After hitting the ground running at full speed with our adoption prep work, the last few weeks have felt as if we’re doing absolutely nothing. We were playing the waiting game – waiting for Rebekah’s doctor to send the letter to Nightlight, waiting for our home study report to be finished and arrive. The waiting will certainly try one’s patience. I know during the course of waiting that our nerves certainly were shot. However, now things feel like they are moving once again.

We received our home study report on Saturday afternoon, which was the final piece we were waiting for. We sent that out to Nightlight on Monday via UPS – so it should arrive on Wednesday morning. So, what’s next from here? More waiting…

We have one more interview with Nightlight on the phone to go over any changes in preferenes for donor parents, etc. and then they will start the matching process. During the matching process, Nightlight will send our family profile to genetic parents that fall within the criteria that we’ve specfied in our preferences. Once a family selects us to be adoptive parents then we’ll start moving toward the transfer of the embryos (which includes the transportation, thawing and implantation).

In the upcoming months our patience will certainly be tried. The matching process could take 2 weeks, a month or even 4 months or more. The biggest unknown for us at this point is knowing when our match will occur. We know the matching will happen in the Lord’s timing – we just have to be patient and let things happen in His timing. What we would certainly appreciate from all our friends and family out there are your prayers. Please pray for patience as we wait to be matched – that is the toughest part for us. Many of our friends and family are new parents or will soon be parents and sometimes it feels like we’re being left behind.

Thank you all for your prayers and we hope to join the league of parents soon!

Recently it feels as though all the progress we were making has slowed and we’re back to the waiting period. We’re currently waiting on the delivery of our final home study report from the agency so that we can forward it on to Nightlight to continue moving forward. We had a heck of a time getting Rebekah’s doctor’s letter completed. It got lost in the mail or something the first time, and the second time it was missing the exact wording that Nightlight needed to move forward. Thankfully, Megan worked with the Doctor’s office to get the letter appended and that should be sorted out soon.

In the meantime we’re slowing starting to put together our nursery. I know that some folks may say we’re jumping the gun a little bit, and we might be slightly, but doing little things like picking up diaper bags and nursery furniture when we can catch it on sale (or have a coupon) helps us feel like the process is still moving forward. Rebekah picked up a bag for me because she knew I would not carry a frilly one – mine says Jeep on it so it’s awesome…nuff said! Some of the other little things we’re picking up can be put to use right away with our little niece, Hannah. With them in the house, she’ll have stuff to play with when she’s visiting Aunt Beka and her goofy Uncle Eric.

So, with the waiting game started again – what’s our next move? Once the homes study report is delivered, we’ll send it off to Nightlight in California and then they will have to conduct about a 20 minute phone interview with either Rebekah or myself (or both if we’re both available). Then they will start sending our family profile out to families with embryos to donate. We know that the Lord has the perfect family out there for us and will match us up in His time. We just have to be patient and know that His hand is continuing to work as it has been throughout the whole process.

Here’s some quick photos of the nursery with the couple of items we’ve picked up on sale (except for the hope chest – Rebekah has had that for several years). Enjoy!