PRIDE - Session 2 (03/11/08)

Session Two: Teamwork Toward Permanence. This session lays the foundation for understanding birth-family issues and being able to support family relationships.

Well I have to admit, am a little disappointed in the classes so far. I was really hoping to get more out of them. I was hoping to learn more about what each session is supposed to be discussing. Our instructor is from Equador, and is a bit hard to understand. She sort of wonders off on her opinions and experiences rather than discussing the topic at hand. I am hoping that we learn more and more as the classes continue, but we will see. The positive side is that we have only 7 classes left, which means we are that much closer to becoming parents!

For those of you who do not know yet... we have taken a whole new direction. We have decided to give a child or children a loving home that has been neglected, abused or abandoned. We are adopting (asking for/open to) a sibling set of two (or a single child) under the age of 5 years old. We are looking forward to jumping right in and becoming parents and having a "family".

Tomorrow, we have our Adoption Application Workshop. We will learn exactly what is needed and how to complete our application, as well as when the proper time is to start our Home Study! I will keep you posted!

Thanks for following our journey!

PRIDE - Session 1 (03/04/08)

Our first class was interesting.. kinda boring I will admit. That is only because the first day was sort of an overview of what all we will be going over throughout the 9 weeks in class. It looks like the information will be very interesting and definitely informative and we are both looking forward to absorbing as much as we can. I will share with you our experience, as we go.

Pride stands for Parent Resources for Information, Development, and Education. PRIDE is Orange County’s standardized curriculum of training for adoptive parents and the new model of practice.

The PRIDE curriculum was developed by the Child Welfare League of America. The model is designed to strengthen the quality of family adoption. It provides a standardized, consistent, structured framework for the competency-based development and support for adoptive families. Prior to becoming an adoptive parent, applicants will participate in a pre-service training by a team of co-facilitators that includes experienced foster parents, and Social Workers. Prospective adoptive parents will be required to attend 27 hours of pre-service training.

The training includes nine sessions
Session One: Connecting with PRIDE. This session helps participants learn about the world of adoption through the stories of children receiving child welfare services. Participants can see adoptive families work as part of the team that provides for the challenging needs of children in their care.

I May Not Be Showing But I Am Glowing!

I love this.. "Forgive Me, I'm Paper Pregnant"

So Excited!

Ok, were off and running (As fast as we can). We attended a meeting last night, which is the first step. Next we start our "PRIDE" classes on March 4th which is a 9 week series of classes. PRIDE stands for Parenting Recourse for Information, Development, and Education. These classes will be completed on April 29th. We also have an Adoption Application Workshop on March 12th. In a few weeks we will be able to turn in partial paperwork to get assigned a Social Worker. We will then take another Workshop and start our Home Study. This is a short version and basic description of what we will be going through for the next few months. Yippppeeeee! Keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We are hoping everything goes smoothly!

Another Meeting

I apologize for not posting much on the blog. There hasn't been any updating news to share yet. Tomorrow we have another informational meeting to attend. If everything goes well, we will be able to move forward with the "next step". Keep your fingers crossed for us. I will let you know the results soon.

Information Meeting

= These are the statistics from the Law Center that we will be using!

Well, we went to the information meeting on Saturday January 26th. We left there feeling very excited and optimistic.

In this meeting we learned about the exact process that we will be going through from the day we sign the contract until the finalization of the adoption. It made it seem so real, and so possible for us! If it's at all possible, we are more anxious than ever!

We are going to be having a Casino Night Fundraiser on March 22, from 6:30-11:30. Please save the date! We will be sending out invitations very soon. If you are interested and want to make sure that you get an invitation sent to you, please do not hesitate to let me know, so we can make sure we get your address! Although this is not going to be an Invitation Only, it Will be a Ticket only event. We are so excited and hope that this fundraiser gets us a lot closer to signing that contract!

Cell Phone Fundraiser

http://www.thewirelessalliance.com/followouradoption/

Why Recycle Your Cell Phone For Our Adoption? It is estimated that every year, 150 million cell phones go into closets, desk drawers and worse, in the trash. We are helping the environment by keeping cell phones out of landfills, and in return you will be helping us raise money for our adoption fund. Please consider dropping off any phones you would like to donate, or simply go the website, (link above) and print your prepaid shipping label. We thank you in advance for considering, not only helping our environment, but also for helping us raise funds to adopt a beautiful baby who needs a loving home ~ our home.

Silver Change

Thank you, soon to be Grandma and Grandpa Manley.
My mom and dad have saved their silver change for the last couple of months. How fast it adds up! They have donated a jar with $351.00 in change and left some space for us to continue to fill it. We have added the silver change from our garage sales, and that increased the total by $65.00. It adds up fast, and every bit counts! Thank you!

Words Can Not Describe....

Words can not describe how grateful we are to have the support that we have had so far! We can't express how wonderful it is to have people involved, interested, and supportive of our decision to adopt. We are so fortunate to have people in our lives that have blessed us with kindness. We received a donation a couple of days ago, from a man whom could never be thanked enough. We have not "asked" any one for money, only support and maybe some junk for a garage sale....but the donations we have received have definitely been appreciated. As we have explained in previous blogs this process is very very expensive and to achieve our dream of becoming parents we have reached out to those in our lives that we feel could/would like to be a part of it.

A Very Special thank you to the person who donated $5,000.00 to our adoption fund! Words could NEVER express how grateful we are! When we opened the card and saw that check, I (Kristi) started to cry. We knew, that this makes everything possible for us! We know now...next month, we will be able to start the actual adoption process with the agency. We are going to an informational meeting on January 26th and will sign the agreement shortly after that.

We will still be fundraising, as we still have a ways to go to raise the necessary money to make it all possible. We thank you for your continued support!

Fundraising Results

Thank you Thank you! We had our 2nd Yard sale with the items that were left over and some other items that were recently donated. We raised another $765.00. So with the $1,200 from the first sale and $765.00 from the second, that = $1,965.00 that we raised all together! We could not have done that without you! All of you who donated, Thank you again!

Also, the Pampered Chef Party raised $105.00 and the Creative Memories work shop raised $75.00. Thank you to those of you who came to those!