March Update #1

Well, our homestudy is done!!!!! It was about 7 hours of us talking about our entire life. We had to start at birth and go from there. Then we talked about our influences, our religion, how we want to parent our children and so on. We had to pick a pediatrician, guardians if something happened to us, etc. If you can imagine it we were probably asked it. But we knew the social worker interviewing us so that made it a little easier. So the next step is waiting for our FBI clearance to come in and waiting for our home study to be typed up and finalized. Then they start showing our scrapbook to birthmothers and we hope to be picked. It is impossible to guess how long it will take. Sometimes it takes a little while, up to a year or year in a half, but sometimes it can move really quickly, like just a few weeks or months. So we are just waiting and praying. I will keep you posted. Keep up the prayers. We love you all.

February Update

Hey everyone, more news from the Brenneman household. Well, we finally have all of our paperwork in to the adoption agency. I am putting the finishing touches on our scrapbook, we have officially graduated from our M.A.P.P. training and our homestudy is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 28th. Yeah!!! The homestudy is the big hurdle that I can't wait to have done. It will take about a month to finish, involve several home visits and lots and lots of questions, but when it is finally complete then the agency can start showing our profile/scrapbook to birthmothers. Then we wait!!! Right now we are waiting but at least we have some things we can do on our end. Once the homestudy is done we just have to wait for a birthmother to pick us. We have decided that when the homestudy is completed we will start to shop and price some baby items but not purchase. I don't think I could handle bringing any baby items into the house yet. So we are excited about things but cautiously excited if that makes any sense. I will update everyone after the homestudy and tell you what that was like. We miss you all and appreciate all the prayers.

January Update

Hi everyone. Well we started our classes last week. We have to take MAPP training, (Model Approach to Partnership in Parenting). It is really for foster care but our agency requires it also. It has been interesting so far. We will finish up with the class on Feb. 19th. We met with the director of the adoption agency we are using on Sunday evening. He and his wife happen to be members of the Church!! We sent in our initial application on Tuesday, the 22nd. ( I overnight expressed it to them :-) The next step is they will send us more paperwork, and call us to set up our homestudy appointment. After the homestudy is completed then we will be able to have birthmothers look at our portfolio and then we wait to be selected. I will keep you all posted. Thanks for the prayers and please keep them up. Love you all.

How the Journey Began

Hey everyone, I have entered the wide world of blogging. I figured I would start a blog to keep everyone posted on what is going on in our lives. As some of you already know, Todd and I have been doing fertility testing and in September of 2007 we found out that the only way we can conceive a child is by in vitro. (for those that don't know, in vitro is where they take the egg and the sperm and put them together and implant them in my body.) It is a very painful procedure, very time consuming and energy consuming and has a very high risk of miscarriage, premature birth and multiple birth (think Jon and Kate plus 8!!!!!!!!). It also comes with a very high price tag of around $30,000, and insurance pays for ZILCH. After some consideration we have decided that we are going to adopt. (Also very pricey). We plan to start the process this month, Jan. 08. There are many, many steps involved before we even get to where we are on a waiting list for a child. We have decided we want to do domestic newborn adoption, at least for our first. (After tons of sleepless nights I might decide to go with an 7 or 8 year old for our 2nd child :-). We are very excited and very nervous. Todd has been very busy this past semester with school and he took and passed his comprehensive exams in Dec., so now he is officially working on his dissertation. I have been struggling a lot with us not being able to conceive. I still am not able to talk about it very much in person but I am able to email about it. As I said we are very excited about the prospect of adopting and we want to share this with each and every one of you. So as things progress I will keep you posted. I would love to hear from you.