system.  We just know that our foundation is in place to bring home ALL our children, it just might take a little longer than we expected.

Fedex is my new best friend!

I can't explain it, but for some reason 2018 has been the fasted, and the slowest moving year ever.  February was the longest month of my life, followed by march that I think was only one week long.  We still still feel like we spend most of our days in flux.  Trying not to make too many permanent plans for later in the year and being cautious about getting our hopes up and setting time lines, and wanting to make every plan and buy everything that we could for our future family.

This past week, we finally got the news we have been waiting for.  The Pinal county courts have approved our home study! We have spent months waiting for that little stamp on a piece of paper from a judge.  No kidding, it's just a stamp that said "Juvenile courts." We've had a completed home study since January, but now we have a home study that we can actually do something with!  The state has approved us to be adoptive parent's.  Our chance of finding our family will now be put in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security, and the children ministry of Hungary.

On Wednesday we drove into Phoenix to meet with our social worker and pick up our official notarized copies. She told us that the courts actually kicked back our home study twice before they even reviewed it.  She has been so great to work with, and even she didn't understands why every government agency has been against us in getting this finished.  From there, the first thing we did was google "Fedex" and went strait to send copies to to our placement agency so they can send them to be translated, and another copy to USCIS with our I-800a application to get that approval.

In typical google fashion it took us to the most random Fedex ever.  It was actually attached to the airport.  You drove all thew ay around to the shipping side of the airport, and were convinced we were in the wrong place. we timidly walked in, expected to be yelled at by someone official (it shared the same building with boarder patrol, it seemed so official.) only to find the nicest lady ever, and a mostly normal looking Fedex store.  We got everything packaged up, used the Delta shipping discount, and they were both overnighted.  It was the perfect location, because it saved us the travel time from a normal Fedex store to the airport, meaning we were able o overnight for even cheaper! I've never been more excited to hold sealed envelopes.

Both of our packages have already been received.  All of our documents should be getting scanned and sent to Hungary today to be translated, and we're waiting USCIS to generate our fingerprint appointments (for the 3rd time).  We are realistically 6 weeks away from being able to accept a referral for our child or children! We know there is no guarantee of when one will come, but just knowing we're ready for it when the time is right is a huge relief!

Treat Yo Self!

Last week was October 13th, so we all know what that means. It's time to...

If you aren't familiar with the comedic masterpiece that is Parks and Rec, there is no time like the present.  Sit on the couch and binge away.  Then next year, you too can treat yo self.

In honor of the beloved holiday, we decided to treat ourselves by completing our finally home study visit!  We are officially done with things that we have to do for our home study.  All we are doing now is waiting for our social worker to finish writing it, and then we are in the dossier and government clearance phase.

This visit was nice and simple, a whole lot less stressful than the last!  Since our home inspection had been completed the visit before, this was just to talk and interview us, I was able to clean to house in my usually way.  Stuff everything behind a closed door somewhere, and make sure the 10 square feet where we were actually sitting in looks spotless.  We were first interviewed together, and then we each had individual interviews, and then we had another interview together.  The entire visit took almost 4 hours, but everything went smoothly.

When I would read things about home study processes, everyone warned that you'd be putting everything on the table.  They weren't kidding.  Before this interview, I thought we had escaped talking about obscure and past stuff, but I was wrong.  If you are related to us, have no fear, you are probably in our home study somewhere.  We had to go through everything from mental health issues, to drug and alcohol consumption, to people we love that aren't related, and those who will be in contact with our child.  All of these things had to be listed all the way back into our aunts, uncles and cousins.  If you ever decide to do a home study, and you come from a big family like we do, start taking notes now! We also had to individually talk about our experiences growing up.  How our parents disciplined us, celebrated us, and taught us.  We had to go over how our views align differently from our parents, and what we want to do differently with our children.  Nothing is harder than trying to explain to someone how you're going to raise and parent your children, when you feel like you know absolutely nothing about being a parent and have never done anything like it before. Though I'm sure all knew parents feel this way!

