We got our baby!

   I can't post details just yet but we committed last night to a precious little blessing! After we sent the necessary paperwork, Joey and I sat down to look at the picture another time and couldn't find it! I was freaking out and Joey just sat quietly. After what felt like forever, he suggested I check my email. In my email was the confirmation that we were the parents! I looked at Joey and said "I don't know how you stay so calm! I was spazing because I thought we lost out on this little blessing!" As I was saying this he started crying. He had held it together because he knew I was having a moment, but he also thought we had lost our little one. I love this man! I barely slept last night I was so excited! I can't wait to share the ubber cuteness of our little one! We are still open to adopting two and will wait to see if another child comes available in the same orphanage or region during our process. We have until we travel to Eastern Europe to add another child so there really isn't a rush.

Sophia

  I posted two pictures of Sophia, a little girl adopted through Reece's Rainbows that exemplifies what happens to downs and other special needs children in eastern European orphanages. If those pictures don't motivate you to do something I don't know what will. Sorry I had to do this in three post but I couldn't combine them and I am to impatient to play with it forever!;)

Sorry second pic after coming home!

Beautiful pics of redemption!

More waiting:)

    I know that with adoption and life waiting is part of the game. I am praying today is the day we hear back from Forever Families and we can make a commitment to a child. This weekend I survived my shift at work, poison ivy and all. On Saturday my Isaiah had a soccer game which the kids went to while I slept. I had to get up at 11 to go to a class for work so I only got 2 hours of sleep. After the class, we had Erika and Mel and their two youngest cuties over for a dinner. We were able to talk and ask questions about Eastern Europe and the process of adopting. We were also able to interact with their little ones with downs. Our interaction with them was very little because all they wanted to do was play and be kids. This was very encouraging to Joey, he was able to see how easily a DS child would fit into our family. Our visit was short but well worth it. By Saturday night I was pooped and crashed. Sunday was a great day spent at church and then lunch with friends. I got my Sunday afternoon nap, and then Joey's parents came over for dinner. All in all a good weekend. I told Joey to get ready. He asked why and I told him this was our week, big things are going to happen!

Waiting and Itching

   Ahh I am so ready to commit to a little guy but we still haven't heard back from our home study agency. Hopefully soon! Joey and I picked up our completed physicals yesterday and I am happy to report we don't have HIV or any other communicable diseases (that we know of). I think this week of waiting has been made worse by the fact that I have poison ivy. This past weekend I cut down some branches behind our house and by Monday my hands had lovely itchy bumps all over them. While it hasn't spread too bad just a few random spots here and there it is still super annoying. Last night I broke down and went to wally world to get some benadryl so I could sleep through the night. I need one good nights sleep before I work all night tonight:) or maybe I will take benadryl before my shift and see how that goes:) who wants a nurse with poison ivy hands hopped up on benadryl?! Happy Friday everyone!

Details of international adoption

   There is no exciting news for today on the adoption front. We mailed in our application to Forever Families on Monday. Hopefully they will receive it today or tomorrow and we can get an appointment scheduled. Once we have our first appointment scheduled we can officially commit to a child. While we wait I thought I would share a little of the process, at least what I know of it so far. I am sure I will learn lots on the way. Mostly it is preparing lots and lots of paperwork. You first find a home study agency which conducts background checks and family history through home visits. We have compiled all of our birth certificates, marriage license, sent off child abuse checks and background checks, wrote about our mothers, fathers, siblings and our marriage, letters of reference from our jobs, had physicals, tax forms, and statements saying we won't use corporal punishment with our adoptive child. We still need finger prints but need the forms from the agency before we can do those. After we start our home study, we can start sending off our birth certificates and marriage licenses to the states they originated in. After being notarized  we send them to be apostilled, which is fancy word for a sticker that says they are authentic. Those forms will then go in our dossier. The dossier is large packet of all our paperwork that will be sent to Eastern Europe for approval. The dossier consist of our home study which will have to be sent to USCIS, federal finger prints (different then state, and we must receive an invitation to do those after our I600 form is approved at the USCIS), all our records notarized and apostilled, and probably much more but that is what I know so far. After compiled it must be translated. So in a nutshell that is what we have been working on for the past week or so.
   Another big thing we need to do is come up with $30,000. So far the home study fee is $1,900, and all the forms and paperwork we have ordered have cost around $400. We have been told that to finish the dossier cost around $5,000. The majority of the cost then goes to travel and  fees. Depending on the time of year we travel can mean the difference of thousands of dollars, but that is not in our control. Our current fundraising and donations total $1,400. I have resigned with Mary Kay and all my proceeds will go toward our adoption. I am having my first facial party Sunday at 6 if any locals are interested!:) Joey is talking about running a 1/2 or a full marathon and raise sponsorship per mile. (I will not be running:) We have heard that the timeline for Eastern Europe can be as fast as 5 months so we have lots of work to do. We are so very thankful that God has chosen us to be blessed with a orphan, and know He will provide for all our needs.

