Yes, the rumors and excited comments from my children are true...we are planning to adopt again! This post will mark the beginning of what I hope to be a new legacy of blogging about our family and I am thrilled and excited to embark on this new chapter of our family story. It was a long process that led us to this place and it all started with a simple ad on craigslist for a fundraising yard sale.

     There was an adorable young family that was planning to adopt a child with special needs. It caught my eye immediately, partly because of the curiousity of why they would want to adopt when they clearly had their own biological children.   Additionally, I knew that my sister had been thinking of adopting, and I thought that this might be the perfect way for her to add to her family. I researched and researched some more and came across this website
http://www.rainbowkids.com/index.aspx
and this one
http://reecesrainbow.org/category/waitingchildren/hiv-0-5

     Of course, in order to get information for my sister, I just had to subscribe to email newsletters and updates. LOL!  So for months, I received information about waiting children. Some had Down Syndrome, some had cleft lip/palate, some had repairable heart conditions, and some had HIV. Robert and I both agreed that someday we might be interested in adopting...but not right now. Having passed the information on to my sister, and feeling overwhelmed with email messages, I had just decided to get off of the lists. I then had a dream, "the" dream that changed everything....

     The dream was something that I will never forget. I was watching myself as though I were on tv and I became aware that I had twins, a boy and a girl. I then became aware that I was leaving them in an institution and at first I was calm, but as I watched myself continuing to walk away, I became more concerned. I started talking to the tv screen and saying in a louder and more fearful voice that I just wouldn't do that….I don't walk away from my children….I couldn't leave the twins in an institution! As I continued to walk away from the children, my tv persona was completely oblivious that I was screaming and continuing to increase in hysteria and panic. I began shouting "I don't do that! Don't turn your back! Don't turn your back on them!" Then I woke up in a sweat with my heart racing and still feeling very upset. I remembered that dream all day and told all of my family about it as it was very unusual for me to even remember a dream. At this point, I had decided that we were perhaps going to have biological twins.  I calmed down a bit in knowing that even if I had twins and they were born with a disability, that I certainly wouldn't institutionalize them.

     Shortly thereafter, I got an email about 3 year old waiting twins….a boy and a girl. The little girl had some medical problems. My children all sucked in air and said that it just had to be the twins from my dream. My reaction was to tell the children to stop being silly and to go on with my day but they all insisted that I should at least inquire. And, then the picture came. Two adorable children hugging each other....real children....that had a desperate need for a family and a place where they would stay and both be wanted and belong. At the same time, I *really* wasn't up for this. The mecial problems concerned me as did the daunting paperwork and expense of an international adoption. Then I began to learn more.  I learned that children that are not adopted prior to the age of five (especially those with health problems) potentially face transfers to further institutions that are often like a hospital setting or for the mentally ill. If that wasn't disturbing enough, I read another report that suggested if children age out of orphanages at the age of 16, 10-15% commit suicide and 60% of girls ended up involved in prostitution.

     So I fretted and thought about it some more and finally decided that I would like to adopt eventually but I was still worried that it just wasn't the right time. And, so I decided that we would not adopt them. All day I had a nagging bad feeling and then by the end of the day it hit me.  The dream!  I was walking away and turning my back on them just as the dream suggested. I contacted the agency imagining that another family had likely come forward to adopt them by this time. Unfortunately, there had been no interest yet in keeping them together. I decided to pray about it and I realized that in the dream there was a feeling that they were *my* children and after more prayer and discussion with my husband, my heart softened and I realized that we needed to follow Heavenly Father's plan and not our own. We were sent more pictures and I began to fall in love with them. I knew that there were no guarantees with a foreign adoption but felt very good and content in knowing that we would do everything we could to bring them home.

     So now, the work has begun and we are close to being finished with the home study paperwork.  We are also having the unfortunate but real task of fundraising as the adoption expenses are quickly mounting.  We plan to do some really fun contests and giveaways to both raise the funds that we need as well as raise awareness of the great need for special needs adoptions.  Please help us get the word out.  I plan to create a Facebook page and will update the blog when it is finished. 

      I already have a long list of idiotic things that I have done so that everyone can learn what not to do during the adoption process.  The first of which was my need to completely refinish my wood floors in anticipation of our first social worker home study visit.  I will try to post tomorrow about two incidents of runaway sanders and legs full of bruises! LOL!  Til tomorrow....