Believe it or not, one of the hardest questions we were asked was "What do you love about your partner."  It should be simple questions, but we both just stumbled a little.  Cory and I have been together over 8 years, and usually when asked I just say "everything" or if I'm feeling sassy "he pays my bills" but that wouldn't cut it in this case. We tell each other we love each other all the time, and I have no doubt in my mind that he loves me, but having to pick out individual things catches you off guard.  Even harder was having to say these things directly to his face and in front of someone who is essentially a stranger. Once you're out of the wedding and honeymoon stage, life moves on.  You still love each other, but gone are the days of writing vows and explaining to all your friends why your partner is the best person in the world.  It was nice to have to take that time to stop and remember all the things we really do love about each other, for better or for worse.  Above all, I love that I married my best friend.  There are very few people I can be 100% myself with, and he accepts my weird off key singing, excessive number of high kicks, and love of puns.  So I challenge all of you who are married, or in relationships new or old, to force you and your partner to tell each other how much you love them. Even if it means tying them to a chair until they talk.  Not that it's what we had to do or anything.

We are in the finally few months of our adoption journey that require us to "do something."  Once our home study is completed, we can submit for our I-800a which is "application for determined suitability to adopt a child from an international country" which can take a couple months for the government agency to complete.  In the meantime we'll be working on our dossier.  Our dossier includes everything about us.  It's our home study, our reference letters, our income, everything.  Once we have approval through our 1-800a our dossier gets sent to Hungary, translated, and approved.  From there we just have to wait to be matched with our sweet child or children!  It's a slow process, but getting closer and closer everyday.  We can't wait.

When Social Workers Come Calling.

This week has been stressful and irritating, but filled with a huge milestone in our adoption journey!  This week we had our home inspection visit as part of a home study.  A big part of the home inspection is baby proofing your house for a baby that probably wont be there in a year and will probably come as a 4 year old. Here is a list of some typical things we were told would be checked in a home inspection:

• Working smoke detectors on every floor and near child's room
• Covered kitchen trash.
• Evacuation floor plan and emergency contacts visible. 
• Covered outlets
• Medications and vitamins in locked cabinets.
• All cleaning products in locked cabinets, or placed at least 5 feet up
• All soaps, lotions, and shampoos over 5 ounces must be locked up, or placed at least 5 feet up. 
• First aid kit and fire extinguisher easily available
• House clean and free of mold or harmful bacteria. 
• All blind cords and cables wrapped and hanging no more than one foot. 

This is just a small sampling.  It's pretty safe to say that I've been a nervous wreck since the date was set.  We know it was coming, but it didn't get real until we had the date on the calendar.  Lucky for us we live in a newer one story home and don't have a pool. That took out a lot of the others things we would have had to stress about.  I have to give a huge thank you to my mom and sister.  Not only did they help me obsessively decorate (yeah, probably not the best time to do that.) They spent so much of their own time cleaning and making sure my house was safe. I couldn't have done it without them.  

The only other time our home has been this clean, is when we first moved in and it had no furniture in it. 

The day finally came for her to come.  I was still walking around finding things to clean.  I Vacuumed the floors 3 times and started picking up individual cat hairs off of things. I was ready. The visit went really smoothly.  Our cats were even well behaved enough she thought we only had one.  You should have seen her face when we told here there were actually three running around here! It was mostly interviews and a little home tour.  The entire visit took about 2 hours, and we passed. Here are a few tips to help you if you every decide you want to be insane and complete a home study too. 

1. Know where your family lives, where they work, and what their job title is.
• We didn't expect this one.  It sounds simple, but we truely didn't know the job titles or actually locations for work of some of our siblings.  Facebook to the rescue! 
2. Have a snack prepared.
• Our social worker didn't have any of my purchased with love cookies (even gluten free ones!) but Cory and I did.  We had been such obsessive wrecks, we had essentailly starved ourselves. It was nice to have a little something to fill our nervous stomachs
3. Use quirky decor. 



Who wouldn't obsess over these? They're adorable. 

