'Nuff Said

I was doing some cleaning and came across one of our left over Christmas cards that we sent out this year. I thought it would make a good post. . .

My WILD Woman

I am constantly cracking up at Laela's crazy hair. It has been chore to tame since birth! LOL! It was super long for a while then I cut it into a Dora bob thinking it would calm it down some. I was WRONG! Well that was a couple of months ago and I've since decided to grow it back out because that way it can at least be pulled back. It's always a mystery how she's gonna look when she comes out of her room in the morning or after nap. But it never fails to be comical! Poor baby! LOL!!

(and no, there is no pink in her outfit that matches her shoes but she HAS to have those on when she wakes up! LOL)

Teeny Weeny Tee Shirts

My boys got up being extra goofy this morning. Ryan always goes through a thousand shirts a day because he loves changing into different collared shirts. Jalen doesn't usually play along but this morning Ryan roped him in somehow :) I got so tickled when they came downstairs to show me the ones they had picked. LOL! Ryan had on one of Laela's shirts and Jalen had on Ryan's! It was hilarious because they just had their little underwear on the bottom and these skin tight shirts! LOL!!

Memories. . .

I just wanted to share this snip it from an email I got today from my mom. I told ya'll I wasn't kidding when I said I've wanted to do this all my life :)

". . .I was in bed the other night and my memories took me back to when you and Autumn were young and I suddenly remembered one specific night when we were playing in your bedroom at our Springlake house and we talked about how you and your sister would be as Mother's when you grew up and I remember Autumn saying "I want to have 6 kids" and you saying "I don't want to have a baby, I want to adopt a baby". When that memory came to me I began to cry because I know it was God that sent that memory to me and it made me realize that even back then, he was preparing you/me/us for this journey. "

Inquiries Begin!

HOMESTUDY APPROVED AND FINAL!!!!
So we are officially (I use that word a lot LOL) able to start inquiring about children we are interested in adopting. We have put inquiries in about three children so far (three single children, not siblings) and will wait to hear back about them, read through profiles and go from there.
This process has come with lots of different emotions. Excitement as we plan to add to our family. Anxious as I start gathering things and making things for the room where they will sleep. Nervous about what lies ahead and that we'll be the parents we hope to be to them. Excitement as we talk about it with Jalen and he beams about having another sibling. Sadness as we go through picture after picture of so many hurt children right in our own country. Sadness as I think about the things that have happened to these children - enough to make someone say that they could never see their bio parents again. Confusion about how to describe our inquiries without making them sound like we're shopping for objects. Above all we are feeling extremely blessed right now.
We'll keep ya posted!!
LOVE!

Laela love her Baby Ay-yee!!

Okay, for those of you who don't know. . .before Avery was born, Laela was not happy about all of the little baby girl stuff floating around. She was quite the jealous little booger. Well, thankfully, Laela isn't jealous of her sweet baby cousin :) She actually LOVES her!! For the past week she has been carrying Avery's picture all over the place and even taking it to bed some nights. She kisses it and just loves it! I'm not sure if she thinks it's a baby doll or what but nonetheless, she loves her Baby Ay-yee! I have been trying all week to get a picture or something of her doing it but she always stopped when she saw the camera. But I was able to catch this tiny video of her loving on her picture of Avery and her saying "Baby Ay-yee"!
Pay no attention to her crazy outfit :) LOL! She's always coming out of her room with nonsense outfits over her jammies! LOL!

WOW! This is really happening!

What a pleasant surprise I had waiting for me tonight! After the kids go to bed I usually take an hour or two to come check email and play on the internet for a little bit, watch a minute or two of television or WHATEVER! Just to enjoy the quiet time. WEEELLLLLL, tonight I came to check the email and found an email from our social worker that our homestudy is COMPLETE!! He has finished the report and will be mailing us the original signed copy in a day or two. As if this wasn't good news enough, I also had a message from the agency saying they were finished creating our website!!!! YAY!!!!!!! When we sign on with the agency we send a narrative and pictures of our family and they create a webpage that they will send to the individual social workers for each child we decide to inquire about so that they can see us, meet us, whatever. So as far as I know, I'm just waiting on the official word from the agency, I think we should be able to start officially asking about specific kids in the next week or so!! Holy Cow It's Real!!!
P.S. I'll email our webpage to anyone interested but didn't want to post it here for any crazies out there in cyber world that might happen to follow the Baldomero Family (for whatever reason).

