SCHONE ADVENTURES!: Hawaiian Enrichment

Friday, October 24, 2008

Hawaiian Enrichment

As most of you know I am our ward Enrichment Leader. I get to plan a big party every month for 60-70 people. It is the best calling and we have a lot of fun and I have a great board to help with everything. We have had some really great nights. On Wednesday for our October activity we did a Hawaiian theme, "The Aloha Spirit" The program was put on by our great President Joan and alot of wonderful women sang, it was perfect. It was fun to think about hawaii in October.. We had hawaiian haystacks for dinner and sherbet with cookies for dessert. Here are some fun photos from that night. ALOHA-

1 comment:

Ryan said...: You did a fabulous job. I will miss our ward so much. Thanks for everything!!; October 24, 2008 at 10:29 PM

Our Adoption Timeline...

ADOPTION COMPLETE!!!
SIGNED...SEALED...DELIVERED..
October 11th...Blessed Zak
October 10th...Sealed Zak in the St. George Temple
October 1st.. Went to Court to Finalize Adoption
January 26th.. A Happy Ending to our adoption Journey- Today our son Zackary was born. The first time I held him, I was hooked. I had fallen in love.. Thanks to everyone that has followed us on this journey. Our family is complete-
January 25th- I am typing this after going to dinner to meet our son's birth mom. The night went really well and we had a nice time. We are both looking forward to tomorrow. The next time I update this blog on our adoption, will be the announcement of the birth of our son... Am I excited? That is an understatement, and I said to Steve, "How am I going to sleep tonight?" and he said, "You should for sure get a good night sleep tonight because once he is here you won't get any".. Isn't that for sure.. Wow, I can't believe this is really happening. Thanks for all your support..
January 20th- 6 days and counting until I get to hold my new son... We had the conference call with our birth mom today and for the first few minutes I couldn't talk. I can't believe what a wonderful selfless person she is. She is giving us the greatest gift, The gift of our SON- Things went really well, we were able to ask any question to each other back and forth. She is darling.. We are both excited about the birth- The best part of all is, she said, I can be in the delivery room with her... I am so consumed with the anticipation to the big day-
JANUARY 16TH (night)- WE GOT MATCHED ... I did the last information this morning and here we are the same day but, How Things Change!!! Well, I had been talking with another agency and decided to go with them and not wait until April with ours. Yesterday, I talked with someone there and had them send me information. I mailed them a profile of our family and all the documents that they needed.. They have a birth mom that was trying to decide on a family. She said, she liked big families and would love it, if they had other African American children. They told her about us and she really liked us, we are going to do a conference call with her tomorrow. She is from Georgia and will fly into Salt Lake to deliver. She is due January 26th, Yes 10 days from now... We are all very excited and we will keep you updated.. Thanks to those of you that have been following our adoption journey.. We appreciate your prayers and support..
Jan 16th.(Morning).. The Adoption world is never what you think or want. Things change by the minute and without any of our control. Their were 5 birth moms due in January, early February. One Mom didn't pick us because we have a large family, one Mom found out that she is now having a girl, one Mom decided to Keep the baby, One Mom picked another family and another Mom hasn't returned the agencies phone calls. It shows you how quickly things change. SO, now we wait again for our son.. We know we will find him, it is just taking longer than we had hoped. We are trying to decide whether we wait it out with this agency who doesn't have any more birth Moms until April-May or do we switch and start with again another agency. We are talking and looking and seeing what our options are now at this point. So, again we will keep you posted...
Dec 27th.. Well, we finally found a new Domestic Adoption Agency to go with. We applied with them and sent them our family profile. They have sent our profile to 3-4 birth moms due in February. We are just waiting to see if one of them pick us. We are adopting a newborn baby boy- The kids are very excited and don't want to wait anymore. We are still sad that things didn't work out with Ethiopia, but we know things happen for a reason. We will keep you updated-
Nov 30th... Well, just to let those of you know that are following our adoption process... We have been doing a lot of talking and thinking as a family. We are trying to decide if we wait and go the distance to Ethiopia.. Right now the wait is 12-16 months.. We are thinking we are going to adopt a newborn boy domestic... Somethings have happened that made us start to shift our thinking. But, because we have been working on Ethiopia we would be all ready to go domestic.. I will keep you all posted, we are talking with some local adoption agencies and will know more soon.
Oct 7th- I just found out today that we are looking at about a year wait. By the time we get our Dossier paperwork in and approved we just wait for the referral. Some are taking up to a year and then another 3-5 months before travel to pick up your child... THE WAIT hasn't even begun yet, until I can get all our paperwork done and approved.. You would be amazed how much paperwork is needed to adopt-
Sept 24th- We finished our Home Study and mailed our Educational Packet. He received our BCI (Criminal Background Check) back . He will need about 2 weeks to get our homestudy written up and sent in and then we will need to wait another 2-3 weeks to get it approved. Once it is approved we can get in line for a referral of a child. Their are 307 families in line for a referral right now... We still have to do all of our Dossier paperwork before we can even get in line to get a referral of a child.
Sept 22nd--Our 1st homestudy is scheduled.. We will have our first Homestudy on this date ..Then we can turn in our part II The Educational portion to The Agency. We had to answer in depth about 100 questions about situations that might arise and how we would handle it, Do more then 10 hours of Study and Do a workbook on parenting questions. Answer health questions that we think we could handle in the adopted child..(So, hard to do because there are so many special children that have special needs) and so, forth.. The so, forth is all the other things that are too long to mention.. It will then be reviewed and then we can get in line to receive a referral. (Which is when a referral of a child is made that would fit our family)This could take around 3 months
Sept 3rd--- Homestudy paperwork almost complete. Medical forms on Steve and I and every child. Imformation form, financial papers, marriage certificate, 5 reference letters... He needs 2 more things and then we schedule our first homestudy
August 27th---Got a new License and Renewed our passports
August 24th---Received and started on list of paperwork for Homestudy
August 19th ---Sent in Initial Paperwork

Our Kids...

Friday, October 24, 2008

Hawaiian Enrichment

1 comment: