Adoption Stuff

Hi Abba. We went to our first adoption meeting to find out more about the whole process. We were the only couple that showed up, so we had the lady to ourselves. She was very nice...all the information got a little overwhelming as there's so many steps to take and all. We really had our hearts set on Guatemala as the babies are in foster care rather than orphanages. They have the quickest referral times of all the countries and you can adopt an infant. The other plus thing is that they provide monthly updates on your children and the whole adoption process can be done in a weekend when you bring your child home. I thought they did a price break for additional children though so we were willing to pay a little more to adopt from Guatemala as they offer so many pluses to adopt in that country as well. Anyway, we found out that they don't offer a price break and we don't have $50k to adopt 2 children. It wasn't until I really started thinking about things that I started to get upset and really realized that I have my heart set on adopting a baby boy and a girl. Deidra really wants a baby sister and we'd like to have a boy as well to carry on the Hoffman name. Besides, there's a lot of baby boys that I've been around lately and I really wouldn't mind having one. :-) Well, then I got to thinking that maybe we should think about Kazahkstan again...the price is cheaper and they offer the price break on the additional children. The only bad thing that we've really run into with the other programs (other than Guatemala) is that we would have to be in the country between 2-4 weeks to finalize everything in the country. So, we would have possibly a month of expenses that we would need for the apartment over there...our meals...and all that. Help us to know what to do and which option to go with.

We've also been thinking about some fundraising ideas to help us with costs as we go. We've thought about a bottle drive, hosting a spaghetti dinner in our local VFW hall, doing some scratch cards, and maybe a bake sale or some craft things. All I keep hearing is our adoption consultant saying to us that if we started the process now...we could have the babies at the earliest by Christmas if we went through Guatemala or by next spring with the other countries. It made it so much more real to me...we have babies out there waiting for us. It's time to figure out how to bring them home to us. Guide us and help us, Abba.