My Fortune

Tonight I took a break from cooking and we had Chinese food. My fortune read;

You will soon receive something you have been waiting a long time for

Can't get much better than that!

Thank you Susan and Wayne!

Today I sent our dossier off to Susan and Wayne and they are hand delivering it Russia. We have already sent scanned copies of our dossier and they are currently in Russia being translated, now we just wait. I assume we'll hear nothing until the papers are actually in Russia, but who knows how long after that it will be until we are invited to meet a potential daughter.

Susan posted a picture of the entrance to the Magadan baby home on her web page, and I find myself looking at it and thinking, inside there is our Grace. I try and imagine what she'll look like, but all I come up with is my boys with longer hair (not a pretty sight). I cannot wait to find out!

Papers IN!

We went to get our paper work apostilled today, the check was big, but the job is done, YAY. We sent everything electronically to our agency and they are currently being sent to Magadan electronically so they can be translated. Our agency director says this will count as having them in before accredidation expires, whoopee! I've picked my mood up and I'm nearly giddy.

At dinner tonight M was discussing all the things he was going to teach his baby sister. J yells our that he wants a baby sister too. I guess he missed the part about how we were getting one for ALL of them to share. We had a great conversation out all the reasons the baby sister might be up for adoption. Either they'll worry themselves sick, or they'll be more compassionate, I'm hoping for the latter.

I'm to eat ice cream with my fellas to celebrate.

Today was a GREAT DAY

The Mailman came through!

In the morning we pick up the completed Home study and we are off to get it apostilled. Then we get to mail it to some wonderful people who are travelling to our region and they will hand deliver it for us! How's that for awesome strangerfriends? It has been a yucky week here for many different reasons, but getting this piece of paper and finally getting our dossier done and ready to go to Russia has put a whole new spin on things.

Tomorrow will be a great day!

I really, REALLy don't like the mailman

or DSHS, or my school district, but the school district is another post. We were told Friday or Today to receive clearance, it didn't come, our SW is trying to get verbal confirmation of our clearance, but I haven't heard about it yet. Do these people not realize that this is time sensitive? Are they not aware that we have people who will hand deliver our papers to Russia for us, but they can't do that if we can't get our papers. Are they unaware that the hand delivery is QUICKER, and time is of the essence? I'm frustrated, and house bound due to a potty training 2 year old, and I think I need a pedicure to cheer me up! Come on DSHS, I'm getting ticked off!

On another note the boys are on mid-winter break so we are just hanging out in our shorts, since the heat is up to keep the potty training two year old J, warm. I'm letting them do things like build forts and eat sugary snacks and play too many video games. Ahh the life of a kid.

I can't even come up with a title for my post

I wait anxiously everyday for 2:30 to come, that's the time our SW's mail arrives. All we need is one piece of paper and we're rolling. Unfortunatley the paper hasn't come yet, and there's no mail Monday. As my strangerfriend/blog buddy Susan would say, that means Grace isn't ready yet. I'm holding onto that thought and letting go of the frustration of waiting for one piece of paper. And when that fails, I'm shopping. Nothing cures the adoption blues like a little retail therapy!

It's becuase I bought the coats

things in our adoption were moving along perfectly. Lightning fast if you will. We looked like we were even going to be able to get a referral and travel in March. Knowing this, I bought S and I coats, since Magadan is a LOT colder than Seattle. Since I ordered the darn coats, things have stalled. We are still waiting (not even a little patiently) for one lousy document and then we send our dossier off for translation. I jinxed us when I bought the coats! Maybe I should send them back....


Keep your fingers crossed at 2:30 that is when our SW's mail comes and I really need the document to come today, it is my Valentine wish.

Patience is virtue.......or so I'm told

I was all zen with the wait over the weekend, most likely because there was nothing we could do anyway. But now that it's Monday, I am freaking out. I want to move things along NOW! I realize that I am selfish, so many have been waiting so much longer then we have, but I've never been good with waiting. When S and I got engaged, I thought it was stupid, we'd decided to get married and the whole engagement just seemed silly, I was ready to be married now. Don't get me wrong I loved the big wedding and it took time to plan that, but in my heart we were already married, so the wait seemed silly. That is how I feel about this adoption, we've decided to adopt her, I love her in my heart already, so this wait seems silly, let's just go get her and start loving on her right now. I'll survive this wait, but I doubt I'll like it.

We're still just waiting on one piece of paper and then we can go get everything appostilled and sent off to Russia. Come on DSHS, Come on post man, hurry!

I've got nothing!

