The Gleason's Family Blog

Isabelle's Birth Certificate Arrived!!!

2010-07-03T09:52:00.002-04:00

On Thursday (July 1, 2010) Isabelle's Birth Certificate Arrived!!! It was so exciting to see our names as her Adoptive Parents on the Birth Certificate. Things are really moving a long. Airline ticket are purchased, Birth Certificate has arrived, just a few more pieces of paperwork and we leave to bring her home.

Meet Our Daughter

2010-07-01T00:06:00.004-04:00

We wanted to introduce everyone to our new daughter, Isabelle. Our adoption case cleared the courts on June 11th, officially making her our daughter!!! We plan to travel to Ethiopia on July 29th to bring her home. We cannot wait!!! Thanks to all of you who walked through this with us.

Motivated by the loss of Kennedy, Katie and I started a non-profit organization called Because of Kennedy to fight for the lives of orphans by providing them with life's basic needs and enabling them to become the future difference makers of the world. Check out our website at www.becauseofkennedy.org to read Kennedy's story and our mission.

We want to invite you to help us raise supplies for our partner orphanages that we will donate during our trip. We have identified a supplier in Ethiopia that will sell us powder baby formula at wholesale rates. Please consider donating funds for us to purchase this formula, along with other needed food and supplies. We have set a goal of raising $5,000. This is enough money to purchase 300 cans of formula plus staple foods and supplies during our visit beginning on July 29th.

All donations are tax deductible and donations can be made on-line on our website at

www.becauseofkennedy.org

directly to our PayPal account at

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=E4GF5E7NLXXJS

or mailed to us at

Because of Kennedy, Inc.
c/o Rudy and Katie Gleason
2755 Saddle Ridge Lake Dr.
Marietta, GA 30062

For additional information, or if you would like to start your own fund raiser, check out our website (www.becauseofkennedy.org) or contact us at rudy@becauseofkennedy.org or katie@becauseofkennedy.org

Thank you for joining us in the fight to save lives of orphans in Africa!!!

2010-06-07T13:14:00.000-04:00

Hey guys -- You can follow what we are up to at www.becauseofkennedy.org.

Rudy and Katie

A Crazy Bunch of Emotions

2009-05-06T21:31:00.000-04:00

These past few weeks have been overwhelming. They have been filled with emotions that at times I don't even know what to do with. Kennedy died on my birthday and two days later I was a mom to Isabelle. The emotional roller coaster is not over. Mother's day is this weekend, Kennedy's court date was schedule for May 15, Izzy is released for adoption on May 30, seven other families are traveling in June when we were planning to travel for our gotcha day for Kennedy, and the courts close August 6.....will we get a court date before then. Will we travel September or November. Will Izzy stay healthy...I hate that she has to be in the orphanage for so long.....I understand the reasoning but is doesn't mean I like it. These are just a couple of the things going through my head these days.

At church we are in the middle of a series called Sacred Space. The series is on Psalm 23. I can't even express how much this series has guided me through this time. I know I will be in another valley down the road, but I do feel like we are coming out of this one. Here is the link if you are interested

http://northmetro.sitewrench.com/dlgMediaPlayer.aspx?id=573

At the same time G-d placed it on our hearts to fight for the lives of the orphans in Ethiopia...we are not 100% sure what that is going to look like, but we know it going to be amazing. We will have a lot to tell you about this later.

We have pictures!!!

2009-04-21T06:49:00.000-04:00

We have pictures!!! We have pictures!!! We have pictures of Izzy!!! We cannot share them on-line, but suffice it to say that she is beautiful. She looks healthy, well nourished, and loved by her caregiver. She just turned 3 weeks old. We are so thankful for the traveling family that took these photo's for us. We cannot stop looking at them.

We have pictures of Izzy!!!

The Crazy Ones

2009-04-19T14:12:00.000-04:00

We met with some friends last night and came up with a crazy dream...

To serve Christ by improving the lives of orphans in Ethiopia by meeting their physical and spiritual needs...

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

[Jesus said]..."I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:19-21

We are CRAZY! I cannot wait to see what God is going to do (and let us tag along for the ride).

We are soooo thankful

2009-04-15T13:58:00.000-04:00

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! That is all we can say. We are so thankful to our friends and to our church for making incredibly generous donations to Ethio-American Family Services (see 'Cool Links' to the right) in Kennedy's name. These donation will directly impact the lives of Ethiopian orphans and directly impact Izzy.