I get struck by lightning

    So I checked my facebook account and I had a message from a stranger? Ms Erika says hi, Ricky (remember the other stranger that donated to the yard sale?) told me you guys were adopting. I have adopted four children from EASTERN EUROPE through REECES RAINBOWS! Say what?! that was our original plan. My heart was still in Eastern Europe but we were told it was a terrible place to adopt from. She also says Forever Families is a great home study agency, which we had also heard but didn't choose them because they were not accredited to do Chinese adoptions. I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck go up. This had to be GOD! I called Joey immediately and asked "what does this mean?" He tells me the minute I called he was sealing the envelope for the home study with Datz Foundation. Well, what do you think we should do? He says as he has repeated to me multiple times during this adoption journey, "it doesn't hurt to wait and get more information." We decide to not send the application in and I will talk with Erika.
     I then sent Erika the craziest message ever. It was a rambling of a million emotions. Thanks so much for messaging, your timing couldn't have been better, I have so many questions, we heard Eastern Europe  is terrible to adopt from, we heard you only get older children, we heard you don't get the child you pick, and on and on. Sweet Erika replied back, Call me. I then did something I never do, I called her, in the morning with all my kids running around. Erika was also trying wrangle her children (she home schools as well) they were headed out for a field trip but she graciously talked to me for over 30 mins. She described her adoptions and Eastern Europe with great love. She said many times she would and will adopt through Eastern Europe again. They have gone twice adopting two children each trip. Unlike what we had heard, they were able to adopt the children they had chosen. The process was cheaper and timeline shorter then what we had been told. There were young children. She not only told me her story, but listed at least 10 other families that had had the same experience. As I paced and listened (while my kids followed me around "she hit me" "he called me stupid" "I need a band aid" "mamamamamamamam" "is it lunchtime yet" "I need to poop", now you know why I don't make phone calls unless it is naptime) I became more and more excited! I couldn't wait to talk to Joey. I called him right after hanging up with Erika and told him everything she said. He agreed that this sounded exactly like what we originally wanted to do.
    One of the major things we also felt convicted about was adopting a downs syndrome child. I had originally felt God calling us to that, but when Joey wasn't sure, I just let it go. All of Erika's adoptive children have DS and she was even so bold to say she sometimes wishes all of her kids had DS. She explained what a wonderful addition her kids were to her family. Joey admitted later that night that although he felt a hesitation with a DS child it was more the long term issue. These children will probably live with us the rest of our lives, or need some form of financial assistance. However, he said after looking through all the medication conditions for the China adopting (missing limbs, cleft lip/palate, and crazy long words like arthrogyposis) He had the most peace with DS.
   We felt like we were starting over but in the right way. As I drove to work that night with lightning flashing all around me (I later learned I probably drove through a tornado) I praised God for working through these "strangers" to show us His will for our adoption. I was totally energized, I felt like I had been struck by lightning. That night at work I was able to browse the Reece's Rainbow site. There are about four little beauties that Joey and I are inquiring about. We are waiting to hear from the Eastern Europen facilitator to see if any of the little ones are in the same orphanage, if so we will commit to two.   I have never been more at peace and excited about our adopt. I can't wait to hear back and see which little ones will soon be our little blessings to love. For now we begin again filling out mountains of paperwork.

