Our Home Study Search Begins

INTERNATIONAL
CHILD FOUNDATION, Inc.Hague Accredited, Licensed & Non-Profit Adoption & Home Study Services

When you start the adoption process, the first thing you do after you pick your agency and get accepted into their program is to start a home study.  Usually the agency you choose to work with for your adoption does your home study, along with the rest of the process.  We knew after researching the different agencies that our agency would be out of the state of AZ.  So, we would need to have two agencies.  One agency would be our home study agency and one would be our placing agency.  All of our documents and communication with Colombia would be through the placing agency.  So, we now had two tasks.  First, we had to decide on our placing agency.  Second, we had to research and find an agency to do our home study!  After researching and talking to reference families, we choose an agency called International Child Foundation for our home study.  We started talking to ICF in February.  We really like them, and they have been very communicative and helpful with all of our questions.  The home study includes two interviews with a social worker at our house, gathering of different documents, and filling out lots of forms to learn more about us, along with an autobiography from each of us.  The different documents included birth certificates, marriage certificate, physician report regarding our health, finger prints, reference letters, and background checks.  The background checks had to come from each state you have lived in since you were 18!!  Dainis was easy because he only needed checks from MN and AZ.  Lori, on the other hand, has lived in GA, AL, NC, TX, SC, OK, MN, and AZ!  This took awhile.  Once we are done with our adoption, we will have taken three sets of fingerprints.  One set will be for the home study, which will be processed in AZ.  One set will go to the FBI for our US documents.  The last set will go to the FBI for our Colombian documents.  After this process is complete, ICF will write a home study report.  After our adoption is complete, we will continue to work with our social worker from ICF.  All countries require post placement reports.  These documents will go back to Colombia reporting how the kids are doing in their new home.  For Colombia, they require reports up until the kids have been home for 21 months.

Therapy 2010

I started my first therapy session at SWAN Rehab today.  Up until now, I have done several weeks at a time all day.  We decided to try something new this year.  We are now going to go for one week, two hours a day, three times a year.  I will be here from February 8th-12th.  It will be more of a check-up then actual therapy time.  We all felt after seven years of hard work, we were ready to take it down.  We will see how this new schedule goes this year.

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.

Lori's On The News

I have had many opportunities to try the newest technological equipment developed to help stroke survivors at my therapy clinic, SWAN Rehab.  One therapeutic device I still wear today is called a Ness L300.  It is a stimulation device that helps stimulate the right muscles when I am walking so I can walk steadier and with better quality.  I had the opportunity to do a news clip on Channel 15 explaining how the L300 works.