We are blown away by you and blown away by 'His incomparably great power...and the working of His mighty strength' (Eph 1:19).

Journey to Iz

2009-04-11T21:02:00.000-04:00

In case you missed it from our last two blogs ago...We have a referral!!! We have a referral!!! We have a referral!!! Isabelle (Daddy's gonna call her Izzy) is less than 2 weeks old.

On April 3rd she was referred to us and the Journey to Iz began.
We are praying continually for her health and nutrition and for her caregivers.

Stay tuned...

Kennedy's Memorial

2009-04-10T23:37:00.000-04:00

Dear friends,
Well our last blog sums up our Ethiopian adoption journey to this point. We had a memorial for Kennedy last night and our home. We were overwhelmed at the response of our friends.

Our friend Craig planted the idea of having a memorial for Kennedy. We had thought it might be cool to have a couple of friends to our house and have a time to pray. More than a few friends showed up; I'm not sure if we've ever had that many people in our house before. We felt so loved and so supported; you guys lived Christs love. Craig led our time, Clark sang some songs, Katie and I shared our journey (we read the blog below), we took communion, we all cried together and prayed together. It was amazing.

After everyone left, Katie and I felt an incredible peace. I felt free to be excited about our daughter waiting for us in Ethiopia. We experienced God through you guys last night; thanks for being the body of Christ.

Rudy and Katie

Our hope is in Him

2009-04-10T23:24:00.000-04:00

We’ve been on a journey. Since long before we were married, we always new we wanted to adopt. In October 2007, we decided the time was right to begin the adoption. After taking too long to finish our home study, a 4 ½ month wait for our USCIS approval, and scrambling to finalize our paperwork we were ready to submit our dossier. In January 2009, we felt strongly that we needed to switch adoption agencies. On January 17th we partnered with our new adoption agency; on January 28th, less than 2 weeks later, we had a referral for Kennedy. She was 4 months old; we later found out that she weighed ~5 lbs and was severely malnourished. She was moved to another orphanage location, where she was better nourished and gained almost 4 pounds in two weeks. Since January, we were able to get 20 cans of formula delivered to the orphanage by parents traveling to pick up their children. On March 13th we received our first pictures of her. It was a few hours after Katie left for the weekend women’s retreat. We wanted to see the pictures of her together. Holy smokes; we had pictures, but couldn’t look at them for 2 days; we looked at the pictures on March 15th. On March 31st, Kennedy got sick and was taken to the hospital. It started with diarrhea then later was diagnosed with pneumonia. She wasn’t strong enough to fight this illness. On April 1st Kennedy passed away.

Shortly after we got a referral, Katie started writing letters to Kennedy. She had planned on giving these letters to Kennedy someday to help her know as much as she can about our journey to her. This past week, these letters have meant so much to us; we’ve read them often. Yesterday, Katie and I wrote a letter together to Kennedy that we wanted to share with you guys.

Our Dear Sweet Kennedy,

What a week this has been. We anxiously checked our email a million times a day hoping to get pictures or an update on how you are doing. Tuesday of last week we got new pictures of you. This was the fifth set of pictures we had gotten of you in the past few weeks and we were so excited. We love to stare at your pictures; you are so beautiful. Then on Wednesday, the very next day, we found out that you went to heaven to be with God. Our hearts are breaking continually.

We cannot express how much we love you. You are our beloved daughter. Our hearts are breaking because we wanted so much to bring you home; to hold you; to hug you; to care for you. There were so many things that we were looking forward to sharing with you; we wanted to watch you grow into an incredible young woman.

Our friends have been amazing; they all shared in our joy when we would hear something new about you and are so sad that you will not be home with us. They have comforted us and lifted us up in prayer. Today they are joining us in honoring you, our sweet girl.

You are our first daughter and you will always be part of our family. We love you with all our hearts. We know that you are in peace. We don’t know what heaven looks like, but we know that one day we will hug each other.

We love you.
Mommy and Daddy
xxoo

Our hearts were shattered by the loss of Kennedy, but we have no regrets. We always knew that God wanted us to grow our family through adoption. We know that He is calling us to adopt from Ethiopia. But through this process, God has broken our hearts for the people of Ethiopia. God has broken our hearts for what breaks His heart. He has planted in us a desire to fight malnourishment and fight for the lives of orphans in Ethiopia. We know that this fight begins by trying to get another orphan out of Ethiopia. On March 30th, our second daughter was born. We are going to do everything we can to bring her home.

