Where we are

Okay, so I realized I probably should write an update post, since so many people at church this morning wanted to know how/where we are with things, since I asked everyone to be praying for us. 

Before I get into adoption stuff, there are a few other things to say.  First, as far as Daniel's selection to officer, we're still waiting to hear on that.  The list was supposed to come out four to six weeks after the selection committee met.  We just finished the sixth week.  So...we're praying it will come out this week, but we know it will be soon.  Thank goodness for that.  We also did hear that anyone who is selected this time will be put on what's called an Order of Merit List for class dates to go to OCS and the first available class date for this selection is April 2012.  Which means, if selected, April is the earliest Daniel would go to OCS, and we'd stay here before then and Lucas and I (and, please, Lord, the baby) will stay here while he's gone, as well. 

Also, Daniel is promotable to E6, and he's been working on some correspondence courses this month to increase his points a little bit.  The promotion list should come out in a week or two, as well, and we're hoping he'll get picked up, because if he doesn't get picked up in the next couple months, the system changes again and it will make it a whole lot harder for him to get promoted any time soon.  But with at least about 9 months ahead of us as the earliest Daniel becomes an officer on officer pay grade (assuming he does even get selected), a promotion would be especially helpful, since when we DO get a baby, I'll most likely have to stop working, at least for a while or until we can figure out a time for me to fit it in, since nap time won't happen at the same time for both kids, most likely.  So...pray for that, too.

Okay.  Now adoption stuff.  The shortest answer on the alternate agency situation is that we decided not to go with them.  They seemed quite aggressive to us both and we kind of got a bad taste in our mouths about it.  It just didn't seem right.  Even if we do get to the point that we want to start working with another agency along with Bethany, we'd look for one that we feel a little more in sync with.  Basically, it came down to the fact that we worried that if they were aggressive with the adoptive family side of things, that they would be the same way with the birth mother side of things, and we don't want at all to get involved in a scenario in which the birth mother feels at all forced or pressured to make a decision she's not comfortable with.  We LOVE Bethany and love the way they do things.  We also love our social worker and trust her to help guide us through all of the process.  We just didn't want to potentially get in a situation in which we'd have to work with people we didn't trust.

We did find out that Bethany showed our profile to a birth mother a few weeks ago, not for selecting a family, but just to give her an idea of how they do things and what to expect on down the line, and she gave very positive feedback about our newly updated profile, which was good for me to hear.  I am starting to feel very strongly that things are starting to move and that once our profile can be shown, something will happen.  We just have to get to that point.  Very likely, it will be shown to one or more birthmoms within the next month or so, so we're praying for a match soon, even if that means waiting with the birth mom for the baby to be born. 

So, that's the biggest news we have to share.  If you read and understood it all, you get a gold star.  If you didn't, all you need to know is that nothing's changed yet and we're still waiting on all the things we've been waiting for.  In happy news, though, it's Lucas' birthday today and my precious boy is 3!!  I can't even believe it.