We had a perfectly nice weekend, but nothing happened on the adoption front, so I have nothing to report. We are hoping to get the final home study tomorrow so we can get it appostilled on Tuesday (come on DSHS) but we'll survive if it doesn't happen. I'll close with a picture of the four cutest boys you'll ever see.

I know they say adoption is a paper pregnancy

so what is the recommended weight gain?

Every time I get stressed out about documents and time lines I just head straight for the sugar and carbs. So... does anyone know what the AMA says is the appropriate weight gain for women adopting?

Oddly, I'm Okay

Well we scrambled yesterday, making sure that we had all the paperwork for our initial dossier so we could get it notarized today and then apposilled tomorrow. During all the scrambling I was panicking and feeling pressured and just not right. I went to bed determined to wake up today calm and collected. I was calm, but not collected.

As the day ends, we have found out that we will not be ready to send our documents with the family going to Magadan on Monday. DSHS hasn't sent our SW our approval so we don't have on final copy of our home study, so we don't have all the paperwork for the initial dossier. Surprisingly, I'm really okay with this. S claims this means that rushing wasn't meant to be. So now we are back to hopefully getting all our documents to our agency early next week and going from there.

I'm not sure there will be time for us to travel before the babysitters go to Hawaii, and I'm sad about that, but as a stranger friend/bloggy buddy mentioned, it just means Grace isn't ready yet, and that's the thought I'm holding onto!

Now it's not panic... it's frantic!

Today we got an email from our wonderful director, we agree that we are going to Magadan, and hopefully soon. Now that we have all the documents, but one, do we think it is possible to have them notarized and apostilled by Friday so we can overnight them to a family on their way to Magadan. This will insure speedy hand delivery. Yikes! I'm not sure we can accomplish this because we are awaiting our final homestudy, which is awaiting an email from DSHS with our clearance. Our SW was going to call today and let us know what she finds out.

Cross your fingers as we are in kind of an awkward time bind. My parents, aka the babysitters, are going to Hawaii for several weeks in April, so we have to go before March 20th, or wait until May. If that happens we could lose a referral in the process.

Keep your fingers crossed that we can get all this done by Friday, we're going to need all the luck we can get!

forget fear....now it's panic

Today I sent my agency coordinator an email filled with questions. Her response sent me into a bit of a panic. You see all this time I'd been assuming we'd be going to Khabarovsk, and then someone told me about the MOE photo listings and I found this girl that I loved from Khabarovsk. Darn those photo listings. Today we learned we are probably headed to Magadan, not a bad thing, just different than what I had planned. I know, I'm totally failing at letting go and letting God. My claim has been that God knows who is our daughter and he will lead us to her at the right time. The thing is, it's what I claimed. Truth be told, my inner control freak wants to pick the child, the time and the place. I don't know why, I've birthed four boys and I just took what I got and they just came when they came, but for some reason this insane control freak in me keeps trying to rear her ugly head during this adoption process. I am working hard on stomping her down and letting the Zen Nancy who takes things as they come out.

Now that it's been a couple of hours since I got the email, I'm fine with Magadan and I'm actually excited. They move quicker there , and most times and they waive the 10 day wait from what I've heard. These are very good things, and maybe God heard me when I said I was scared to be away from my boys for so many days. I am confident we will meet OUR daughter when and where we are supposed to, but maybe if I could have a teensy bit of control about some little detail I'd feel better.

Fear

Usually I am a happy go lucky type person. I can find the positive in things and while I am a worrier, I tend to look on the bright side. My hubby, S, is an engineer, they prepare for the worst case scenario, so S usually has a much darker outlook than I do.

Not today! This whole adoption has been moving too smoothly and quickly. I am just panicked that the bottom is going to fall out and I will be crushed. I don't know why, nothing has happened to point to a problem, but I am just really fearful today that things are about to come to a crashing halt. Maybe it's because I bought a couple of outfits for princess pink yesterday, so we could take them with us when we meet her and see what size she fits into. Today I'm worried I'll never need them. S, however, is calm, cool and collected, he is not worried at all.

This role reversal thing is just wigging me out.

We're still chugging along...

We have turned in all our documents for our Home Study, and now we are waiting to receive it so we can turn in to the USCIS when we apply for the I600A. This is the wait part. I'm hoping that when we turn in the Home Study and the I600A application they will magically agree to fingerprint us right then, this could cut out two weeks from the process. We're still hoping to travel in March (dreamers!) and this needs to happen.

While we wait we just keep gathering all the other documents needed so we will be paper ready as soon as the I1717 gets here.

I hate this waiting part, but at least we have things to do fill our time.