Hague Training

Wow - this week has been IN-SANE!! We were at VBS all morning everyday and everyone is pooped =) Claire and Eden had a great time and my video room was great! I'll share some pictures of Claire sometime soon. On top of VBS, I had two other nights up at the church for worship committee and worship support ministry. Lots of driving but well worth the trips!


Last weekend we were up in Austin again getting our required 10 hours of Hague Training for our home agency. We will also have to do mandatory Hague hours through AGCI but that will be a workbook and online classes. For those who are wondering what Hague Accreditation means click and read. It meant a lot to us to use an agency that was Hague accredited so we were assured that everything was being done ethically and legally correct.


The training was really great! We learned a ton and some of the key points they talked about were the stages of grief for everyone involved in adopting - very eye opening and interesting. No matter what age these kids or babies are they all go through a grienving process that we need to be aware of. They lose everything they know as home, caretakers, friends, surroundings, language, country, etc. I'd love to talk more about this with anyone who is interested! We also spoke about how to integrate our baby's culture into our home and how we will now be a multicultural family, what to expect for medical issues when traveling and upon return, attachment and bonding (we're going to have to do a lot of things differently than we did with the girls!), saw video of some orphanages, child development and SO much more. So glad we got some much info - it was certainly overwhelming trying to remember everything!


One of the other greatest parts was meeting so many different families. We met a couple who are adopting from China and have been in process for 5 years, a single mid-30's woman who was waiting to travel for her court date to Ethiopia for her 26 month old son, another single woman adopting from India, an older couple adopting from Ethiopia, a family adopting their second baby from Korea and a handful of families hosting older kids from Columbia through Kids Save. There was one family there who lives about 10 minutes away from us and I'm so excited to get together with them. They have a 3 and 2 year old and are adopting their third from Thailand. They spent a number of years there as missionaries by running a workout gym. I really clicked with Julie and look forward to connceting with them soon!

A HUGE thank you to Aunt Heather for keeping Eden for us during the day. She had a blast with you! Thank you also for letting us stay with you and the yummy dinner. Our training was only 10 minutes from Mike and Heather's house so we were able to spend time in the evening and Sunday am with Heather. Also, a HUGE thank you to Aunt Shannon and Uncle Steve for letting Claire come stay. She is still talking about her time with her cousins! We couldn't do all this without our families!

OK - off to work more on the garage sale for Saturday. Please pray for a big success and for people to come! We live in a little inlet of our neigborhood so I'm nervous about people not showing up. I've advertised on Craig's list 3 times already and we're putting our signs up tonight to catch people in the area!