I can't help it!

I just love looking at the pics of my boys! They are stinkin' cute! I can't wait to get them home. I dream about them almost every night.

Ok just wanted to share. I am going to post some pics about our encounters with some 'wild' deer on my other blog if you wanna check them out. They are quite interesting.

Big News!!

We mailed out our dossier yesterday!! Yippee!! It's strange to let it go, after working so hard on it. Please pray it arrives safely and that everything is good!!

95 pages!!

Well I spoke too soon about Sasha. He doesn't have a large grant there was glitch with the new sight. :o(

I know it is always more fun to read blogs when there are pics, so here are two of my bio boys.

Asher playing at the river last Sunday at our friend's baptism. He must have thrown at least a thousand rocks in the river. I'm surprised it didn't dam up!

Caius at 1 year old. He was getting in his morning reading.

Ahhh!!!

I'm so excited! Lil Sasha has got a big grant now!! $4195 Woo Hoo!To God be all the Glory!! Thank you all who gave to his grant and who will give to Nikita and Sasha.

Plus, our FSP fund has increased too!! Yippee!!

Reece's Rainbow got a new website and it is GREAT!! Very easy to use. I'm having trouble getting to it but I'm sure that is my error. I'm what some might (do) call technologically impaired.

Any who, we are waiting....... This is the hard part. We faxed our Dossier there last Saturday and then on Monday we got an email saying the fax didn't go through. So we had to re-fax Monday morning. I haven't heard anything back yet. At least when I running around like crazy I felt I was inching closer to my boys. Now just twiddling my thumbs. I will say though if I could iron my way there, I would have already been there and back by now! I had some catching up to do.

May I recommend a life changing book and I mean LIFE CHANGING!! It is so good! Josh is on his second time through now in just two weeks. The book is RADICAL by David Platt. It is a MUST read.

Christmas Warriors- I think RR is still in need of some Christmas Warriors. If you would be willing to advocate for an orphan this holiday season please let RR know!

Alrighty, I have two teething littles fussing at me. Gotta go!

Update

Well, little Nikita has a family but it isn't ours. My heart is broken and I don't know how we are going to leave him there but I know that God has a super cool and loving family already picked out for him. We (as in you and I) just have to help find them. We can do this by praying and praying with a little bit of spreading the word and fundraising. It is amazing how much easier it is for these babies to find families when the financial burden is lifted. There are so many people that would adore to have these babies but money stands in the way. Stupid old money. It is such a minor and easy thing for God to work out and yet it controls our lives. Funny huh?

My goal is to help build Nikita's (and Sasha #3) grant fund until it will be inevitable to get them a family. You rarely see a child with a large grant wait very long. Just in case you don't know how to give to Reece's Rainbow you can just send your donation to

Reece's Rainbow, PO Box 4024, Gaithersburg, MD 20885 and write the name of the child you want to receive the donation. And it is all tax deductible!

Nikita (3)

Boy, Born February 4, 2008

YAY, new pictures of Nikita!! He is a darling little boy and is doing well. He was born with an open oval window. He likes to play with toys and is interactive with his caregivers. Nikita needs a loving family to help get him out of this crib and be the little boy he so wants to be! He does not have any other medical complications to prevent him from being active and happy in your family.

This orphanage has a history of medicating the children, so many of them look sleepy and zoned out in their photos. It is imperative to find families for all of these children quickly. Wade can be adopted with Nikita below, and or any of the other children listed in orphanage 3.

I have $450 in my grant fund towards the cost of my adoption!

Sasha
Boy, Born 2006

Look at this happy little face! Sasha is 3 years old. He has blonde hair and brown eyes, and is a happy, active, Orphanage favorite. He is HEALTHY, despite being born with the cord wrapped around his neck.

I have $195 in my grant fund towards the cost of my adoption!

Can I just say... $450 and $195 paaaleeeze!! We can do better than that!

Ok, moving on. Drove to the capital yesterday to have our dossier apostilled. That is where I was informed that they can't apostille proof of home ownership (oh yeah the one we have been fighting for) because it is certified by a municipality. huh.

So off to paper chase yet again. :o) I'm so excited we are so close!

Last leg

We are on the last leg of our paper chase. God worked it all out and we got everything we needed! Thank you Jesus! Thank you all for your advice and prayers!

