Some of my online friends are doing a fundraiser auction for us for our adoption! There are tons of great items; many without any bids! Go check it out and help us come up with airfare to get home with our little guy!
/www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.577162419029647.1073741830.497429290336294&type=1
rainbow
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
We Have Arrived!
Well, we of course had an issue with USCIS. Our homestudy was worded incorrectly. It said we would accept the placement of a child with special needs and it needed to say we were approved to adopt a child with special needs! Our homestudy worker had to write an addendum and overnight it to USCIS. This was on Tuesday. We needed to leave on Monday; we had already scrambled to change our childcare plans several times already and we didn't know what we would do if we didn't travel NOW! Our worker had some personal stuff going on and was not available for almost 2 days after we found out about this. Luckily once she found out she moved quickly and our USCIS officer was very helpful and spelled everything out for us so she would get it right. She got it done and overnighted to them Thursday night so it should have arrived Friday morning. Unfortunately it arrived but was stuck in the mailroom until Monday morning. The officer emailed us after lunch on Monday to say the final approval was complete! But I wasn't able to check my email until we were at the airport waiting for our last flight. yes, we booked our flights praying that God was going to see it our way and make everything fall into place. He did!
We are in Serbia! Tonight we went to exchange some money and got a few groceries and are at our apartment relaxing. Tomorrow we will do some sight-seeing and souvenir shopping and then Thursday we will have our ministry appointment and learn everything we can about our newest addition! We will most likely meet him on Friday morning; we cannot wait!
We are in Serbia! Tonight we went to exchange some money and got a few groceries and are at our apartment relaxing. Tomorrow we will do some sight-seeing and souvenir shopping and then Thursday we will have our ministry appointment and learn everything we can about our newest addition! We will most likely meet him on Friday morning; we cannot wait!
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Leaving on a Jetplane!
We have flights booked! We are leaving here on Monday January 13th! One week from right now we will have met our little boy! I cannot wait to kiss his chubby little cheeks and hug him and tell him how much we love him! We are on our way Little One!
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Long Overdue Update!
Sorry I guess I am a total failure at this blogging thing! But I am going to try to catch up on all of the adoption happenings! In my last post I had just found out that our homestudy was finally approved after a ridiculous wait for a phone call for one little bit of information that was needed for our social worker to be able to finish up our study. So I spent an entire day, like 9 hours with my 2 yr old and my special needs adult daughter in tow driving all over WI to pick up the homestudy (there was no way I was going to wait for the post office to deliver it after this long!) We drove from Sparta, WI to Milwaukee picked it up and turned around and headed to Madison thinking we would get all of the apostilles done at the Secretary of State's office and then head to Fed Ex to send off our dossier. Simple right? No such luck:( We spent almost an hour in downtown Madison attempting to find a parking spot for my 12 passenger van within reasonable walking distance to the office. Finally we found a spot, got out the stroller and headed off to get the apostilles!
I was feeling pretty proud of what I had accomplished that day so when I walked into the Sec of State office and told them what I needed I was not prepared to be handed a form to fill out which asked if we wanted 3-5 day service or expedited next-day service! I need them now like today! It wasn't going to happen; not sure if I looked like I was going to cry but the lady said they didn't have many in front of mine so it shouldn't take the whole five days. Then she looked through my pile and I had 5 documents that had been notarized incorrectly! I paid for what I could and they gave me the forms to fill out for the others that I had to get re-done and I was on my way back to the van feeling extremely defeated at this point. That was on Thursday the 21st of November. On Friday I got all the corrected documents and Fed-Ex'd them back to Madison that night along with a Fed-Ex envelope to send the entire dossier to Serbia. The Secretary of State office received my corrected documents Monday morning, did the apostilles and sent the whole thing out via Fed-Ex at 11:53am that same day! Our dossier arrived in Serbia the day after Thanksgiving. We had also sent our immigration application in on the 22nd and it was received the day before Thanksgiving. I thought our problems were over finally!
We received our fingerprint appointment's for December 18. We spent another long day driving to Milwaukee for those and then we sat back and waited. Unfortunately USCIS wanted more information twice so we are still waiting for our final approval letter! They do have all the information at this point so it is a technicality; that being said we have not booked our flights because we cannot afford to lose out on the non-refundable fees just in case something else comes up!
Our Ministry appointment is scheduled for January 16 at 11am! We are hoping to fly out of Appleton on Monday the 13th. Our flights were on hold until last night so hopefully tomorrow we get the green light from USCIS and the flights will still be available! Prayers would be appreciated at this point for all aspects of this adoption.
On the bright side we received pictures on Christmas morning! And even though we would have loved our little guy no matter what he looked like I am thrilled to announce he is ADORABLE! And is going to be so spoiled by everyone in our house! We are so ready to bring him into our home and family! We cannot wait to share his adorable little face with all of you, unfortunately we can't until he is officially ours.
I was feeling pretty proud of what I had accomplished that day so when I walked into the Sec of State office and told them what I needed I was not prepared to be handed a form to fill out which asked if we wanted 3-5 day service or expedited next-day service! I need them now like today! It wasn't going to happen; not sure if I looked like I was going to cry but the lady said they didn't have many in front of mine so it shouldn't take the whole five days. Then she looked through my pile and I had 5 documents that had been notarized incorrectly! I paid for what I could and they gave me the forms to fill out for the others that I had to get re-done and I was on my way back to the van feeling extremely defeated at this point. That was on Thursday the 21st of November. On Friday I got all the corrected documents and Fed-Ex'd them back to Madison that night along with a Fed-Ex envelope to send the entire dossier to Serbia. The Secretary of State office received my corrected documents Monday morning, did the apostilles and sent the whole thing out via Fed-Ex at 11:53am that same day! Our dossier arrived in Serbia the day after Thanksgiving. We had also sent our immigration application in on the 22nd and it was received the day before Thanksgiving. I thought our problems were over finally!
