dh said what I needed to hear

So Thursday night we went to our first adoption support group meeting together as a couple. Most of the other support group meetings I have been to were for women going through infertility(IF) treatments or were in transition.

Well after I finally put my foot down Wednesday night and told DH that we are dropping the issues of IF treatments via surrogacy for now(not to be forgotten) and pursuing adoption 100%, he agreed. YEAH.

We went to the meeting and got there a 1/2 hour early. LOL My butt was so excited to go and thus we left the house in plenty of time to grab dinner and then get to the meeting room with 30 minutes to spare. There was another couple there waiting so we were not alone. Then the leader of the group came in early too and she was excited to see all of us there early. Then b y the time 10 minutes past for the start of the meeting we had 15 of us in there including the leader of the meeting. The leader is a 2 time mom of an adopted son and daughter. It was nice to meet others still in the search process as we are for an agency or lawyer/facilitator and others with an agency that are in the process of paperwork and home studies.

The meeting lasted 2 hours and as DH and I walked out of the building, I asked him how he felt about the meeting? He said, "This proved that Adoption IS for US." WOOOHOOO. My heart jumped with JOY. We talked all the way home and even more some when we got home. He said we can do this and he was excited to know that not ALL aspects of adoption have a negative notation to them. He even said he was really happy to realize that we can be happy through this process unlike the uncertainty through IF treatments we often experienced.

So I have a total of 5 agencies we have reviewed the initial packets from and I am going to be requesting about 3 or 4 more from out of state agencies. Looks like I might need to take a 1/2 day of work to do this because I can't do it at work. I loved hearing that others have done this too to get the initial reviewing process done. I will be sitting down this week and will make up a list of questions to call those agencies we can go with (non-church going folk here) and call them to get answers. It is amazing what you can ask them. Oh, one agency even sent a list of referrals for me to call when I asked them if they had a list. Very nice. I am sure it is a list of people that are "good" referrals, but I want to hear their experiences. Once we are finalized with our adoption and if a couple needs a referral (spoken word on the agency we use) then I would be glad to help them out so I hope we can find that same help.

First thing is first........ Put away my Christmas decorations today. Bahahahaha. Yup, they are still up, sad I know, but both DH and I were too lazy this past week and been sick so today is the best day I have to put them away.

Second thing ...... Find some adoption agencies in Illinois and possibly Indiana to get their intro packets from. Might you know of any with a good referral? Now remember we are in MO so we are ok with travel to places like this. Heck, DH and I even were kidding about if we were to be matched in another state, we could take the camper and stay near the place we would need to go. The camper is like a house for us and plus we can take the doggies if needed. I can't kennel 3 dogs and it is hard to find a house sitter to do that. LOL

NOTHING but POSITIVE things to think about.

Hey, today is January 7th and it is going to be near or around 50 degrees. WOW. We have only had one real snow here so far and I bet we will get blasted with nasty weather soon.