Siberia Bound

Well, it has been a whirlwind since we accepted our referral.  We have been frantically working on our paperwork that is needed for trip #2 since we were told we may be able to cut some time between trips if we complete as much paperwork as possible to bring on trip #1.  

On Friday we received our itinerary for our trip and we leave on Saturday, yes, in 6 days!!  We mobilized quickly and booked our air travel and reinforcements (Amy's Mom) to take care of the boys.  We are so blessed that we were able to cover our complete flight to Krasnoyarsk and back with airline miles and our friends (Pilot) donated the flight for Amy's Mom...thanks Jeremy and Danielle!!!

We leave on Saturday and after 19 hours (over 3 days) in the air will FINALLY get to meet our little girl!  We are so completely excited to spend even just a few hours with her NEXT WEEK!  We return on Friday, the 12th.

We hope to post more during our trip, so check back!

The Call

We have been silent on our blog for the past week, but not for lack of things to tell!  Our last post was about us daydreaming the day we would finally receive a referral.  Well, it happened that very next day!!  How good is our GOD!!  We received the call on Thursday morning that our agency had a referral for us to review.  So many emotions overcame us as we reviewed the medical information and pictures of what could be our little baby girl.  We began to pray for the Lord's will to be done in this situation and not ours.  Today we discussed the medical file with an International Adoption Specialist and any fears or concerns we may of had with her health were completely laid to rest. Praise the Lord!  We have officially accepted her referral and are in the process of getting our visas and travel itinerary so we can go meet her!  We hope to travel in the next couple of weeks.

We have been told not to give specific details about our little one, but we can tell you she is  just over one year old and as adorable as can be!  

Thank you to everyone for your prayers for us during this past year of waiting.  We will post any new news as we get it.

Could this be the week?

We are praying that this week we will get a call from our coordinator... Not the usual call that we are missing some paperwork, or that one of our papers needs to be re-done, but THE call, the one that says we have a child for you!    Oh what a sweet day it will be.

Prayers Answered!

The paperwork we were waiting to receive from The Netherlands was finally faxed to us last week! It seems it has been lost in the mail but Ryan was able to convince someone in Holland to fax us a copy in the meantime.  So last Thursday, Amy and Brooks spent a good portion of the day driving to our social workers house to pick up our home study, then to the notary, then to Olympia to have the Secretary of State put their seal on it, then to the UPS store just in time to make the overnight shipping cut off.  So according to our agency our paperwork is now in Russia and all we have to do is sit and wait:-)  Ryan and I are having fun playing the guessing game of when we will get the call.  

It is exciting times around here, the feeling that many good things for our family are just around the bend.....

stay tuned!!

Paperwork Prayer Needed!

This is a call to all our faithful family and friends to pray for us.  We have heard this week that we are not able to accept a referral until all our paperwork has been updated. Originally we were told that the document from The Netherlands will not hold us up, but that has changed.  We are still waiting on Amy's police background clearance from The Netherlands to come.  Ryan received his last week, which seems odd that Amy's did not come at the same time.  Please pray that it will arrive ASAP, because our coordinator would like it to be hand delivered to Russia with a family that is traveling there early next week.  Once we do get it, we will make a quick trip up to Olympia to have it Apostilled by the state and then overnight it to the family.  

We know God can make this happen, so we are praying it and trusting in His timing. Thanks!

16+9=25!

It's not over, until it's over...

We were feeling so relieved that our updated Dossier was going to be completed this week, (with the exception of the document still needed from The Netherlands) and we would finally be done with this paper chase and be able to focus on other things.  Oh, how wrong we were!  Our adoption coordinator told us she would be sending a packet of information relevant to the region we have just been assigned to, and that there would be some more paperwork involved with this specific region.  No big deal we thought, we have done our Dossier 2 times now so what more could they possibly need from us?  Only Russia could think of 16 ADDITIONAL documents they need signed, notarized and apostilled from us, and 9 more from our social worker.  That makes 25 more documents to hunt down from California, Texas, The Netherlands, Washington and the FBI.  What more do these people want to know about us!!  Seriously, we are boring, law abiding people who just want to bring our daughter HOME.

The good news among this frustration is that these documents will not hold up our referral or our first trip.  So we will start tracking all of these down now, and turn them in as quickly as we can in order to expedite our court hearing on the second trip.  

Someday we might look back on this and smile, but today we are too buried in paperwork to see the humor.

Feeling Patriotic

Here are a couple clips of our cuties.  Brooks is 3.5 and Bradey had just turned 4.