Making Progress...Finally

Yes folks, you read that right, we are making progress!

Today I made the long drive to Albany to have the documents for our Dossier Apostilled.  I drove all by myself.  Those of you that know me, this is a big deal.  First of all, I strongly dislike driving in the rain, I got plenty of that on the drive there and back, but thankfully while I had to walk around Albany there was no rain!  Second of all, I am not a city girl.  I don't do city driving.  I don't do on street parking if I can avoid it either. Both of those things make me nervous.  Yep, I had to do both today, I even had to pay with a parking meter... this is a big deal folks.  Not only that but I also had to park on the left hand side of the street on a one way street, and it was legal.  Craziness!  Yep, I'm a country girl.

I decided to drive to Albany and have our paperwork done same-day instead of mailing it out, I figured this would save us about a week and a half.  I was wrong.  I quickly found out that one of our documents was incorrect.  Thankfully I could go to the Dept. of Health, only 10 minutes away to have that taken care of.  So I left the DOS, went to the DOH, waited for my new document, went back to the DOS and had that document Apostilled.  After a quick stop for lunch, gas, cash and caffeine, I was back on the road to home. 

Once I got home, I gathered the rest of the documents needed for our Dossier, went to the bank, got a big fat Cashiers Check to submit to our placement agency, went to the Post Office and mailed out our Dossier!  It took 2 envelopes because 36 notarized, certified, Apostilled documents take up a lot of space!  But IT IS DONE!

Now I pray that everything was done properly and that we can now sit back and play the waiting game.  If all of our documents look good, they will be shipped to Callie and Chance's country.  There they will be translated which should take about 2 weeks.  After translation our paperwork will go to the Prime Minister of the country for approval.  This could take about 3-4 months.  After approval, we will get invited to visit the children to get their official referral.  I am hoping that we (I) can travel in December to meet Callie and Chance.

After spending about a week with the children I will come home and we will wait AGAIN for the Prime Minister's approval, this could take 4-6 months.  With that we can fill out more paperwork stateside, get final approval and travel for trip #2.  That process should take about 2 months.  Trip #2 will be about 3-4 weeks long in country with the children, then we will come home as a forever family.

This timeline is an estimate and can change at any time, but it looks like the children could be home in about a year give or take a couple of months.  That sounds like such a long way away, but every day that passes is one day closer to being a family of 5!

 

5/5/5

 

Hi everyone!  I wanted to tell you about an exciting new ministry called 5/5/5.  5/5/5 works hard to raise money for 5 families each month, on the 5th of every month, $5 at a time.  It was started by 5 adoptive mothers that had a vision of wanting to help families with the final costs of their adoption.  Many times at the end of adoptions there are unforeseen costs or agency fees that need to be paid.  The ladies of 5/5/5 wanted to help ease the burden of some of those costs.

How does it work?  5/5/5 has a page on Reece's rainbow: http://reecesrainbow.org/78491/555-for-families and they request that donors donate $5 or $25 each month (you can set your donations up to be recurrent).  Of the $5 donated, $1 will go to each of that month's 5 families.  Throughout the month, donations will be collected and will be released to the lucky families on the 5th of the following month.  Then, a new set of collections is made for the next 5 families.

Visit and LIKE the 5/5/5 Facebook page HERE.
Follow 5/5/5 on twitter HERE.
Make your donations HERE
Visit the 5/5/5 blog page HERE.
For additional information, you can email 5/5/5: 555forFamilies@gmail.com

July is the very first month for 5/5/5, at this time they have already raised $727.32.  There is still about 2 weeks left for more donations to be taken in.

We have been blessed to be one of the 5 families chosen for the first month of 5/5/5!  It is such a blessing.  Thank you 5/5/5!

 

 

This month, the Aschoff family (another family receiving the 5/5/5 grant this month) has added some incentives to help us grow this month's donations.  They have up for grabs some T-shirts and jewelry!  For more details check out the FaceBook Page and scroll down through the timeline a little bit.

 

 

Imagine, if we could get a group of 5000 people to each donate just $5 each month, families would have a huge blessing of $5000 to go towards the final costs of their adoption!  This ministry has the potential to be a huge blessing to 60 adoptive families each year!  They cannot do it without your help.  Can you spare just $5 a month?  How about $25?  Can you share about 5/5/5 on you FaceBook, Twitter, blog or other social media?  Every single donation counts!

 

Please help spread the word.

Updates and Reunion!

There is not a lot to update you all on as far as our adoption of Chance and Callie goes.  We are just about ready to send our paperwork off to the state capitol to be Apostilled and then we will submit our Dossier.  We hope that our case is seen quickly and that a referral will be made.  I really hope that I will be able to travel in the late fall, I'm not wanting to go in the winter! 

We have finally gotten confirmation that Callie will indeed be 11 this year, not 8.  We were pretty sure this was the case, but we finally have it in writing.  We did not care one way or another, but we wanted to be as prepared as possible!

Jason and I have been doing a lot of research and had many discussions on adopting an older child.  Things will go much differently with this adoption compared to Claudia's adoption.  Most of this is because both Chance and Callie are in orphanages (Claudia was in foster care), and also because Callie is an older child and may have more difficulty in her transition into a home.  I will write a more detailed blog post about how things will work once we get the children home once we get closer to having them home.

Please continue to pray for our soon-to-be children and for a smooth and quick process.

We are quickly finding out this summer that Claudia is a water bug :)  Our friend brought over a small pool for Claudia to use at home and she loves it!

We spent the last couple of days in Cave City KY hanging out at the 2014 Reece's Rainbow Reunion!  We had a blast meeting other families that are "in the know."  It is nice to talk with other adoptive families, especially ones who have adopted children with special needs.  It helps us to feel like we are not alone in some of our struggles.  One of the best parts of our time at the reunion was meeting so many children that I had seen only in pictures through Reece's Rainbow.  It is amazing to see how far they have come!  I wish I had my camera on me and was able to take more pictures.

I did however get some pictures of Claudia enjoying the water :)

 

 

 

 

 

She did not care much for the splash pad, except to play with her reflection, and lick the water...

 

Just hanging out...