{Approved}

I promised an update on our adoption journey but in order to do that I'll have to go back several months and also update a few other things too! We've had so many changes lately!!

Last summer, after our last miscarriage, we knew we were ready to adopt and we wanted to start the process. But right as we decided we were ready, we found out that our landlords were selling the house we were living in. So we would need to move when it was sold and because of that I knew that doing a Home Study then wouldn't be a good idea since things would be changing. And big changes like that would cost more money so we had to put it off again.

In the meantime, Bryce finished Helicopter school! He finished at the beginning of November! We were so excited!!! I took off work early and went and watched his final flight test and took pics and videos. I'm so crazy proud of him! HE'S AMAZING! I love him so bad...

I threw him an awesome surprise party at his parent's house to celebrate his awesomeness. Lori made a helicopter cake and all her decor was awesome! And I made a banner out of heli flying maps. It was pretty sweet...

There weren't any openings for instructors at his school at that time so we started applying at schools all over (CO, UT, AZ, NV....). One of them was promising but they had a run of very bad luck and had two crashes in one month so it ended up not working out.

So while we waited for an opening, Brian and Cindy's house went under contract to sell so we got busy looking for a new place to rent. We were SO SAD to leave our last place. We loved it there and really really loved renting from Brian and Cindy. They became like second parents to us and we love them so much!

After several weeks of non-stop searching and praying we finally started just driving around random roads that we wanted to live on looking for For Rent signs......and we found one!! It was PERFECT. It was in the same tiny town we were already in and was on a really quiet street in a neighborhood. It had an an extra bedroom and bathroom compared to our last place, a huge backyard, and we would have a garage for Bryce. And my favorite feature of all...........................an art studio in the back! I would have died. seriously. if we hadn't gotten it. I was drooling looking at it. But someone else had 'dibs' on it.  Noooooo!!!!

(Above: my art students during a lesson in my studio)

 (Above: if you look out the window you can see my studio in the backyard! And in the foreground are the Moon Flowers and Morning Glories I've been growing from seeds! I'll plant them next to the art studio and on the arbor in the yard once they're strong enough to go outside!)

Long story short....that person fell through and we got the contract and moved in a week later!

So once we moved in, I had a lot of work to do getting unpacked and settled and redecorating and all. Once we got that done I contacted the agency I wanted to use for our Home Study.

I updated our paperwork (that I had already done months before but had never submitted them because of moving) and then finished gathering our documents and sent it all in! Right at that same time (one month ago) we finally heard back from Bryce's school!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They brought him in for an 'interview' but turned out to just be a 'hey, this is how things work now' meeting and formalizing his hire!  It had been a long five months of waiting but it finally happened! He's been on cloud 9 ever since. Flying is in his blood and he has lots of students and loves teaching!

Luckily he got hired before the home study was done so we didn't get charged for employer/insurance etc changes. :)

The next week we prepared for our in-home interviews. We made sure we had working smoke detectors, a fire extinguisher, a carbon monoxide detector and that chemicals were stored on shelves out of reach of little hands. And then that fire arms and ammo were double locked. And I cleaned....a lot. I know it's not necessary to have a spotless house but I still wanted it to look good!!

The whole thing lasted 2hrs and 45mins. She interviewed us together for an hour and 45. Then our individual interviews were 15mins or so each. Afterwards she walked around the house and yard and verified that we had everything we needed and were compliant. :) It took all of 10 minutes. Ha! So much for my cleaning....  ;)

And that was that! She said she would approve us and that it would take a week or two to get us the documents. And true to her word, she got it back to me two weeks later!

SO WE'RE OFFICIAL!!!! We can legally adopt (newborn-3yrs) and up to two children at once from anywhere in the USA. (She did say she'll add an addendum if we are matched with a child older than 3 if we feel like it will be a good match. )

Now that the Home Study is done, we're working on our profile with adoption.com. The church is paying for our profile (the approval came through for that last week!!) until Feb of 2016. Other than the profile on their site, we are not using an agency. Just doing it on our own. That may change...you never know. But for now we're going to try it this way. Once we are matched, our adoption attorney will handle the finalization etc. and the agency we used for the Home Study will do our Post Placement visits.

So that's our update! :)