Foster to Adopt

For those of you who actually read this, this is not public knowledge...yet. Granted here it is on the big ol' internet but who really reads this anyways? Not many without a FB link; so I am not worried. :)

However, it is no secret we just haven't made it public knowledge yet since we are just starting.

Starting what you ask? 

Albert and I have officially decided to get our foster license so we can become foster parents with the goal of fostering to adopt a little girl. We recently met with my step-brother Andrew, who is the founder of and attorney at The Children's Law Center of Washington and his wife, my sister-in-law, Michele who is the Director of Local Orphan Care at their church to learn about our options. As you can see they know a bit about adoption and foster care! :) We are pretty lucky to have them in our corner for support and to give us answers to any and all questions we have!

We have decided to do foster care instead of straight out adoption, for a few reasons but one because of money. It can be very expensive to adopt, very. So we will hopefully adopt through foster care. Though adopting through foster care can be very emotionally "expensive". The state does everything it can to reunite kids with their birth parents and/or relatives, for good reason. So there is a good chance we may have more than one child in our home, living with us, then being reunited with their family. We are hoping to be lucky enough to be able to adopt the first one! We also know this could be potentially hard on Antonio having a kid(s) come and go but we are hoping it won't be more than one. 

We have decided to go through the state versus an agency. There are a couple agencies in our area but from what Andrew and Michele told us, both are having their own "troubles" right now. A lot of turnover of employee's, understaffing/overworked etc and may not be any more help than the state would be. So instead of paying an agency and not getting any more help than from the state, we will go through the state. We are planning on/hoping to accept a little girl, maybe 6 months to 4 years old, younger than Antonio and preferably young enough to not have been in other homes. Fingers crossed. Antonio has been wanting a little sister for awhile now so I am sure he will be thrilled. Well, maybe only until he realizes he will have to share everything including us and our attention! :)

We have quite a bit of training to do before we can even submit our application for our license so it won't happen real fast. Unfortunately the training classes aren't held very frequently and not always at times we can attend. I am hoping we can have our license by the end of the year but we'll see, we are after all, going through the state. 

I am thinking about creating a "group" on FB and include family and a few friends who I think will want to know/care that we are doing this and post links to this blog when there are updates/news regarding it. You'll know soon enough if I do! :) In the meantime please pray that we are able to complete the appropriate training quickly so we can move forward on the process! Albert and I are both excited to do this!