Our journey continues. We have been deeply wounded, but have an incredible amount of hope. God has been with us throughout our journey; through the tremendous joys and tremendous sorrows. Our hope is in Him.

WOW!!!!

2009-01-23T19:49:00.000-05:00

Big news, for a few reasons I am not going discuss online we have decided to switch agencies. We are now with a local agency here in Georgia. We are very excited. We met with our new agency January 17, 2009 and made our decision to switch.

We should have everything together for our dossier by the end on next week. We are just waiting for a few documents from the doctor and the bank to arrive. When they do all our documents will be delivered to our Agency. Rudy's office is literally five minutes from the agencies office. How cool is that. The documents will then be authenticate at county level, sent to new Secretary of State, and finally to the US Ethiopian Embassy. The documents are then sent to Ethiopia.

Our agency believe we will have a referral approximately a month after we have our documents in. In fact they said they are already looking. How amazing!!!!

We are really excited and will keep you posted on the progress.

We Run To The Mailbox Everyday!!!

2008-12-20T14:19:00.000-05:00

We got it, We got it, We got it......We finally received approval from USCIS!!!

Yesterday I ran out to our mailbox hoping, but not really believing that our our USCIS approval would there, and to my surprise there was an envelop from Homeland Security, which mean something from USCIS. I ran as fast as I could into the house dropped all the other mail on the floor and called Rudy.

Just by the envelop I could tell it was the approval. Rudy asked me not to open it until he got home, so in the mean time I did the happy dance and told Lawson and Eli what we got in the mail. Finally, Rudy came home and we opened the letter. It was our USCIS approval. Yeah!!!

We sent our intial request July 28th, we sent the requested paperwork the end of October and recieved our approval in the mail on December 19,2008.

We went out to dinner with the boys to celebate. As soon as we come home from Buffalo for Christmas we will finish up our paperwork so we can send our dossier to Ethiopia. We will keep you posted.

Merry Christmas and Happy NewYear!!!

USCIS Fingerprinting!!!

2008-09-25T17:38:00.000-04:00

On September 6, 2007 we were fingerprinted for the adoption process a 3rd time. We received notice from the Department of Homeland Security USCIS of our ASC appointment. In other word we received a letter stating when and where we were to report to get fingerprinted. Everything went really well. Our appointment was for 10:00 am on September 6, 2008. The boys came with us and they were great. The entire appointment was over in an hour. Although Rudy almost got sent home without getting fingerprinted. In the letter they send you it states: if you have open wounds or bandages/casts when you appear, the USCIS may reschedule your appointment if it is determined your injuries will interfere with taking your biometric. Well Rudy had one spot of poison ivy on his finger with a band aid over it. The girl who was taking his fingerprints called over the girl that was taking my fingerprints to see if they could get a good fingerprint or was the band aid in the way. My face was probably turning red at that moment, because if his appointment needed to be rescheduled, who knows when that would happen and that means things would be delayed even longer. We are approximately 60 days into our potential 90 day wait for our approval form I-171H. So far God has done wonders for me. I have really been at peace while we are waiting for the approval.

3rd Time is a Charm!!

2008-09-05T13:22:00.001-04:00

Last Friday August 29, 2008 we received notice from USCIS that we have been scheduled on September 6, 2008 for our fingerprinting. Yeah!!; this means USCIS is processing our paperwork for our Orphan Petition. My guess is that after we get fingerprinted tomorrow it will take another 2 months for us to get our approval back from them. This is just based on how long is has taken others in this area recently to receive there approval. Lets hope things have gotten faster. This will be our third time getting fingerprinted for the adoption.

We are waiting for USCIS

2008-08-07T13:53:00.000-04:00

We sent our paperwork to USCIS on Friday July 25, 2008. They received it on Monday July 28, 2008. We are now waiting for their approval. They sent us an acknowledgement of our application. The letter said it could take up to 90 day to process. Typical time in Atlanta these days seems to be 1 month for your fingerprinting appointment (yes, we need to get fingerprinted for a 3rd time), then it takes approximately 3 months from application to receive approval.

While we are waiting on USCIS approval we will be finishing up all of our dossier documents and doing some reading.