My new favorite song!! Love it!

Audio Adrenaline - Kings and Queens (Exclusive Music Video Premiere) from audio-adrenaline on GodTube.

God works in mysterious ways!

         During my time of moping, I remembered that we had planned on having a yard sale to raise funds for the adoption. We live in a big community and the neighborhood was having it's spring sale. A few people had said they would donate, but now it was Wednesday morning, three days til the sale, and we had nothing but our own junk. I didn't feel like doing it, Joey is never excited about yard sales. I thought, we don't even know what we are doing why even bother, but something (the Holy Spirit) said we should give it a try. I sent out a kindly reminder that if you would like to donate we would need it dropped off soon to prepare for the 7 am Saturday sale. Well, God showed up in the form of our Sunday school class and a garage full of stuff. I mean  full! I could barely walk around in the garage. I stood in the garage Thursday night and cried (if you are noticing a theme, I am a crier) We still didn't have any direction regarding country or agency but it was another affirmation that we were in God's will with adoption.
       I posted a picture on facebook of all the loot we had received to thanks the friends who had donated. On Friday someone named Ricky commented on the picture, "what is this?" I didn't know this person but he was a friend of a friend so I responded that it was a yard sale to raise funds for our adoption. He immediately messages me and asks if he can donate. Well, I am not going to turn down donations, sure come on over! Ricky comes a little while later with a load including an elliptical, xbox, and a surprisingly popular box of Christmas mugs (that is just a few things, there were lots more). He tells me that he loves that we have a heart for adoption and just wanted to help, and he hands me a check for $100! You can probably guess what I did:)
       We had another answer to prayer when I was cancelled from work that Friday night, looking back I know Joey would not have been able to put together all the stuff Friday morning without me. So at 6am on Friday we started putting all our goodies out in the yard. People came by and looked but no one was really buying anything. By 9 I was really getting discouraged, yard sales usually are fast in the morning and then slow down. I looked at my filled front yard and thought "what have I done!" I now have enough stuff to completely fill my garage forever, and I can't just take it to goodwill if it doesn't sell, it was donated! Isaiah, my ever intuitive son notices that I am worried. He asks me what is wrong, and I tell him that I am just worried that we will not sell our stuff. He tells me ever so sweetly, don't worry mommy it will all be okay. So smart at 6, oh to have the faith of a child! I then remember that we had not prayed over our sale like we had planned on doing. Joey, Isaiah, and I stopped and prayed over the sale and that God's will would be done.  The sale picked up and stuff started selling (I am not kidding it was amazing) I stayed home while Joey took the kids to Isaiah's soccer game. By days end we had sold $500 of stuff and still have plenty more that we will try and sell at another date. The following day I sold a large item on craigslist to bring our total sales to $800 plus the $100 donation.
      The sale was a huge motivator and we pushed forward and chose a placing agency and home study agency to begin the process. We filled out piles of paperwork and by Wednesday we had the initial application done to send to the home study agency. I sent it with Joey to mail off on Thursday with a check for $1900. When Joey walked in the door Thursday night, my first question was "did you send the application?" Have I mentioned I am not patient:) He says "no, I transferred the funds from our savings account and I will mail it tomorrow." I thought he was silly because if he mailed the check then the funds would be in the account by the time they received it. Either way it was done and I had to wait another day:( Friday morning came around and I got the kids breakfast ready and checked my facebook account. I could not believe what I saw!

