Unfortunately, not too much news to share. The summer has been going good so far. We are enjoying riding the bikes and spending time with friends and family. Of course it still feels like something is missing. It is sooo hard not to be impatient. We are still trying for our own biological child and are continuing treatment. Each time that I start my period, it is hard not to be frustrated. We went almost a month without hearing anything from Molly, so of course that was frustrating too. I sent her an email asking for an update, and after a week of no response I decided to text her. She of course responded quickly and apologized for the delay. As I mentioned before, Molly adopted as well and she took her new baby girl "Gia" home a few weeks ago. I understand she has been busy with a new baby, but the lack of response time has me and Derek questioning her commitment and how things will change for us. Since she hasn't been volunteering any information, and since I'm pretty nosey (in case you didn't already know), I asked her if she has had any luck with any birth moms. She currently has 2 birth moms that are due in August and 1 due in January. She advised she is working with 4 families at this time (3 others and us). No matches have been made at this time with the birth moms. I wonder at what point the birth moms and adoptive parents are matched. August isn't very far away and no one has been matched. Then again... I'm not the professional and I'm super impatient. In the mean time I guess we will stick to riding our bikes and hanging out.

" Dear Maggie and Derek,

I am pleased to recommend that you have been approved for the adoption of one infant birth to twelve months through Choice Network, LLC. The approval date for your Homestudy (JFS01673) is June 4, 2010. "

YAY!! We can officially say that we are "expecting"! We have the paperwork to prove it! :o)

YAY! Good news :o) Got a text from Molly that our central registry check came back today! One step closer. She said she will be sending our approval letter soon. I will keep everyone updated! Saweet!!! Sooo very excited!

Well, we just got back from a trip to Jamaica. We were suppose to go for our 5 year anniversary, but with hopes of having a child before 2011, we decided it would be best to go this year. We had an awesome time, but were excited to get home to find out if there was any good news. After contacting Molly yesterday, she informed me the Children's services background stuff still had not been received. It is starting to get frustrating waiting for this paperwork to come back. I knew the adoption process was time consuming, but I figured the time consuming part would be waiting for a birth mom...instead she states she has several birth moms but is still waiting for our background stuff to come back. Grrr... I guess we both just have to learn to be patient. Hopefully I will have better news the next time I post :o)

Goodness, I didn't realize it had been almost a month since I last posted. Sorry :o( Well at this point our homestudy has been completed. We are still waiting for our background checks to be 100% completed. Molly is confident that it should be completed by May 15th. She advised she does have some potential birth moms and is excited to begin the matching process with us (fingers crossed). So at this point we have just been playing the waiting game... or as I like to call it "waiting for our baby mama". Nothing has really changed for the last 3 weeks or so.

At our last meeting (the middle of April) we found out that Molly actually decided to adopt as well, so she is currently going through the process herself. So it is kind of exciting knowing that she will be experiencing the same things as us, but we are both nervous too that she will not be able to devote enough time towards matching us with a birth mom. She continues to reassure us that she is fully devoted and confident she can multi-task. Her birth mom is due is June, so she will be a mom very soon. Her birth mom is actually HIV positive and Molly had tried to locate adoptive parents for her but became so close with the birth mom, that she decided to adopt herself. Of course we wish her the best of luck as we wait for our baby mama :o)

We had our first homestudy on Sunday 3/28. Molly was here from about 9am-2pm. Whew! Of course I thought I would be a good host and would make muffins... As most of you know, I'm not the best cook. So I bought the kind that comes out of a box and all you have to add is milk and eggs. I figured that would be easy enough :o/ While I was putting them into the muffin pan, Derek decided to take over so I could fill out some more paperwork. He put them in the oven and set the timer. I typically set the timer a little less than what the box says (I'm sure you can see where this is going). Well the buzzer goes off, and of course they are slightly darker than I would have liked them. We ate them anyways and Molly didn't say anything about them :o) Oh well, I'm sure that's why she decided to go out to eat for lunch rather than stay at our house, lol.

During the 5 hour visit, we gave her a tour of the house, went over paperwork, answered additional questions, and did a few of the training exercises required by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Some of the training was boring, where as others were very helpful. We have to finish up on the training on Sunday 4/11. This time we will go to her office and it will be for 8 hrs. I will try to update later and let everyone know how that goes...

In the mean time, yesterday was Easter. It's always so much fun to watch the kids get excited when they find an egg. For me and Derek it is fun and hard at the same time. I love my niece and nephews and enjoy the time we get to spend together; however, it's frustrating that we may never be able to have our own biological child. We have started a new round of fertility treatments, so we haven't given up. The excitement and hopefulness of the adoption process keeps us going. We know our adopted child will not have any less love than if they were our own. We are excited to start our family and are second on the list through the agency. (fingers crossed).

Sorry it has taken me a little while to update. My goal is going to try to send out an update every week or so, depending on whether or not anything has changed. We got all of the paperwork filled out to the best of our ability. Many questions did not apply to a newborn, so we didn't have to worry about those. We had the fire inspection Monday 3/22, but had to make some changes (we didn't have a big enough fire extinguisher). So the fire inspector came back yesterday and signed off on the paperwork, everything looks good.

We had some issues with getting a loan from the bank. Originally we were hoping to get a Home Equity line of credit for the $25,000, but we have only been in our house for 3 years and unfortunately don't have enough equity built up to take out that much. It is difficult to get a loan for that large of an amount without having any collateral, even though we have very good credit history. So today we ended up getting a credit card for $15,000, which was the initial amount needed to start the process. The check was written directly to the agency and then we will have to come up with the remaining $10,000 once we have the child.

We have our first home study on Sunday with Molly. I've been trying to clean a little everyday so Saturday I won't be too stressed. Thought about having someone power wash the siding on the house, but I don't think it looks that bad. I'm pretty anal about making sure my house looks nice when people come over, so hopefully she will like it.

Everyone that has been helping us with this process has said they want to see pictures once we have our child. This includes the fire inspector and bank lady, lol. We are so lucky to have friends and family that support us and will be beside us during this process. It really means a lot :o) I'll let ya know how the home study goes. Just a few days away!