A Great Nacho Event!

Wow! First, a HUGE thank you to everyone who came out to, made contributions toward, or sent thoughts and prayers our way for our first fundraising event yesterday afternoon! Our "Nacho Average" Nacho Bar was a big success, and we're so grateful for all the help and encouragement we got along the way!

Our house church planned and put together practically the whole thing. That's them on the serving line, dishing up plates for the dozens and dozens of folks who came out to support us! We really couldn't have done this without their help: They took care of all the food, worked with the church to make sure we got the space and knew the rules, helped set up, pitched in every crock pot they had, and invited all kinds of people.

Word got around pretty well, too, because there was a pretty healthy gathering of people we had just met for the first time. It was truly amazing to hear the stories of people whose lives had been touched in some way by adoption - their parents were adopted or their friends or themselves had been through the process - and who wanted to come out and support our adventure.

Before we started diving into this process, we had no idea how big the adoption community really is, and how supportive they can be. Some stopped by just to give us a quick bit of support and invited us to reach out to them if we needed anything as we went along.

Many of our friends from across Indianapolis came out to support us, and we got to reconnect with a few people we hadn't seen in a really long time. Nachos really do help bring everyone together!

We made a little board about us, our decision to adopt, and what all our fundraising was going toward. Jenny dug up a photo of us from 2004 (you can sort of see it in the picture below, on the left - I think that got more comments than anything else) and, with a friend from house church, made the breakdown chart and fundraising thermometer you see on the board.

And now for the big reveal!

We've been SO fortunate to have the support of so many family members and friends, and we saw the thermometer go up quite a bit after yesterday's nacho bar!

Thank you again to everyone who attended, helped out, and contributed to our first fundraiser! We'll have more on our next fundraiser soon!

And Now, We Wait... (But First: Nachos!)

We've got a great update to share, but first we wanted to tell you about our first fundraising event: The Nacho Average Nacho Bar Adoption Fundraiser!

On Sunday, May 3, we'll be hosting a nacho bar lunch to raise funds for our adoption. You and your wonderful friends are invited to join us at Common Ground Midtown. No tickets to buy or fancy-pants dress code to follow, just come out and enjoy some great company.

You can view and share the official invitation here, or email teamvanandel@gmail.com if you have questions. RSVP appreciated but not required!

Now back to our regularly schedule blogging. :)


Whirlwind. I'm really not sure how else I can describe the last seven or so months of our lives. We moved into a new house in a new neighborhood, had a lot of doctor visits, spent WAY too much time scouring the internet for ideas and answers, and, somehow, it feels as if all this just started yesterday. And now, the first truly big milestone on our adoption journey:

A FedEx man dropped by this week with our printed profile books and, just last week, our signed/stamped/sealed home study reports arrived - we're officially official!

Profile books and home study reports artfully arranged!

Tomorrow, the profile books and copies of our home study report will be sent out to the three agencies but as of now we are live! We are now just waiting for a phone call about a potential Baby V.

Well, I say just waiting. Really, some of the hardest work is only beginning for us:

As soon as we finish packing things up (and hitting "Go" on this blog post), we hit the books looking for grants to help fund the adoption. We'd done some research before, of course, but nearly every grant program requires you to have your home study complete and be "adoption ready" before you can apply, so our hands were tied until the paperwork arrived.

Speaking of packing things up, we're just a matter of weeks away from garage sale season and the first of our garage sale fundraisers. Every scrap, stitch, or bit of fuzz from that stuff you never use but want to serve a good cause can find a new home AND help us in our adoption! We'll take the stuff off your hands and sell it at one of the garage sales, and all the proceeds will be put toward the Team VanAndel Adoption Fund.

You can email us if you have stuff you'd like to clear out, or just drop it off at Casa del VanAndel (preferably with some advance notice).

Last but not least, don't forget you can help bring home Baby V by shopping on Amazon using the link here or over in the sidebar of the blog -->

So there you have it: Books, reports, mailing, grants, NACHOS NACHOS NACHOS, and garage sales. Thanks SO much for your prayers and to everyone who has contributed to our adoption so far! You are all so appreciated!

To Write a Profile

Writing is hard.

Writing about yourself is really hard.

Writing about yourself in a way that doesn't sound braggy or superficial is even harder.

Writing about yourself in a non-braggy, non-superficial way while trying to convey what you're really like to a complete stranger (in 300 words or less) is near agony.

Oh, and you also need pictures of yourself that look good, that aren't too old (you know, from when you were skinny and/or had had a haircut), and that also convey what you're like in a non-braggy, non-superficial way.

That's a process we started on more than two months ago and now have a looming deadline to complete, as we've been putting together the profile book that will become our selling point to agencies and prospective birth families.

We'll send a handful of to each agency we apply with for our adoption (at least three in the first round); they'll review the profile book along with whatever application information they require and use that to match us up with an expecting mother or family.

