ACCEPTANCE & TRAVEL

We have accepted the referral and are planning our first trip around the beginning of October!

We are really excited about meeting our boys! 

Until all of this is finalized, we won't post specifics or pictures (confidentiality concerns), but we can tell you some things:

*the ages are 4 & 2
*they look really great
*we are going to keep their Russian name as a middle name and adding a new name to go with their new family
*we are going to name the older brother David
*we are going to name the younger brother Michael

Please continue to pray for us:
*that we stay calm and focused
*that Rachael can get school stuff done in a timely manner (has to leave lesson plans, etc for a sub)
*that we get all the papers sorted, organized, filled out, signed, notarized, apostilled, etc as needed and as soon as possible (the sooner the dossier part 2 is completed & sent to Russia the sooner we get a court date!)
*that we make good travel arrangements (we will be traveling to the Archangelsk Region)
*we are about $8,000 short of what we anticipate
*there are probably more things but this is all for now.......

Spring Break Update

Well, Spring Break is finally here and I am looking forward to a week without my students!

Don't think that it will be a week of nothing to do; I have a list of things to get done:

** Work on grant applications

**Get blankets sewn for 3 upcoming Craft Shows

**Clean house & do laundry, mundane household things of that sort

**Get all of our papers together for tax preparation

**and other things I can't think of right now....

Chris still has to work this week (both jobs) so keep him in your prayers.

The DX Kid's Cafe (our concession stand) at the Greater Houston HamFest on Saturday, March 6, went really well! We had some great helpers for the day! Chris came with me in the morning (were there at 6:30 am) and his mom met us there and stayed to help bring the remaining stuff back to our house (got home around 3:30). Our friends, Dawn & Virginia, came out and were very helpful. Also the two daughters of one of my dad's friends (Andre) were a huge help as well! We didn't have as many sales as we hoped, but we did net about $1200 when it was all done and the money counted (after paying Dad back and our expenses). Not a bad day!! Of course, we do have stuff left over that I am not sure exactly what to do with, but I will figure it out this week.

We now have just a little over $10.000 in the bank! Only about $30.000 more to go. One of the things I need to do this week is see if I can get us a credit card for travel expenses. Need to add that to my list...

Please continue to pray for us during this time: that the funds come in, paperwork gets done in a timely manner, our children and their current caretakers.

eBay sale!!

The 1910 Tobacco Card (precursor to baseball cards) that a friend gave us to sell on eBay sold a few days ago!!! YEAH!! Now we are waiting for several other items I've posted to sell: 1999 Disney 101 Dalmatians lithograph, Fujifilm FinePix S3000 camera, 1954 Marilyn Monroe Golden Dreams calender & a 1973 Rookie Third Basemen card.

The plans for the concessions at the Greater Houston Ham Fest on Saturday, March 6 are going well.

Liz & I have 3 craft shows coming up: Greater Houston Ham Fest on March 6 (Liz will run the tables on her own), the SLHS PTSA Garage Sale (Seven Lakes High School in Katy) on April 10 and the Mom's Market at Fishers of Men Church on April 24. Nothing like being busy with sewing!!

Last Christmas without a tree...

Chris and I decided to not put up a tree or decorate for Christmas this year, as it will be our last year to get away with it! We are looking forward to next Christmas season and all the fuss that will go in to pulling out the tree from the garage, finding all the ornaments (or buying new ones), stringing lights inside and out, etc.

We did have a good Christmas with family. We joined my sister, her husband, child, and my dad at her house for lunch as spent a nice 2 hours with them. Then we went 'down the street and around the corner' to Chris' mom's and step-dad's house. We spent a few hours with them and other family stopped by (step-brother & wife). It was a really nice time with all!

I am enjoying my last week off from school! As nice as it is, I will be ready to return next week. We are starting the sewing unit on the 11th and I always enjoy those 6 weeks! Chris is off from Fort Bend on Friday and is working at Wal-Mart all week (the only day Wal-Mart ever closes on is Christmas Day).

Our Adoption Fund is now at $5000! It is slowly but surely getting there (we still need about $35,000 more....). One of our friends at church gave us an autographed NFL football to auction/sell as we see fit. It is an NFL (has a serial number sticker on the box) football signed by Roger Staubach from the Dallas Cowboys. The football is engraved with the 5 Superbowls that the Cowboys were in and it also says that it is a limited edition of 5,000. It is in the original box (has never been taken out of the box). Can't wait to see what it brings in! Chris' mom gave us a calendar that she had been given to post on eBay: 1954 Golden Dreams with a nude picture of Norma Jean (later known as Marilyn Monroe). The calendar is in mint condition! It will be interesting to see what it brings in!

