Happy New Year....and an exciting little update!:)

Happy New Year Everyone!! I know I am few hours early but I can honestly say I’m not sure if I’ll make it to midnight….so I’m saying it a little early!:) I am amazed at how fast this past year has gone and I am even more excited about what 2012 holds for our family. We have been truly blessed with all the support of our friends and family during our adoption process so far and I hope it continues long after our sweet boy is home.

With that note I want to update all of you on our current adoption status! We were able get over a HUGE road bump this past week and got our much need county assessor letter done! WooooHoooo!! This has by far been one of the hardest pieces to get for our adoption. I have taken a couple of trips to the assessors office and made many phone calls and each time I was told they can’t make a letter up for us and if we need it we should look into getting a lawyer to help us get this letter! Yes, I’m totally serious they said we needed a lawyer! Well little did these people know that when I really want something I will do whatever it takes to get it and being told no just made me soo much determined to get it done!! After spending two plus hours in the county building going up and down to three different floors, visiting four different departments, talking to seven different people, shedding a few tears and bribing my son with treats if he can wait nicely, I am proud to say we have our letter done!!! It has been approved by our state-side helper and by the team in the country we are adopting from! I feel so proud of myself and wanted to walk back in to the assessors office and show all the people who told me no what this girl can get accomplished!! But I didn’t…I thought about it but after two plus hours in the county building I just wanted out!! So now that that is done all that’s left is redoing our medical paperwork…again…and getting David’s employment letters done! We have some other paperwork that requires just or signatures and that is it! So I am pretty sure that I can honestly say that we should be finished with our dossier within the next 10 days!! That’s right everyone…I said 10 DAYS!!!!!! WOOOOOHOOOO….we are so close to finishing our dossier I can’t believe it!! Our BIG hope is to have everything apostilled and headed over seas in about 2 weeks!! It’s crazy to think that just 7 months ago we were thinking and just looking into adopting and now we are soo close to getting our boy home I can barely stand it!! It’s all so exciting and scary but soooooo worth every second of every emotion we have felt over the last 7 months!!:)

Thank you again to everyone who has shown us love and support throughout this process, we hope it will continue into the New Year!! And we would like wish all our readers a very Happy New Year and we hope that 2012 brings you love and happiness all through the year!:)

What a difference a year makes!

“What a difference a year can make.” This is a saying I have said many of times but this time I am truly amazed about what a difference a year has made for us. This time last year we were looking into expanding our family with help the of fertility treatments. We experienced much heartache during that time and questions of why? Why us, why could we have one child but now we can’t have another, why aren’t these treatments working? Adoption had always been talked about between David and I and had never really been much more then just talk; but after a few months of unsuccessful tries with fertility treatments I thought maybe I should look further into adoption. And after doing some digging and TONS of research we knew exactly that a new addition to our family would be coming via adoption! We didn’t start the process until late spring/early summer and have been hard at work trying to bring our boy home ever since! So that brings us to today, its three days until Christmas and we are amazed at what a difference a year can make. These last few months have been stressful and amazing all at once and everyday we keep getting closer to bringing our sweet boy home. I’m sure we will be repeating our words next year at this time when we have our son home and celebrating his first Christmas with his us. But for now we are really amazed at how much our year has changed us from then to now!

Now for a little preholiday adoption update! We were hoping to have our dossier done and off to Aaron’s country by now. But that is not the case, we’ve hit a little road bump with some paperwork but we hope to have it fixed and put behind us next week sometime!:) Which means (fingers crossed tightly) that we hope to have our dossier done within the first few weeks of January!! So please say an extra little prayer that we can get over this road bump next week, so we can finally say we are in the home stretch to getting our boy home!!:)

We wish you all the happiest of holidays and hope that your 2012 is filled with as much joy and love as ours promises to be filled with!!

Stopping by to say HI!

Hi everyone! I just want to stop in and say Hi! Things are CRAZY busy around our house. I am in the thick of finals and won’t be able to take a breather until Thursday evening after my geology final! So for the next four days we will be putting adoption paperwork on hold and I will begin working on it again on Friday. So I will fill you in with all things adoption next weekend once the craziness of finals is over! However real quick I wanted to remind you to PLEASE check out our fundraiser page. We have many fundraisers going on right now and need all the help we can get to bring our little guy home!!

