So you're adopting again? Already? From where?

November 2012
Yes.. we are adopting again.. and how the story of Sam unfolds is rather amusing.

After attending the Friends of FANA Minnesota fundraising gala last year in July.. my heart began tugging to tie our family again to FANA. I don't regret stepping away from the classing "two normal healthy infants" plan most FANA families work with. At the time we were considering our 2nd child, the wait with FANA was years and years long as the Hague was a relatively new process and the kinks were getting worked out. We were new to Kansas City and weren't sure how to execute an adoption with FANA while NOT living in Minnesota anymore. Fana only works with handful of placing agengies around the world and Crossroads in MN was one of them, and now we didn't live next to them anymore. Ethiopia worked for our desires for our family at the time and we went with it. I digress.

Anyway, fast forward to 2012 and we are sitting there in the banquet hall, listening to Patti Bertsch give a report on the special needs and older children that had been placed and were currently looking for families in 2012. At that time, Ben was only 2 and Ted had only graduated a few weeks prior. There was a little 2 yr old girl flashed up on the screen.. and I found myself playing the "what if?" game for the next few days. She received a letter of intent right away from a family and it became a non-issue, but it did get make making phone calls to figure out if an adoption from FANA to Missouri was possible. It was during the fall, that we generally agreed as a couple that child #3 would be coming from FANA and have some sort of "special needs" situation. We weren't intending to start this paperwork until mid spring 2013 due to finances and clearing debt. We are just getting done with 9 years of college and medical school and 2 international adoptions, all of which we are paying on by the way.. in addition to normal people bills.

So we sat on that for a bit and were at peace with it.. but then when we thought about the "special needs" climate and families in the past, it seems that the kiddos always become available.. and then families sit on it pondering it.. and THEN they start their paperwork (which takes a minimum of 4 months, I have yet to get it done faster). All the while, that little person is sitting down there while people get their junk done. That was something I didn't think I could live with. Yes, it is possible that a little person could become available while we were working on things, but at least everything was already in process and they weren't sitting down there just because Ted and I didn't feel like starting a homestudy. So then we sat on that for a bit.

In early November, I felt like God was telling me to go ahead and get the ball rolling with Holt Intl down here (our homestudy and placement agency for Ben) and Crossroads in MN (our agency for Lucas and the placing agency for FANA). We had to get them "married together" in a sense. Holt for the local MN requirements and homestudy and Crossroads as the FANA liason and placing agency. Both are Hague agencies and seemed happy to work with each other! That took awhile to make sure all of that was rolling. So we settled back into the game in November, and were looking forward to finishing a dossier and getting it to FANA and returning back to our normal lives. We though MAYBE a little person may came along sometime in the next few years that fit our homestudy.

Then, on November 28th, we got an email.