All of these guys had been bought originally from the Bergers. These are very well known llama people in the Midwest. I have the opportunity to bring these guys home and love them up. There are 5 females and 1 gelding. They all have great conformation, great heavy wool and great size! I am so incredibly excited about the whole herd. They should be here in late July.

We are active! What this means is this. All of our paperwork is completed, our profile is completed and they have cashed a big monster check at the adoption agency: they will now present our info to prospective birth mothers whom meet our requirements (ie; did not do drugs during pregnancy)..

Now we are in the official “wait” stage of the adoption process.

We have a new girly llama for Cheese!

Rory

A. Lluminous Aurora Borealis. “Rory”

Isn’t she sweet? We have her out back with the goats until she is a little bigger. She is still on the small side and we do not want to breed her until she has grown a little more. We got her from Auld’s Lluminous Llamas; Steve and Sandy Auld. They came out to our place with their llama bus and sheered both Rory and Cheese for us, right out front. Here are some photos.

Cheese getting sheared.

Hmm, well.. Nothing new.. absolutely nada.

We have had our home-study done since May 5th. We have been having issues with the Agency that we are working with however. We sent all of our documents and they seemed to have misplaced several pages that we had to resend. Thank God, I made copies. Then they claimed our Home-study professional misplaced some of his documents… He resent them and they claimed he did not. I called them today and had them LOOK at the documents while I was on the phone. They looked closely and walla, they found one that they said was missing. They feel the FBI clearance document is not as explanatory as they want. They now want the social worker, that is working with us to send a statement explaining how to read the FBI clearance document. Grrr. It never ends. It seems to me that they are stalling. Come on… Like how different is our FBI clearance from all the others? I was curious and had the documents faxed to me at work. There seems to be nothing unusual. In fact it looked entirely boring.. Nothing on it to make us looks in the least bit bad. it just says we are good people. 3 lines.. grrrrrrr. So, here we are- still not able to adopt a child because the agency is not satisfied with this one stupid document.  The man I called today about it, said he just wants to make sure we are covered if we have an interstate adoption. I tell this to the social worker and he tells me he has done 1000’s of adoptions and in his entire career he has never seen this much bullshit.

What to do… Maybe move on. I will give it one week.

We all had thought we would be live or “active” by now..  By this, I mean- in adoption terms: all of paperwork would be neatly filed away, home study turned in and the profile on us would be sent off to birth mothers to see if they would like to choose us to raise her child. We did our part. However, once all of the papers were received in the adoption agency in Missouri, some pieces from my envelope and a some pieces from the Iowa Adoption Investigator’s envelope were missing.

I can not see how this happened and after talking to the social worker who sent his stuff to the agency, he asked me to double check because he has been doing this for years and does not miss a beat. I have been trying to contact the agency and can not get the woman or her assistant who is managing our case to call us back.  It has been a long week of NO movement whatsoever.  We have not sent them any money yet, so I am wondering if they just do not want our business. Maybe we should take our home study and go somewhere else.

Yes, this is discouraging.. I am sure it will be worse when we are “active” and waiting.

This is a sad post.

At American Adoptions, where we are adopting from, there is an Adoption situations web page that is updated fairly often. An adoption situation is where a  baby is available and where they are actively looking for an adoptive family. This web page, that is shown to all public has category A situations. Here it is. These category A situations are where either the birth mother did not find any waiting parent profiles she liked OR there are no waiting parents who match up or would take her baby (usually a case where the mom has abused drugs or the baby has a known defect). I look at this almost daily and see some sad things. Right now there is a Spina Befida baby on there. So sad, I hope there is someone out there willing to take on that challenge.

We will be looking in a different pool of babies, not seen by the public. But we always have the option to ask American Adoptions to submit us for one of these less fortunate babies.

Well, everything is in place, except the profile. It is written, but is being reviewed by my husband and most likely revised again.  I tasked him with writing the birth parent letter. He is a very good writer so I hope he can portray our honest hopes and dreams for “Three” in such a way that a birth mom chooses us.  The better it is written, the less time we wait.

