Thank you all for coming to read our story. We are a family that loves Jesus and has a heart to build our family through adoption and are believers in open adoptions and loving on birth families as much as we can. We have felt so supported through James adoption process and through this one. Thank you all for loving on our family so much!
Where are we in the process?
This adoption process has been quite the journey. We started 3.5 years ago, by writing our sweet attorneys at Family Building to start the process. While most home study's are pretty quick (3-6 months) our's took about 1.5 years or more to be approved.
The first pause for our home study was I was in need of major surgery 3 years ago. Therefore the doctors would not sign off for our adoption, until the surgery had been completed & I was on the mend. I am grateful for this pause, since at the time we had no idea what the surgery entailed & the recovery process.
We then started back on the home study process only to found some black mold in our house that was causing me to be sick. This led to a year of construction on our house to make the house home study ready once again. Therefore we could not be approved until everything had been finished. Once we got our home study approved, that put us in the waiting period for the last couple of years.
We have now been home study approved for years and were in the waiting period for a while to get matched before CA state laws changed. Due to the change in CA state laws in private adoptions they re-routed most private adoptions to go to an agency. We were one of those families re-routed to an agency and starting over with the waiting period. Although it was discouraging at first, we truly feel like the Lord led us in His perfect timing to this path, so we are stepping out in faith in this step. We know there have been many hurdles in the past couple of years, but we hold close to our hope in Jesus and His timing of it all.
As of right now we are not on a wait list, we are waiting to sign the contract with Family Network Agency hopefully this month. We have an apt. on April 25th to see if we can sign. We can sign if we have raised the 15 k that is due to sign the contract. We are planning to ask them more about how much longer we can have to raise the funds and hope & pray there is still a spot on their list for us. After contract is signed the remaining expenses are due once matched. That can happen anywhere from 1-2 years from now most likely. We of course are hoping for sooner, but trusting again in the Lords timing.
We are excited to say we hit 6k from the market fundraiser and my mini photography shoots (I own a photography business) combined we did this past couple of weeks, so have left 9 k for the first goal and 32 k for the second goal. For those that gave in the form of coming to our market and our mini sessions we are so grateful. The reason we used venmo for the market was because legally if you are selling goods there cannot be a tax ride off from it, therefore we needed to go that route. This is the next route we are choosing to step in faith because we love that this organization is all about adoptions and having family/friends rally & help us get a grant.
Why start this adoption fundraiser?
Before these last two weeks we have tried to not fundraise for this adoption. We paid for the home study and all the renewals on our own, as well as some of the attorney fees early on. After the change in state laws, we felt the support of friends/family encouraging us to once again be humbled and ask for support. It does not go un-noticed that our community has come alongside us time and time again from adoption support to getting me to the heart clinic 10 years ago. Thank you for your prayers, love and constant encouragement. Everyday we feel so much gratitude. Seeing God show up time and time again has truly grown our faith and hope so much.
What is the breakdown of costs?
We get asked this question a lot as for what is required cost wise in the adoption process. Although it can be a hurdle at times, we are so grateful to pay those that work hard at their jobs to help us in our adoption journey. We also want to support/love on our child's birth family as much as possible. We see all these costs as supporting our full family, our child's birth family included.
Orientation, Pre-Adopt Meeting- $350
Membership Fee, due upon signing- $15,000
Extraordinary expenses- $1,500
Birth Mother expenses- $5,000
Home study- $3,000
Attorney Fees- $5,500- $10,000
Adoption Social Worker fees - $6,025
Post placement and finalization fees- $2,750
Other expenses- Counseling, waivers etc. - looks like 500-thousands, things that come up.
How does this work? We raise funds through family & family's donating. Then once we have reached an amount we need to use for the adoption we apply for a grant from Adopt Together and they review why we need it (we send in our agency's costs and needs) and they then pay our agency directly in the form of a grant. We love it because it goes directly to the agency and this is a tax ride off for anyone who is donating as well.
Thank you for taking the time to read our story and a little bit about this journey for us. We love you all!