Well, I guess I had better get moving. I plan to take some gold jewelry and stuff to sell at Houston Gold Exchange. Chris' mom gave me some to add to what I already have. Anything at this rate will be helpful!

Hope you had a great Christmas and an even better New Year!

Still planning, working, etc

We are still working on paperwork! It never seems to end! I haven't finished our written financial plan for Buckner yet (I am still waiting to here that Chris got the part time job at Wal-Mart - it's been a month and he has been assured that they want to hire him, they just haven't called him in for the interviews & finalization yet!!). Please continue to pray for this situation. We really need this second income for Chris to go towards the adoption expenses.

I have been working on a Wish List at Wal-Mart. I think most of the things we need for the kiddos is listed. It is a work in progress (like the adoption!). You can access it through my name or Chris' name. It is registered as a Wish List, not a registry. I put our anniversary next year as the 'event date' for lack of a better date. It will change as we get closer to bringing our children home.

I talked with Donita Potts a few weeks ago and got some great ideas for fundraising! I was originally told that they fundraised both of their adoptions. Apparently that is not the case. She said that they fundraised the first adoption 100% through donations & activities. The second adoption was a gift from God. They prayed and said "God, if you want these children to join our family, you will provide the money". They didn't do any fundraising at all!! Just goes to show how great God is and how He provides for His children.

I heard from Amy Norton, a friend of our pastor's wife, and got some suggestions for agencies that we can contact about financial assistance (scholarships, grants, etc). I will be working on that this week.

Please continue to pray for us: stress levels are lowered (especially for me), we get clear direction on fundraising ideas, our children as they wait for us.

On a side note, my sister and I will be participating in a craft show at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in the Heights area here in Houston on Saturday, October 3. Feel free to stop by if you are in the area. Money from the items that I make goes toward our adoption expenses. Also, I make homemade goodies (desserts, enchiladas, lasagnas, etc) and the money from that also goes towards our adoption expenses. So if you don't bake or cook ......

Oh, the car is still for sale if you know someone who is looking.....

We are OFFICIAL!!

I got THE PHONE CALL today around 1:45 this afternoon from Joy, our Home Study social worker informing us that we are Officially Approved to Adopt up to 2 siblings from Russia!!!

After some crying, writing information down and trying not to break down, I called Chris at work to tell him the GREAT NEWS!! Since he could tell I was (or at least had been) crying, he thought something was wrong, but was excited once I told him about Joy's phone call.

We have been waiting and praying for this day for about a year and God has been faithful. We really appreciate all of our family and friends that have been praying with and for us during this time. Please, Please continue to pray for and with us as we begin the next step.

From here, we need to submit a written financial plan (just saying that God will provide isn't good enough) for financing this adoption process. We estimate that we will need about $40,000 by the time we are ready to go pick up our children. Yes, that is a huge amount of money! And no, we are not exactly sure where it will come from. The nice thing about Buckner is that you pay as you go. If you don't have the funds for the next step, you wait until you do. The down side is that most of the paperwork that we will need to complete is time sensitive. So, we need to have as much of the money as possible (or all of it) collected before we begin the Dossier paperwork. Once we send the Dossier to Russia, it could be as quick as 4-6 weeks to get the referral from Russia. Apparently the referral process is not as long as we had originally been told!!

Right now, we need about $7,000 to start the next step: submitting the USCIS (immigration) form and get fingerprinted, paying the first half of Buckner's agency fee and several other miscellaneous fees. Now that our Home Study is complete, we can start applying for grants with various organizations (unfortunately most of them prefer stay-at-home, homeschooling moms).

Anyway, we are really excited!

Please continue to pray for our children and their current caregivers; our financial situation; school (starts on Monday and I am NOT ready yet); we have patience during the rest of this process.

We are NOT crazy!!

Yesterday I spoke with the psychologist that did our adoption evaluation, and we are good to go (according to his report) for adopting! So for all of you out there that asked "Are you crazy?" in regards to adopting an older sibling group, according to a psychologist, we are not crazy!

Okay, maybe we are just a little bit, but who isn't (in some way or another). Anyway, he has sent in his report to Buckner, so the last of the paperwork is on us. Chris has been reading one of his 2 books and I have been working on getting the house back to normal (it still smells a little like paint).

Please continue to pray for our children and for our finances {we got the bill for the psychologist's paperwork (test scoring and report writing) yesterday}.

Whoo Hoo! The painting is done!

Yesterday morning the last 'touch ups' and such were done! Now I don't have to worry about being in someone's way while they are working (I actually got to sleep till 7:30 this morning). Now all that is left is to put everything back where it belongs. This is taking longer than it took to empty cabinets and such. I should be able to get the kitchen totally done tomorrow (started on it today).

Now, if we can just get the books finished...

Okay, last night the fumes finally got to me!

