We have BIG news!
We are adopting a child!
We are beyond excited and are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome a beautiful new life into our home. As part of our adoption process, we have started a crowdfunding campaign. It may surprise you to hear that adoption related costs can easily total up to $40,000 or more. This is why we have set a goal of $45,000 to help ease the financial burden that often overwhelms adoptive parents.
We hope that by inviting you into this process, you will see yourself as part of the community we hope to build around our child as he/she grows up.
Hello Everyone!!
I wanted to write a little update here to let you know that our little guy got his gift this week. We got pictures and he was SO excited to learn that he has a family. He wasn't sure what to think at first but then he was really excited. He loved the gift that we sent him. He LOVES Mickey Mouse so we sent him two tshirts. We also sent him a few small toys and a book of pictures. In the book we wrote about our family and who we are. We talked about all of his grandparents, his cousins and friends he will meet this summer. We also included pictures of our house, things we like to do as a family and pictures of our two cats. He was studying our pictures intently.
We are still waiting on our I800 paperwork to be approved. This is us asking for our child to be an immigrant to the United States and for him to be a direct relative of us. We are hopeful that our paperwork will be approved this week. Then after that we need to get "magic numbers" to apply for our visa to Colombia. Once we get that then we can send paperwork to the US embassy in Bogota and they will then tell us when they are ready for us. That is called Article 5, which is travel permission.
We are hopeful we will be in Colombia with our little guy sometime next month!! Things are getting realllllly exciting and really real.
Please keep us in your prayers as we are drawing close to meeting our son and all the logistics that need to happen in order for us to do so.
Hello Everyone! We have been matched with our little guy, who is 6 years old, in Colombia! We are so so excited and cannot wait to get to Colombia to meet him. We were matched on 3/30 and we have sent his file along with an application for him to the United States Customs and Immigration Services. We are now in the process of waiting for approval from them.
This week we also sent a gift to him via FedEx. When he gets this gift, he will find out that HE HAS A FAMILY!!! We made a shutterfly book about our family, extended family, friends, pictures of our house and fun things we cannot wait to do with him. We also made him a video talking about how excited we are he will be joining our family. We are hoping that not this week but next week he will get all of these things from us. Then shortly after that we should be able to meet him on Zoom and talk with him!
We are hoping and praying that we are able to travel to Colombia this summer. It has been such a wild ride and we are so thankful for all of your support!
Much love,
On January 18th, we viewed a file of a little 6 year old boy. It was 29 pages long and we sat and read it all and felt like we were consuming information from a fire hose. The next day we decided we wanted to get more information if possible. We started filling out more papers, asking to have his file downloadable so we could have a doctor review it. We were 80% yes at this point.
We then were told we needed to type up a Letter of Intent (permission to adopt him) with ALLLLLLLLL the information we just sent in our Dossier. It was mind numbing to write 🫠 and was 7 pages long.
Yesterday we talked with the International Adoption doctor. She is an infectious disease doctor, reviews files from Colombia all the time and has adopted two children from Colombia herself. We had a REALLY encouraging chat with her and at this point we were about 90% yes.
I talked to our agency and they were wanting us to submit our LOI incase anyone else would and there would be a lot of people wanting to adopt him. Sometimes if there are too many LOI’s then they stop accepting letters. Our agency has talked to the orphanage that he is currently at and they are really excited about our family!
That afternoon a friend called me and told me her agency sent a video of a child and it was the little guy who we are looking at! I checked my email and I got the same one. It was so amazing to see a video that was 1 minute long as the only video we had was 5 seconds! I emailed our agency and said it was the video we needed and we were 💯 in! 4 minutes later, our agency is emailing me back with MORE information about him and everything we had asked for!! Truly amazing and mind blowing!!
We officially had our Letter of Intent to adopt sent to Colombia too!!! This is a letter asking for permission to adopt this little guy.
It’s been a CRAZY whirlwind! We now wait for Colombia to get all our information and to read to see if we are the family for this little guy. ❤️🤯🎉
Hello Everyone!
We got our I800a Approval in the mail today! It is a document that we are registered with and approved by the US Government to adopt a child from Colombia!!
We will be working quickly to finish all our paperwork so we can send it to the Holt Oregon office and then they can send it on to Colombia!
IT'S GETTING REAL!!!
