Adoption can be a roller coaster...

So last time we blogged we were waiting to hear back about a Waiting Child.  The good news is, that child has a forever family working their way to Ethiopia.  On the other hand, we are not her forever family.  The wait continues...

Last week I went in for another physical, as requested by All God's Children.  This appointment was long awaited because for several weeks I have been trying to get my insurance company to cover this medical cost.  Insurance said no because I had a physical in August 2011, they don't cover two physicals in one year.  (Since I'm a teacher my insurance coverage is August to July.)   I thought I would be leaving the doctor with a bill to the tune of $700.  To my surprise the doctor signed off on the paperwork without a second thought and without charging me a dime.  In his words, "You are perfectly healthy and you will make a wonderful parent."  What a blessing!

So, it's back to waiting and praying.  We are okay with that, because right now our lives are a little bit crazy.

Remember how John started that new job in the fall?  Well, he loves it. I love it.  Youth ministry is his calling for sure.  On the flip side, the 45 minute commute to work is not so fun.  When I drive out there on Wednesdays for youth group it takes me anywhere from an hour to two to get there.  Gotta love rush hour.  Plus, it's difficult for me to get involved in other ministries in programs when we are so far away.  That being said, John and I have thoroughly enjoyed house hunting for the last several weeks.  (Did you catch my sarcasm in that last sentence?)  We know the perfect house is out there and we will find it!  Can't wait to be closer to our church family.

Our car situation has been another wild adventure.  John and I bought a beautiful, brand new white Ford Explorer in November.  This is what it looks like now-

Check out the roof.

Glass and water everywhere.

Not so beautiful.  On April 3 tornadoes tore through DFW.  Our school was hit.  HARD.  We are so fortunate that no one was hurt.  It caused horrible damage to the roof of our school and most of the cars in the parking lot were totalled.  Our car is sitting in a shop awaiting repairs.  I can't wait to get our pretty car back, and hopefully soon before rental car coverage runs out.

Lastly, the best news of all is our wonderfully talented friend Holly took lots of family pictures for us. Perhaps you already noticed the new banner up top.  They turned out fantastic and we can't wait to get them printed and framed.  This summer I'm determined to figure out a way to add more pictures to this blog. In the meantime, here's are some of my favorites.

Thanks again for your continued prayers.  Adoption can be a roller coaster, but it will be totally worth it!

Jeremiah 29:11

"For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."

Jeremiah 29:11

Last Friday we received an email from our adoption agency in regard to a waiting child in Ethiopia.  This email was sent to several families that, like us, were part of the Ethiopia adoption program. Amazingly, this child fit our already approved home study criteria.  We immediately contacted All God's Children to express our interest in making this child a part of our family.  When John connected with our case manager on Monday, she told him she was expecting our call.  She said she had a feeling we would be interested in this waiting child.  We stayed up late last night making the last bit of revisions to our dossier in preparation for our follow-up call today.


The good news is, we finished our documents, John got them notarized, and they are in the mail headed to All God's Children.  On the flip side, our case manager was out sick today so we were unable to reconnect.  We are hoping to know more soon.


Although we would love to be the family this child has been waiting for, we really just hope and pray that this child gets home soon.  We realize that may be with another family, and we are at peace with that.  Please join us in prayer for this waiting child in Ethiopia.  Pray that this child gets home to their forever family as quickly as possible.


If you are curious about the waiting child program, or just want a little lift, I've attached a video from our agency below. To read more about the waiting child program click here.

Be The Difference from Videos for AGCI on Vimeo.



Nicole and John Scott

Happy Birthday ah-By-ah (Daddy)!

Yesterday we celebrated John's 30th birthday with a dinner downtown.  Usually we do not go out to restaurants outside our zip code, but thanks to the Wharton's we had dinner reservations at The Common Table.  Here's a picture of John celebrating.