The kitchen cabinets were painted yesterday afternoon and the fumes were getting to me by bedtime! Nothing like waking up at 3:30 in the morning with a MAJOR MIGRAINE. Then Sheba started to bark at 4:00 for some reason (maybe because she saw me getting up for ibuprofen?) and didn't stop until about 4:30. I will be really glad when this is all done and life can get back to normal.

I think they are going to do the final walk-through/check this afternoon, so it should be completely done by tomorrow night. Sheba has been really traumatized this past week as she has been cooped up in her kennel most of the time (including yesterday evening because of the kitchen being painted). She has been 'talking' with the guys, and occasionally they talk to her. :)

Everything is looking great!

House looks great, not sure about us...

So far, they have completed the front 2 bedrooms, front bathroom, hallway, laundry room, dining/living room. They worked on Saturday getting the dining/living room done. We had Sunday off and they were back here on Monday to finish the 'touch-ups' in the dining/living room, move some of the furniture back in place (Yeah, I have the computer to work on), finish the laundry room and start on our bedroom & bath. We spent Sunday evening emptying our closets and I finished the rest of the bathroom stuff Monday morning. All of the ceilings are painted and they are supposed to finish our bath & bedroom today. Originally, they were supposed to have our rooms finished yesterday, but only 2 guys were able to work yesterday.

I get to finish emptying the kitchen cabinets today. I started last night, have worked some this morning and will finish the rest later this morning. I hope that they at least start on the kitchen walls today. There isn't a lot of wall space, it is mostly cabinets. Oh well. There is a 'Men's Night Out' tonight at BerryHill Tamales & Tacos in Sugar Land. I told Chris that he needs to go, if for no other reason than a good meal since I don't know if I can get into the kitchen to cook dinner. I picked up hot dogs & buns yesterday in case the kitchen was a mess. At least that is easy to fix (less than 2 minutes in the microwave which will be on its cart in the dining room). The coffee maker is being moved into the front bathroom so we can have coffee in the morning. Not sure if I will be able to make breakfast tacos for Chris, but I should still be able to make his sandwich for lunch tomorrow.

Hopefully I will be able to get some sleep soon. I haven't slept well since they started working last Thursday! Most mornings have been tolerable inside, but the afternoons and evenings have been really, horribly hot! The front door has been left open quite a bit with stuff being moved in or out in the afternoon. Our poor air conditioner has been working overtime (not to mention the HEAT Index!). It will be nice when our doors are back in place, then I won't have to go to the store to use the bathroom (didn't think about that problem last week!) during the day. Maybe I can get a nap this afternoon...

Living with Workers in our house

We are getting our house painted! The entire interior of the house! We have had someone offer to cover the cost, so we decided to get it started while I am home for the summer. We sat down with this company on Monday (we had a total of 4 different bids), liked what they had to say the best, picked out colors that closely matched what we had already chosen, and called them on Tuesday to confirm the agreement. We got an email on Wednesday morning asking if they can start on Thursday morning (we didn't think that they would start so soon!) and the crew arrived right on time at 8:30 this morning. Talk about short notice.

Chris and I started taking stuff down last night (realized that we didn't clean out as much as we thought for Joy's visit) and getting ready for the guys to start today. They are starting in the front 2 bedrooms (the kid's rooms) and the front bathroom. They are also taking all the interior doors off site to paint them (they need to be prepped before painting as they are vinyl and have never been painted). I told the crew chief (Manuel) that the only door they couldn't take was the front door! That one has been painted before, so they won't need to take it away with the others. Hopefully, we will have them back by Monday.

We are keeping our nephew overnight on Saturday so my sister and brother-in-law can go to his sister's surprise birthday party. It should be interesting to see how he is without doors in the house! I hope they get the front room completely done by Friday night so we can empty the stuff off his bed that we piled on it last night (I thought that he wasn't coming over until next weekend)!

Oh the things to look forward to next week: emptying all the kitchen cabinets & pantry, the laundry room, the bookshelves in the living room, figuring out if I have to empty the china hutch or if it can be moved VERY CAREFULLY from against the wall, emptying our closets (gives me a chance to sort though my clothes) and who knows what else I will have to do.

They should be completely done with the painting by next Friday, if all goes well. I think they are just prepping today and will paint the bathroom & kid's rooms tomorrow.

Getting Ready for Home Visit...

Chris and I have been working hard this past week (longer, actually) to get ready for our social worker's home visit on Saturday. I never realized what we have collected over the years and haven't gotten rid of! It is amazing what people collect and don't throw away. It is so easy to become a pack rat and hard to throw stuff out, but we are doing it! I think that we are ready for the Home Visit on Saturday (or at least we will be by Friday night). We pick up Joy at the airport in the morning and will take her back in the early afternoon. I know it is not a 'white glove' inspection visit, but you never know.....

