Wow! After officially announcing to our friends and family via email and Facebook that we were adopting, both Matt and I received multiple (at least 50+) emails, phone calls, text messages and comments of encouragement and congratulations. We also received our first donation via our website (technically it's our second donation overall, as the first was a generous gift from a precious family who wanted us to have the funds to start our home study as soon as possible) - amazing!
For those of you who expressed your excitement and support, thank you so much! I have truly been overwhelmed, sometimes to the point of tears and laughter, by the outpouring of kindness and love from our friends and family. We are truly blessed.
Speaking of blessed, Matt and I spent a wonderful week celebrating our five year anniversary in Tamarindo, Costa Rica! It was the first vacation for just the two of us in the past four years. It was a great week of surfing, swimming, adventure and spending quality time together. I was reminded of how solid our marriage is and that it's solid because of our faith and commitment to Jesus Christ. We need to continue to stand on that foundation for strength as we dive into the process of adoption.
For those of you who expressed your excitement and support, thank you so much! I have truly been overwhelmed, sometimes to the point of tears and laughter, by the outpouring of kindness and love from our friends and family. We are truly blessed.
Speaking of blessed, Matt and I spent a wonderful week celebrating our five year anniversary in Tamarindo, Costa Rica! It was the first vacation for just the two of us in the past four years. It was a great week of surfing, swimming, adventure and spending quality time together. I was reminded of how solid our marriage is and that it's solid because of our faith and commitment to Jesus Christ. We need to continue to stand on that foundation for strength as we dive into the process of adoption.
Here are a few pictures of our trip:
On the beach at Tamarindo.
The view from the hotel lawn. It looked like a screen saver - I couldn't believe it was real.
We took some silly photos with Matt's underwater camera.
After dinner one night.
Another view of the beach.
Sad to be leaving such a beautiful place - we had a blast!
Quick clarification: Matt and I didn't plan it on purpose, but we announced our adoption plans the night before we left for our trip. I realized (after the fact of course) that this could have possibly come across as hypocritical to be asking for financial support for our adoption at the same time that we were taking a nice vacation! Please know that this vacation was planned and saved for prior to our decision to move forward with adoption, and in no way were we trying to skirt the financial responsibility of this process. We are fully committed to funding it on our own through a variety of means (grants, loans, borrowing from the equity on our home if we can), but knew that there are people who will feel led to support us in different ways, so wanted to give them an opportunity to do so. Also, we felt a peace about going now as opposed to later in the year when we might be in the thick of the process or possibly matched with a birth mother - we jokingly called it our "babymoon".
Matt and I will be spending this week researching some of the financial opportunities - grants and loans - provided for adoption. We will also be (fingers crossed) choosing our home study agency - we need to make an appointment with an agency sooner than later - this is the first step in the process and have been told by other adoptive parents and from our research that this can take up to 30-90 days to get all the approvals.
Blessings and Love in Him,
Kara
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