It Arrived

2008-07-25T14:48:00.000-04:00

Our home study arrived in the mail last Saturday (July 19, 2008). We were so excited. I opened the mailbox took it out and was waiving it as all three boys (Rudy, Lawson, and Eli) were looking out the window. I opened it and immediately read it, and immediately found some major typos. They typed Lawson as Dawson and they called us the Wilson's instead of the Gleason's in a sentence. I couldn't believe my eyes. I have been checking the mailbox everyday for this documents and when it arrives it arrives with typos that need to be fixed. This only means it is going to take longer. Monday morning I called our social worker to discuss the typos. She called back on Tuesday. We received the corrections yesterday. Now we have everything ready for USCIS. After the boys wake-up from nap time we are headed straight to the post office to send this packet to USCIS and then the wait starts.......

Our consultant at our agency told us it currently a 3 month processing time in Atlanta, but she heard they (USCIS) are trying to speed things up in here. I hope so. We can't send our dossier to the state until we get our USCIS approval...which means receiving our I-171H in the mail.

Checking the Mailbox Everyday.

2008-07-16T14:02:00.001-04:00

I have been checking the mailbox just after the mailman leaves everyday in hope to find our homestudy report. I has been four weeks and one day since our last visit. The homestudy was suppose to be in our hand with in three weeks. I called on Monday as we were approaching the 4 week mark and they said it hadn't been processed as of Friday and we should receive it by the end of this week. I was very nice and said okay, but I don't think I will be as nice on if we don't receive by next Monday. The other documents for USCIS are ready to go we just need our homestudy report.

When Rudy and I were talking about the adoption this week we realized that our baby girl is probably due or was just recently born. It may be possible that Kennedy will have a July or August birthdate. WOW!!!!

Our Home Study is Complete.

2008-07-06T13:11:00.000-04:00

On Monday our social worker called and told us that she had finished our report, however there were two missing documents. Immediately I gathered them and brought them to her home. She said she was sending the report to her agency and ours that day. Hopefully we will have the completed notarized home study report in our hands this week. Yeah, I can't wait to see it and send it off to USCIS.

Once the home study is in our hands, that along with other required documents can be delivered to USCIS by courier. Please pray that the approval from USCIS is quick. I have heard it can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. We can't submit the dossier until we get the approval in the mail from USCIS.

In the mean time, this week I plan to drive all over Atlanta to get my notarized documents for the dossier authenticated. This means going to three different county court houses to get a stamp on each of my documents with the boys in tow since our sitter is busy. Luckily a friend has offered to go with me to help entertain the boys. ---That's all for now!

We celebrated tonight!

2008-06-17T20:46:00.001-04:00

All weekend we prepared for our social worker for our home study to visit our home today. As usual our social worker for our home study is great, real easy-going. The morning began with me waking up before everyone and not being able to go back to sleep, so I started getting breakfast ready for our visit. Finally, I heard Lawson waking up, so I went to get him and the day began; soon after we were all up and going.

Then the phone rang it was our social worker, she almost forgot we had an appointment. When we scheduled it, we were both in the middle of something else, so I can understand. So she was just confirming the appointment and checking if it would be okay to bring her 3 girls with her. Of course I didn't care; our house is kid friendly, there are plenty of toys to entertain and we did not want to cancel the appointment. Rescheduling the appointment wouldn't happen until July because our schedule is so busy until then.

The visit was about an hour, just after she arrived, we ate breakfast while discussing a few things such as the final home study processing, what our community is like, etc,. After that we showed her all around the house and that was it. Nothing to it. I really enjoyed the home study process and am looking forward to reading the report. We will get the report in approximately 3 weeks. Lets pray for a quick return, in other words shorter than 3 weeks.

It felt so good to have this part our the process completed, at least on our end; so we celebrated by going out to dinner. Our next celebration will be when we get our I-171-H form back from USCIS.

So what's next: we are going to fax our dossier documents to our agency to have them check them for errors, etc. When they are complete I will get all our notarized documents authenticated and sealed.

This was a big day for us and we are so excited that things are going so well.

The First Set of Tears!

2008-06-11T21:03:00.000-04:00

The adoption process is amazing experience with both joys and disappointments. Monday I shed my first set of tears related to the adoption. Rudy and I have been working really hard collecting all the documents for the home study, USCIS, and the dossier. Now that we are almost finished I called my agency to figure out one of the forms for USCIS. Well little did I know this form can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months to get back. That sent me over the edge. Lately I have been pushing us along to get things done so we can get on the referral list, in other words I want the paperwork to be in Ethiopia and I want to be waiting for our little girl to be matched with her family. I know the referral is going to take awhile since the adoptions in Ethiopia are slowing down, but I just want my paperwork to be their, and I want to be on "The List for a Girl from Ethiopia" NOW!!!

