Outstanding news

So as most of you know Mike and I have been trying to get pregnant for over a year now and have been successful 2 times which both ended in miscarriages.... Not sure what happened since I used to be a Fertile Myrtle. This time has been hard on us (mostly me) so I started looking into adopting within the U.S. Adoption never really felt right until one day when I was talking to my friend Lauren who adopted the cutest little boy from Korea. She recommended I Google Ethiopian adoption so I did. I started creeping on a ton of blogs of people who were recording their Ethiopian adoptions and I got hooked/obsessed. My heart melted for these sweet children who had nothing and were in need of loving homes which I could provide. As I researched this it felt right, I knew the infants being adopted in the States would likely find homes and these Ethiopian children would likely not. Now I needed to get Mike on board which was no easy task, it happened slowly for him. At first he would just kind of go along with me but would say he didn't feel exactly like I did and didn't know if it was right. I am pretty sure he would have gone along with me the whole way because I kept pushing, but i needed him to want this and pray about it and feel right about it or I didn't want to do it. We both needed to feel that is was the right decision for our family. In the mean time I looked into different agencies and requested information packets from them. And kept showing Mike pictures of cute Ethiopian children hoping to soften his heart.... I know, pretty cheap. I had mentioned to a few friends that we were looking into Ethiopian adoption so one day Mike was talking to our friend Luke and they were talking about it. Mike wouldn't let on what they were talking about to me until he said "ya, I didn't want to tell Chantel this because she would go and buy a bunch of stuff, but lately I have been feeling really good about it" Oh man, I was so excited. He told me the only condition was I am not allowed to get crazy about getting all of the paper work in, that if it took him an extra day to get something done I couldn't get crazy..... I made no such promise.

We decided on the Agency All God's Children International (or AGCI) since they were a Christian, non profit organization, had a good standing on the BBB and every blog I read that had used them said they were excellent. I was really nervous that they wouldn't accept us since you need a positive net worth and we are sooooooooo far from that with all our student loans and such. I spoke with AGCI today and they said we are approved "she approved... approved"

We decided it would be best for our family at this time to adopt an infant (we put under 12 months on our application) and this age range usually takes about one year. There is a ton of paper chasing involved and it is pretty expensive, about $25,000 YIKES! We are hoping to earn/fund raise half .... or as much as possible which I know will be really difficult... especially since I have no fundraising skills... yet... so any advice/ideas on fundraising would be appreciated. We are really trusting in the Lord that this will work out if it is meant to be.

I want to document our journey to Skids baby #3 so this blog will now serve as our Ethiopian adoption journal....