A Great Day!

Today was the day that we knew our final home study visit was scheduled.  We knew that it was going to consist of our final one on one interviews and a tour of the house.  I had heard from other people going on the same journey we are that the final interviews were more questions to answer.  I came home on my lunch hour and sat at the dining room table and was prepared to answer the tough questions.  Turns out, that I just had to answer a few questions about how old people in my family work, what their occupations were and things like that.  The list of questions were pretty easy and painless to answer and within about 30 we were all done.  She told us that we would have our first draft of our home study tomorrow and it will be sent on to the next people to be finalized by the end of the month!

As I was heading back to work I decided to go check the mail box.  It was full of a lot of stuff.  There were a lot of envelopes that looked the same.  I pulled them out and found that their was one for every person in our house  2 sets of 5 envelopes.  I opened them up and found that our Passports had arrived in the mail today.  This is HUGE because now we can start the process of filling out our Dossier which goes to L@tvia!

Just a reminder to check out our fundraiser page for Mary Kay, Pampered Chef, 31 gifts, Disney Vacations, or oh ANYTHING from Amazon.com

Grateful!

Caden waiting for the next pizza to work on!

Today we had the pleasure of being a part of a "Take and Bake Pizza" Fundraiser that was done through Treasured Adoptions support group.  It was great to see all of the support for us as well as the three other families that are in the process of adopting.  I was the delivery boy for the pizzas that were ordered through us.  When I walked into the kitchen it was an awesome sight seeing the generosity of everyone offering their time to help make this fundraiser possible.  Caden and Libby were excited to help assemble the pizzas and were a big help.  We were also blessed this morning by two separate  families that chose to help us bring him home.  We are truly grateful and humbled.

Libby getting ready to put on some pepperoni

Tomorrow is our final home study visit.  This visit consists of one on one interviews and.  a tour of our house.  After tomorrow we will be waiting for the first draft that will be produced from all of the questions that we previously answered in our paperwork as well as the answers from our interviews.  We are excited to get through this part of the process and onto the next stage.

Shop Amazon, Consider using our Link

This morning we set up a new way to help support our adoption.  If you access Amazon.com through our link.  They will pay us 4% of your purchase.  Our link directs you directly to Amazon.com however it has a tracking code in it that associates it with our account.  If you are purchasing anything through Amazon please consider using our link.  Your cart must be empty when clicking our link or we will not get credit for your purchase.  Click the ad below and bookmark it!

Final Home Study Visit Scheduled

Today we were able to schedule our final home study visit which is a big deal.  That means that we are coming down to the end of our home study.  The final home study visit consists of one on one interviews to help fill in the gaps in our answers and the answers of our references.  She will also take that time to tour our house and perform the safety inspection.  The final thing that we had to do was to take two different online course.  

We are now in a waiting game as we wait for our passports to be processed so that we can begin the dossier process.  We are just behind another couple that is on the same journey that we are.  (You can follow their journey here: http://warrior-home.blogspot.com/)  They have let us know what is ahead of us.  Guess what, its more paper work, however we can not get that started until our passports get back to us!  

If you haven't noticed that we have added a page where we could consolidate all of our fundraisers.  Feel free to browse all of our different fundraisers.  We will be adding things as different fundraisers become available.  We currently have Pampered Chef, Thirty-One, Mary Kay and Disney vacation options.

Round 1 paper work is DONE!!!

We have been poked and prodded, late nights answering questions and now the home study paperwork is finally finished.  It is a complete load off of our backs.  We finished it this evening and emailed it off  to our social worker.  many people have asked where we are in the process.  We have had two visits from our home study social worker.  After she reviews our paperwork she will schedule our final interviews so that she can fill in the gaps and any holes that she finds in our home study.  She will then put everything together and have a picture of our lives and home so that the State of Illinois knows that we are fit to adopt.

Tomorrow, we will kick off a couple of fundraisers.  You can check them out on our Fundraiser page by clicking here!  We have had consultants offer a percentage of the proceeds to help fund our adoption.  If you are looking for Pampered Chef, Thirty-One, Mary Kay, or even a Trip to any Disney Property head on over and check it out!

How is it going?

How is it going?  That is a question that I have been asked quite a bit lately.  I will say at this point it is pretty tiring.  We have been spending nights working on paper work trying to get it done as quickly as possible.  It seems as though the questions will not end.  We are slowly working our way through them.  Two weeks ago we had our first Homes Study visit.  It went very well and Linda and I both liked the social worker that we will be working with throughout the process.  She came and sat down at our dinning room table and pulled out a big thick folder with about 2 inches worth of paper in it.  At that point my heart sank.  I thought "How are we supposed to get through all that paper work?".  Fortunately that was just reading material.  The other stack that was about 3/4 of an inch was the actual paper work.  I thought to myself "That's no problem, we will knock that out in no time!".  Little did I know that in that stack of paper lay every thing anyone ever wanted to know about me or even think they want to know about me.  As you can imagine that smaller stack did not turn out to be as quick and painless as I would have liked, however we are moving through it.  Today  was a very productive day for us.

Yesterday Linda and I went to the post office to give them our passport applications.  Its official, they have been turned over to the Government and we should be getting them back in 4-6 weeks according to the website that appeared to be updated daily.  After lunch we all loaded up to get our pre-adoption physicals.  That turned out to be pretty painless and was another thing that we were able to check off our list.  It is fun marking stuff off.

Today was our second home study visit.  This visit contained all of the training that is required by the State of Illinois in order for us to adopt.  It was a pretty long day however it was much less painless than I thought it was going to be.  We turned some papers into our social worker and she gave us some back.  Below is a picture of the paper that we have received to this point minus the 20 or so pages that we signed and gave to her today!

Many people have asked if there is anything they can do to help.  Honestly the first and probably the most important thing we could ask of you is to pray.  Please pray for us through this process, that we are able to get everything accomplished in a timely fashion.  Also pray for him as he does not yet know that we are traveling down the path to bring him into our family forever.  We have estimated the costs of the adoption being between $35,000 and $39,000.  The range of the estimate is due to the three trips overseas that are part of the overall costs and those costs fluctuate.  As you can see above we are on our way financially to bringing him home.  We had no idea what God had in store for use when we chose him out of a photo listing last fall.  We did not think that we would be led down this path.  With that being said, we have not been saving up for the day that we could one day adopt a child. We were able to come up with $15,000 of our own money to get the process going.  To date we have had $5125 donated to our effort to bring him home. It is very difficult for us to ask for this financial assistance but we know that we will not be able to bring him home on our own.  If you would please consider making a tax-deductible gift on our behalf to help offset the cost of our adoption.  Click here to contribute online or by mail. Please specify in the designation box that the gift is for the Ryan and Linda Henry Adoption Fund, doing so will insure that it goes into our account.

Susan Dack if a Mary Kay consultant that we met during our host training.  She has offered 100% of the proceeds of any order that has "Henry" in the "Promo or Event Code" box.  There is a $5 shipping charge for every order.  If you wish to order from her you can do so by clicking here!

We will also be having a Pampered Chef online party as well during the month of march, so you can stay tuned for that.

Thank you all again!

GOOD NEWS!

We got news this morning.  He is cleared for international adoption!  God is keeping the door open so we are happily and thankfully going through it.   What a great start to a Monday morning.  We start our home study tomorrow.  Please join us in prayer for papers, finger prints, and legal "stuff"  to all move fast and smoothly.  As of now it looks like we will be hosting our sweet little man this summer for 5 weeks.  We are hopping to travel this fall to his country to make him part of our family FOREVER...    Thank you for all the prayers and support!