We are ready!

Hi everyone!
We have been quite busy over the last several months completing our home study requirements. We are happy to say that we are approved and ready to accept a baby. Although we still have lots to do in our home to prepare for a baby. Please notice our time line to the right and check out some of our recent accomplishments!
The last few months have been very rewarding for us. We have met two more times with our social worker, Jill. We adore her! She has been so supportive and helpful to us. When we first met her we learned that she was fairly new to the agency. She told us recently that we are her first adoption that she will complete with Bethany from start to finish. Truthfully, all of the staff that we have worked with or encountered with Bethany have been superb and we are constantly reminded that Bethany Christian Services was absolutely the agency for us!
At the beginning of January our home study was officially approved by the agency director, and although we expected it would be, we were still delighted! We also completed and turned in the profile book that we made. We are pleased with how it came out and feel that it's a beautiful representation of who we really are. It came in the mail on Christmas Eve, so we were able to take in to NY for Christmas and share it with our family. The home study approval was an exciting day and solidified the fact that the calls could start coming at any time...and they did!!!
On January 14th our profile was shown for the first time to a 23-year old young woman who is currently hospitalized, due in two weeks, and had decided that giving her baby to adoption was the right thing for her to do. She was given five profiles to review so we knew that she may not select us. We were both floating and so excited! We promised ourselves and each other that if this was not the time for us to be selected we would not be disappointed. So when we received notice on Friday that we were not selected this time we stayed encouraged and continue to be ecstatic that things are progressing as quickly as they are. Jill reminded us that there are several babies due this spring and their mother's will be selecting birth parents in the not too distant future.
Our next project is to get ready for a baby at home. We have selected the room in our home that will be the baby's when he/she arrives. Over the next several weeks we will be packing "knick-knacks" away and moving furniture around in preparation. We had discussed how difficult the "waiting" would be once all of the paper work was complete, but with all we have yet to do we are hopeful that the waiting won't be quite as bad as we thought it might be.
We thank you all for your on-going prayers and support! Please continue to be prayerful for us as we wait for another call. For those of you who ask our Saints in heaven to intercede for us, Saint Gerard is the patron saint of adoption/expectant mothers.
Finally, here is a little tid-bit of information to help you learn about adoption with us. When we receive a baby we will have physical custody of the baby and Bethany Christian Services will have legal custody of the baby. About six to nine months after we receive the baby will have a court hearing that will finalize the adoption and this will give us both physical and legal custody of the baby. People often ask, can the birth mother change her mind? This is how it works here in the state of PA. The birth mother cannot sign away her rights until 72-hours after the baby is born. She than has a 30-day revokation period in which we will have physical custoday of the baby, but she can change her mind. So, there are 33-days from the time the baby is born that the birth mother can change her mind. In the next post we will ellaborate more on the birth-mother counseling that helps prevent this from happening.
Thank you all again for your support and prayers. We'll continue to keep you all posted of exciting new details!
With love,
Amy & David