Adoption Updates

Why "Our Girl"?  Where are all the great pictures???


I would love nothing more than to show off our super sweet girl in pictures and share everything about her country, but due to her country's regulations we are not supposed to. Once she is home we can share a lot more. We have had such an amazing opportunity to have tons of pictures of her growing up as well as some video of her.  We have had a couple of emails from people in country that have met her and every single one has said, "she is sweet".  



In the last 2 second video clip she seemed a little lost and lonely, very curious about the American Visitor and she said, goodbye in English.  It sounds like she is trying to learn English.  :)  Praise God.  Every little bit will help. 

 Dossier


Our Dossier is in country! It arrived on Thursday.


Garage Sale


We had a great turn out for the garage sale today.  Thank you to all who donated.  It looks like we will do one more day of it in the spring.  




Raffle  

Our Raffle Winner was The Cameron Family!  Congrat!  
Crystal Beck Photography also threw in a surprise 2nd place winner.  A free mini session- the winner was Miss Smith. 


Quilt

Misty is wrapping up The Quilt.  We have had a wonderful response and we are so glad that we will have something so special to give to "Our Girl".


Fees and God's provision

When we arrive in country we will give our facilitators the program fee of $9,000.
I was very a little bit stressed about this huge number.  I tried to believe that God would provide for us.
I really could not see where that much money would come from.  
I dreamed of a huge check falling from the sky, but I have felt God is teaching us in a very real way that we need to be faithful in the "little things". Being more conscientious about spending money and finding little ways to add to our account. God has also squished my pride a little bit more and allowed us to be BLESSED by our friends.  I don't know about you all, but asking for or receiving money is hard for us.  It is a huge blessing and very much appreciated, I think it is just pride that makes getting money a little on the strange side. 
We also love tax returns. :)

All this to say WE ARE ALMOST THERE!






I

Making Lemonade

So the Boise trip started off exciting ~

Got a bit stressful and felt like a waste of time ~

  Kali and I sang along to a fun little song called "This is the Stuff" by Francesca Battistelli 

and tried to NOT SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

Then Jeromy worked it out to come down and save the day!!!

My Hero!

Then the trip got really fun. 

We had a great time with my friend's mom. 

Bummer the friend and her kids weren't able to come. 

Her littles were a bit confused about why Kaly and Stacy were at grammy's house.

We went out to dinner, took all day to shop around at some craft stores.

Slept in late and took a beautiful walk by the river.

God knew I needed a little R & R

Jeromy arrived with Ayla and Gavin on Sat. eve.

love the look on Gav's face

Sunday morning we met some other dear friends for church.

Then while they went to a b-day party and work 

we took a couple of hours to enjoy the sun at the coolest park ever. 

Then we headed to the State Capital building.

While everyone else watched Super Bowl we checked out what was behind every open door.

We had a great time.  Kaly and Ayla love exploring and every floor held a surprise.

Our only fam. photo and Gav. is "hiding"- little stinker :)

Then back to hang with our friends for the night. 

Up till 2 am talking about everything I love (and hate).

Adoption, special needs, our kids, home schooling, blogging, photography, and the need to act and help stop human trafficking.

It is such a blessing that even though we have not spent time with these friends for a long time that God continues to touch our hearts in such similar ways.  

 They love the Lord and desire to serve him and love on people and they are just plain fun to hang with.

Our kids had a blast and it was all we could do to tear them apart.  

Thank You God for seeing our need for a time of refreshment and providing it!

And to top it all off....

Our completed Dossier is in the air on its way to Eastern Europe

It should be there on the 10th!  Woo Hoo!

So now we wait for a date (as long as they accept our paperwork- I am prepared for the worst just in case)  and in the mean time we are prepping for a garage sale and planning for travel. 

I am so excited!  I cannot wait to travel.

I am nervous and I know I will get sick on the plane or be passed out from my half of a non-drowsy Dramamine, but I love to travel and I love that Jeromy and I get to go together.  

Talk about a date. :)

 

Boise or Bust!

Wednesday Night we realized

2 of our documents needed for our adoption were dated wrong 

and our tax form needed to be updated.

The paperwork we sent to get the apostille was due back on Thursday or Friday and we did not want anything slowing down this process, SO Kaly and I drove to Boise.

The plan was to get the apostille on the two last docs. 

My dear friend's mom lives near Boise and graciously allowed us to stay at her home.

Thursday night after arriving Jeromy called with the bad news.

Our I 171H came back with no apostille!

I emailed our facilitator in Ukraine and she said we had to copy it and notarize the copy, then The State would apostille the notarized copy.  

I cried!!! Our sweet hostess offered her home if we needed to stay.

Jeromy, Ayla and Gavin  are on their way with the form.

On Monday we will get it notarized here in Boise, 

go to the Secretary of State to apostille it 

then we will Fed Ex all of our dossier to Eastern Europe.

Kaly and I are enjoying some very relaxing time here with our best friends' grandma/mom.

Then tomorrow we get to spend the day with some very dear friends we haven't seen in years.

If we have time on Monday we hope to take the kids to the Capital Building.

Then we will caravan home and hope to be ready to get back into real life on Tuesday morning. 

Thank You all for your prayers!

All things work together for the good of those that Love the Lord. 

We Love Him and Trust this is All in His Hands.

Celebrate~Celebrate~Celebrate!

We received our last document in the mail yesterday and even better than that, today we received confirmation from our facilitator that it is approved.  YIPPEE!