We are all signed up for the adoption program that leans heavy on biracial and African American placement.. What if a mother does not choose us because we appear to be the whitest family ever? I do not think there is anything but Caucasian in our entire family. Croy and I have many friends from India and all over the world. We both have befriended many people where we do not see color of the skin meaning anything.  How do we tell the birth mother that we will embrace her child’s heritage and teach her child that a person is a person no matter what race they are, without sounding like we are desperate.. This, getting acceptance from a woman who does not know us, is the largest hurdle. It’s likely the first of many.

I hate to say it but the profile and birth mother letter are just marketing documents. I really do not want to fool anyone about who we are, but the only way (it seems) to do it is to conform. I wish there was a more honest way to show someone who we were, that the adoption agency would allow. They all want us to write about specific things such as:

• What does it mean to be parents and what do you like most or expect to like most about being parents?
• What is your cultural heritage?
• How will you address cultural diversity?
• What are your family traditions?
• What type of education will you provide for the child?
• What are your strengths as individuals?
• Do you have other children?
• What are your religious beliefs?
• Out favorite things

Everyone has the same topics. And everyone is writing what they think the birth mother wants to hear. Then the agency takes our photos and what we have written and drops it all in the same template web page/brochure that all the other waiting parents have.  These poor birth mothers see the same stuff everywhere, how can they choose? Is there a reason that they want to make us all look alike? I want to task you with just looking at some of the adoptive profiles out there and see if you find something/someone different. Then tell me if that person is going to get chosen to bring up a child.

Ok, Mombie is ranting now and getting herself worked up. She must go and pre-clean the house, for the cleaning fairies are coming tomorrow to mop, scrub and dust.

Today, May 12th 2010, is the “Day in the Life” Photography day for Iowa.

I am not sure, but I think it is worldwide.

All day, it has been entirely too rainy to get any good shots, so I felt powerless. Then, about 20 minutes ago, I glimpsed out the window a perfect shot! Xoe helped me out and ran out in the backyard for this one..

Yes, we are dealing with flash flooding. The creek down the hill is over flowing- for sure!

Jinx has not been updating her blog, that is what has been happening.  Perhaps, you should yell at her.

Beyond that, Wind ranch has been pretty wild.  We have been busy with work and play. I have a been working alot because we are about to launch a new release of the banking software I design. It has been crazy at work. When at home, we have had soccer practices Monday through Thursday and games on both Saturdays and Sundays! Then just for some fun, we through in a barbecue every other week and have tons of people over. << I will insert some photos of the fun we have been having with BBQs.>> The soccer player BBQs are most fun, because the kids terrorize the baby goats and poor old Sunny gets more attention that an old mare can tolerate. At this last one, the 10 yr old girls found mud and we had to hose them off before the family’s went home. HA, the parents must love us!  Girl Scouts has 4 meetings next week. 4! And we have one more soccer tournament this month and 3 more next, not to mention soccer tryouts for next season. This should be fun. Matt (“Croy”) is going to go to Minneapolis for more coach training soon too.  We are having a great time out here at Wind Ranch.

We went to Pella Tulip Time last weekend. Check out the photos!

I am going to plan the garden here soon. Any suggestions? I just planted 3 new silver maples and the deer have not gotten to them yet! I am thrilled. They killed the apple trees from last year.

We have some news. Just call us pregnant. Well, not really.. But we are expecting. Nooo, not a baby goat, horse or llama. While we were in WI, we had revisited the idea of adoption again. We both came to the same conclusion. This little family is not yet complete. Over the last 2 months we have been filing paperwork, getting fingerprinted and we have paid massive amounts of money to many different people in effort to adopt our next child. Until we know who we are adopting- we are calling this new family member “Three”, “Tres” or “Tre”.. If you hear mention of 3 in the following posts, you’ll know who we are referring too.
Soo, my friends and fam, stay tuned for more info on our most amazing of all family endeavors.