• Maybe this isn't a real tip, but one of the first things she said when she walked in was "Wow, you guys really like Disney." Followed by a "Me too!!"  She then spent a good 10 minutes obsessing over these Disney are postcards my sister helped me put onto canvases. She was even trying to convince us we should sell them for a fundraiser.  Sure, it's not essential to the process, but it was a fun distraction.
4. Don't obsess over showing them all the work you've put in.  
• Our home tour and walk through took literally 5 minutes of the entire visit.  She walked into each room, asked what we used it for, and moved on to the next.  As much as I wanted to follow behind shouting "shake that bookcase, feel how stable!" and "Just try and find the chemicals in the room!" I didn't do it.  Did i feel a little cheated for all the hard work we did, of course.  In the end was it a relief because we were actually short one blind cord wind and I just hoped she wouldn't notice? Of course it was!
5. Relax
• They want to help put children in good homes. They aren't there to stop you, but to help you.  I was so worried about failing our first one, and in reality we just needed to have a few things around the house done. Most of the meeting was just getting to know us more.  So remember to stay calm, and remember, your social worker is on your team!

Now that it's all over, i'm thinking "this isn't too bad." though I definitely wouldn't want to do this again in the near future! We have one more visit scheduled for next week, and we'll be done with our home study.   Despite all of the stress, our social worker left us with great news.  Our home inspection has passed, and we have been approved to bring 1-2 children, between the ages of 0-7 into our home! Just to know that we have taken another huge step in the process makes all the work worth it.  We're hoping for a child that's more toddler age, but now we've been approved to accept a sibling group.  Some days I can barely imagine bringing one child into our home, but the thought of possibly two has me all kinds of excited.  To get to start our own family, while still keeping another together seems like such a beautiful prospect.  In the end, whomever and however many children we get, I know they will be the ones that are perfect for our family!  

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!

Ich bin ein Berliner

It's been a few weeks since an update, and truthfully, not much has happened on the adoption front.  We are still trudging through a mountain of paperwork.  When we first received it, I thought I could tackle it in a week! Boy, was I optimistic.  We have made a good dent in it, just not quite enough to turn it back it.  We're running into the problem that there is just not enough time in the day. We're down to just the paperwork that Cory needs to do.  Between work, school, and keeping himself sane, it just has not happened.  On top of that, we still haven't gotten our FBI clearance or Cory's finger print card done. They are both appointment based, but the only appointments are available Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm.  It's a little hard to make those times when you are also always working! I'm trying not to feel overwhelmed and impatient, but those are just two emotions I'm great at!  I have a new goal to get all the paperwork finished by this time next week, and all of our clearances started by the next.

Now, I really shouldn't complain about it taking us so long to finish this stuff up.  We did get to take and amazing week off playing tourist, avoiding responsibilities, and just having fun. Last week we spent a beautiful 5 days in Berlin, Germany.

The Brandeburg Tor

We had been planning this trip pretty much since the day we got married.  This trip has actually been planned 3 separate times.  The first time was after we had been married a few years.  We were going to use buddy passes from my brother (I didn't work for an airline yet), go through Paris, and take an amazing adventure. With that one, life got in the way. We went to Disneyland a bunch, and ended up buying a house a few years later.  Last year year we had the entire trip planned including hotel, rental car,  and train tickets booked.  We were scheduled to fly standby into Amsterdam, and take a train to Berlin. Everything was perfect and set to go. That is until 5 days prior I fell down the stairs at work and broke my foot in 5 places. Not my smoothest move, and the trip got shelved again.  Last summer my airline had a total meltdown.  It was a disaster. Crews and passengers were stranded for days, people will sleeping in airports, and flight attendants were getting lost in the system; stranded for days at a time.  As a thank you, the company gave all employee's positive space passes (real, free tickets) to anywhere we fly.  A few months after that, they announced we were going to start a direct route to Berlin just for the summer. It was a sign! A few months after that we booked the trip, and painful waited the few months for it to arrive. The wait was worth it!

You might ask though, why Berlin?  Before we were married, Cory served a 2 year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If you aren't familiar with the process, they don't get to pick where they go, and they are in full missionary mode for two full years.  Doing service, proselyting, and spending all of your time teaching the gospel and spending time with members there.

  

Some of the first pictures I saw of Cory before we met where these pictures.  Can you blame me for falling for him?  For as long as I've known him though, he's always spoken so lovingly of his time in Germany.  Don't get me wrong, he often talks about how hard it was, but he still looks back on it fondly.  He has always wanted to go back, and with my work just putting the opportunity in our laps, we couldn't not go. 

