All In Due Time

First of all, what about this heat??? Poor Nate is practicing in full equipment at football and has been sick with a terrible bark like cough, but still loving every minute of practice. 104 degrees yesterday…gee whiz!

Okay, first I realized that I have a spelling, pronunciation and grammatical error in one of our paperwork steps. I have been using “apostillized” it should be “apostilled” …oops! And it is pronounced entirely different than what I thought. Live and Learn : )

This week we are beginning to send off all of our notarized items to be apostilled. We will have to send each item to the state it came from, for example, Eric was born in KY so we have to send his birth certificate to KY. Ohio is a bit different. You have to send each item to the county where it was notarized. So all together we will be sending items to 5 different places. The Psy report is being finalized as we speak, so hopefully by the end of the week we will be able to have it notarized and sent off by early next week. It will take up to two weeks to get everything back into our hands.

Shucks, I have run out of time. Maybe more tomorrow.

Time Flies

Sorry for the hold up in adding another entry. Is time just flying by…wow!

Jeanie, my sister, asked me if we made our August 1st goal…yes and no. We have several items to be notarized, but we have been waiting for the Immigration Office to send us our final approval, the 171-H, because it too will have to be notarized. Just this morning before I left for work the phone rang. It was a lady at the immigration office calling to congratulate us. She said she just completed our approval and will put it in the mail today!!! How awesome is that?! I would have thought the immigration people would be crabby and hard to deal with. Our experience has been just the opposite. When Eric and I went in to be fingerprinted they were the nicest, most friendly, people! Then they call us to congratulate us…imagine that! Kudos to the Cincinnati Immigration Office!

So now we will wait for that to arrive and take the remaining items to be notarized. The Psychology report will also be finished by the end of this week. Our agency is going over our paperwork with a fine tooth comb in the next week to be sure we have dotted every “I” and crossed every “T”. Then we will send things off to be apostilled (have our notary seals approved), then to be translated and sent to Colombia….I just got chill bumps thinking about it. Breathe…Breathe…Breathe!

Another question that has been posed is ”Will re-name the children or keep their birth names?” Our answer is “It Depends.” It will depend on several things, but in the meantime, we are working on names. If the name is completely Spanish and not easily translatable to English we will use their given name as their middle name and give them a new first name. We want them to keep as much of their heritage as possible and would love to keep the name, but not at the expense of making it hard for them here in the States. So, we’ll see. We will decide on possible names so we are prepared.

It was a lot easier to agree on names when it was just Eric and I. But now that Emi and Nate have a say, it is much more difficult for all of us to agree. Emi really liked Lilly, but the rest of us said no, so she named her new baby bunny Lilly instead. Nate is completely indecisive on girl names, he says he has to see her picture to know her name…good point and we all agree, so we have started a list of boy and girls names that we like. For a boy we all like the name Elijah and call him Eli, Samuel is another option. I liked Ross but it is very American and Eric doesn’t like it because, my siblings and parents live in Ross OH. The boys names seem to have been easier to agree upon than girl names. Nate likes Gabriella, but Eric doesn’t like Gabby for short. Emi chose Arianna, which is lovely. We talked about Leah, Moriah, Allison and Tori too. Hopefully the given name and the photo, when we receive it, will make the decision easier.

Another issue we have been talking about is the fact that we will need a van. I have/had an SUV but it won’t seat all six of us. Plus, I totaled the SUV last Monday in a car accident, luckily the kids weren’t with me and I was not hurt, but the vehicle is totaled. So I am now driving our truck while we prepare to buy a van.

I am glad the paperwork portion is coming to a close. Football and cheerleading have begun and school will start soon, so extra time is hard to come by.

So much to do, so little time!
Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

Reality Sets In

We finally have an appointment with the Psychologist…July 19th, next week!!! I finished the photo pages last night. It was fun. I took pictures of the individual pages, maybe I can post them for you to see. I will play around with it. These pages will be given to our children as they wait for us to travel. There are photos of the house and family. Originally we planned to include photos of everyone on both sides of the family…that’s a lot of people. So I spoke to the social worker about it and she said to just make it of us 4 plus the cousins they will see all the time and of my mom and dad because that will be their caretakers when we need someone. Including everyone may be a bit overwhelming.

