The ceilings are done!!

Yesterday we put the final coat of white paint on the ceilings in the kids' rooms! (Never mind that we still have eight walls to paint with color, plus closets, doors, and woodwork...) The rooms originally had "popcorn" texture which we scraped off. We then primed the nearly-bare wallboard, sprayed the new "orange peel" texture on, primed the new texture, and finally put the last coat of paint on - whew!

Here's Jeff working the sprayer to put the new texture on:

It's so nice to have this much done - now on to the next steps! (Hey, it's a great way to kill time while you're waiting to hear news from Colombia!) ;-)

CHI Picnic - Aug. 2, 2008

While clearing some pictures off of my camera card today, I came across a couple of photos from the CHI picnic held in Portland, Oregon back in August. (A little slow...I know!) I took this picture of Caroleana Smallwood, Becky Hartman and Julie Eagleson as a remembrance of these special ladies who have helped (or are helping) us to make our adoption happen.

Caroleana (left) was the first person I met back in October of 2007 when I went to the CHI office in Troutdale, OR to drop off our initial application forms. Her warm smile and kind personality immediately put me at ease. She's no longer working with CHI, but instead is enjoying being at home with her young son.

Becky (center) was the social worker who did our home study. In spite of some of the initial changes with CHI, we were able to finish the process with her and we appreciated how she made the home study appointments quite painless and even fun! We met with her twice and we were amazed at how great she made us sound in her final report! ;-) We are saddened that it appears we will not be able to do our post-adoption reports with Becky due to the continued changes happening with CHI.

Julie (right) is the Colombia program director for CHI and has been wonderful to work with as well. I met Julie briefly too that first day I stopped in the office and within minutes I remember thinking, "Oh yes, we can work with these people!!" :-) Julie has been available and patient with my continual questions via email; and promptly responsive, I might add. She has been a great encouragement to us as we have proceeded along this uncertain path. Of course, it's the first time for us, but she has been on this journey with many, many families before us. We appreciate how Julie seems to feel the joys and the disappointments just as deeply as we do.

We are grateful to these three ladies for all they have done for us so far to help us along on our adoption journey.

Wrinkle ironed out...sort of

In the Aug. 21 post, I mentioned a "wrinkle" related to the two kids we were hoping might become part of our family. It's a little complicated, but technically our adoption agency should have never known about these kids because another agency was already trying to get them adopted. Two different agencies shouldn't be given the file on the same kids. It was an oversight by the Colombian welfare agency, for which they feel very badly. (And because they feel badly, our director thinks we will have an assignment very soon!)

The other organization actually brings orphans from other countries to the US to stay with a host family and meet other families with the hope that they will be adopted. The host family that "our" kids stayed with also submitted a letter saying they wanted to adopt them. Because technically we shouldn't have even known about them, and because the kids actually stayed with them, we knew our chances of the kids becoming part of our family were slim. Still, we waited for a definite answer.

Yesterday it came. Our agency's Colombia director called to let us know that a decision has been made and the kids will definitely be assigned to the other family. Although we are disappointed, this is what we expected and we're actually doing ok with it. And we're happy that the kids will have a family of their own.

So, we wait. We continue to be confident that God has kids chosen just for us and we'll just keep moving forward until we find them. :-) In the same phone call yesterday, we were told that Lucia (the CHI rep in Colombia) knew of another brother-sister pair that might work for us. We are waiting for the information on them, so we'll see what their story is.

In the meantime, we still have lots to do around the house in preparation. And we have reading to do, and Spanish to continue to try to learn! I think we have plenty to do to keep busy!

Thanks to those of you who are supporting us in prayer and who continue to encourage us as we wait through the process. You are appreciated. We look forward to being able to share good news with you sometime soon.

Quick post

Just a quick note to say I've tried to update the timeline list on the right-hand side to bring it a little more up-to-date. Our dossier has arrived in Colombia and is currently being translated into Spanish. Then Lucia (CHI's rep in Colombia) will hand-deliver it to ICBF (Colombia's childrens' welfare agency). Then, of course, we wait for their response.

Meanwhile, we have received our Travel Guide from CHI so we have more reading to do in preparation for our eventual trip to Colombia which we are still hoping will happen before the close of 2008. For the moment, however, I'm off to work.

P.S. If you happen to be reading this blog for the first time, remember to start at the bottom in order to read the posts in chronological order. Thanks for stopping by! :-)