It was the trip of a lifetime!  We actually didn't spend much time in areas that he actually served in, so we didn't get to meet any people he knew,but we did get to spend a week playing, exploring, and reminiscing. We did four days throughout Berlin, and a day in Potsdam exploring the old Prussian Palaces. Here are some of my favorite pictures. 

Sanssouci Palace

The Reichstag Buidling

Sanssouci Guest Home

The East Side Gallary

The Berlin Zoo

The Pergamon Museam

The Siegessaule

Inside Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

Checkpoint Charlie

The Berlin Cathedral

The Berlin Wall at East Side Gallery

 I'm already ready to go back again.  I don't know what it was about this city, but i'm in love!  I already miss the green landscape, history down every street, affordable Haribo gummies, and most of all the Mezzo Mix. I want to go back and bring an entire suitcase full of the delicious orange coke back to the states with me.  You can still buy Mezzo Mix in the state, but only at World Market.  I want it in every restaurant, and in every vending machine!

#bringmezzomixtotheUSA

While it may have slowed our home study down by a week, I wouldn't trade our week in Berlin for anything.  It was the perfect break, and we needed the time just the two of us.  I hope that one day we can bring our future family back, and get to share a part of something Cory, and now I, love so much!

On Your Mark, Get Set, Paperwork!

It's happening, and it's real.  We are officially in the Home Study phase!

We had our first meeting with our home study agency last Thursday.  Though the meeting almost didn't happen. I always thought the concept of "If you're doing something right, it'll always be hard" was a joke.  Why would something right be hard? Well, This must be the most right thing we've ever done! We had gotten over the problem of choosing domestic or international, and decided on a country through trial and error, and found a country that will let us adopt with depression, we thought it would be smooth sailing.  It turns out my job had other ideas.  

Now, you know we live in Phoenix, but what's fun is I actually work out of Salt Lake City.  The airline I work for doesn't have a base in my state.  Luckily this job does come with some great benefits and the ability to commute across the country if you need to.  It's all done on our own time, and it's our responsibility to have a place to stay in the base, and get there on time.  So next time you complain about your 40 mile commute, remember mine is 670 miles.

Of course our meeting was scheduled for the day after I got done working.  Usually, no big deal.  Oh no, this time it was different.  My trip ended up changing, and I ended up getting done too late to catch a flight home. I was a complete mess.  Thank goodness for an amazing crew who kept the trip fun, calm, and helped me see that it wasn't all hopeless. After a night in the airport, I luckily was able to catch a very early morning flight home on another airline.  I landed just in time to drive the hour home and pick Cory up, then head right back to the adoption agency.  Turns out the agency was right next to the airport!

Meeting with our social worker for the first time was great.  She was calm, focused, and laid everything out for us.  She went over the home study process, and made sure we knew all of our options.  We once again discussed the prospects of switching to infant domestic adoption, and she was a great resource for finding out how it really works.  We still feel very strongly about going internationally even though it costs us more, and means we will adopt a toddler instead of and infant. It felt good to talk it all out with someone that didn't know us, or what we've been over so far. Now we are getting down to business, and there is a lot of work ahead of us. The first step in all of this is a ridiculous amount of paperwork! I was expecting it, and I knew it was comings, so I had my binders and dividers ready to go!

I never thought i'd be so proud of a binder.  I am not the most organized person, and this little book is my pride and joy!  Now we are in the process of getting our fingerprint and FBI clearance, filling out monster amounts of paperwork, and getting our certifications of health.  I was mentally prepared for all of the paperwork, but I was not prepared for what was actually required in the paperwork.  In addition to the regular financial, work, and basic lifestyle questions, we have some other fun ones to answer.  Here is a sample of some of the harder ones:

• What age of your childhood did you like most, and why?
• Growing up, how did members of your family show happiness/love/frustration/stress/etc.
• What was the main reason you married your partner?
• what would you most like to change about your partner? what would they most like to change about you?
• How important will grades and school performance be for the children in your home?
• How do you handle privacy and nudity in your home?
• How will you discipline you children?
• What do you think will be your least favorite part of parenting?