The least of these

I stated in my last post that I didn't want a healthy baby, we want an orphan more specifically a special needs child. I don't know when this happened, and Joey and I have laughed about how when I was pregnant we always prayed for a healthy child. After finding the twins, I began researching orphans, their conditions and was shocked. It is horrific! In Eastern European countries children with special needs are considered cursed, less then animals, as the Bible calls them "the least of these." Specifically the plight of the Downs Syndrome children caught my attention, through blogs like nogreaterjoymom.com. These sweet little blessings are systematically starved so they stay little and less of a hassle. They almost never leave their cribs. Mrs. Salem of nogreaterjoymom adopted a 5 year old little girl with DS that was in 6 month clothing and had never left her crib, she had never been outside! She had learned to deal with total boredom and the depression of almost never being touched by banging her head against her crib. Most children do some form of autistic behavior like that just to feel something. It gets worse people! Since they are thought to be nothing and cannot learn they reach a point, for some as early as 4, when they are sent to mental asylums. At the asylum it is a survival of the fittest, 90% of them dye within the first year. This is real, this is happening now! Just youtube eastern european orphanages and you will see. So now maybe you can understand my insistence on not wanting a healthy baby:) I want one of these precious "least of these" I want to hold them and love on them and tell them the same things that I tell my current children daily. You are SPECIAL, you are a BLESSING, you are a SON/DAUGHTER of GOD!

Our First Homestudy Appointment

Tuesday came and I was on cloud 9, Joey came home two hours before the appointment to help me clean. If you have children you know (especially with 4 or more) if I clean upstairs, they bomb downstairs, if I clean downstairs they bomb upstairs, if I clean the bathroom..well you get the picture. Anyway, we cleaned the whole house and told the kids they better be good! Peggy the social worker walked right into the house after Joey opened the door, weird no hello just right in. She sits down at the table and we start talking, she asks our ages and about our marriage and current children. Then the big question why and who do you want to adopt. We proudly bring out the picture of "our" boys. She frowns and says "no way." What I don't think I heard you right? NO under no circumstances am I approving an adoption of children with fetal alcohol syndrome. We reply that the information say it is cautionary they have not been diagnosed with FAS. She doesn't care, she says I can get you a healthy domestic baby for $15,000. At this point I tune her out she is talking and talking but not listening. We don't want a healthy baby, we had four of those. We want an orphan, a child in need! My heart is in my stomach and then I kick into what Joey calls "mama bear" if she isn't going to help us get our boys I will find someone who will. After she leaves Joey and I get very little time to talk, the kids are hungry and it is almost bedtime. Joey was quiet, I think he was processing what we had heard I had moved on I wanted a new social worker. The next day we spoke on the phone and decided to tell Peggy we no longer wanted to use her as our social worker. I spoke with a few different people about the boys, however I heard similar things only said in a nicer way. With the possible diagnosis of FAS and the fact that there were two boys and the young ages of our children, it was not a good idea for us to adopt those boys. It is hard to know when to fight and when to give up and realize it is a closed door and not a test. Joey was way better at coming to grips with the boys were not "our boys" I was depressed for three days, I felt like I had had a miscarriage (and I don't say that flippantly, I have had a physical miscarriage) I mourned the loss and wondered how long I would think about them (I still do) One of the hardest parts was Isaiah learning we would not be adopting the boys, we had asked the kids a general "how do you guys feel about having a brother or sister not from mommy's tummy?" They were thrilled screaming with excitement and demanding 2 or 10 more:) Isaiah is more intuitive being the oldest and had seem me on the computer looking at the boys so he felt an attachment as well. He sobbed for a good while, explaining to me he felt he had broken his promise. He said he had promised God to be a good big brother and teach the boys about sports and legos and the very important Star Wars. I will admit for the week or two after this I was ready to quit, why are we doing this again? I have four beautiful children I just want to move on with my life. I couldn't I knew we were called to adopt and that fact would not leave me. I felt like God was silent, I heard nothing.  We were back at square one.....