Rudy was great when I called him at work on Monday while the boys were napping to tell him this news. Of course he could tell right away that I was upset. We both thought we were going to get our dossier in Ethiopia sooner than we are. Now I am just praying that we can get our dossier in to be processed in Ethiopia before the government shuts down for 3 months (August-October) and that they get enough rain to keep the office open full time.

In the meantime we have scheduled our last home study visit, which will take place at our house on Tuesday. When we are done with this visit our caseworker can write her report and we can hopefully submit our documents to USCIS, etc. Our caseworker has a family and job that keeps her very busy, hopefully she will be able to get the report done quickly; she has already been so great at accommodating our schedules. I will keep you posted on how this goes.

Finally, the last bit of news, we are so excited friends of ours are going to pick up their little girl in Ethiopia this week. We can't wait to meet her.

Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork!!!

2008-05-19T14:15:00.000-04:00

We are almost done with our home study. We have been working hard at collecting several of the documents needed for the home study and on Friday March 16, 2008 Rudy and I had our individual appointments with our caseworker. As usual I had no idea what to expect and was nervous while I was driving to her house. The meeting was a piece of cake. It lasted an hour, the first half I gave her all the documents Rudy and I had been collecting for her, and the second half she just asked me to elaborate on some of the questions I had completed for my personal profile, and finally we discussed how we are going to handle becoming a transracial family. Rudy's meeting was identical except that I had already given her all the documents, so his was even shorter.

We are now waiting for our FBI cards to come back, by then we should have the last few documents needed to have our final home study meeting at our house; which means we will be working hard to prepare our house for this visit. Hopefully around that time we will also be getting ready to finish up our USCIS and Dossier paperwork.

Other exciting news: While we have been working on our paperwork several of our friends have travelled to Ethiopia to pick up there child or children, and several are getting ready to travel. Please keep all of us in the adoption process in your prayers.

What have we been doing????

2008-04-16T13:57:00.000-04:00

Well we have been slowly working on gathering all of our documents for the adoption. For those of you whose are not familiar with the process there are three main groups of documents. These include documents for your (1) Home study, (2) USCIS, and (3) Dossier. Rudy and I have been working on collecting documents for all three of these at the same time but primarily placing our focus on the home study.

We have just finished completing our personal profilesf for the homestudy. This was 15 pages of questions about you, your spouse, your childhood, adoption, etc. Some questions included: Describe your personality, How did your parents teach you to be self-reliant, describe how you and your spouse met and dated, and What is your present participation in an organized religous setting. As you can see some the questions were pretty easy and straight forward and others were more thought provoking.

Some of the other types of documents and tasks we have been working on include:
--> requesting all the 911 calls from our residences for the past 5 years which includes Georgia and Texas for us
--> Getting out GBI fingerprinting and we need to go back because we misunderstood that we could do our FBI fingerprinting at the same time.
--> We have doctors appointments next week.

We plan to have all our homestudy documents collected by the end of April and hopefully all other documents by the end of May.

This is what we have been....what have you been up to?

I have NO Birth Certificate!!!

2008-03-31T13:55:00.000-04:00

Since we started the adoption process started we have been throwing everyone for a loop. Every consultant we have talked with has told us we are going to need certified copies of our birth certificates. My response to there requests is that I do NOT have a Birth Certificate!! There response is us usually what, then what do you have and why do you not have a birth certificate?

This is how I have responded to this question my entire life: I was adopted from Bogota, Colombia when I was an infant. I was born in April and my parents travelled during the summer to bring me home. We flew home on August 28th. My mother asked immigration if and when I would get a birth certificate, and they told her all I was going to get was this birth data card and that would be all I ever needed. Ha...what did they know. My birth data card has my name, date of birth, where I was born, and sex.

Two weeks ago, my home study caseworker asked me to call NY to see if I could find a birth certificate. I was fairly certain that one was not going to turn up, but I did as she requested. I call all over NY state. Long story short, I was finally connected to the international adoption vital records department. They explained to me was that in the 70's the US was not issuing or keeping track of international adoption births. It was not until the 80's that that there was a requirement to keep track and issue birth certificates if the child was readopted in US.