I have to tell you…I am an emotional mess this week. I cry at the drop of a hat. It’s like being pregnant, your hormones are out of control and you cry at anything. I guess I just can’t believe that we are within about 2 weeks of being able to send everything off for translation and then soon after to Colombia. At the beginning of this process I had to not allow my mind to wonder, but now that the paperwork is nearly finished, I can’t stop myself. I wonder if they have a bed to sleep in, are they fed enough, what are their names, why are they orphans, did they get hurt today, who takes care of them and so on and so on. I have been having the most vivid dreams of the day we meet them and how our family of 4 will be 6.

Okay, now I have a favor to ask of all of you. We knew this day was coming and this is the time when the big bucks are due for us to be able to bring them home. We have been able to pay everything so far on time as needed. Only about $5000 since April, but now we will be needing a great deal more. I am just asking you to keep us in your prayers as we seek guidance on how to possibly finance the rest of the adoption. I have been a mess thinking about the financial part of this process and God continues to envelope that fear with peace, but my human brain cannot help but worry. God has been in control of every little detail, I have been amazed to watch his hand at work, so I should not fear, but I do. I will be sure to report His miracle to you as it takes place. He has been giving me some gentle reminders that he is in control. Even just this morning he was sure to let me know we are not forgotten. One through a verse I saw this morning “Now unto Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think…” Ephesians 3:20. And secondly by a quote I came across this morning by Joni Eareckson Tada “Faith isn’t the ability to believe long and far into the misty future…It’s simply taking God at His word and taking the next step.”

One last thing. This week Emi and Nate have also realized that we are really getting close to finishing all of this paperwork and realize too that the rest of the money will need to be availalbe soon. Just to tell you how much they are excited and how God has been working on thier hearts, here is a cute story. Emi had a friend over for the day and they set up a lemonade and chex mix stand on the corner of the street at my mom's house. At the end of the day Emi and her friend split the money. Then the following day Emi and Nate washed my mom and grandpa's cars, who in turn paid them. When I picked them up that evening they asked me to take the money and put it toward the adoption. So we are now $10 closer in our savings.

We will move forward in Faith!

Exciting News

I just received the Home Study report for us to review. It looks great, which means the first and biggest step is complete! I can hardly breathe!! This is a huge step in being able to bring the rest of our family home. The agency will now notarize the home study and send it to us. Once they notarize it we will have to send it to the immigration office here in Cincinnati so they can complete our paperwork. The immigration office already approved our application and accepted us. But in order to complete things on their end, which is the I-171, they need the home study report.

I am hoping by the end of next week the only things left on the list are the PSY report, wait for the 171 to come back to us, Eric's Employment letter and then we can send everything off to be apostatized. Then step two is done!!!

HOLY COW!!! This is exciting!
Love to all of you reading!

Another Step Closer

As you have probably noticed I have added the list of paperwork items for you to see how far we have come and for you to see what we have left. I tried to remember everything, but did not have my list with me when updating the blog, so I may have missed one or two things. I also changed the color scheme to represent the colors on the Colombian flag.


Last week was a big week. We completed our Home Study and the Social Worker is writing up her report as we speak. We also completed our 10 hours of parenting education. I plan to complete a few other items on the list this week and then WOW...we are really getting close. The biggest thing that we will have to wait for is the Psychologist report. Once we meet with the PSY he will have to write the report, hopefully it doesn't take too long. Eric will also need to get a letter from his employer, which is just a form letter and should not take too long.

Also, just an update about Eric's job. Long story made short, just pretend he never left his job in the first place :-). God works in mysterious ways and as it ended up, he is now working back at Midas and is the Cincinnati District Manager. He no longer has to drive to Dayton everyday!!! Yippee!!! We are very excited and Eric is happy.

Now, back to the adoption. The list on the right side of your screen is a list of the paperwork we need to complete the Home Study and the Dossier, which are the two main parts of the process of adopting internationally. Below is a general list of steps we need to go thru in order to bring our children home.

1) Complete a Home Study with a Social Worker - This is complete for the most part. Once the Social Worker completes her report, which she is working on, this will be complete.