Getting our feet wet

So we left off with us being on the same page about pursuing adoption. Can I say overwhelming I felt like I did when I started to cloth diaper, so many options, they all sound good, how do you choose? Domestic, international, Hague, or non Hague, open, closed, special needs? AHH I had mentioned before that I started following the Reece's Rainbow website which is a Christian nonprofit that aids in raising funds and finding homes for special needs orphans. Joey had mentioned that he would like to adopt a sibling group because he was adopted as a sibling group. Well that led me to RR sibling group page, and I found the most gorgeous little twin boys! They are so precious 2 years old with big blue eyes. I emailed RR to see where their country of origin was, some countries have a stipulation that you stay in country for 7-9 weeks straight and that is not doable for us. The boys are in Ukraine which involves two, two week visits, we could work with that. Next we learned that Ukraine only does independent adoptions, meaning we would not need an agency to complete our adoption just a facilitation team. We were thrilled especially when RR let us know that as a nonprofit they do all the facilitation for FREE! We took all this information in on a Sunday afternoon, the following Monday we started paperwork like crazy. We placed the boys on "hold" and began looking for a home study agency. Although we did not need an agency to finalize the adoption, we needed a home study stateside to get our adoption started. We picked a small agency that had its office close to my parents home in Loudon so we would be able to drop the kids off when we had meetings. The social worker emailed us back almost immediately after sending our application and made an appointment for the following Tuesday. We felt like God was flinging the doors wide open in regards to our adoption, we had specifically prayed for open and closed doors. At church that Sunday as we left Sunday school and headed up the stairs to our "designated seats:)" Joey hands me a check and I look at him confused. He explains that someone in our class has made the first donation to our adoption. I was so shocked! If I wasn't in church I probably would have screamed when I opened the check $500! I burst into tears. It is an indescribable feeling to have the body of Christ obey God in a way that directly affects you. More then the amount or the fact that our friends had monetarily given, we felt God saying you are where you should be, you are in My will. That money would hold a powerful symbolic meaning for me as we entered the next week. God was going to slam shut door after door and it was going to be hard.  But I was able to look back and see, God does want us to adopt and we just need to be still and hear what is next.

So Joey....God wants us to adopt:)

When I left off yesterday, I had not talked with my husband (who has been adamant for the last year that our family is complete.) Little background on hubby, he likes his spreadsheets on our future. It is not a control thing as much as a planning thing. We have life insurance for each member of the family, 529 plans for the kids college, emergency fund, all the good Dave Ramsey things. And it all just worked out with four kids. So on a Sunday night after my crazy night shift of finally giving up to God, I said "I think God is calling us to adopt." I don't remember his immediate response. It wasn't a NO! but it was not anywhere near what I had prayed for "I feel the same way!" He said things like I need time, I don't feel that call, what about our own children? I tried to explain my "feeling" of God telling me we were to adopt. Joey in no way is closed to adoption, he was adopted at the age of three and we had always said if we couldn't have children, we would adopt. But this was different we did have children and four of them in 5 years! Our lives were busy and full. We "talked" about it for a week or two. I tried not to nag but it is like when you want to be pregnant, you only see pregnant women. Every song on the radio, every book I read, all around me I saw orphans and adoption. I think I felt his heart changing and I did an awful thing, I showed him the waiting children on reece's rainbow's website. He cried and we started talking about how this might work for our family.

The start of our adoption journey

God works in mysterious and often humorous ways! Last year at this time our family was perfectly complete, I had just given birth to our 4th little blessing Jedidiah Eric and we were even! Two boys and two girls, perfect. Joey had his "procedure" and we were on to the future! We laughed about finally growing out of diapers, bottles, cribs and all that comes with babies. I continued to carry a strong desire for another child but followed my husbands lead that our family was complete. I prayed many a prayer for God to take away my desire for more children (or just get me pregnant:) Then in February I started a Bible study in my home for the women in our small group, we began the Nehemiah study from Kelly Minter. Little did I know! On the first week of the study Kelly has you think about what breaks your heart like it breaks God's heart. I had a nice list of things, the top being abortion. But on the last day she asks "what has God asked you to DO about it?" Wow, God slapped me in the face! Adoption came immediately to my mind and I knew. I didn't agree and I wrestled with Him for a good week. I didn't say anything to Joey I just explained to God a million reasons why we couldn't adopt or it wasn't a good fit for our family. I already get crazy looks at the grocery store and the constant "you have your hands full"! (He didn't change His mind) After a very slow night shift (which leaves WAY too much time to thinking! I gave up saying no and said, yes. Next up was telling my husband that God wants us to adopt.....but that is another story:)