The questions just go on, and on, and on, from there.  Some of the ones that are hardest to answer, are all about being a parent.  It's hard to imagine how you'll parent when you've never been faced with it before! For now, we do a lot of googling, and a lot of asking our families what they would do in a situation. 

Our current task is to get this all finished, and in about a week we will apply to our placement agency to start our dossier and USCIS approval! We're estimating about 3 months to finish our home study, and once that's done less than a year until we have a referral for a child! It's still a long ways away, but getting closer with ever piece of paper we fill out!

Wish us luck, and please send help if we drown under all this paperwork. 

The Best News Comes From Disneyland

“To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here, age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.”

Alright, you get it. We love Disneyland.  I'm sure you're ready to get back on track. This is an adoption blog for heavens sake! I promise, this is all going somewhere. 

Since we established that so much of our story started at Disneyland, let me add that so many big things happened in our life there. From getting good or bad news, to life events, Disneyland for us is more than just thrills, turkey legs, and long lines. 

Here are a few of the snapshot of our Disneyland memories:

March 20, 2010. Cory proposes in front of sleeping beauties castles.  He asks me "if you could wish for one thing, what would it be?" I of course respond with "a cat" right before he gets down on one knee.  Lets just say I got something better than a cat (and later still ended up with 3 of them).  We then call our families to tell them the news while waiting in line for The Matterhorn.

May 02, 2011.  While walking around in the park, we hear the news that Osama Bin Landen was killed.  I know, a weird thing to put here, but it's one of those things we'll always remember. 

February 2013.  Not only do I survive life with a dark brown pixie cut, I get to celebrate getting my dream job as a flight attendant with Skywest Airlines.  I fly home early for training, and my hair eventually grew. 

January 2014.  Just one year later, while we are walking to the park from our hotel, I get a phone call from Delta Air Lines recruiting that I've been selected to do a face to face interview with them. Moving to a mainline airline would mean better pay, international trips, and more flexibility in my chosen career.  I again have to cut the trip short a day and go home before everyone else.  I land the job, and get the career of a lifetime. 

August 2015.  We attendant our first D23 expo, and are in the room when Bob Iger announces that Disneyland and Disney World are getting Star Wars Lands.  I can't even describe the electricity of being in the room when something big like that is announced.  We are huge Star Wars fans, and are still counting down the days till 2019 when it opens. 

July 17, 2017. While riding Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout, I feel my phone buzz. Minutes before this picture was taken I read the email stating that despite our small issues, Hungary will accept us as adoption prospects!

Yeah, you read that right. We finally have a little more progress into our adoption! We had been waiting to hear back from Hungary about adopting while on anti-depressants and they did not seem to want to get back to us. We had been patiently waiting for a response for almost a week, and when I finally got an email, I thought we would finally have some progress. Turns out all the email told us was that they were forwarding our question to the ministry of children, to really ensure it wasn't an issue.  We were told it'd be at least another week until we heard back from there.  This was the one thing standing between us, and finally starting this processes that could take us years. We had been told to expect it to take a weekend to hear from Hungary, and patience isn't something Gifford's are known for.  Lucky for us, this past weekend was the D23 Expo 2017.  

I LOVE going to D23. It's a crazy, exhausting, exciting, and informative weekend of all things Disney. Disney holds it every 2 years at the Anaheim Convention Center, and it's where they announce all of their new movies, TV shows, video games, theme park changes, and just about everything else.  There are signings, and panels with Disney Legends. It's pretty much a Disney fans dream come true.  We were able to do so much fun stuff, and above all we are able to see a lot of our friends that we don't get to see very often since we moved.  Sure, we had to wake up at 3am to wait in line to be in the standby for the live action panel that didn't start till 10:30am, but we're some of the only people in the world to have seen scenes from Avengers: Infinity War. All in all, the convention proved to be a great distraction. It was the first time in almost a month that I wasn't refreshing my email like a madwomen. It was exactly what I needed. 