2) Complete the Dossier - This is a bunch of legal stuff and paperwork for the international side of things. Everything will have to be notarized then sent off to be apostatized, which is a process of someone checking to be sure our notaries are valid. We are really close to being able to send off all of our notarized items.

3) Send all items to be translated into Spanish

4) Send all items to the Colombian government and wait for approval. We will be notified when they receive our paperwork and we are approved.

5) Receive a referral. This is when we receive photos and background info on the children.

6) Travel 4 - 6 weeks after we accept the referral.

I know this is a lot to take in, but we have had so many questions about the process and the amount of paperwork. I thought putting it in a list form may help you all to understand a bit better.

Adios for now!

Getting Closer

Yesterday Eric and I had an appointment with a marriage therapist. We had to have an assessment of our marriage which included how we deal with stress, how we problem solve, what do we include or not include the kids on. We had to discuss the most difficult time in our marriage and how we dealt with it etc. The point is that anytime you bring in an older child to your family, there will be stress and additional issues to deal with. Colombia wants to be sure that the the adopting family is strong and will be able to deal and overcome the additional stresses that may come with the child/children. Anyway, the appointment went very well and the therapists report will be complete in a week.

After the appointment Eric and I began to discuss what all is left to do. We both became very excited to see the light at the end of the paperwork tunnel! We have to set up visit with the psychologist for personality testing and Eric needs a letter from his employer, proving his salary, and other general employment issues. Then we have to write an autobiography of ourselves. These are the next major steps. There are some additional things we will need to do too, but what I have just listed are the next steps we are focusing on completing.

Baseball is almost over and we will have a few weeks before Football and Cheerleading start, so I am hoping to accomplish a lot of this in the next few weeks. My real goal is to have all of our items complete by the first of August!

The kids are getting excited too. They have stopped asking a lot of questions so I have been trying to be creative with thoughts to give to them. Food for thought, kind of. They are in for such a shock and I want them to be as prepared as possible. My thought for them this week is on the country and our trip itself. I want them to view it as an adventure and to find something to learn everyday while we are there. The trip will be hard, just being away from home for 3 to 4 weeks, but also they will have to go to every legal appointment with us. They are so well behaved, but even they will get tired of the running to all of the appointments we will have to attend. I want them to be prepared for the change in food style, and the fact that they will not understand anything the people around them are saying. It's easy to accept these things for a few days, but for a whole month...can any of us really be prepared for that?

Hope everyone is doing well. I will write more soon.

Slowly but Surely

Here is an update for those of you reading.

It has been so busy, other than the adoption paperwork, that I haven't had time to think about the blog. The kids are out of school, baseball is coming to a close, Emilee's dance recital is this weekend, the kids took off for camp for 3 nights, Eric was offered a job 3 miles from home, more money, and just one shop instead of 7. His boss was a bit surprised at him taking a "demotion", but it's really a blessing from God. Less stress, less travel, close to home, and more money!

With all of that going on, and that's not even all, it's been kind of hard to keep our heads above water. I was feeling a bit discouraged because I hadn't spent any time on the adoption. But the other day I was able to get back on track.

The last thing we need to do in order to complete the first set of paperwork is to meet with a Psychologist and a therapist. We have to have personality tests, an assessment of our mental health, an assessment of our family life, and Emi and Nate have to be interviewed too. Normally this is about a $500 process, but Eric recently met a guy who is a Psychologist and wants to do the assessments and reports for us for free!! It has been so amazing to see God's hand at work in all of this. So anyway, we are setting appointments and hope to have all the reports completed by the end of June.

We also have one more meeting with the social worker, then we will have the Home Study complete...yippee!

The next step is just more paperwork, but it doesn't require as much running. We have to write biographies, a letter to the Colombian government, have tons of stuff notarized, etc. But for now we are just focusing on completing the Home Study.

I am so excited to think that we could actually have all of this complete and out of our hands the first part of August. I know it's all in God's timing. He has given me a real peace about everything we have done so far.

This is such an amazing time in our lives, we are getting anxious to be able to bring the rest of our family home.

Love to all of you! I will let you know when our Psy Report is complete and another step is behind us.