Jeromy rushed our last 4 documents to the Post Office to get them to our State Capital to get certified. (to apostille)
(Does anyone know what the past tense of the word Apostille is? I found that Apostilled is not an English word. )

So we wait for them to return and then we mail our Dossier to Her Country.

The dossier will get translated and then submitted to the Government. 


Once the Government gets the documents and reviews them they will give us an appointment date.  It seems these appointment dates are often only a few weeks out. 


We will travel to Eastern Europe and go to the Government office for the official referral.  Please pray that this goes smoothly.

We will then travel to her orphanage and spend time with her and get to know her. Then we will go to court.


After court we have a mandatory 10 day waiting period (please pray that this gets waived. Some Judges will waive it, I am praying since she is a teenager that they will waive it. ) 


After the 10 days we can bring her HOME!


We have a long ways to go but we are getting close to the best part...Meeting her and getting to bring her HOME!


THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR LOVE AND SUPPORT
For checking on us and listening to our excitement and disappointments. So excited to have so many loving friends and family to share this with.

Fabulous Fundraisers

In an effort to keep our debt as low as possible we have been and are doing some fundraisers to help bring "Our Girl" home. We want to thank all of you that have supported us through sponsoring a fundraiser and or participating in a fundraiser.  So far we have had a Quilt by Misty, A Scentsy "Party" by Katie and a Portrait Raffle by Crystal.  Thank you so much to all of you for your hard work and generous hearts.

If you still want to participate in The Raffle or get your Name on The Quilt the time is now.  We are Wrapping these up this week.  

The Quilt Fundraiser works like this:  A donation of any amount gets your name on a quilt square.  Once "Our Girl" gets home we will give her the quilt and she will know that she is loved by you. Click on the PayPal button on the right hand side of our blog where it says "Quilt for our girl". 

The Raffle for the FREE Portrait Session by crystalbeckphotography.com is also coming to an end.  Tickets are $1 each or 6 for $5.  These can be purchased by sending a check to the above address.  Please make sure we have your phone number so we know how to get a hold of you if you win.  

We have also been collecting cans, cans and more cans as well as scrap copper. So if you are in the area and have cans or copper to donate, please give us a call and we will grab them when we are near you. 

Lastly we are doing an INDOOR Garage Sale on Feb. 11th in our old house.  We are simplifying and hoping to generate a few bucks. If you have any items you would like to donate just let me know. And if you like to go "garage sale-ing" and can't wait til summer this is your chance. 

All funds raised go toward our Adoption Fees.  

I think that about wraps it up.  We are so close I can "feel it"!  

Thank You ALL so much for your support!  

PLEASE keep praying for us as we prepare to travel.

Input Please!

Please let me know what you think!

I am not usually concerned about comments

I know everyone is busy and it is time consuming to comment on lots of blogs. 

But Please comment this time it will really help.

I would love to know if any of you have or do use Ad Sense

Would you recommend it?

If we used it would you be less likely to read our blog?

I would love to use it as a little way to raise funds to help bring our girl home.

Just a thought but it could help and be of no cost to our friends and family. 

I would also love to know 

how many of you read through Google Reader and how many actually go to our blog.

Thank You for your input!!!!

Laughing / Crying

This morning I woke up burdened to get this adoption finalized. Like really burdened.


I committed to the Lord to fast and pray.  My fast was undetermined. I couldn't really put a definite on how long or what I would fast.  Usually I like to have a specific commitment before the Lord.  I just kept saying every time I wanted something to eat, "I want Our Girl more".


I was up early and posted this :


We are still waiting for one VERY IMPORTANT document.
The I 171 H from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. (AKA USCIS )
We NEED this to move forward with our adoption.
PLEASE PRAY with us that it comes soon. LIKE TODAY.


God continues to make a way.
When we get discouraged, God lifts us up with a drop of HOPE.


Our girl is anxious to be HOME.
We are anxious to have her with us.


Thank You for Journeying with us. 




I shared on the blog, email and on Facebook our prayer request and headed off to therapy.

As we got home I checked the mail convinced the form would be there.  It wasn't.

A bit disappointed I began to get our docs. together to call USCIS.  
As I searched for the info. I needed, I started re-reading one of the forms we have had since the beginning of Dec.  


I was thinking "this says everything we need the I 171H to say".
Then as I scoured over it I noticed at the bottom in little tiny writing it says, "I 171H form".  I assumed it would have I 171H on the top in big letters and be on shiny, colorful paper, like the other documents we had received.

 

OH MY!  I was sick ~ happy ~amazed at God ~ and amazed at my stupidity. :(
 (kicking myself-beating myself up-won't change a thing-so why do I do it?)
 

I am so happy we have the document, but so sick that we have had it for over a month.  

We know God has perfect timing.  It all is so obvious in that as of now Ukraine is closed to new Dossiers until the beginning of Feb. We just got the money last night to pay for the all the up coming expenses.  We just received via email today a new form we have to fill out for the dossier.   


It probably wouldn't have gotten us there much sooner anyway, but I do not want to be the one holding up the process!


We received a message from our girl last night.  It translates, How are you doing? When you come?
I believe she is as anxious as we are to get her home.  

I emailed our I 171 H to our facilitator and promptly received her response.  There are 2 errors on the document.  It must be fixed.  I left a message with our officer and we are now again waiting.


So again I ask, please pray we get our new and PERFECT   I-171H  very soon, and this time I promise I will not mistake it for an update notice. 


Please pray for Our sweet girl, and that God will move mountains so we can go get her soon.



I am claiming this verse: 


"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."  Romans 8:28