Update on Rositsa's adoption

It has been awhile since I updated where we are in the process of bringing Rosie home.  We received our completed and signed homestudy on July 24th and forwarded it to our agency.  They sent in the paperwork for our i800a and today we found out the check was cashed, so hoping thats good news!  We had been electronically fingerprinted for our dossier and sent it our agency, but turned out it was only run through the state of TX and not through the FBI and Bulgaria is specific in the paperwork they want.  So we had to go to the police station and get fingerprinted again and mail it into the FBI headquarters.  So now that is being processed.  We have stack of papers to be signed and notarized and then we need to get papers signed and notarized by our doctors (although we have already had the appointments, so this should take too long) and while we are waiting on that we will hopefully get our appointment to be fingerprinted again (this is for the USCIS and immigration) and then the clearance.  Once our agency has all this it will be forwarded to Bulgaria and translated and we will invited to come and visit Rosie for the first time.  Then we will return home and they will send all our documents to court to get the official adoption decree then we will travel back to bring her home.  So we are almost halfway there!  I would love to have her home for Christmas, but without a miracle I am thinking she will likely be home earlier in the new year. I am slowly learning a little Bulgarian, to hopefully make the transition a little easier. 

Other then that to keep us busy while we wait, we are getting ready for the new school year.  We are starting Aug. 20th so this week I was organizing the homeschool room, seperating books, filling pencil boxes.  It will be so nice to get back into a school routine!

I am a morning person...

NOT a middle of the night person.  Here is a snippet of my life...
Setting (I am peacefully sleeping and it is before 6am which is the time I can become a morning person)

Daughter opens door and rouses me with shuffling steps..."mom" she says

I try to pretend I cannot hear as I hope to drift back into my dream

"Mom" she says louder

I am pretty sure I said what but might have sounded like a grunt.

"My eyes are puffy and hurt" says daughter who was convinced the previous evening that she might be going blind because I once said perm chemicals can blind someone and we had done a deep conditioner rinse, which I assured her won't blind her and she swore a tiny bit got in her eye.....ahh melodramatics....

Me reply "you will be fine its not from the conditioner" ...note I still have not opened my eyes other then a quick peek to assure me which kid was talking.

"Then what is it from?"  She replies unbelieving...

My reply "Its called morning...you just woke up that's why"

She shuffles back to bed and though I tried hard to go back to sleep in comes my trusty alarm clock 45 minutes later who wakes up at 6 every day for the past 5 years..... :)

The phone stopped

Every year around this week, I have a stressful week, life seems overwhelming, usually find myself lying alone on the bed thinking its hopeless!  I usually think are the kids unusually wild or naughty?  Is the house ALWAYS needing this much done?  Can I never find the right hobby to satisfy me...?  Then it occurs to me every year, this is the week we lost my mom.  Perhaps that even unconsciously speaks to my heart.  Its a weird thing I don't even remember its coming but every year its the worst week and then it hits me what day it is.  We were close my mom was proud of her children and a little over protective, which in my teen years I thought was a lot, but now as a mom can laugh!  Even after I moved out she and I would call each other all throughout the day.  If Alex or AJ did something funny I would call her to let her know, if she saw something funny on TV or wanted to see if we could come to a family gathering she would call me.  Its been 9 years since she has gone.  I realized today my phone went silent after that.  Not for lack of callers, but for me.  I stopped calling to let people know whats going on believing they have their own families or lives, believing no one cared about the details as much as she did.  Not wanting to burden others who were trying to make dinner or get the kids to bed.  Over time I myself filled the house and so long talks on the phone are almost impossible without many interruptions and lots of background noise (although I do love email!) I think on some level its one reason I love facebook.  I can post the cute things or the stuff I want to tell and I can keep connected.  I really am at peace with her passing, knowing where she is now and knowing that there is no more cancer or pain.  My sadness and grumpiness isn't for her missing anything because eternity isn't missing anything, its for me and the calls I miss!  But I learned something the other day, we make the mistake that we are humans living a temporary spiritual experience during our lives, instead we are spiritual beings who are living a temporary human experience....temporary....I can handle that....means we will be reunited someday :)

Adoption Fundraising!

Adoption is expensive, homestudys are over a thousand dollars, we have to budget 2 trips to Bulgaria and then their is fees everywhere agency fees, fees for the immigration paperwork, fees for the Bulgarian government.  When we were having an adoption fundraiser garage sale for our Liberian adoptions, a woman wrote a nasty email to us addressing that if we can't afford to adopt we shouldn't be adopting.....I am here to prove that yes it works.  Had I listened and thought we can't afford it...Hannah JD and Zeke would still be orphaned, Zeke was so sick when he came home I am sure he would be a statistic of kids in Liberia who do not make it until their 5th birthday.  The parasites in JD's stomach would have caused severe malnutrition.  God has provided each penny when needed for our adoptions, many times through angels who have joined us in this journey.  I know these days EVERYONE is fundraising for something and EVERYONE needs a donation, but I have put this in God's hands and Rosie will come home with every penny, this I am sure of :)  I am sure if I could post Rosie's picture you would look into her sweet brown eyes and agree with us no matter the cost she deserves a family to love her!  So if you want to join us through the purchase of a t-shirt or coffee see the links on the right of this page.  Even if you cannot buy anything we would greatly appreciate prayers!!  Lets storm heaven on Rosie's behalf :)

