Our Adoption Research and Plans

 Colombia

  Ecuador

    Peru

Throughout 2009, we researched adoption and prayed about our future.  In the Fall, we decided to move forward.  We were excited to research all of our options of agencies and countries.  There are so many agencies out there!  Some agencies work in all different countries and some are more specialized to one particular country.  When we first started our search, we looked at all of the countries, and we were really interested in South America.  We then discovered that most agencies that work with South America work in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.  Unfortunately, Ecuador and Peru were ruled out based on my medical history.  We really liked Colombia, and we were very excited to move forward with the hope of adopting from there.  The Colombian adoption program is one of the most established programs so there is a lot of stability working with the Colombian government.  The Colombian government for adoption is called ICBF, which stands for Instituto Colombiano de Beinester Familiar.  ICBF is the government agency in charge of processing and authorizing adoptions throughout Colombia.  When you adopt from Colombia, there are two options.  Some children are under the protection of the ICBF and some are in private orphanages that are overseen by the ICBF.  With both options, all adoptions are processed through ICBF.  After researching everything, we knew we had a strong desire to adopt older children, siblings, and boys, from Colombia.  We felt led by God to adopt, parent, love, and share our lives nuturing, raising, and creating life long memories together.  So, after two years of praying and researching, the adoption journey begins!!  We are so excited!!  Dainis will graduate with his MBA in May so we know we won't start the process until then.

Our 11th Anniversary

We celebrated our 11th anniversary in California.  We spent our actual anniversary at Disneyland, which was a lot of fun.  We were given buttons that said Happy Anniverary so everyone wished us "Happy Anniversary" all day long.  We then went onto Carlsbad for the rest of the week.  It was our first time to Carlsbad and loved it.  We stayed at a resort called Great Pacific Palisades Resort, and it overlooked beautiful flower fields.  The beach was only a few minutes away and you could walk on the beach for hours.  We are still excited about the option of adoption, and Dainis has one more year of school left.