Seems like we've got some winter....

We finally have a snow storm on our hands. I can't believe that it's only the third time that we've had snow since the winter started and for the first time we actually have to shovel (and clear off our cars, thank God Mr. JB got me a good snow brush!).

Unfortunately our first real snow storm happened on the same night that we had our first adoption seminar. We left our house 45 minutes before the session was to start which should've been plenty of time to get there, but we still ended up being 10 minutes late. I was pretty surprised that the meeting was still going to happen since driving was pretty treacherous. Lucky for us we weren't the last people to show up and the social worker that was running the session hadn't even started.

After speaking to the social worker on the phone a couple of times I was feeling apprehensive. I know that she has to weed out the callers that aren't the best candidates for adoption as well as the crazies, but I felt discouraged after I spoke to her. Well after sitting through her presentation I feel completely different.

The social worker went over the types of children that the C.hildren's A.id Soci.ety helps, the services they provide, the adoption process and then we had a question period. It seems that the less particular we are, the greater chance we will have at adopting sooner. The children that are up for adoption are C.rown W.ards so their parents have lost their parental rights. She also said that there are sibling sets up for adoption as well as older children.

We filled out our first information sheet in order to get the adoption package and we indicated that we were interested in adopting a child from birth to age 8. Mr. JB would prefer a younger child, but I didn't want to limit our choices.

Mr. JB wants to fill in the paperwork as soon as we can since we will have quite the wait. Last year the C.AS had 38 applications and they also had 38 families waiting for adoption. They also had 9 families that were in the application process. Our first step after filling in all of the paperwork is getting the standardized P.RIDE training that one needs to adopt in Ontario, but there is a waiting list for that. We have the option of having our home study and P.RIDE training done privately, but we wouldn't have a close relationship with the social workers at C.AS and there is the cost factor (a home study would cost about $10 000 and the training about $1400).

It seems as though we're going to have a lot to do in the next little while to get this ball rolling. It feels so right for us to pursue adoption this way. I do hope that we will conceive sometime in the next year and I don't know how that will affect our chances at adoption. I was too scared to ask the social worker the question in front of the other people in the session. I'm sure that it will come up, but I did mention that we weren't doing any "invasive" fertility treatments.

I'm so glad that we're praying the rosary together every night. We definitely have a lot to pray for right now!