Hope you all have a great week and will update you as soon as finals are over!!:)

No clever title today.....just hope you enjoy the post!:)

   Happy (early) Thanksgiving Everyone! I have been trying to figure out what to say in this blog post. I have honestly started it about four or five times and erased everything each time. We have had a crazy two weeks since my last post and we are still digesting the outcome from it. As I am typing I am reminded of all the things we have to be thankful for and reminded that patience is a true virtue. That saying “Good things come to those who wait,” keeps running through my head. This adoption process has made us feel emotions we didn’t think it would. For the most part it has been super easy and not to many bumps…..but there are times when things don’t always go the way we thought they would and that is ok, we simply learn from it and move forward. And we just keep reminding ourselves that patience is a virtue and everything will work out just the way it should! So on that note let me fill you in on the last few weeks.

          Two weeks ago we started the home stretch to our big fundraiser Aaron’s Harvest Hoedown. We had spent these last two weeks busy rushing to gather the last of what we needed and to tie up all loose ends. When the 19^th rolled around it was game time! We woke up early and started our looooong day of setting up and preparing for the evenings event. As we put on the finishing touches, I felt relieved and had hopes it would turn out great. As guest started to arrive my hopes keep rising. I am SO very thankful for everyone who came out and showed us their support and got us a few steps closer to bringing home our boy. We are still a long way from the goal we had hoped to raise that night but it was evening I would not change for anything! The goal was just that, a goal, and not always do you reach it with the first try and that is why we don’t feel disappointed or anything like that. We spent the night surrounded by family and friends who really care about us and want to see us succeed in bringing our boy home! We are thankful for our wonderful family and friends who did show up and made the night special. Aaron is going to be one lucky boy, I know we feel loved and he will two when he gets to meet everyone who helped bring him home! So again thank to those who came out and made our night soooo special! We love each of you and couldn’t do this without all your support!

          Now I have been saving this for the end. If you’re my friend on facebook you have already heard the news but if not here’s the latest most up to date and exciting news about our adoption! We have received our I-171H also know as the “Golden Ticket” and are approved to adopt through the USCIS!!! WOOOHOOO!!!!!! This is so exciting because it means that we will for sure have our dossier finished by the end of the month!!!! Today or tomorrow I am headed to the state capital to have our first piece of paperwork apostilled and send it off to Eastern Europe! We are headed into the home stretch and I can honestly say we are feeling a little bit of everything! I personally am ready to be a busy mommy of two kids and can’t wait to have another wild boy running around the house! So please say an extra prayer for us and keep spreading the word about our adoption to anyone and everyone who wants to hear about it! We need to get funds raised so we can get our little guy home! I can’t believe the end is in sight and the best Christmas present we could ask for will arrive a little late but will be sooooo worth the wait..because good things come to those who wait!!!:)

          I just want to give a quick thank you to all of you who follow our blog and to all of you who stop by from outside links to read our newest posts. You all are reason I write and are the ones passing our story along to you friends and family! So Thank You and we wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!

~Oh and just one last thing before I go is please go check out our fundraiser page. We have some new fundraisers going!! Please stop by and check them out, who knows you find a great Christmas present for someone special!:)~

Thankful

Hi everyone! I just wanted to write and give a quick update on our adoption and talk about something that was brought to my attention last night!