So I will never have a birth certificate....How weird and how normal for me.

Disaster!!!

2008-03-03T21:35:00.000-05:00

The morning started really early with the pounding rain and the howling of the wind outside. I didn't realize how much damage there was until our babysitter was an hour late because of traffic due to the down trees blocking the streets. Luckily Rudy and I were planning on going out to breakfast before we met with our caseworker for our home study. While we were waiting for our babysitter to show up I decided to call the preschool I wanted to register Lawson for. They had in house registration on Monday and I was planning on standing on line at 4:30 am to get him registered on Wednesday. Well they filled up in house and told me if I wanted to get on a waiting list I could sign up at 6:00 am tomorrow, but there is already an in house waiting list. In other words, I was not going to get him into the preschool I wanted.

I was panicked. The morning was a disaster!!! The babysitter was an hour late, Rudy and I could not go to breakfast together, I couldn't get Lawson into the preschool I wanted, and now we were suppose to go meet our caseworker. I was convinced it was going to be a disaster too. But to our surprise our caseworker for our home study was really nice. We had our orientation meeting at her house which lasted approximately an hour. We went over the policies and procedures, documents we need to collect, the number to times we need to meet with her, etc.

We will meet with her again individually after we are done with our personal profiles. The personal profiles is 16 pages of questions all about you. Some are easy such as where did you go to high school, other are more thought provoking such as, how did your parents teach you to be self-reliant. After we both meet with her individually and she has all our paperwork she will visit our home. So everything went really well, it was not the disaster I thought it was going to be. I am starting to feel more relaxed about the home study.

Our first phone call

2008-02-22T14:19:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday February 19th we called our social worker and scheduled our first appointment with her. After the phone converstaton I got very excited and starred working really hard to get together the paperwork we already have as well as ordering other documents. As usual I am trying to organize and label everything and Rudy laughs at my organization but at the same time is very appreciative. We are really excited about starting the home study, and are counting down the day until next Tuesday.

The Home Study is Moving Right Along

2008-02-18T13:31:00.000-05:00

We sent the home study application on Monday and by Friday we received a packet from our home study agency stating that they were going to accept our application and assigned us our social worker. Tomorrow Rudy and I are going to call our social worker and hopefully set up our first of four appointments.

This weekend we had another gathering with the Georgia Ethiopia adoption group. Stephanie and Jason openned up thier Rainbow showroom to host this gathering. Of course Lawson and all the other kids had an amazing time playing on all the playground equipment. We too, had great time on the slides, but most of all we enjoyed talking with friends we made last time and making new friends this time. Thank you Stephanie and Jason!!!

We Finally Sent the Application!!

2008-02-11T15:17:00.000-05:00

Our intentions were to send the home study application out two weeks ago, but for several days we forgot to sign it, then we forgot copy it, etc. Finally today 2/11/08 I mailed out our home study application. I have also created a sheet for keeping track of all our documents needed for the adoption. WOW!! We need a lot of documents.

Last week was Eli's first Birthday (2/4/07). He was born on superbowl Sunday last year. We had a great birthday party for him Saturday. It is so much fun to watch all the kids playing together in our playroom. I expected Lawson to get a little jealous of his brothers birthday but he was amazing. He was so happy for Eli and just wanted to celebrate his birthday with him.

Back to the adoption; I am going to start collecting all the documents we need this week. My initial thoughts are that it is not going to be difficult just tedious, and time consuming. We will see. I am sure I will have plenty of comments on this later.

It's Almost February Already!

2008-01-26T11:53:00.000-05:00

It's almost February already, where has January gone? Aside from a sniffle here and there we are on the mend and back into our daily routine. We have filled out our home study application and will be sending it in on Monday (January 28, 2008). I am not sure what to expect during the home study. I have heard that it is not big deal and I have heard they are very intrusive. I guess it depends on the agency and the social worker you are assigned. Eventhough I am a little nervous about this part I am really excited to see what questions they are going to ask us and the assignments they are going to be giving us. I think that is the psychologist in me.

I have started scrapbooking Lawson as a baby, I would like to have Lawson and Eli's books caught up by time we bring Kennedy home. Ha, Ha, Ha, is't that a funny idea. Rudy bought me a pink scrapbook for Kennedy. The idea of pink in my house is so exciting.

