One Step Closer

I never thought I would be so happy to get something in the mail from the FBI.. You guessed it we got our finger prints on Saturday. As some of you know Blake and I were out of town last week on a cruise and we had a blast. I will post some pictures soon! When we got home we realized we were locked out of our house. We had a key to the dead bolt lock but not the door lock. Bummer! So off to check the mail and there they were.. I think the mailbox had a golden glow when I opened it and saw them or maybe it was the glare off of the yellow manilla envelopes.. but either way and am sure I heard angles singing!!!
It was so funny later because someone told me the week before that they will come when you least expect it.. Well there we were locked out of the house but no worries I was holding on to my FBI fingerprints like a kid with a new toy. What a great surprise to come home to.
So now we get the final draft of the home study completed so it can be reviewed and finalized and then off to the Ukraine it goes... We are one step closer in our journey to our babies..

Paperwork!!

We had our first conference call with our case worker for the Ukraine yesterday.. Can you say OVERWHELMED?  I am not sure we will ever be finished with everything. But my sweet and loving husband reminded me that you can't eat an elephant in one day.. it takes several small meals.. I think he was trying to tell me to take it one step at a time.. So for now we will be working on our 177 page workbook and our 6 online classes that we have to take before our homestudy is completed.
I was looking in our workbook and one of the exercises in there is to draw a picture of your child. Really?? Where do we start. I saw this exercise yesterday and I have thought about it all day and still don't know what to draw. I think of my children all throughout the day wondering what they will be like. Will they be loud like me, quiet like Blake or a nice mix in between. But other than hair and eye color I have not thought of anything else. It will be an enteresting exercise forsure. Perhaps I will take a picture when we are done so you can see what we did..

Rain Rain Go Away!

It is a nasty Sunday here today. Still no news on our fingerprints and the conference call we were suppose to have on Friday was canceled because we did not get the correct paperwork in time. I am hoping we get the paperwork soon so that we can get the call re-scheduled. Everyone has always told us waiting will be the hardest part of the adoption. Turns out they were right.

More Happenings

We've been spending the last couple of weeks trying to gather all the information we need to get started on our home study.  We were told that this would be a 3-4 month process.  However, we decided to go with New Beginnings out of Tupelo because they had a much faster time line.  We met with our social worker on Monday night, gathered as much information for her as possible this week, and then met with her again for about 5 hours on Saturday.  The next time we meet with her will be to go over the completed home study and should be within a few weeks.  That's a 3 month process reduced to a 3 week process.  WOW!  We're pumped!
We were also able to get our DPS background checks requested and returned in just one day.  It's great to have connections.  Right now, I think the hold up is going to be getting our FBI fingerprint criminal record checks back.  That can take up to 12 weeks, but hopefully it won't take that long.  Anyone have any connections with the FBI?

Blake

Sorry For The Delay

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since we talked, and it's been BUSY!  We had the Burdine Christmas, the Collins Christmas, our niece Kailey came and stayed with us for a few days, we dook down all the Christmas decorations (which is a multi-day process), and went to Jacksonville to watch State play Michigan in the Gator Bowl (we won 52-14, and had a great time).  Things have finally started to slow down and return to normal so I wanted to catch you up on a few things.  We heard right before Christmas that our adoption application was approved and had a program orientation call right before we left for Jacksonville.  We got our contracts signed and sent off and the only thing we were really waiting on was the outcome of the adoption bill in Parliament.  They had pushed it back to the January 11 agenda.  If we paid any money and then they passed the bill, we would lose whatever we had paid.  So we were debating on whether or not to go ahead and send the money knowing that we may lose it but believing that God had the situation under control or to just wait and find out the outcome of the bill.  We had decided that we were going to go ahead and step out in faith and send the money when we got word that they had postponed the bill indefinitely.  We thought it was GREAT news!
But the down side to finally getting the answer we were looking for was that we now needed the money to send to the agency to get the process rolling.  Again, I shouldn't have worried - God is in control.  We needed to come up with a little over $4000.  After being told that we wouldn't get an end of the year bonus, I got one.  Then I got a call from a guy who needed a survey that I'll be able to do on the side.  I'm also trying to sell a few of my guns.  If you add up all of that, it's about $4200 worth of unexpected income.  God is good.
To get our home study, we'll still need to come up with another $2000, but I'm looking forward to seeing how God will provide for us.

Blake