Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The time is finally here.....

Tomorrow morning we get Arielle's new birth certificate and then to the orphanage to pick her up. After we pick her up we have a day full of errands, passport office, tax office, bank and notary. It will take about six hours to finish. Then we will be in our temporary home for a few days while we wait for the passport to be issued.  Hopefully, it shows up Monday like it's supposed to.  We leave Sunday on the express train and travel 4.5 hours back to Kiev. Monday morning is our first embassy appointment and the medical exam for Arielle.  Tuesday is our second embassy appointment and hopefully we get her visa. Please keep praying for the visa situation.  There are families still stuck here waiting for visas and they are delayed because our Government cannot fix a computer problem.  As big as our Government is, they should have been able to completely restore the computer by now, it's been 11 days now.  Keep us in your thoughts and prayers, we are ready to be home!

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Arielle coming home!!!

Just a few more days and I pick up Arielle from the orphanage and go finish legal paperwork and apply for her passport. Lucky for us we are in a quick region that issues passports on the third business day. But please pray for the situation with the US government, the computer in the immigration and visa department crashed, they have not been able to issue visa for over a week now.  There are several families stuck here and cannot get out of country until this is resolved. We won't be asking for a visa for another week, but I don't want to get stuck here like these other families. Let's all pray this situation gets resolved quickly! Our budget is very tight and I don't have extra money for rent and food if we get stuck passed our original exit date.  We are currently supposed to leave Thursday August 7th.  Our sweet baby girl is so precious, we love her so much! God is so good, he sent us to this angel and now our hearts are forever changed!

Friday, July 18, 2014

All is good here...

We have received a lot of calls, texts and FB messages about the airplane that was shot down here in Ukraine. All is good here, we are located in Kharkiv, which is about 4 hours North of the area Russia has occupied and where the plane was shot down. The town we are in is beautiful, clean, peaceful and a lot of fun for our kids and family.  Shawn arrived backed into Country late Thursday night, we had Court yesterday and then spent the day at Gorky Park with another family we met here a few weeks ago.  Yes I can now say the location, because we had Court and Arielle Grace is officially and legally ours.  We cannot pick her up and start the process to leave the country until July 29th, but she is ours. Please pray for this Country, these wonderful people here don't want Russia taking them over, they just want to live in peace like every other Country, also pray for these beautiful babies and kids that are stuck in those regions being occupied by Russia, they cannot be adopted until Russia leaves.  I know one family in particular that are waiting to pick up their precious little boy and girl siblings and we pray daily for them to be able to get access to them very soon.  God is good and I know he is watching over them, please pray!!

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Love my family!!!

I am so lucky my family is so caring, loving and giving to everyone. I cannot say the same for my husbands family. His parents are filled with hate. They are attacking my husband, trying to convince him to divorce me and leave his family behind. It is so sad that after ten years of marriage they are still attacking him and our marriage. Immediately upon his return to the States last weekend they marched straight over to our home and proceeding to show him some information from twenty years ago in my past, something minor that neither of us care about. But to them it was another way to try and convince him being married to me was a mistake. After all they said they are looking out for his best interest. Since when, they have never cared about their kids their whole life, why now? When that did not work, they came back yesterday and started yet another argument with him, bringing up information about my grown adult kids and things they are doing in their lives. Geez, let it go already, my husband is not going to divorce me, he is not going to choose his parents over me and his kids. All this because we are adopting this beautiful precious angel and they are against it. It does not surprise me because they are not grandparents to our other children anyways, they are filled with such hate. Please pray for them, anyone who can be so hateful and vindictive needs massive prayer. Also pray for my husband who is being attacked by his parents almost daily over this situation. He needs strength to deal with them and only God can give it to him. Love you baby, hang in there, you will be back here in three days and won't have to listen to them.

On an awesome positive note, we have Court either Friday the 18th or Monday the 21st. We will know more by Thursday, so Shawn will be returning in a few days. We are almost to the end and will be bringing our angel baby home.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

We have met our angel!

We have been in country for one week and three days. We met our beautiful angel five days ago and accepted her referral. Shawn left this morning early to go home and will return for Court in a couple of weeks. The girls and I are here visiting the orphanage everyday and hanging out.  It is cheaper for us to stay here the whole time, than it is for the airfare for all of us and I won't leave the girls behind. Besides McDonalds happy meals are equivalent to .50 US money, the food here is cheap. I did under budget for in country transportation though, we are going to need an extra $1400 because the orphanage our baby is at cannot be accessed by the Metro, so I have to pay the driver $50 US per day for travel and I was not expecting that.

The first day we met, I was talking to the director and getting all my questions answered and they brought her in, immediately I started crying she is so much more beautiful in person.  What an angel she is. We also met a baby boy that we really wanted to accept referral for, but our finds are way short so we had to so no.  We are barely going to get out of here with one. I wish I could post my pictures here, but cannot until after our court date. I will update as we move through the process.

Thanks and God bless to all who donated!