On Monday after the convention, we decided to go to Disneyland for a half a day before driving home.  The first thing we did was run over to California Adventures to ride the new ride, Mission Breakout - The ride formally known as Tower of Terror.  I absolutely love the ride.  We had already ridden it our first day, and needed to do it again. Just as Tower of Terror was, the ride is a complete dead zone for cell coverage.  I wasn't expecting an answer till later in the week, so I wasn't worried.  As we were on the ride, catapulting to our doom, I felt my phone buzz.  I didn't think much of it, and so I didn't even bother to check it.  After going through the gift shop, (I'm a gift shop addict. It's not a problem, I could quit if I wanted to!) we went outside and I found the guy with the sign celebrating Disneyland's Birthday.  I chased him down, and when I pulled out my phone, I saw one sentence in an email that will change our life forever. “according to their (the ministry's) reply the family can apply to Hungary”.

Now that we know we can adopt, it's time for more waiting! I know that was the first of many hurdles to jump over, but it was the one we were facing to even get to the starting line. We have an appointment scheduled on the 26th with a home study group, and hopefully we can start that process soon.  Once our home study is done, we can submit our Dossier to Hungary to await a match for a referral for a child! 

From Utah to Disneyland - Our History

As anyone who knows us should know, Disneyland is a huge part of our story.  When I met Cory I was a college freshman, working on my degree in dance education, and mostly failing out of college.  My roommate and best friend has started dating an awesome guy (they're now married), and he set me up with his co-worker. One afternoon over Thanksgiving break, I received a text from an unknown number.  All this message said was "Hey, this is Cody's friend Cory.  Do you know how much a polar bear weighs?" Being the smart alack I am, I of course responded with a perfectly googled measurement of what a polar bears weighs in both pounds and kilograms. Turns out all he wanted to say was, "enough to break the ice!"

We went on our first date the next evening.  If was a night of Kermit the Frog impressions, bonding over our same love of music, our love of Disney and Marvel Comics, and a whole lot of giggling on my part.  We had gone to Temple Square to look at the lights, and were so caught up in everything, he even forgot to feed me dinner.  We ended up staying up till 1am, just talking on the couch in my parents basement.  He scandalously kissed me at the end of our first date, and the rest is history.

                  

Everything was near perfect.  He was kind, hilarious, and had a sweet car. (Honda Elements, always a lady killer.)  There was only one little problem. The summer prior my older brother and his wife had taken me to Disneyland.  I fell in love.  It was the costumes, the music, the food, and the magic.  I felt at home.  I spent my entire first semester in college focused on doing well enough to get into The Disney College Program.  Lucky for me, I was working for Radio Disney at the time as a dancer doing live events and promotions.  It gave me a good reference, and less than a month before meeting Cory I had been accepted into the program.  I was overjoyed, excited, yet still heartbroken to leave this awesome guy that I had fallen in love with in such a short time. We had just over a month before I packed up my Chevy Aveo with my sick collection of pop-punk CD's and headed to Anaheim.  We spend that month practically inseparable, but the time still came to leave.


My college program experience was a unique one.  As I look back on it now, it was some of the best times of my life.  However, if you were to have met me then, you might have thought I hated everything about it. The hours were long, it was my first time living more than an hour away from where I grew up, my roommate could only fall asleep while listing to the score or book on tape for Lord of the Rings, and I was incredibly sick. (I was diagnosed with Celiac disease during my program, which is why it was cut short.) Despite all of that, it was still an amazing experience.  I made awesome friends, went to Disneyland almost every day, and ate too many Churro's to count. If you asked me today if I'd do it all over again, I would automatically give you a big yes!

Working at World of Disney meant awesome tapestry vest, and Deny's trips
 at 3am after the park was asleep for the night.

One of the best parts of working for a Disney park, is the free sign ins for your friends and family.  You're essentially given a certain number of free park tickets every year.  Because of this, Cory was able to come and visit a few times.  Despite us both being huge Disney fans before we ever met, I think our relationship starting with Disney definitely helped add to the craziness. So if you're reading this and think, "these people are insane, why are all their pictures from Disneyland?" You can thank a couple of nerdy college kids, and the Disney College Program.

Brace yourself, another Disneyland post is coming.  

The House That Was Never Built.

