It's off......!

We mailed it off today! The last of the paperwork is out of our hands! We emailed the profile stuff (questions, birth parent letter, & favorites), and we sent the cd with the pictures, the form and the profile check thru the mail! The ball is in the media specialists court. They are supposed to review the information, and let us know within a week if they need us to change anything. Then we will be active!!!! Can't wait! =)

Input

We polished up our birth parent letter and sent it off to Kelli to give us some input. She said she would be happy to give us some, so off it went along with the other profile questions. We have decided to just send the pictures we have and if they need more, we'll just take some more. We'll keep you posted!!!!! =)

Adoption Appointment 4/13

We made an appointment to go to American Adoptions in Overland Park to talk with our Adoption Specialist, Kelli, about our APQ (Adoptive Parent Questionaire). Usually they do this over the phone by conference call, but I emailed her and asked if we could come in and talk to her face to face instead. They always seem delighted to get to actually meet with you. So we showed up and got to meet Kelli face to face. She was very nice, easy to talk to and enthusiastic. She didn't talk she bubbled, and she smiled the whole time. One thing I really like about these people is that they seem to really be enjoying what they are doing! They instantly put you at ease, and you feel, within seconds, that you have known them your whole life! I was a little nervous that the APQ would need to be changed a lot. Kelli kept saying how wonderful it was that we were so open and broad in our APQ! She said that because we are so broad with it, that we will be exposed to a lot of birth mothers and have a great chance of getting several people interested. The only thing that she mentioned was our budget was a little low..but not too bad. She said any match that comes in between 1,000-5,000 over our budget will still be brought to our attention, so that we can make the decision if we can do it or not. But we are not required to do so. She told us a little what to expect in regard to the birth mother. She went over that the birth mothers only have our profile as far as information about us. When a birth mother selects us, and her social worker calls us to tell us, that we will receive everything the agency has on the birth mother, medical records, questionaires, financial records, ect. We have 48 hours from then to decide if we want to be matched with her. The birth mother's social worker has access to our APQ and is the one who will determine if it will be a good match before she calls us. We only have wiggle room if something is outside of our APQ or if we are not strict about something on our APQ. the birth mother is asked to choose up to three selections of adoptive families in case an APQ of one of the families doesn't fit her situation.
Since Kelli worked with birth mothers for quite a few years, before starting to work with the adoptive families, she gave us some ideas and encouragement in regards to the birth mother letter and what most birth mothers were looking for. When we get matched with someone we will have her cell phone number and will be able to reach her 24 hours a day. When a birth mother selects us, we will be dealing mainly with the birth mother's social worker thru our same agency. But Kelli said she will be kept up to date on everything and if we ever need to talk or have a question that we can call her. She is just there to make sure that we have everything we need, counselling for what to expect next, keep our rights protected, ect. Lastly, she said she thought it was awesome that we seem to both be on the same page with the whole thing and that that isn't always the case.
All in all, we had a fantastic visit with Kelli and are really looking forward to working with her.

Profile Pics