The "New" Dresser

Originally (30+ years ago) the dresser looked like this. Note the other things hanging on the wall too!! (more of those later!)

The dresser stayed in my room at my Mom and Dad's for 18 or so years, including one move.
Then I took it to college. The poor dresser made it through countless moves, a leaky fish tank on top and then a move all the way across the country!
Erik and I thought it was time for a little t.l.c.

 We people from California (or those who lived there for a while) enjoy our wine while we work!!

 Original honey pine.

TAAA DAAAA!!!! Looks pretty good. We saved the original hardware. The color matches the rest of the baby's room (crib, rocker, and soon changing table).

Still Waiting..............................................

Erik Here: 
Yup that's right! We are still waiting to be matched. Keep those prayers coming.

Home Study APPROVED!!!!!

Our official approved home study came in the mail today!! This means that on our profile it will no longer say "Home Study in Progress" and we have been approved by the State of Wisconsin (and anyone else who cares) to adopt. This was the last official step before we could "officially" bring a baby home. Fingers crossed!!

Baby Shower, September 11, 2011

Click here to view these pictures larger

Thank you to everyone who made our baby shower a success. It was perfect and beyond anything I ever could have imagined. Thanks also to those who couldn't make it but sent such thoughtful gifts. Now all we really need is the baby!! 

A place to sit and a new slideshow

Yay!! We have our rocking chair/glider. It's very nice and comfy, and we have both spent time rocking in it already. Thank you Mom and Spence for your wonderful gift!

This was the chair before...my oh my did I have a time putting it together!! But with a little patience and a lot of luck....TA DA...

One beautiful chair ready for rocking. If you're in the area you should stop by and try it out!!

On another note our Media Department has made a slideshow that is view-able on YouTube and our profile page. I have included the YouTube link here so that everyone can see it. It's a compilation of pictures we sent to them and text from our Dear Birthmother letter. Enjoy.
Erik and Melanie on YouTube

New Stuff...Now all we need is the baby

We are very fortunate to have so many good friends and family. We are already getting ready for baby, just in case he or she decides to arrive unannounced! Our theme is Winnie the Pooh for the Baby's room. I (Melanie) saved (or my mom did!) several items from my room when I was small: lamp, switch plate, pictures and a music box. These are the basis for the new room. With some brand new add ins it is really starting to come together!

Thanks to Mom and Dad (Judy and Frank) we have a crib with super cute Winnie the Pooh bedding. As my mom said, "All you need is the baby!" The crib converts to a toddler daybed and then to a full so we are set for many years. THANK YOU!!

When little babies grow up Erik and Melanie get their car seat!! Thanks to our very good friends Joey and Cherissa we have a car seat to use when we are in California. The twins are growing so fast and they graciously gave us this beautiful seat when we were back for a visit. This is great because now we won't have to bring one on the plane every time we travel back and forth. THANK YOU!!

Ok, so I know what my fellow Niner fans are thinking...but it was just so cute I had to buy it!! (Just shows how much I really love Erik!) I'm sure our child will grow up very confused as to what teams to root for, but at least we all agree that we love sports.

Up and Running

Our other three website profiles are up! This completes the next phase. Birthmothers can now access our profiles from four websites and gain more insight to us and our plan for adoption. We really now just sit back and wait. The average wait time to be matched, for Adoption Network Law Center, is four months. This means that it could be soon that we are matched with a birthmother. Depending on how far along she is, will determine when we welcome our little one home. There will be lots more details to tell after we are matched, but that's all for now. Enjoy!!

http://courageouschoice.com/album.php?id=8193

http://www.adoptionspacebook.com/view_photos.html?id=8193

http://www.theadoptionfoundation.com/adoption-unplanned-pregnancy-waiting-families-profile.html?id=8193&action=photos

Moving Forward

Our next set of pictures is in and they have been approved. We should be up online on three additional websites by the end of next week! This will allow more birth mothers to potentially see us and make a match. The links to those sites will be posted here as soon as we get them.
Our current profile has 180 hits for the month of July. I am thinking that this is largely due to the fact that we have shown just about everyone we know our profile! August should give us a better picture of how many people that we don't know are looking at us.
Our home study is nearly complete. It's just the last few bits of paper that are taking the longest. We hope to have everything turned in by the time we leave for California next week.
As soon as everything is in and we are fully up online it will just be a waiting game (which we are very good at!).

WE ARE LIVE!!

We are live and online. This means that we are now searchable for birthmothers looking for permanent homes for their babies. They can look online now and see our cute little faces! We now wait for "the call." As soon as someone picks our profile we will have our first meeting. After the first meeting we (us and the birthmother) each get to decide if we like each other. If everything goes well we will be officially matched and will wait for the baby to be born.
http://www.adoptionnetwork.com/waitingfamilies/show.html/8193
This is our link to our first profile. We sent in more pics so we should be on other sites in the next month or so.

Trying to catch up...

A brief rundown of the process...

1- Choose place to handle adoption. Done: Adoption Network Law Center

2- Send in "pre-approval" paperwork (and one photo-I guess so they know we are not weirdos!!) Done: They said we were "Oh so cute" and would have no trouble finding a match.

3- Apply for loan to fund this super cheap project. Done: Now if the magic loan fairy would come and pay it off...

4- Send in official legal paperwork and promise to pay them. STOP!! This is where we got to a few years ago and then I lost my job and we were not able to continue. So we waited and waited for the right time and now we are here!! So.... Done: We signed on the dotted line and got the process rolling.

5- Home Study- The process where you are interviewed for hours and they come to your house and ask you lots more questions and then write a report that says if you are fit to be parents or not. It's a federal regulation so we have to do it. Pretty much done. The social worker came to our house and we chatted for a while. We are both working on finishing our autobiographies and the other paper work that goes along with it.

6- Gather pictures for our profile that have:

     NO sunglasses, NO hats, NO alcoholic beverages, NO swimsuits....Hmmm....well that eliminated almost all of our good action shots. So thankfully we have a few really good friends and family that agreed to do photo shoots with us so we could get the required number of pics. Done.

7- WAIT, and wait and wait. We are now waiting for our profile to be put up online so that we can be matched.

Let's start at the very beginning... A very good place to start.

Erik and I have always wanted to have kids. I'm almost positive that we talked about it on our 4 hour first date at Applebee's. We just assumed that after we dated, got engaged and then were married, that kids would naturally be the next step. We found in February 2008, due to medical reasons, we would not be biological parents. However this did not stop us from continuing our dream of becoming parents. We quickly discussed all of our options from not having kids, to adoption and everything in between. Together we decided that adoption was the best way for us to expand our family and bring a child into our lives.

We sought out information on several different agencies and law offices, private adoption vs. foster care, open adoption vs. closed, domestic vs. international. Whew!! Who knew there were so many choices before we even began?

We ended up choosing a Law Center based out of California but operating nationally. We chose Domestic Infant Adoption, in hopes that we will get to bring our newborn baby home from the hospital.