The In-Between

Hello friends and family!

Here is a post just to say we are still here, and we are still kicking away at this adoption thing, along with a lot of other things:

 A quick note on adoption: we are in the end stages of our home study and then will be applying to agencies (fingers crossed) sometime in December! We still have fundraising to do, but have raised a little over $10,000 so far!! How absolutely incredible!!  We are still trying to come up with creative ideas for this process. So far, our friends Aaron and Minette put on an amazing poker tournament for us, I am still taking orders for Colorado flags, and of course we are playing our map guessing game! We SO APPRECIATE our friends and family and how they continue to step up.  They have given oh so generously to our adoption!

That being said, I'm going to take a page out of  Jesus Calling by Sarah Young - I was given this devotional by a friend, I had heard of it, but had never read it before.  I am so glad that she placed it in my hands. This is actually the passage from October 27, but it stuck with me:

"As you become increasingly aware of My presence, you find it easier to discern the way you should go. This is one of the practical benefits of living close to Me. Instead of wondering about what is on the road ahead or worrying what you should do if… Or when…., you can concentrate on staying in communication with Me. When you actually arrive at a choice-point, I will show you which direction to go, many people are so preoccupied with future plans and decisions that they fail to see choices they  need to make today. Without any conscious awareness , they make their habitual responses. People who live this way find a dullness creeping into their lives.They  sleepwalk through their days, following well-worn paths of routine. I, the Creator of the universe, am the most creative being imaginable. I will not leave you circling in deeply rutted paths.Instead, I will lead you along fresh trails of adventure, revealing to you things you did not know. Stay in communication with Me. Follow My guiding presence.

Psalm 32:8; Genesis 1:1"  - Jesus Calling by Sarah Young

With all of the excitement happening around us, I find myself being thankful for future blessings and sometimes forgetting the moment I'm standing in. This feeling has let a level of dullness and frustration with the current day creep right in. I needed this reminder we are led on fresh trails of adventure each and everyday when we stay in focus of God's purpose and promises. I hope it can be an encouragement to you, too! 

Now, can you believe it's November? Wowzers! I swear my friends just had babies last week not this spring and summer, Andy just started school, he couldn't possibly have already taken midterms, and I just started working at SF again a couple months ago so I shouldn't be coming up on a one year anniversary here!

Cheers to the last two months of one amazing year- here's to making it count! 

Andy and Mimi 

Here are a few of our favorite photos over the last month :) 

Murder Mystery Party at our house

Andy performs his first wedding ceremony and marries our neighbors!

Poker Fun with Minette & Aaron

Practice makes perfect? I think these babies are just forgetting to smile :)

My Lovely sister visiting 

A little Zombie fun...

Everything You Wanted to Know: The Adoption FAQ

Welcome Back!

We have had lots of support and prayer since making our adoption announcement so thank you!  There have also been a lot of questions about the process.  What better way to answer those questions than a handy dandy FAQ for you. Enjoy!  

Where are you adopting from, and how old will the child be?
Andy and I are doing a domestic infant adoption. About 135,000 children are adopted in the United States each year. Of non-stepparent adoptions, about 59 percent are from the child welfare (or foster) system, 26 percent are from other countries, and 15 percent (or roughly 19,000 cases) are voluntarily relinquished American babies.

So will your baby be born in Colorado?
We are open to adopting from anywhere in the United States, although each state has different adoption laws. There could be all sorts of situations we encounter, but we do know that unless our baby is born right here in Colorado, we will go to where they are born.  We will stay with our baby in that state until the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) is cleared from both states and then come home!

How long will it be till you have a baby?
The average waiting period for this exciting journey is anywhere from nine months to one year, it could be shorter, or longer though.

Where are you at in the process?
We are currently in the process of completing our home study.  An agency licensed by the Colorado Department of Human Services conducts and facilitates this process to ensure we can be suitable parents and meet certain state and agency requirements.  This process should be complete in two to three months, and then we can begin being matched with our baby and birth parents. This is such a unique process for each baby and family that we really can't speak to how it will play out.  We don't know how our story will be written. We could be matched with a birth mom who has weeks to go, or we may not know we are parents until after our baby is born; we aren't closing any doors right now.

Do you want an open or closed adoption?
We are hoping for an open adoption.  However, that term can mean a lot of things so we really can't answer what that will look like for our family until we are matched.

How much does it cost to adopt?
The average cost for a domestic adoption is between $25,000- $35,000.  This was probably our biggest hesitation when thinking about adoption. However, when we stepped back and thought it through, it seemed ridiculous that God would lead us to this point and then not provide us with resources to go the distance. So we prayed, and we have peace that we will be able to raise the money we need!

Hopefully this was helpful and answered some of the questions out there.  Look for a followup post soon; we will give you some ideas on how you can continue supporting this adventure we are on.  

With love and gratitude,
Andy & Mimi 

Blinded by the Light

Dear Online Fans,

We haven't spoken in a long time-- like over a year, what happened? I thought this was going to be an ongoing relationship- why did you fail me? I need you more than you need me and I think you knew that and you took advantage of the situation-- I'm not saying I'm going to hold it against you I'm just saying I know. So let's move on....

The small stuff is the big stuff really so let me start by saying, I got new glasses.

Impressed?  I was-- by the clear crisp lines of the world. Seriously, faces have expressions, signs have words, and most importantly, roads have lines. Truly the world is a new place. And because I can't just appreciate something at face value I started thinking about the symbolism behind seeing things (very literally) clearly.

 I'm lucky enough to be able to afford an eye exam and a hot new pair frames and it still took me roughly four years to get myself to make the switch-- and because of my birth lottery ('Merica/1st world country) I knew that blurry vision could easily be corrected and that the world wasn't supposed to move in blob like shapes. So what's the flip side to that? What if where you were born wasn't privileged to Lenscrafters and no one ever checked your eyes and you always thought that things were blurry five feet from your face and that's just how the world looked. Would it change how you thought of things; of beauty? of precision? of correlation? of fear?  I don't even really have that big of an impairment -- and I have access to like three Lenscrafters-- and yet each of these things looked differently through my new lenses. You can imagine how beauty might change if you can't see the creases on your face or how I was more fearful when driving because I could never really see the road ahead.

*Run on sentence warning ahead. ----There is also that whole thought of how do we instigate peace with the world when what we think we are presenting is peace because that is what we see it as but the other side is looking through their own lens and what we show them as peace doesn't look anything like peace and so they counter offer with their vision of peace and to us that looks nothing like peace because we have our own glasses on so we argue and fight instead of trying to put on each others glasses. But that is a whole other story.

But what I have is today, so I celebrate the details in God's creation -- because today I can see them.

With laughter and joy,

Mimi


**Author note-- I've changed the name of my blog and the web address. Although the Salonen's have many adventures --setbacks in life tend to have the better story-- at least that's how my life plays out :) So update your book marks -- haha --wait I mean bookmark this page and follow me.
www.ourtemporarysetbacks.blogspot.com