It's been almost a year since Cory and I moved to Arizona.  It has been a fun and exciting year. We've had our ups, and our downs. We miss our friends and family back in Utah so badly it hurts some days. However, I wouldn't trade our move for anything in the world.  It's allowed us to grow closer as a couple and be able to more clearly see what we want for our future.  Do you want to know my favorite part though? We get to live just down the road from my sister Angela, her family, and my parents!  My sister and i have always been close, despite there being a 15 year age gap.  Her husband was in the military for the majority of their marriage, and because of that, I very rarely got to see them, or their six kids.  Now getting to live close to them is one of the best things in my life. They're a huge support, and some of our biggest cheerleaders!

Here are some of our adventures so far:

                                        

              This little family of mine, I'm going to let them shine!

When we first moved here, we decided we wanted to live close, but not too close (my parents and sister live in the same circle!). We also knew, if we moved a little farther down the main road, it'd put us about 15 minutes closer to Cory's work.  So, we went about 15 minutes away and bought this perfect one story home.  3 bedrooms, 2 baths, perfect for our hopefully future family.  We were ecstatic.  We had just sold our old home in Utah. When i say old, I mean literally. We put our heart and souls into fixing up that house. It was bittersweet leaving it because we knew it wasn't the house we were meant to stay in forever but so much of our blood, sweat, and tears were in it. 

The happiness of know there was nothing to fix right away!

Now, what most of you don't know, is as much as we love our home, we wished we would have been closer to my family.  A few months ago they opened some new construction lots just across from my parents circle.  Angela and I look at just about every home in the area, it's like a hobby. So it was no surprise when we went in and looked at these.  What was a surprising is some how Cory ended up in there with me the next day, with a contract on a home and me enrolled in real estate school!  We went through and had every upgrade we'd ever want put it. We were excited, my family was excited, I think Bert was even excited!

Flash forward a couple of weeks. The new home had been trenched, I had only one last test to get my real estate license, and we were pre-planning our furniture layouts and decorations.  We're sitting in Olive Garden, enjoying a free meal thanks to a gift card, and Cory says "I think we should start looking into adoption."  Little did he know Angela and I had already been researching adoption for a few weeks.  Everything from domestic, to foster care, to adoptions from Bulgaria and China. We spent the meal in our booth discussing the information I'd found, and realizing it was actually realistic at some time in the future.  Just a few days after the "Olive Garden meal that will go down in history."  We get an email form the lender of our new home.  To our surprise, thanks to my 6th grade math level and a rise in interest rates, we were spending about $300 a month more than we were planning to.  We were shocked, and starting finding a way to afford it.  Yet, one of the first thoughts we both had was "Well, if you don't move, that's 6 months sooner we could start the adoption process."  We let it sit for a while, seeing if there was a way we could have our cake and eat it too. In the end, we had decided the $500+ we would be spending extra a month would be better spend on our future family. For now, we'll stay 15 minutes away from my family, and an extra 15 minutes farther away from target.  I'm still working through which one is sadder.

Watch out, i'm about to get a little spiritual on you. 

Cory has always been a huge believer in, "if it's meant to happen, it'll happen."  I've always struggled with this a little more. I'm more of a doer.  However, in this case, I think that's exactly what it was.  I think there were reasons we jumped the gun on a new house.  Yes, we will lose our $500 of earnest money, but in the grand scope of things, that doesn't seem like too much.  What it did give us, is my second career.  When we started talking about adoption, the biggest problem was the cost.  We're hoping I can find a good broker, and become a real estate agent while balancing my flight attendant career.  If I can manage it, 100% of the funds made from real estate can go towards our adoption.  I truly believe going into there, going to school, and the timing was all part of gods plan.  It was always a small comfort when talking about adoption that he was a chance of back up funds from real estate. Even though I'm not quite to having my license, just know there is a chance of the extra income is so comforting. I still can't explain it, but for one of the first time in our lives, it feel like we're on the right track. Like we're moving in the right direction.  Maybe the reason we haven't been able to have kids on our own is because we already have kids out in the world, we just don't know yet that they're supposed to be part of our family. All we need to do is find him/her or them to make our family complete. 

Oh, and if you know anyone needing to buy or sell a home in Arizona, I'm your girl!

And that's the story about how we almost bought a new house!