God Bless America

My how we take things for granted! Benji and I were blessed to have company this past weekend. A client of Benji's and his wife (whom we consider friends) came down to stay with us from Michigan. They are originally from Romania and have been Americans for many years now. We had a wonderful visit with them. During our visit, they told us stories from Romania before they came here to America. At the time they lived there, it was a Communist country. In talking with them and hearing their life story, I realized just how good we Americans have it. We are so blessed to have the freedoms that we have. As we are approaching Independence Day at the end of the week, I want to say how grateful that I personally am for our country and to all the the men and women in our armed forces who put their lives on the line everyday to protect our country and who fight for our freedom. God bless you all, you are in our hearts and in our prayers. And we thank you God for the child/children that we will hopefully be bringing to this country very soon!

Also, just a side note. I have been blessed to meet some families that have already adopted from Russia through our agency's online forum. I just want to take a minute tell Heather how special that she has become to me. She is such a great source of support for us and her information is always such great help and inspiration to us. Thank you Heather for everything! And thank you a million for the books. I recieved them today. I was so excited to start looking through them. You gave me such a boost when I have been a little frustrated lately. Your support and encouragement means so much to us. Thank you for everything!

We are apostilled!

Yay! I was able to make a quick trip to Atlanta today to pick up the documents that we left and have them apostille a few more. So we are ready to send in our dossier! It has taken us what feels like eternity to get to this point but praise God we are moving forward. I feel a huge weight lifted off of me having all of this done and ready to be sent. Thank you Lord for getting us to this point and keeping me sane (most of the time anyways. HA!). We are looking forward to what is to come and praying the be "paper pregnant" or "expecting" real soon.

Almost apostilled

Benji and I drove to Atlanta on Friday to have everything apostilled. There were two papers that we not quite right. They gave us updated forms for both and we just have to get them notarized and we can overnight them and hopefully everything will be back to us in another week or so. Even though we were unable to get it all done Friday, we are still closer that we were a month ago.

It's here, it's finally here!

Our homestudy has finally arrived! It came in the mail today. So after 5 months it is finally here! Can you detect my excitement? I have everything ready for our dossier (with the exception of our police clearances, which hopefully I can pick up today and it is the right thing). Everything has been faxed to Kristen and if she can look over and approve it today, we will be headed to Atlanta in the morning to get everything apostilled. Once it is apostilled, our dossier will be sent to the adoption agency then on to Russia for translation. This has been a really rough week, a curve ball was thrown to us (I wont go into great detail) but we asked God to send us a burning bush and he did. So to get this in the mail today, was just what I needed. Thank you God!!

The Homestudy is finally on it's way!

I recieved an email from our homestudy agency stating that they were putting our home study in the mail today. Finally! I have everything that I need for our dossier, except for our homestudy. We began our homestudy back in Janurary. To be honest, I have no idea why it has taken this long. We have turned everything in within days of being asked. The only explanation that I can come up with for our lengthy home study time is the Lord's timing. At this point, I don't care how long that it has taken all I care about is it is on it's way and that puts us a step closer to bringing home our baby/babies. Praise God it is on it's way!

Church BBQ

This past Saturday our chuch had a BBQ plate sale as a fundraiser to help us raise money for our adoption. Words cannot express our gratitude towards everyone who helped make this fundraiser the success that it was. We are truly blessed with an amazing church family. We are so touched by their love, support and dedication in helping us to bring home our baby/babies. We can't thank everyone enough for giving up your weekend to come out and help us try to raise money for our adoption. Also, a big thanks goes out to everyone that sold tickets, bought tickes and helped promote the fundraiser. I truly hate to call names because I am so scared that I am going to forget someone. However, I want to specially thank those that worked so hard: Benton and Ruthie: You guys made this happen. Thank you for getting the BBQ together. You are two of the most amazing people that I have ever met and we are so blessed to have you in our lives. A big thanks to my parents who played a big part in this fundraiser also. You guys have been at everything and worked so hard to help with every fundraiser that we have had. Eddie, Patti, Gayle, Addison, Julianne, Tina, Myrtle, Hal, Angela, Byron, Trina, Carl, Pam, Bob, Danette, Terrie T, Tim and Lora...thank you guys so much for everything. You will always hold a special place in our hearts for all that you did to help with this BBQ. To Shasha, Erin, Mema, Papa, and Mickey: thanks for coming up. Your support means so much to us and we love you.

Getting Closer..

Kristen (our adoption coordinator) called today to review all of the documents that I sent to her. There were several minor things that needed to be changed or updated. I spent a good portion of the day getting as much as I could fixed. There are very few things left to do at this point, and everything left has to come from the home study agency (which I'm confident that the new company will be quick in getting me the things that I need). Kristen informed me that we were really close to submitting our dossier, we just have one major thing to figure out. As many on here may know, Benji was a twin (his twin sister died at 8 months old). He, as well as myself, have always had a heart for twins. So we are at a point to where we must decided wether to register for one child or two. It is really a huge decision for us. So in the next couple of days, we must decide for our registration forms. We are trusting that God will lead us in the direction that he is calling us. We are really aiming to have everything sent off and hopefully be registered to a region in Russia within the next month to month in a half. I have been so excited all day. I feel like we are finally going somewhere. We have spent the last 5 months working on our home study and preparing our dossier (which I truly thought would take less than 3 months). The longer that it took and the more speed bumps that we hit, the more I was becoming discouraged. Today, I was very encouraged. I got the boost that I desperately needed...praise God!