When I asked John how he wanted to celebrate his big day, he responded with, "Can we just go to bed early?"  Ha!  I guess that what's you get when you hit the big three-o!  Annie hit the target when she gave John this card:

On another note, yesterday morning we received a newsletter from our adoption agency.  Unfortunately, the timeline has changed for our adoption.  From what we understand, the U.S. Embassy has revised the requirements to declare a child an orphan.  This means it will take quite a bit longer for the children to be declared orphans, and a slower process for the adoptive families.  At this point our agency is predicting 18-24 months for our referral.   We definitely weren't expecting this, but are trying to stay optimistic.  We've been saying from the beginning that we will do this in His time, so there must be a reason for this change.  In the mean time, we will enjoy the time we have together and continue to pray for our sweet child.

Hope you all are doing well!  Happy early Valentine's Day!

Paperwork Sent!!!

After many months of working hard to get all our paperwork in order for the adoption, it has arrived in Oregon.  It seemed as though it was taking forever, but we able to persevere through delays and changes to get it completed.  In total we had 46 pieces of paper that we had to have 2 copies of for a grand total of 98 pieces of paper sent to All God's Children.  This completes our dossier stage of the process.  We are now in the review stage, which shouldn't take too long.  We are also waiting on the completion of our Addendum to our Home Study.  Since John now has a new full time job, we needed to note that change in our file.  Luckily we did not have to totally redo our Home Study, but were able to just make an addendum to it.  Our next step is for All God's Children to review all our paperwork and have them okay everything.  From there they will send it over to Ethiopia where we will get in line for our court date that will result in our referral.  The referral is the courts sending us the information for the child they believe will most benefit from our family.  We will then have one week to review and pray over this information and decide if this is the child that will become ours.  This is when things get exciting.  After we approve the referral we will be making two trips to Ethiopia for court appearances finalizing our adoption.

We are so excited to be making this giant leap forward in our adoption process.  Again we cannot thank everyone enough for their love and support and most importantly their prayers as we continue moving towards growing our family.

Love,

Nicole and John

Summary of Our 2011 Adoption Journey

So, as we are counting down the hours of 2011, we can't help but think about our journey this past year.  We hope and pray this is our last New Year's Eve celebrating as two, and that next year our family of three will be together.

You can imagine at times like these (and it was even harder at Christmas), our hearts ache and yearn for our child that is so far away.  Sometimes it's as if we are spinning our wheels, a feeling that we are not really going anywhere in our adoption path.  We know that's not true, but honestly that's the way the holidays make us feel.

In an effort to cheer ourselves up, and double checking our finances in preparation for tax season, we created a little presentation of the adoption journey in dollar signs.  We have been so blessed by family and friends from the beginning.   The adoption process can be so fuzzy and gray at times (and we have all the literature and information at our fingertips), we thought that this would be an easy way for our loved ones to see where their donations and prayers are going.

Let's start with the adoption expenses we have already cleared.

We haven't paid our Dossier fees quite yet, but are expecting that to go through in the next week.  We went ahead and marked it as "paid" since we know we have those funds covered.

As many of you know, we have been working really hard to raise this money.  Until October, John was only working part-time but we were still determined to stay out of debt with this adoption so we can be prepared financially to support a baby.  Again, we were blessed by family and friends along the way, just look below.

Unfortunately we have yet to receive our donations from the marathon, but we are hoping that will arrive soon.  That, along with future T-shirt sales, will add to our fundraising total.

In addition, we have been picking up every odd end job that comes our way.  As we went through our adoption deposit receipts, these are a few examples of what we found: babysitting, dog sitting, countless hours of tutoring, tutus for Coppell Dance Centre, Advocare, Daily 5 Presentation in Crandall, CISD mentoring, and chauffeuring our favorite Coppell lacrosse player.

Although crossing these expenses off our list is a major accomplishment, we know there are more fees to come.  In addition, we want to be prepared for the unexpected hurdles that may arise.  Here's what we KNOW we can expect:

The hardest part about this is we just don't know when all this will come about.  We are definitely in the "waiting" stage now, only this time it's in Ethiopia's hands, not the U.S. government. (More on that when we get our number!)

