When is the right time?

I have said ever since I was a teenager that I was going to foster/adopt a child in the future. I've talked about this with my husband since before we were married. We considered adoption in the past (adoption of a family member) and we cared for the child in our home for several months before she was reunited with her parents. This was not done through an agency or by court order, rather the parents saw that they needed to work on some things and we offered our help. Anyway... I'm 40. My husband is 39. We've been married for 16 years, together for 20. We have two biological children, ages 9 (nearly) and 12. We also have 2 dogs, 2 cats, 3 rabbits, fish and a hamster. ;) We both work outside the home, but I did spend 11 years as a stay at home wife/mom. I rejoined the workforce when my youngest started kindergarten. We have worked diligently to pay off all of our debt and put ourselves in a good financial position so that we could afford to take care of the needs of not only our bio children, but any children that may come into our care for whatever length of time. We have talked about fostering a lot over the years, but we've put it off many times for various reasons (like wanting to get out of debt first). The one thing that was kind of holding us back was that we wanted and had been trying for another bio baby for the last 7 years. I recently had some medical complications that resulted in my baby-making parts being removed, so another bio baby is off the table. We were concerned about keeping birth order, making sure any foster children are younger than bio children, etc. so we kept waiting because I just knew as soon as we'd start paperwork I'd get pregnant (heck, maybe we should have started! LOL). Now, here we sit. - We have plenty of room in our home and in our hearts. We are out of debt. We have a very stable marriage. We have no doubt we can (as we DO) love children who are not our own. We have no criminal records of any sort. We can't foresee a single reason why we wouldn't be accepted. Our kids are both on board. They know quite a bit about foster kids and adoption. We live in an area with a large amount of foster children. I work for a school district and our superintendent told us that our district has more children in state care (fostering, group homes, up for adoption, etc.) than any other district in the state. At the building I work at, I think its safe to say that 25% of our kids are in such a situation. My kids have friends who have been adopted through foster care. They've been friends since they were toddlers so mine have came to understand what it means at least. - Here we sit and we still aren't exactly sure when the 'right' time is to take the plunge. I'd gather that there probably is no perfect time, there is probably always still something that you'd like to do. That's how it was when we were planning our bio babies. We started late, having our first when I was 28. Then we dealt with years of secondary infertility that we may not have faced had we started having our children earlier in life. Does anyone have words of wisdom for me?? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mamabug - mom to :wings: T - 20 week stillborn due to an incompetent cervix - June 2001 :female: C - born June 2002 :male: D - born Nov. 2005