Home Study.......Done

We completed our home study yesterday and we are just waiting for our clearances to come back (hopefully within the next 3 weeks) so we can send our dossier to Ghana and Kofi can request a court date!

We also booked our plane tickets for our trip to Ghana!! We are going September 3-10 and Brendon is going with us. It is going to be a great trip learning about Ghana...their people and their culture, meeting Kofi and most of all meeting our kids! We will be taking as many extra items as we can (we can fill 3 extra suitcases) to donate both to the foster home and the village where our kids came from. My Mom is also making little snuggly blankets for all the kids in the foster home.

We made a decision about Vivian's name as well. We are going to name her Vivian Belle Venegas with the idea that we will probably call her Belle. Belle means beautiful and it sure fits her!

Next step..... more shots next Friday...Brendon starts getting his too....that produced a frown from him :)

Relief!!

Well.....Noah is doing much better. We got a message this morning from Kofi in Ghana and he said he is smiling and fine. He said he is so adorable and smiling all the time to the point everyone in the foster home wants to take turns holding him because he is so adorable. That's such a relief! I'm sure it is for his sister too who must have been worried about him. She has been doing fairly well all along because things were able to be explained to her.

We got the green flag to book our flights in Septmeber around the 17-24 as Kofi will be available to show us around etc. Can't wait to meet our kids!!

We are hoping to fill 2-3 suitcases with clothes, shoes, toys etc so if anyone has donations to help fill suitcaes let me know!

It's Official!

Well....it's official.....we have two children in foster care in Ghana, Africa. They were moved yesterday and the Mother relinquished her rights. Our little girl (5 years old) is doing fine but Noah (the 5 month old)is having a rough time. He has been crying pretty much the last 24 hours. I wish I was there! I'm sure one of the biggest issues for him is that he has always been breast fed and now has to take a bottle. TOUGH STUFF for a 5 month old! I just hope he can calm down soon and adjust!

We finished 2 out of 4 of our home study visits as of today. We finish the final 2 next weekend and then will just be waiting for our fingerprints to come back from CBI in order to send our dossier to Ghana to apply for a court date.

We are looking at booking our trip to Africa for mid september. We will probably take care of that this week.

One step at a time!!

And then there were two......

Big news! Seems Noah has an older sister that the Mother needs to give up for adoption too. She is about 5 years old. We received an email yesterday morning from our adoption agency Ghana Coordinator asking if we would be interested in adopting her as well. After getting over the initial shock of the news Omar and I decided we would like for the siblings to stay together and decided we will adopt her as well.

Both kids will be moved to the foster home tomorrow and the Mother will be relinquishing her rights.

So....our family just grew literally over night!

We'll keep you posted.

Our First Blog Entry!

Welcome to our blog! This is our first post so it will probably be short. Many of you already know but for those of you who don't.....Omar and I have decided to adopt. This decision has lead us to a little boy in Ghana, Africa. He is currently 5 months old and we are naming him Noah Zachary Venegas. We are just beginning the process so this blog is a way to journal our experience for us, for Noah and for all our family and friends.

We are currently waiting for news that Noah has been moved into the foster home our agency has in Accra, Ghana.

When we have more news I will post. I will also be posting pictures as soon as they become available and we are given permission.