          First an update on our adoption, we are still hard at work compiling our dossier and hope to have all the paperwork together and finished before Thanksgiving!!:) I know some of you may think this is crazy and quick but we have a GREAT notary who is available whenever we need her and the paperwork that will take a little longer to get done has already been taken care of and will be finished within the next week or so!! So our next big wait will be for our “Golden Ticket.” We go in on Tuesday for our fingerprints and then the wait begins for that! Hopefully it won’t be a long wait but we are prepared to wait. This will be the final piece to our dossier; which is exciting and scary all at the same time!! When this is done our final stage of this process will be right at our finger tips….which means traveling to get our boy and becoming a mommy and daddy of 2 kids instead of 1!! So with all this excitement going on we still have to fundraise to get our little guy home. While I have been busy with our dossier I have been working even harder to get ready for our big fundraiser, Aaron’s Harvest Hoedown, it is in just 13 short days!! Which the planning and preparing for the Hoedown have been more stressful on us then the actual adoption process!! We are hoping and praying it will turn out well and bring us the much needed help to get our boy home!! Please check out our fundraising page for more information on the hoedown and keep an eye out for the Christmas ornament fundraiser we will be starting around Thanksgiving.

          Now onto the eye opener I had last night. As most people know David and I have struggled for a number of years trying to have another child of our own. And after a few failed tries with fertility treatments we then realized that if medical intervention wasn’t going to work then it was time to look into other ways to expand our family. We know that some people would most likely live with the fact that they can not have more children and some, like us, would look for others ways to expand their family. With that said, I had my eyes opened up to the side that would not be ok with adopting last night. While at my mom’s house running a Thirty-One party for her, I was explaining why I started selling Thirty-One and how all my profit goes towards our adoption. After explaining everything I was stopped and asked about our adoption and the reason we chose to adopt and after explaining it several different times to these wonderful ladies it hit me. One of them said that they too had thought about adoption, but their husband said “No, I could never love a child that didn’t come from me.” Now I have to tell you this comment does not offend me in any way at all, adoption is not for everyone and I totally understand that. However it was with this comment that I realized, how truly lucky I am. I have a wonderful husband who loves with everything he has. He has never once said no when talks of adoption came up, and then when it was time to make our decision about adopting he was more then ready to go down this road. The money factor scared him a little bit but his fears are slowly being put to rest with every fundraising effort we do!! So my eye opener was one that reminded me to be thankful to have a husband who can love without limits and is willing to walk hand in hand with me down this road!! I love you David and thank you for making me one lucky girl!!:)

Feeling a little emotional....

   As I start this blog post, I realized I’m filled many emotions tonight, from excitement to nervousness to worry to stress. Excitement kicked in today because we received our appointment letter in the mail to go get our fingerprints done for the USCIS!!! This is great news, since most of the blog posts I have read from other adopting families it took awhile for them to receive their letter and then once they did receive their appointments they were about a month or so away....ours however is in 2 weeks!! This is so great and exciting!! We are going to try and walk in to see if we can get them done sooner but if not 2 weeks from today we will be getting that done!!:)  Along with the excitement I am feeling a little stressed, this part of our process is going by VERY fast and I just hope and pray we are going to be ready to go when the time comes. I hope to finish compiling our dossier in the next 2 or 3 weeks so that once we get our “golden ticket” we can put it in the box and send it off to Aaron’s country! This is where the worry kicks in, as most of you know adopting a child is VERY expensive and I am really worried about not raising enough funds to get to our boy. I am truly praying that our Harvest Hoedown fundraiser can bring in the funds we need to cover the last part of our adoption; which is the most expensive part! So please if you get a second can you say a little prayer for us? We’ll take all the prayers we can get!:) The nervousness is from reality setting in; in just a few short months (hopefully in January) we will be traveling to a far away country to get our little boy. And the unknown is really making me nervous, from the language barrier we’ll face to riding the metro to living in a different country for 4 to 6 weeks…..don’t get me wrong I’m super excited to get to our boy and bring him home but no matter how much information the families before us give to us, the unknown still makes me a little nervous. But the biggest emotion I am feeling is excitement, excitement over meeting our son, excitement to finally get to hold him in my arms and of course the excitement to let him know his mommy and daddy are here and we are not going anywhere!! I just wish there was a way to let him know we are coming and will be there soon! I hope he feels our love for him even though we are thousands of miles away…..

As this blog comes to and end, I wanted to share this song I have loved since Ryan was born and I think about every night as I go to sleep and can’t wait to sing it to our little man once we get to him…..I have posted it below, please enjoy it!:)

Godspeed (Sweet Dreams) By the Dixie Chicks with lyrics