Anxiously awaiting a court date!

So now it has begun to sink in... we are going to have a 4th child soon!!! All the efforts and paperwork always made the end result seem so far way, but it is getting closer!!! Soon our little Alina will be home with us... we cannot wait!

Through RR I learned that another family who submitted their paperwork 2 days before ours heard they will be traveling in early Feb. So I am hopeful that we will also have a travel date soon... maybe we will even know that date before the holiday. There is also another RR family traveling right now and are at the orphanage where Alina is, so we are hoping for updated pictures of her soon. It will be so wonderful to see how she is doing, changing and growing.

Our family is doing great. Everyone is healthy and the kids are excited about Christmas. So much to be thankful for right now!

We'll update as soon as we know a date!!!

BIG NEWS!!!!

We learned yesterday that our dossier was submitted in Ukraine last Wednesday! It was the Thanksgiving miracle we had been praying for! So now we wait to hear from the Ukraine government about our court date... most likely in either late January or early Feb and then Todd and I will start to make our travel arrangements! It is really happening!

Noah said this morning, "You know, I already love Alina... I just can't wait to meet her!" He asked us the other day why we were only bringing one when we had so much room and there are so many kids who need a home, we explained that we are starting with one and going from there.

The good thing is the wait between now and January will go quickly with the holidays to celebrate! Plus we need to get Meg into her big girl bed so that the girls room is ready when our new daughter comes home!

This is great news for us but please keep those prayers coming... we still have a long road to brining her home!

Still a glimmer of hope!

Well the good news is our dossier arrived in Ukraine! The bad news is it was about 30 minutes too late... and still not fully translated.

So through the friend of a friend, a man from a church in Keiv, Ukraine is meeting with some high ranking government officials on Thursday to ask them to consider accepting our dossier so that we do not have to wait until February to submit. That is our last chance. If they accept we will travel in January-Feb. If they do not we cannot submit until Feb and will travel in March/April. So we need a Thanksgiving miracle.. please keep praying for that!

We had a great visit with the McSorley family in Columbus this past weekend. Our kids really enjoyed playing with their cousins and spending time with their aunts and uncles (and grand parents of course!). Lots of driving though... and when you have 2 young boys who think it is really cool to pee outside, you can bet we made lots of stops along exit ramps. I think I said "just don't hit my shoes" at least 100 times over these past few days!

It is in the mail...

Well after a few issues yesterday, we finally sent our dossier in the mail yesterday! I drove to Springfield to have it all apostilled. Right before Meg and I got there our agency realized we had never gotten or filled out our Power of Attorney for our facilitator in Ukraine. So we had to deal with getting that form printed, signed, notarized apostiled and shipped off too... all while several hours from home! But thanks to some very kind people, and a husband who got in the car and drove when he heard the stress in my voice, all is okay.

Now we just have to hope and PRAY that the package arrives in Ukraine in time for it to be submitted by the November deadline. We do not want to have to wait until Feb before it is submitted!!! We are hoping to travel by that time.

So that is the update. We are leaving in about 12 hours for an early Thanksgiving with the McSorley family in Ohio. We'll be back on Sunday and Monday we'll know if things are moving ahead in our journey to adopt Alina of if we are in a several month holding pattern.

Keep those prayers coming!
Anne

GREAT NEWS!!!

Thanks to the hard work of our friends at the local congressmans office (as well as our Congressman himself) our I-171H has arrived!! It is nothing short of a miracle!!

So tomorrow I will scan and send all our forms to our agency in CA for one last review, then once I get the okay I will drive everything to Springfield to have it apostilled and then shipped to Ukraine. It looks like we might make the Nov 29th deadline for the year.

There is a chance we could have Alina with us by her birhtday on Valentine's day! How wonderful would that be!

So keep those prayers, love and support coming... they are truly helping to work miracles in our situation!

So where we are today...

Brief review...Todd and I filed our I-600A in late July/early August. At that time we received a letter stating that our home study had not been submitted nor had our DCFS letter of recommendation. We knew that both of these had not been submitted. We were fingerprinted in Naperville on Thursday, August 21st.



On September 25th I received an email from Cathy who is our case worker for our home study. She stated our Home Study had been approved by the state and was being sent to Immigration that day. Both the Home Study and letter for support from DCFS were mailed that day.



Since that date we have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of our 171-H form (the outcome of filing our I-600A) so that we may process our paperwork to adopt. When a month passed and we didn’t hear anything we had our local congressmans office inquire about the status of our paperwork. Late last week I received a fax from Immigration that states they have our I-600A, but have not received the necessary Home Study and DCFS endorsement letter so there is nothing for them to process. They cannot move forward until this necessary paperwork is provided.

So the bottom line is that all the documentation that was mailed on Sept 25 was never recieved. Last Friday we resubmitted the info, our Congressman called Immigration on our behalf and we are waiting to hear our status.

We are really frustrated and upset about all of this... but grateful that our friend in the Congressmans office pushed us to let them check into it for us (thanks Nate!) Who knows how long we would still be waiting...

So if you have any prayers for a speedy turn around, we could certainly use them. We are still hopeful that our dossier will be submitted by 11/29, but each day that passes lessens that hope.

Things on the homefront are fine. Noah had an ear infection last week and Caleb has some sort of coughing cold thing that is keeping him (and most of us) up at night. Hopefully it won't spread to the rest of the family and he'll feel better soon.

Had a quiet weekend at home. I would say we were enjoying football but I can't say that... stupid Iowa! I hate those Hawkeye's!!!!

long time no updates

So every day I run to the mail and every day I am disappointed. Still no form from the state. I was hopeful we would have it submitted to our agency by Nov 1, but that isn't going to happen. I have learned that if we don't submit our dossier by Nov 29th to Ukraine, it will be Feb before they begin to accept them again. Making this process much longer than we wanted.

Otherwise it has been a whirlwind of a month. Lots going on at work and on the homefront.

Todd is busy with football. The Elmwood Trojans have their first playoff game on Saturday. We are hoping for a win to keep the season going.

The kids are excited about Halloween. They are all going as gnomes... their costumes are hysterical!

Work has been hectic, we have had 5 major events in the last month, not including the Extreme Home Makeover of one of our very own Easter Seals families... so much activity! I believe the episode will air Jan 11th... but I will keep you posted. I am enjoying the activity, but am ready for a less hectic schedule! Especially with the holidays around the corner.

If you have any prayers to spare, could you please say a few that this adoption process speeds up for us. I know everything happens in Gods time.... so maybe your prayers should be for patience for us while we wait for that time to arrive.

Here are a few pics... one is of our family at the first Down Syndrome Buddy Walk
in Peoria and the other is of my little gnomes (minus one little gnome who was napping)