Orphan Summitt

We met with our homestudy coordinator on Wednesday and he was wonderful. He and his wife adopted a three year old boy from Korea 30 years ago. He went over some orientation items, our safety check list for our home, and gave us more paperwork to fill out (he said he didn't send it all at once because then it's really overwhelming). We meet with him again on June 8th for our home safety study, he said we weren't being graded on how clean our house was, darn :).

On Friday I went to the Orphans Summitt VII at Southeast Christian. I went to two sessions on having a multi-racial family. It was wonderful! In the second session there were three adults who were adopted by white parents, 2 South Koreans and 1 biracial from Detriot. They gave great insight and I realized Mike and I are "very white" (a term they used) and we are going to have to help our little guy understand and embrace his race and ethnicity. They did an exercise with beads, each color representing a race, with each question you were to put a bead in your cup (your race, your husbands, kids, doctor, pediatrician, neighbor, boss at work, hairdresser, etc)... then you put your adopted childs race in the cup. I got a little choked up when I put the little guys in because he was the only non-white bead. We have got to do better and I'm going to need some advice on how to do this better. The picture of my cup is below, can you see his black bead in the center...

After the seminar I went to Mimi's Cafe to meet with other America World families and people that work at America World. The creator of the agency was there, it was neat to meet him, you see him in the intro video but meeting him and thanking him for what he's done means much more. About 40 were there including families and employees, it renews your paperchasing spirit to talk with others that are doing the same or have already been there.

On a non-adoption note Samuel ran his first 5K this Saturday and I ran with him. He did great and never walked once. We finished at 29:55, he finished two seconds before me because that is what moms do, he said all week he was going to beat me and he did.

Homestudy

I'm new to this whole blogging thing so I know there hasn't been any new post, sorry. We have been busy at home. As you can see my boys looked very handsome at Easter, I don't know how long they are going to let me dress them in matching outfits. I hope I can do it at least once when our new son is here.

Samuel's soccer team played in the Jefferson County tournament this weekend and for the second season in a row they were the tournament champs, Yeah!!!! Go Celtic!!!!! Will's team hasn't been able to play much because of all the rain we've had and this weekend is Derby and all of Louisville shuts down, so no games :( .

Mike and 2 of our friends ran the Louisville marathon last weekend, it was the first marathon for them. Mike did fine except for all of his bathroom breaks, I think he counted six times, maybe he should get that checked out. :)

I haven't been doing anything exciting except the normal mom stuff AND trying to get all the paperwork done for our homestudy. They call it "paper pregnant", it's overwhelming but I'm trying to do bits at a time. We meet with our AWAA social worker next Wednesday, this will be our first face to face meeting, we've had a number of emails with all my questions. I'm excited to meet him, he adopted a 3 year old boy from Korea 30 years ago. I'll let you know how that goes. I know Ethiopia has become a longer wait in the past 2 months, I told my friend Allison who's also adopting from there that I just want to submit my dossier and then wait, that way I know it's out of my hands.

I met a mom this weekend at the soccer tournament who has 2 boys from Ethiopia, one is now 9 and the other is 5. They have had the 9 year old since he was 5 and brought the now 5 year old home in September. This gave me a lift meeting her and the boys, she was so encouraging and the boys were adorable. The 5 year old was speaking great English and she said he had adjusted very well. God gives you these moments, I was overwhelmed and my new worry is attachment disorder, then God brings this mom with her 2 boys in and I feel refreshed and renewed. Only God can do that!