Updates

Good Morning Ya'll! This post is short and sweet. Our adoption Paypal account is finally up and running! For those of you who were waiting to be able to make a contribution online you can now do so with the 'donate' button to the right. If you donate with paypal please also drop me an email so that I can be sure your name gets on a puzzle piece.

nikkipetersonphoto@yahoo.com

Many friends have been asking what the process will be for our adoption. I will tell you our plan... Although we all know who laughs at those ;-) It may change and that's why we are staying open to whatever comes our way. We are interested in an international adoption from Kazakhstan. Why Kazakhstan? There are thousands of places in the world where children are in need. Kazakhstan is just a dot on that map. We can't explain why we feel drawn to the children there, but we do. I think that God works on our hearts and gives us a passion for a specific area of the world for a reason. We strongly believe that our child has already been chosen for us and we are going to follow our hearts to find him! Back to the plan ;-) When we reach half of our savings goal of $30,000, we will begin our home study. During a home study, a social worker interviews us and our family and checks our house for safety. We anticipate that our home study will take about 3 months but of course we are hoping for less time! At this time we will also sign on with an agency. I have been researching agencies up and down so that when it's time to choose, we will be with a good one! Once with an agency, we will prepare our dossier which I hope to complete in 3 months or less. A dossier is a whole lot of paperwork! We have to gather important documents such as marriage certificates, birth certificates and FBI background checks and have them translated by our agency and sent to Kazakhstan for review. When Kazakhstan approves us, they will send us a referral and an invitation to travel to their country to pick up our child! We will not specify boy or girl, but we are hoping for a child under 1 year of age. The period of time between the submission of our dossier and our referral will be approximately 3-6 months. Once it's started, our adventure will take about 9 months to a year to complete. We're hoping to have $15,000 by the summer so that we can begin. It's going to be exciting and scary and crazy but we know we'll get there!