We have childproofed all that we can think of, put the 7 pound fire extinguisher under the sink (behind a childproofed latch) and double checked the 2 CPS lists we have to follow.

Now, we just need to finish cleaning, hanging fresh towels in the front bathroom and wait. I guess that means that I need to stop writing and get back to work (laundry, dusting, vacuuming/sweeping, cleaning the kitchen, etc).....

Things are moving along

Only 2.5 days left with the kiddos at school! Then I get to work on the house stuff and the Home Study stuff. It will be nice to sleep till 5:30 (that's when Chris gets up) every morning!

I talked with Joy this afternoon and she will let us know the day she is coming down after talking with her husband (he will have the kids that day). We should know tomorrow if she is flying down on the 20th or 27th. We will pick her up at the airport and take her back (saves the cost of a rental car).

She sent us the information for a psychologist that one of the other families in the area used for their Psychological Evaluation that is required. I don't think that insurance will cover any of it (at least that is what I've been told so far), so I need to find out how much it will cost us. Please pray that insurance will cover part, if not all of the cost (or that the cost will be covered somehow!).

I've gotten information from Texas Children's International Adoption Clinic, and it will cost us $500 to set up a file for one child (each additional child costs $300). This will enable us to sit down with a pediatrician in the clinic and go over the Medical Check List that we need to re-do and re-submit. Please pray that God will provide at least $500 to set up a file.

We are still waiting for a written estimate from one of the painters we had look at the house,but at least we have picked out the colors we want!

I am about halfway through the 2nd Adoption Book (Adopting The Older Child [written in 1978]) and still have one more to go!

Not much going on right now

Chris and I plan to have Joy (we haven't checked with her yet) come down at the end of May to do the house visit and last interview. Still haven't read the other 2 books yet, but we are getting more stuff around the house done. Chris painted the garage door yesterday, so it doesn't look so bad! I am still trying to get used to the latches on the cabinet doors and drawers. After 2 broken nails, I've decided that short is good. I haven't had time during the day to find out about a psychologist yet. With super needy sewing students, phone calls from the office looking for students, meetings in my free time, I haven't had much time. Lunch is usually during class, instead of the 15 minutes I might have during my lunch period. Oh well, 5 more weeks to go then I get lots of free time! Of course, that means I have more time to get everything done that needs to be done....

Overwhelmed right now, but it's getting better!

Chris and I are still working on the Home Study stuff. We got home around 11:00 on Friday the 20th, after sitting in the Seminar all day and then driving home afterwards. Talk about exhausted! It took us a few days to get semi-caught up on sleep, although I don't feel like I am rested yet!

It was a great 2 days, but we hadn't had much time to really talk about what we learned when we got an email from our social worker the following Tuesday evening asking when (in April) can she come down for the home visit. As she was going to be out of town the last weekend, and Easter wasn't a good time, that left the first weekend and third weekend of the month available. Talk about extremely short notice! Since we haven't completed everything in the house that is on the CPS check list, the visit will have to wait! It took 2 emails and 2 phone calls to convince the social worker that we are not ready yet (in more ways than one!), but she has accepted that this is our process and we will let her know when we are ready. The good news is that we don't have to have all the other stuff (2 books, psychological evaluations, financial plan, medical check list) done before she sees the house. It all has to be done before the Home Study process can be completed and Final Approval is given to adopt.

Of course, we will have to pay as we go (which is something we already knew and planned for), so that will slow the process down as well. We need $500 for the second half of the Home Study process, fees for the psychological evaluations & medical check list meeting with a doctor, and $3,500 for the 1st installment of the Agency Fee when we are given the Final Approval. Please continue to pray that the funds will be available when they are needed.
Chris has installed the drawer and cabinet latches in the kitchen, children's bathroom and our bathroom; as well as smoke/fire alarms in the 2 extra bedrooms and checked to make sure that the other ones work. You never think of all that is necessary until you get 2 check lists that CPS requires.

School has been rather busy lately, but should get better soon. My students are starting their sewing projects this week and that is always a good time for me. Chris is seriously considering going back to Wal-Mart part time this summer (after the home visit by the social worker) to earn more to go towards the adoption (and get the last 2 credit cards paid off). I have been working on more baby blankets to sell. Liz (my sister) and I spent the morning at the Seven Lakes High School 3rd Annual PTSA Garage Sale on the 28th and sold 3 blankets! One lady bought a nap mat from our online store: www.LandRDesigns.etsy.com when Liz reactivated it on Sunday the 29th! I am really praying that more will sell (when they all get posted). If you know anyone who is looking for baby blankets, Burpcloth Babies or children's clothing, please feel free to pass our store site on!