Thanks to SB Childs for the photo (that we're using on the cover)!

 The expecting family will then review our profile and, possibly with little other information about us at all, make a decision about us as adoptive parents.

So, you know... no pressure.

We're winding down on the home study now, and are expecting the first draft of the final report this week, so the next step is to make sure we've got everything together to start applying with agencies. In the cliched metaphors of motorsports, I'm not sure if this is is where the pedal meets the metal, where the rubber meets the road, or we're already somewhere into turn 2, but it does mean that HOLY COW everything may be getting very real very soon.

In running down the list of everything we still have to do, we keep seeing the list of expenses sitting in the pile of paperwork and getting a little twitch in our eye. We've been overwhelmed by the support we've received so far and want to send a HUGE thank you to the folks who have donated just since we've started writing here, and our friends and family who have shared our story, but know we've got a long way to go, too.

We wanted to share what we've got ahead of us on this journey, and show you what contributions are going toward. For our adoption, we've mapped out the following little list of expenses:

With your support and your amazingly generous contributions, we've been able to take care of the home study and education fees to get us off and running -- thank you!! We've also been able to address a couple other things and are now starting to chip away at the agency fees, too!

We've still got a ways to go, and hope you'll join us as our story unfolds. You can make a contribution right over there → or click the "How You Can Help" link at the top of the page.

If you cannot make a financial contribution, you can help by sharing our blog with your friends, and we're always in need of prayers, positive thoughts, and general encouragement. If you've got some stuff hanging around you'd like to clear out, we're putting together some garage sale fundraisers in May where we can help us help you! Stay tuned for more to come.

And thank you again to everyone who's donated or shared their support and enthusiasm for us during this journey!

-Jenny & Jeremy

We Are Adopting!

HEY! WE'RE ADOPTING!

Yep, Team VanAndel is recruiting, and we've decided to adopt our first child. Our reasons are personal and we hope it's sufficient to say that the decision wasn't speedy or made all at once, but it's where we feel we're supposed to be heading to build a family.

We have decided to start this blog to keep friends and family updated and to invite others on this journey with us. We will be raising money through this process and will be using this blog to update everyone on fun fundraising events we will be hosting along the way. We will also be updating everyone on our adoption process, but will be keeping some things private. The following are answers to some of the most frequent questions we have been receiving:

Going through the process, we've gotten a lot of questions about what exactly domestic infant adoption is (and what it isn't). We'll talk a little about what we're expecting it to be like here, but if you're interested in what domestic infant adoption as a process is like, you can look at the About Domestic Infant Adoption link at the top of the page.

One of the first big decisions we made was whether we would adopt domestically or internationally. We quickly decided that there were some challenges with international we just weren't (or aren't) quite prepared to deal with, so domestic it was.

The next big choice to make was whether we wanted to adopt a newborn or an older child. For us, being first-time parents, we want to start our family with a newborn. It's one of the biggest pieces of the parenting journey we've been looking forward to for so long, we didn't feel like we could miss out on those first few months or years.

So that's the background. Once we'd settled on all that we needed to choose our agency and how we were going to handle the home study.

As of this writing, we're actually nearly done with the home study process. The home study really isn't as bad as it sounds (or as we'd heard/feared): Although there is a check over of our actual house itself, it's more intended to ensure that the adoptive family will provide as safe and stable a home as possible, and fulfill some of the legal or procedural requirements of states or adoption agencies. In addition to producing nearly every document we've ever touched -- proof of citizenship, proof of marriage, proof of insurance, proof of not being a hyper-advanced cyborg, etc. -- we've also discussed our personal histories, family situations, and what kind of parents we think we'll be like.

Once the home study is complete, we can begin applying with individual agencies and for things like adoption grants. We'd heard all kinds of things about how much an adoption could potentially cost and they were all over the place. Cost varies depending on the type of adoption (foster adoption, domestic infant adoption, international adoption, etc.). The average we were seeing for a domestic infant adoption once we got into the process, however, was right around the $30,000 mark.

Of everything, this was probably the biggest pill for us to swallow, but we've been the very fortunate and grateful recipients of some incredible support from our friends and community along the way. It's been tremendously humbling to receive so much help so graciously from those close to us to help get us started in this process. We've still got a long way to go, but it's been amazing so far.

So, gets us most of the way there: Domestic, newborn, finish the home study, apply with the agencies, do a whole lot of fundraising... Then what?

Well, there's still a bit of paperwork to do along the way, but, mostly, we'll just be waiting. Until we're matched with a birth mother, there's not a whole lot for us to actively be doing besides continuing to save and fund raise as much as we can. Once the match comes along, though, it could be anywhere from several months to a mere matter of weeks until we meet our son or daughter.

Until then, though, we'll be blogging here, posting updates and ways you can be a part of our adoption story. We're excited to get going, and excited to share the journey with you.

-Jenny & Jeremy