We received our fingerprint appointment's for December 18. We spent another long day driving to Milwaukee for those and then we sat back and waited. Unfortunately USCIS wanted more information twice so we are still waiting for our final approval letter! They do have all the information at this point so it is a technicality; that being said we have not booked our flights because we cannot afford to lose out on the non-refundable fees just in case something else comes up!
Our Ministry appointment is scheduled for January 16 at 11am! We are hoping to fly out of Appleton on Monday the 13th. Our flights were on hold until last night so hopefully tomorrow we get the green light from USCIS and the flights will still be available! Prayers would be appreciated at this point for all aspects of this adoption.
On the bright side we received pictures on Christmas morning! And even though we would have loved our little guy no matter what he looked like I am thrilled to announce he is ADORABLE! And is going to be so spoiled by everyone in our house! We are so ready to bring him into our home and family! We cannot wait to share his adorable little face with all of you, unfortunately we can't until he is officially ours.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Making Progress Finally!
Our adoption process has been at a standstill for five weeks. Did you read that? Five weeks! Ridiculous and totally maddening. I didn't know weather to laugh or cry anymore. I almost dreaded someone asking about the adoption because I didn't have anything to say:( Nothing, I knew nothing other than there was someone who wasn't returning our social workers phone calls and that someone held the final piece of the puzzle that would make our homestudy complete!
Well that phone call was finally answered late last week and we got the call from our social worker this morning that everything is approved and we will have our final copies of our homestudy Thursday morning! I will be doing lots of driving this week because everything still needs to be apostilled (my understanding is that an apostille is like a state level verifying that the notaries that notarized all of our documents are actually legit!) And then I am hoping to drive my dossier to a couple who is traveling this weekend to adopt their own little one from the same country as ours!
So we are celebrating at our house tonight! It won't be long now and there will be one more little one at our table and one less orphan in this world!
Well that phone call was finally answered late last week and we got the call from our social worker this morning that everything is approved and we will have our final copies of our homestudy Thursday morning! I will be doing lots of driving this week because everything still needs to be apostilled (my understanding is that an apostille is like a state level verifying that the notaries that notarized all of our documents are actually legit!) And then I am hoping to drive my dossier to a couple who is traveling this weekend to adopt their own little one from the same country as ours!
So we are celebrating at our house tonight! It won't be long now and there will be one more little one at our table and one less orphan in this world!
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Bibs to Bring home our Baby!
Well she isn't actually a Baby but she will be OUR BABY!
Here is Clara modeling the bibs I am making to help fund our adoption!
They are great; cute cotton print on the front and flannel on the back with bias tape ties instead of velcro!
I bought 2 of these at a craft show last year and I absolutely love them; we use them literally every day and they wash and wear great!
$15 each or 2 for $25 including shipping!
I will be adding lots more prints as I get them made but wanted to give everyone a sneak peek at what we are doing while we WAIT!
Friday, November 1, 2013
Where We Are Right Now
We bought our house in June and I immediately started trying to figure out how we could start an adoption! By the end of July I had contacted Dani Funk at Adoption Babylink about starting a homestudy and she came to do our first visit on August 4! We initially had planned to adopt from Latvia but nothing was falling into place quite right and something just didn't feel right. So I remembered a facebook conversation I had had with Leah Spring several months earlier. I emailed the ministry in Serbia in late August. They were on Holiday so I didn't here back from them until September 9th.
From then on it went really quickly! I had no idea just how fast things could go with Serbia so I didn't worry about all the paperwork until a couple weeks later and we have been racing since trying to get medicals done and income verifications etc. As of today everything is completed and we are just waiting for the final copy of the homestudy! Our next step is to apply to immagration to get permission to bring our new little girl home! At the same time we send that in we will be sending our dossier over to Serbia to be translated. As soon as that is finished we will get more specific information on the little girl we have preliminary approval for and hopefully a picture of her too!
We have requested a little girl with Down Syndrome so we know she will have our favorite extra chromosome but that is pretty much all we know! We could possibly travel as soon as early December so we have been doing everything possible to come up with the funds for travel and in country costs. Just airfare for Bill and I roundtrip and our little one on the way home will be well over $2,500!
We have added a fundraising thermometer to our sidebar with a donation button. We would appreciate any donation no matter how big or small! Please consider being a part of saving our daughter from a life without a family!
From then on it went really quickly! I had no idea just how fast things could go with Serbia so I didn't worry about all the paperwork until a couple weeks later and we have been racing since trying to get medicals done and income verifications etc. As of today everything is completed and we are just waiting for the final copy of the homestudy! Our next step is to apply to immagration to get permission to bring our new little girl home! At the same time we send that in we will be sending our dossier over to Serbia to be translated. As soon as that is finished we will get more specific information on the little girl we have preliminary approval for and hopefully a picture of her too!
We have requested a little girl with Down Syndrome so we know she will have our favorite extra chromosome but that is pretty much all we know! We could possibly travel as soon as early December so we have been doing everything possible to come up with the funds for travel and in country costs. Just airfare for Bill and I roundtrip and our little one on the way home will be well over $2,500!
We have added a fundraising thermometer to our sidebar with a donation button. We would appreciate any donation no matter how big or small! Please consider being a part of saving our daughter from a life without a family!
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