WE GOT OUR TRAVEL DATE!!!!

We have been waiting on pins and needles for our coveted email from Eastern Europe! We are going to have our DAP appt. Feb. 11, 2013. Yes that's alittle under 5 weeks away!! I am very excited but have never seen anyone have to wait that long before they travel. The average wait to travel after you recieve your dates is about 2 weeks. So from submitting it will be 10.5 weeks!! WOW, that's a long wait!! Don't get me wrong we are very excited but i don't like having to wait for things! I guess i need to learn patience!!! Until then we have alot of packing and learning the language. While we are in country we will be very limited on what we can say publically. So i will have a private facebook page if you would like to know more. A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED US GET TO THIS POINT!!! We have seriously had our prayers answered and been blessed beyond measure!! We are fully funded and feel honored to have recieved such blessings! A huge thank you to anyone and everyone who contributed, Austens work, 2 anonymous donors and many more generous people that can't be named now. I guess i can't complain anymore about the wait, the blessings outnumber the waiting! Keep you all updated on whats next!

Russian ban....

Over the past few weeks i've been following the ban on Americans adopting Russian children. It passed all the way with the president signing this morning, what a corrupt government!! Azlyn was asking why would people not allow children who don't have families to not be adopted from the U.S.!? All i could come up with was they were letting satan lead them, they weren't following Heavenly Father and Jesus. If they were this never would have come up! It's so interesting to listen to a child, everything is so black and white. Why couldn't this be more of what happens around the world. If people are hurting it's bad. Well, you may be wondering if this affects us being able to adopt our sweet little one. The answer is no, we were not adopting this little one from Russia. Luckily the country we are adopting from has no intention of following Russia on this Ban. My heart still goes out to those it is affecting and all of those children in orphanages and institutions. Every child is a child of god who deserves to be loved and have a family of their own!! We should be getting our travel dates VERY SOON!!!! We are just sitting on pins and needles waiting!! CAN'T WAIT TO SEE WHEN IT WILL BE!!

GREAT NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!

This past week has been a very STRESSFUL week!! Last Tuesday i saw in the mail that our fingerprint paper was ready and that we just needed to go to USCIS to get them done. We walked in about 3 weeks early at 3:29 p.m. They close at 3:30 needless to say they said to come back tomorrow , which was Wednesday the day before thanksgiving. So we got there and got our fingerprints done!! YAY! That was a huge one, all we were now waiting on was the approval from USCIS that we were cleared and to get the next set of paperwork to send to country to get submitted! Well that day we heard nothing, the next day was Thanksgiving so we didn't hear anything that day either. Friday i kept calling Nancy, who is our go to lady for everything, to see if she had heard anything. Nothing!!!! UGH i was starting to get a little worried and frustrated, the dead line for submissions was the next Thursday the 29th!!! Monday came and i was feeling very anxious about everything. Were we going to get it in time to be able to make the winter cutoff?!!?!? Poor Nancy had to hear from me alot more then she probably wanted to!! I didn't hear anything until 4:15 p.m. the USCIS office closes at 5:00p.m. We had gotten approved but still needed to get the papers printed and notarized in order to be able to get them apostilled. Well by the time we got them notarized and printed it was 4:50p.m. There was no way to make it there in time! So i went the next morning at 7:30 am to get them apostilled and had to find a DHL place to send them to the country! We got it sent off and prayed and prayed that it would make it there by noon on Thursday! That was only 2 days away!! I got a text from Nancy this Morning saying that it arrived in country and they were at the notary and needed to be at the DAP in one hour in order to be able to get it submitted! ONE HOUR?!?! Are you kidding me?! Does the stress ever let up?!? More prayers were said and i got a text from Nancy again saying CALL ME!! I new this meant one of two things, either we got submitted or we would have to wait until after the winter shutdown! Well we GOT SUBMITTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT was 8:30 in the country and the team that we have there was just leaving the DAP, they had to get an exception to be able to submit a dossier after 6:00 p.m. THEY DID IT!!! I am so very grateful for the team that we have there! I have heard it said that if it were any other team it probably wouldn't have been able to get submitted! Heavenly Father heard our prayers and pleading!! We know that this is a miracle from him and now we won't have to wait a month and a half to be submitted. We will more then likely be traveling around then in mid Jan. Now we just wait to hear when our appointment in country is!!! I can't believe that we are here already!

UPDATE!!!!

Sorry i haven't written much lately! We just haven't had a ton to say! This week our homestudy was finished!!! That means that the last of our paperwork is done! We sent in everything to USCIS (where we get our fingerprints done) so we should hear from them in a few weeks. We are finishing up all the stuff with our homestudies, getting them Apostilled and then we should be sending them over to Eastern Europe this next week or so!! YAY!! We are getting closer!! After our USCIS date comes and we go get fingerprinted then we get to send that to the country, which is the very last document they need to submit our Dossier(paperwork to adopt internationally). That means we will be 5-7 weeks out from getting our date of travel!! Just gotta get through these last few documents and then we play the waiting game! Such a fun game to play ;) We are so excited to meet this little girl and have her be apart of our family!! The kids are constantly talking about having a little sister and they really can't wait! Sorry i have no pics but will be posting back when we hear from USCIS on our fingerprints! So close yet so far away it seems!

Last garage sale!

We just finished our last fundraising garage/bake sale! We made about $1500 at this one! YAY! So now we are at $6800 for the funds that we have raised! We are seriously doing great, we want to thank everyone who generously gave of their time and money for our cause!! An update of where we are with our paper work! We have finished with our homestudy just waiting for our paper work to be written up and submitted! We are now working on our dossier paperwork. We are having a couple handcarrying some of our docs to the country this friday. We are so close to finishing all of our paperwork soon, so hopefully we can get everything done this month! It seems as though everything is going smoothly! I know that's not what i should expect but it's just seeming to fall into place! Stay tuned to what's coming next!!!

First one down 1 more to go!

Yesterday was a great success for our first fundraising garage/bake sale!! A HUGE thank you to those of you who donated your wonderful items!! We made $1800 yesterday! Yay, we are so much closer! We have currently raised $5500 so far. We still do have one more garage/bake sale this coming Sat in Salt Lake! Still accepting any and all donations! Yesterday was pretty amazing, not only in the amount we came out with but who i came in contact with. I spoke with some pretty special ladies. All of them who were in tears talking about their own children who have Down Syndrome. Everything that i heard told me that what we are doing is good and needed. Now i have a feeling of urgency, not that i didn't before, but i don't want our little girl to sit in an orphanage any longer then she has to! She's not getting the love and family that she deserves! She needs to be able to grow and develop in a way that will help her reach her potential that i know she can have! These children are special spirits of god and i know they were born that way to teach all of us something! Something that is taught to us in our hearts! Anyways, i am so appreciative of everyone who has helped and supported us in this journey.

Update on garage sale!

Ok, we have all the information about the garage sale! We are having 2 different ones , Sat. the 29th at 12938 Hunterhollow way in Draper 7am-4pm. THe other Sat. Oct. 6th in Salt lake at 604 S. 1300 7am.-4pm E. So we are still asking for donations! If anyone has anything that is usable and unwanted please send me a message and i can pick it up or you can drop it off! All proceeds will go toward helping to bring Jocie home!! We appreciate the help of everyone who is working and also donating!