Counting the Cost

What would you do if you knew a young girl was in grave danger of being taken by traffickers and sold into a life of prostitution?  How would you react if you saw a 12 year old girl in your neighborhood being grabbed by a stranger on the street or watch a man slip something into a young girls drink and took her with him?  What if it was a friend's child who was sexually assaulted?  What if you found a homeless child hiding out in your backyard?  What if it was your child?  Who would protect them if you could not?  Where would they go without you?  Most children age out of European orphanages around 16.  They are literally sent out into the world with nothing and no one. Statistics show that 90% of children who age out end up involved in crime, prostitution, addiction or give into suicide.  It breaks my heart to think about it.  I think about my children who just were blessed to be born to parents who wanted them, to parents who were not in poverty, to parents who were not in a country where we were forced to give them up, that their mother was not a drug addict, to a father who did not abuse or exploit them.   Does that make them more worthy for life then anyone else?  Do they deserve love and protection more then the child sitting in an institution waiting for someone, anyone to notice them?  Adoption has been difficult at times adjusting to new normals, dealing with broken hearts and paying every last official who needs to be paid to process the adoption.  But how much more did my Savior pay for my adoption?  How much pain or tears were spent on my behalf as Jesus hung on the cross for me. Redemption on my behalf.....adoption into His family.  Redemption is expensive, it cost Him his life, Redemption is messy, the thorns in His crown, Redemption is painful, every strike on his back.  Redemption is beautiful a new name, Redemption is everlasting eternal home, Redemption is loving and never looking back.  Adoption to me is a small scale example of redemption, but not just for our children, but for me.  It has changed me, shaped me and molded me.  It has stretched me in ways I didn't imagine and it has formed in me a passion.  Today we finished our homestudy visit, one step closer to bringing our Rosie home.  One more step in the messy, expensive, sometimes trying process to bring a little girl into the safety of her daddy's arms, to protect her from traffickers to keep her from poverty and to make sure she knows she is loved and wanted. 

Chasing papers!

I remember my first thoughts of adoption.  You choose a child and that same child a few weeks later was placed in your arms, happily ever after.... HA!  Was I snookered!!  Adoptions take a lot longer then a few weeks, there are homestudies, paperwork, fingerprints, paperwork, fundraising, paperwork.... months of waiting.....get the picture LOTS of paperwork.  Everyone needs a paper or a form!  I applied for a passport today even if I don't end up traveling the dossier requires a copy of it.  I made appointments for physicals for Randy and I both the homestudy provider needs a form from that and the country requires a letter of health.  Then I found all 7 kids need a physical for the homestudy, not a big deal as they get them yearly, however they have to have been seen within the last 2 months....insurance pays for 1 a year....they had them in Oct and Aug so not quite a year but more then 2 months.  So I have to figure that one out.  Wasn't such a big deal when scheduling 2 kids, but scheduling 7 is always interesting!  I am terrible about gathering things, not because I am slow but because it stresses me out knowing Rosie is waiting on me!  I can say oh I need to get to that, but I imagine if it was Alex or Hannah sitting in a far away place without a home today, how hard would I work to bring them safely into our home!  Please pray for all our paperwork to go smoothly and quickly so we can bring Rosie home as soon as possible!

We have a match....and a leak....

Lets start with the good news....we have a match!!  Number 8 is on her way in the form of a 12 year old girl.  She will squeeze in between Alex and AJ's ages.  She is currently in the 6th grade in Bulgaria and living at an orphanage.  She is a beautiful girl and has an adorable laugh in a video we saw.  So we got the good news that we are officially matched, so we have 6 months to gather all the homestudy and dossier and INS stuff (hopefully done WAY before that) and then soon we will be invited to visit her in Bulgaria, after that visit they will proceed with the court to finalize the adoption and then we go again to bring her home.  So exciting!!  Just as we were getting all the paperwork together and remembering what a cumbersome process adoptions are, we saw a mysterious what I though shadow in the living room.  Randy came in the house a few minutes later and I showed him and he headed up to the bathroom above said spot and found its source, underneath a sink into a cabinet....into a bathroom floor, into a hallway, into my bedroom in which we had a sticky door lately and had assumed it was from the humid weather.....down the floorboards into the ceiling and by the time he had water shut off the ceiling started to cave in every so much and the dripping became faster.......  So needless to say by the next day we had people in our house tearing up floors and ceilings, giant dehumidifiers and fans running extremely loudly.  I was sleeping on the couch and Randy in his office on an air mattress and so the chaos continued.  We had them drying out the floors for 3 days continuously....that is until last night while sleeping on the couch in the whirlwind of noise at 3:30 it went silent, which woke me up.  A random power outage, no storm no wind..... Then I started to think about a power surge when it came up with all this equipment in the house and then I started to think about all the what ifs in a fire.  Then the lights came on machines rumbled and all was good except now I was wired and unable to sleep.  Thankfully God is good and the machines left today, so we have a few days of peace until they come to replace floors, ceilings and paint walls....thank you for home insurance!!  So now back to paperwork, passport application, home visits and the one thing I am freaking out about....how to get a notarized doctors letter!!  Everyone says there is always a notary on staff and there never is and then its all awkwardy and what not......  It will be worth it when our newest girl leaves behind a life alone and the dangers that come with a pretty girl aging out without a family and joins a forever family with first Christmas's and birthdays and hugs and graduations!  God is good all the time!