I sent a fax out last night for approval. If it passes inspection then we will just have to get everything apostilled and then we will be sending off our dossier.

We still don't have peace about what we are going to do about the childcare issue but we aren't worried. We know God has this all worked out.

I would like to ask you all to pray with us about something. We have been approved for 3 children. We can't fathom adopting 3, we don't even know how that would work but more than anything we want to be in God's will. Please pray that we will know what God's will is for us on this issue and if it is His will that we bring one more home that He would show us who it should be. Its scary to write this but following God isn't always comfortable.

How to tell you about this week...

I don't know, so I'll just go day by day.

Monday- we were waiting on the proof of employment from the guy who does our taxes. This was the second time we were requesting it, as the first one didn't fly. We had picked it up on Friday but noticed that the guy hadn't signed it. So Monday we dropped it off at his office but he wasn't there. We weren't able to get it until Tuesday. So....

Tuesday- We were handed the check! Thank you God!!

We get the proof of employment and fax a huge pile of paperwork to our family facilitator for checking. While all of this was going on, we got word that our Proof of Home Ownership wasn't gonna fly because something was blacked out.

Definition of Ridiculous- The country where we are adopting our boys from won't accept any document that has ANYTHING blacked out. Our county assessor's office will not write us a letter with the information because 'that's not how they do it." All they can do it print us up a form that has a remarks section in it with the previous owner's DOB, which they legally have to black out. We told them that it was not accepted. So they checked with their attorney who said they cannot give us the form without the DOB part blacked out. They also cannot remove the remarks section or move it.

So I wrote county assessor's lady a desperate email, pleading for the lives of my boys who are rotting away in their cribs. ..... I haven't heard anything yet.

Wednesday- I email our social worker who did our Home Study and asked her for a new copy with a few changes. Minor changes. She said we need to submit the new copy to USCIS when we get it. No worries. Right?

Friday- I get an email about our pile-o-paperwork we sent in. All was well except the Proof of Employment. Grrrrr! The guy who does our taxes didn't put his title under his signature, just below his name. Which by the way matches the letter head since he is the owner. So Josh calls him to have him redo the letter with his title under his name and what do you think happened...

Josh calls me and says "you're not gonna believe this, the guy who does our taxes isn't a CPA. In fact he has no title except the owner of the company." I wanted to cry but I just started laughing. I mean what are ya gonna do. We love this guy. He was referred to us by some great friends of ours and he has always done a great job us. HOW CAN HE NOT HAVE A TITLE. ok......

So we get home and guess what was in our mailbox. oh yes our USCIS approval! Except what about resubmitting the home study... yuck.

what can I say? Any and all advice is welcomed.

Are you ready?

Are your couches covered? Are your diapers on? I finally got the total of our PEE IN YOUR PANTS GOOD NEWS!

All I can say is God Rocks!! From the birth announcements we sent out to our friends and family, several anonymous angels, obviously called by God, gave to our old church for our adoptions. The pastor called me back today and told me that everything has cleared and they rounded the amount up to............

Are you ready for this?

$24,000

May all the glory be to God! How cool is He?!

Sorry it took so long to get the the total to you all but it was worth the wait right? Alright, I will let you all go clean up now. :o)

Need Prayer again

Hello all! Thank you for following along our road to adoption. it is comforting knowing that we aren't in this alone. I'm having a down day. I know in my heart of hearts that God WILL work everything out but as a human I am down and can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I can't get a hold of that pastor so I can tell you all the amount of our super surprise. We are about to get our USCIS approval but can't get anyone to look at our documents. Last time it took 3 weeks to get a reply. On our current fax it has been over a week and still nothing.

The big heart break came yesterday when we lost the childcare we set up months ago for when we are out of the country. I don't know what we are going to do. Our kiddos are so little and it is going to be hard for them to have both of us gone, so I hate to take them somewhere unfamiliar. Not to mention the fact that my littlest guy just had open heart surgery and I would like him to be close to his doctors.

Leaving my boys has always been the hardest part for me. I don't want to leave them but I know taking them isn't feasible. It gave me some comfort knowing that they would be here in a familiar place with there Doctor's close by and Caius could continue his therapies.

God has worked so many miracles through this whole process and I know he will work this out, I'm just blah..... Tomorrow will be better!