Hi everyone!
We are very happy to say that tonight we submitted our formal application for the adoption. The agency has a great web-site that we used to complete the forms. The application was quite lengthy--eight pages to be exact! It asked all kinds of demographic, family, employment, and financial information. We described our home and community, and we described the child that we see ourselves receiving. We also listed our references, which include three friends who have known us for a long time and a pastoral reference. We could not list any of our family as references.
We are also starting to work on our profile book, which includes lots of pictures and some descriptions of us and our family, as well as our interests, hobbies, etc. It will be fun to see our book come together.
A few weeks ago we met up with our friends Esther & Mike (and their daughter Tessa) in Pittsburgh for dinner. They had spent the day with their friends that we mentioned in our previous blog post. They shared their adoption story through Bethany with us. What a treat it was the meet them and their son!!! We all had dinner at the famous Primanti Brother's of Pittsburgh! They were so down to earth and open to sharing their experience with us, and what a blessing that is to have such great people to lean on for advise and reassurance!

Since this has been such a learning experience for us, we though it would be neat to pass along some of this education or little tid-bits of information to all of you as well, so here goes:
We are entering a semi-open adoptions--what does this mean?
This means that when the birth mother chooses us we will have some limited amount of contact with her. She may request to meet us in person prior to the birth of the baby, at the time of the birth, and after the birth. We will be known to her only by first name, and vise versa. She will not know any identifying information other than our first names. We have agreed that we would share an occasional letter/photo or visit after the birth of the child, though in many cases doing this makes separation very difficult for the birth mother and she will often choose to discontinue any further visits or contact. Any visits/meetings would always be held at a neutral location or at the agency office and can be with our social worker present, and any communication via mail is submitted through the agency. Finally, after the final decree is signed and the baby if legally ours, we have the right to also discontinue any visits/contact if we feel the need, as we are not legally bound to this.

Thanks for reading, everyone! We so greatly apprciate you all sharing in our excitement! We'll continue to keep you all posted!
Love,
Amy & Dave