Finally, to sum it all up:

Our intentions for this post are simple really:

1.  Thank our friends and family for the support emotionally, in prayer, and finances.  Hopefully you have a better understanding of journey so far.

2.  Celebrate our progress in the process of adoption.

Looking back on 2011 we will always remember this was the "climb" in our adoption.  Yes, it's been stressful, down right agonizing at times, but we can honestly say we have never felt so close to our Lord, Jesus Christ or our friends and family.

Wishing you all the best in 2012.  Please continue to pray for our family, especially our sweet baby in Ethiopia waiting for his/her forever home.

Sincerely,

The Scotts

Chosen Half Marathon

To say the last three days have been busy is an understatement!  This was a very important weekend for our adoption.

First of all, we received a copy of our home study with all the signatures.  Friday morning John dropped off the packet of paperwork at USCIS.  There were several forms we had to include in our I-600, the petition to classify an orphan as an immediate relative.  We are not sure how long this will take to process, but in the meantime we will pray, pray, pray.  Once we receive approval, our dossier will have all the parts and be ready to send to All God's Children and Ethiopia.

Secondly, Nicole completed the half marathon on Saturday.  John was unable to run because of his injuries in the car accident.  Nicole's brother, Elliott stepped in at the last minute to run with Nicole.  Thanks Elliott!   Nicole's sister Angie and niece, Elizabeth, were at the finish line cheering us on.

The finish line! (Yes, I think I was smiling the entire 13.1 miles.)

 Nicole and Elliott

 My favorite little cheerleader!

 My unofficial time!  Notice the distance 13.17, hmmmmm!

Talking to my Dad (wishing they were there) and drinking a Spark!

My Dad and Sister showing their support in Florida, wearing our adoption shirts.

Although I don't have any other experiences with marathons, I have to say this one was pretty awesome. It was a beautiful route through the hills.  A little chilly (42 degrees) but nothing we couldn't handle.  Actually, I probably wouldn't consider that cold except for the last four months that I was training the average temp was in the mid 90's.

One of my favorite parts of the marathon was the pictures they had lined up right before the finish line.  They had enlarged pictures of children that were adopted with the help of ABBA/Chosen Marathon.  There is no way you could give up when you see those sweet smiling faces.

Not sure when we will find out how much we raised through the marathon.  They were registering the runners up until the last day and rumor is they raised over $153,000 this year.

Don't forget our friend Becca is hosting a Stella and Dot jewelry party this Wednesday, November 2nd.  You can shop online by going to this link.  If you would like to order, please contact Melissa directly here.  If you live nearby, stop by Blue Mesa in Southlake any time between 7-9PM.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers as we continue on our adoption journey!

With love,
Nicole and John Scott

Waiting for our paperwork...

Just a little update on what's going on with us.  We are patiently waiting for paperwork.  Our home study was approved, we just need for the official copies from the agency so we can pass along to UCIS.  We have been waiting for this paperwork for over a month- ugh.  Once we get this, things will start moving very quickly.

On another note, John started a new job as Youth Minister at Most Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Arlington.  Right now he is working part time and keeping his after school job and tutoring.  He is anxious to go full time, so I'm sure come January we will be crazy busy!

I'm working insane hours at school, as usual.  All I know is this schedule is NOT going to work when our little one(s) comes home.  John and I are working and praying hard that this will be my last year teaching until our kids are back in school.

The marathon is less than two weeks away.  I've been running and training for several weeks now (with a little help from Advocare supplements), but I'm still very nervous about the hills in Gruene.  John was in a terrible car accident last Thursday, so we are not sure if he will be able to run.  He definitely wants to, but lets just say it's not looking good.  To find out more about the marathon click here.  We are The Scott Family Ethiopia Team.

On November 2, my good friend Rebecca Burda is hosting a Stella and Dot jewelry party.  All the proceeds will go directly to our adoption fund.   Even if you do not live nearby, you can order online and have it shipped to you.  If you are not familiar with Stella and Dot- you will love it!   Evites go out this Wednesday and I will post details on the blog so nobody is left out!

Hope all is well with all our friends!  Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers while we wait for our paperwork!