Happy New Year

2008-01-10T13:22:00.000-05:00

Christmas was difficult both boys got sick. Eli got sick the second day we were in Buffalo; he had a viral infection and was miserable. Lawson started getting sick on Christmas day and eventually ended up with bronchitis and a double ear infection. Since both boys were sick we ended cutting our trip short. We couldn't wait to get home and get well.

When we arrived at home a packet from our adoption agency was waiting for us. We were so excited it was there, but it took us a few day till we could sit down and look at the material together. The packet was from our consultant and contained all the information we need to complete our dossier, the USCIS paperwork, etc.

Yesterday I spoke with our consultant on where and how start all this paperwork. WOW!!! This is going to be a very busy year gathering documents with 2 children. In the next couple days we are going to be contacting our home study agency to start that process. I am already feeling a little overwhelmed!

Rudy has started back at school, he is teaching to classes on top of doing research and guiding his students. I am sure he will have another great semester.

2008 is going to be an amazing year!!!

Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow

2007-12-21T20:57:00.001-05:00

I don't even know where to begin. So many amazing things have been happening. Since we had our international adoption awareness meetting we have, told my family about the adoption, we had dinner with our ethiopian adoption in Georgia yahoo group, we submitted our formal application and we are waiting axiously to tell Rudy's family.

To tell our families we have decided to print out the Ethiopian Flag and make flags with our blog address on the back. The first person we told was my mom while she was visiting us last week. We handed her a flag and said Happy Hannukah. She looked at us with a confused face, so we told her to read our blog address "the gleasons are growing" thinking this would give her a clue. Well she was still a little confused and thought I was pregnant. So we told her "NO", but we are going to have another addition to our family, and that we are adopting an infant girl from Ethiopia. She was so excited. We then sent the flag as an e-mail attachment to my brother and sister-in-law along with the blog address. They figured it out when reading our blog. We told everyone else in my family over the phone. Everyone is very excited!!! It is so excited being able to talk to my family about this wonderful event in our lives. We are getting ready to tell Rudy's family on Christmas Eve. We are going to do the same thing hand each family a flag and see if they can guess first, if not we will solve the puzzle and tell them the amazing news.

We also had dinner with the Ethiopian Adoption in Georgia Yahoo group. This was the most amazing experience!!! Approximately 20 families in the metro Atlanta area that are adopting from Ethiopia met at an Ethiopian Restaurant in downtown Atlanta to get to know each other better, and to celebrate the 7 or so referrals that have recently taken place. We met so many wonderful people. We are so excited about this community of friends that we are going to have for us as well as for our children. We can't wait to meet up with everyone again in January.

On Monday December 17th we mailed our formal application to our adoption agency. We called today to make sure they received the packet; and they did. Maybe next year Kennedy will be celebrating Christmas with us. The formal application took us awhile to fill out, but we were really excited about. Our next step is having our consultant assigned to us. We will also begin our home study process after the New Year when we return home.

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Very Happy New Year!!!

Adoption Awareness Meeting

2007-11-26T21:26:00.000-05:00

On November 16, 2007 we faxed our preliminary adoption application, and on November 17, 2007 we watched as the mailman took the preliminary adoption application. I consider this the official start of the adoptions process. Today, we had our scheduled International adoption awareness meeting with our agency. A dear friend watched Lawson and Eli while we had an hour and a half phone meeting about the ins and outs of international adoption. The meeting was informative, exciting, and exhausting for me. Our next step is to complete our formal application and submit it by December 21st.

Right now we have not told our families that we have started the adoption process. It's Killing me, we are so excited, I want to tell everyone; but we are going to wait for the holiday's when we will be together. It's going to be soooo... exciting to share this news with them.

The Quest for Kennedy Starts

2007-11-25T12:47:00.000-05:00

At the end of October God showed us the path to Kennedy. While sitting and waiting for the church service to start, I noticed an annoucement in the bulletin for First Friday's. First Friday's is a group of community members who meet to support each other throught the adoption process of a Chinese child. We attended our a First Friday's Meeting on November 2, 2007 to find out more information about adoption. Everyone we met and talked to was a blessing; by the end of the meeting we were sure that now was the right time for us to start the adoption process. We spent many hours on the internet and on the phone talking to many different adoption agencies about adopting an international child. Finally we decided to use AAI to adopt a baby girl from Ethiopia. We are going to use this space to log the process. We hope you enjoy the journey with us.