Update on the Update

A dreary Saturday outside makes me thankful for the warmth we have inside. It's a good day to work on adoption stuff. And it seems our work is never finished.

Three of the four options I spoke of earlier are no longer available to us. The only possibility that remains is with a birth mother who is due tomorrow. But, considering we haven't heard a single thing from our adoption representatives about it, our guess is that it's a very slim-to-none possibility.

With that in mind, Kurt and I are faced with more work. We are updating our profile with new photos and a few more details about our lives in the hopes that a birth mother will be even more interested in us. We've had birth mom's look at our profile but haven't been able to close the deal yet. And it's kind of hard not to take it personal although we don't dwell on it. We will also update our web site (www.ktandbabymakesthree.com) with the new information. I continue to try to write blogs that will point potential birth mother's to our web site. (And on that note, would you please take a moment to forward the URL to our site to everyone you know? As is true in many situations, it is here as well: It's not always what you know; it's who you know.)

We are also in the process of applying for grants, which is a time consuming and lengthy process. Hopefully it doesn't take as long to process the grant! The good thing (aside of the money we'll eventually get) is that it's helping us with a budget! And we're still hoping that people will make their way over to www.justlovecoffee.com/TheWhitfields to lend a hand in fund raising by purchasing a bag of coffee.

We never know what's going to happen at any given time so we are simply doing our best to be as prepared as we possibly can. And we wait...

Home Study - Check!

We are officially finished with our home study! The awesome adoption preparation director at MLJ Adoptions, Brooke Randolph, dropped off the notarized copies yesterday. It was an unexpected and pleasant surprise to have her drive all the way over to our home to drop it off. Brooke has been simply wonderful through this entire process, and we're so thankful to her for all of her help.

Even though the home study is complete, our work is not yet done. In fact, we're gearing up for another round of filling out paperwork. This time, we're trying to find the funds to pay for the adoption! Part of that means applying for grants.

And we're still feverishly trying to find other ways to raise money for the adoption. As a reminder, please visit www.justlovecoffee.com/TheWhitfields to order some coffee and support us in our efforts. We will receive a portion (albeit a small one) of all the coffees sold through our personal web page. If you're not a coffee drinker, consider buying some and giving it to a co-worker, a friend, a family member, your pastor, your mailman. You get the idea! And we welcome any and all other ideas for fund-raising!

We do know that our profile has been presented to four birth-mothers, most of whom are out of state. Out-of-state adoptions are a good bit more expensive so that means we might need even more money than we initially anticipated. We will be creating an account through LifeSong for Orphans where people can make tax deductible contributions to support our efforts. So, look for that announcement soon.

Back to the birth-mothers reviewing our profiles: As I said, there are four possible matches and five possible children! One mom is expecting twins. The earliest arrival in any of these scenarios could be as soon as January 17th and the latest not until May. Of course, there is always the very real possibility that none of these will come to fruition. So, in every case, we wait.

I must confess that the wait has become much harder than I thought it would be. There are times I'm fine with it but knowing there are four possible matches and then not hearing an update makes the wait almost unbearable. But we are both trying to remain positive and focus on preparation. While we're trying not to get too engrossed in details, we are starting to think about things like strollers, car seats, formula and other newborn necessities.

So, while things continue to move, it feels like we're stagnant! Please continue to pray for us through this journey and pray for the birth mother and child as they also face challenging times.

Happy New Year! All good things...