Seattle Seminar

Jon and I ultimately survived our adoption agency trip.  While there, we we have two days of seminars and then one day of interviews from 9:00 - 5:00 pm.  We met a lot of great people including the other 4 couples who were in the seminar with us and then the adoption counselors who will be tasked with the job of facilitating our adoption once we are chosen.  We absolutely LOVED our main counselor and look forward to working with her in the future. 

During our 2-day seminar, we heard real life stories from adoptive parents, birth parents who've given their children up for adoption, and a lawyer who specializes in adoption law.  We got all of our questions answered in that regard.  Additionally, we talked about having trans-racial babies, drug and alcohol exposure of birth parents and their children, and our own emotional health while we are captive "waiting" for the call.  In the room with us were the following 4 couples:

• The same-sex hippie male couple
• The Indian couple who already have a child but feel it is there moral obligation to adopt their second child.
• Susie Cries-a-Lot and her husband Mr. Distracted who seemed very disconnected from the whole adoption process.  She literally cried the whole time. 
• The young couple (our age) who had trouble conceiving and were just content listening to the rest of us interact. 

During our all day interview, we were asked questions on everything regarding our lives while our counselor took copious, hand-written notes.  I was simply amazed by her stamina during this 8 hour interview-a-thon.  We were asked about everything:

• What we thought our parents did right
• What we thought our parents did wrong
• Disciplining our child
• Our daily schedule (from the moment we wake up till the moment we go to bed)
• Our relationships with our friends (are they short-term, long-term, surface relationships, etc)
• Our values and morals
• Our religious practices for our whole life
• How we met, where we met, and when we met
• What our wedding was like
• And on, and on, and on.....

Under different circumstances, this could have been highly annoying.  But between our counselor's outlook on life, our general light-hearted responses, and constant reassurance from our counselor, the time just flew by and was rather enjoyable.  It is almost never that people actually act or are interested as you talk to them for 8 hours about just your life and not anything about theirs.  It was rather lethargic. 

We also received the news that based on the few "little things" we need to do and that "big things" that they need to do (type out her 500 pages of notes from our interviews), our estimated time into the pool of candidates will be 4-6 weeks from now.