Adoption Updates

Hey everyone. While we know that the idea of our adoption doesn't exactly excite everyone we know, we would still like to extend the invitation for all of you to check this site frequently for updates. We are going to try to be quick about getting updates on here as they come. We also would like to thank so many of you that have sent us such warm, supportive messages about our journey. It means a lot to us. More than you know.

Now on the topic of updates. We wanted to explain where we are in the process.
We are adopting a child from the US that is from the foster care system.
They will be anywhere from infant to 5 years old. Infant is very unlikely since it usually takes at least a year or more to for them to become legally available for adoption after being removed from the home. We have listed that we are open to adopting a sibling set of 2 but no more. We don't know yet which state they will be from. We also don't know if it will be a girl or boy or one of each. That will depend on who we are matched with. We have completed our application process and submitted all of our paperwork. In order to be matched with a child(ren) we have to have what's called a homestudy completed and on file. A homestudy consists of a social worker visiting our home and interviewing us and writing a report on his findings. It also consists of physical reports from our physicians, financial documentation, online adoption training courses, copies of certificates, and clearances from the past two states we have lived in. Sooooo, the homevisit is completed. The clearances have been requested, the physicals have been done, the training is complete and so on. The only thing we are waiting on for our homestudy package to be complete is for the clearances to come in and for the doctor to finish writing our report (they said it would be Friday). Once all of this documentation is gathered, we'll send the package into the adoption agency we are working with and they will file it. Then, as we are interested in children on the listing, we will inquire about them and our homestudy package will be sent to the child's social worker. There are already several we are interested in. If they agree that we are a good match for them, they will approve us and we will then make travel arrangements to meet the child. We will need to stay in the child's state for about 3 weeks or so to have gradual visits with the child. Eventually they will end up spending the nights with us in our hotel there but at first they will just be doing day visits. If the child is immediately ready to spend the night with us, they will be allowed but that will just depend on the child. Once everyone agrees that we're all a "good fit" for each other, we'll be bringing them home. We are hoping to be able to travel to GA to introduce the child(ren) to everyone but we aren't sure what they'll allow. These children have typically been through an awful lot and have usually had bad experiences with moving around a lot and feeling secure. So we'll just have to see what the social worker will allow us to do with them for travel.

Hope this helps explain it all a bit better for you all. But please, by all means, feel free to ask any questions you want. We are open to questions and actually enjoy answering them. We've taken a lot of time to learn about this type of adoption so we would love to answer any questions you might have. We look forward to sharing our journey with you all.

Love,
Allison and Eddie

Doggers Get Dogged Out!

My mom found these AWESOME croc-like shoes for Laela and she LOVES them! I think she said she found them at CVS or some unexpected place like that. The boys both have fuzzy crocs and Laela was so jealous so her Grammy got her a pair of her own for Christmas and she hardly ever takes them off. We joke that they are named "Doggers" not real sure what that's about but it's kinda funny :) LOL! I was just telling my mom how much Laela wears them so I thought I'd post for everyone's enjoyment, how much my daughter loves her "choos"! She really has dogged out her Doggers!

Japanese Outings

The food court. . . Ryan says McD's fries are McD's fries no matter where you go LOL~ Ketchup Packets

Eddie's favorite-the Teriyaki Burger from McDs

Check out these prices. . .YIKES!

Yes, you are seeing this right, about $8 for this value meal

Golden Arches are never far away

Eddie's miniature $6.50 meal

More outrageous prices

Good Ole KFC!!

Trash cans at the restaurant-big time recycling over here- you have to separate all of your trash

Napkins are hard to come by but these hot towel machines everywhere

Vending Machines

The bunny store. . . my FAVORITE kids clothing store.

Joyful Honda-we love to go here as a family. It's ENORMOUS!! There's a home section as big as Home Depot. There's grocery store as big as Kroger. There's a pet store as big as Pet Smart. And a HUGE food court. This is all in ONE building!

IT"S OFFICIAL . . .

WE"RE REALLY ADOPTING!!!!
I keep pinching myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. :) We have not posted because we didn't want anyone else to know before our family and since we told them Friday, now I can jabber on about it all I want LOL! We had our homevisit on Saturday and it went really well. It was very laid back. We have a couple of courses to take this weekend and that's it!! Our homestudy report should be completely finished by the end of next week and then it will be sent off to the agency and we'll be officially waiting on our match! We're adopting through the US Foster system so things run a bit differently than with international adoption. OMG I can't believe it's really happening. This has been a part of my heart since I was a child and I just can't believe we're really doing it. Everyone keeps telling us how great it is that we're blessing the child but we're the ones that feel blessed.

We can't wait for you to be part of our family little one! May God keep you safe and sound until we can bring you home.