2nd trip soon...

Our Court date was originally March 3rd and now has been pushed to Friday March 6th.  So airline tickets have been purchased and we are ready to leave next Wednesday.  It will be a short trip, arrive, travel to region, have Court, visit the next day and then home on Sunday.  Cannot wait to see our precious baby girl again, I have missed her so much.  But I keep telling myself, not much longer and she will be home with us.  Our pick up date will be March 17th, so we are almost there!

I have been researching pediatric occupational and physical therapy in our area.  Looks like I will have to drive over an hour to Dallas to get the therapy she will need.  We currently use ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) they come to your home and help, but they cannot offer the type of services in our home that I feel Arianna is going to need.  Her little body is limp, she has no body strength at all.  When you lay her on the floor she can only hold up her head and nothing else.  Bless her little heart she cries when you put her down on the floor, but I guess if it took so much work to lay there I would cry to.

On the other hand, she loves to be held and cuddle, so I a ready for lots of that! Thank you to everyone who has supported our journey through prayers and donations, we are grateful, God bless you!

Home from first trip

We traveled home on Sunday and were happy to see our little girls!!  We will return to Eastern Europe on March 1st, for Court on March 3rd.  Nice to get home, see our girls, clean house and get organized again for trip number two.  Things will move quickly as I have a lot to do.  Cannot wait to get back and have our day in Court to officially make Maureen ours.  Thank you to all who donate and pray for Maureen and our family!

Met our baby girl!!?

We finally meet.  Maureen is such a precious and beautiful baby girl. She is much bigger than I anticipated very tall for her age.  Her birthday was a few days ago and she turned two.  She has waited a long time to get a mommy and daddy and finally her time is here.  What a blessing she is to us already and will be forever! It was a long day yesterday driving here, then meeting her, then doing paperwork, getting checked into hotel, then back to see her again, then back to hotel, dinner and finally bed.  We overslept this morning and missed breakfast, now the trick to find a place to eat for lunch and get ready for our visit of the day.  Again thank you to all who donated allowing us the opportunity to come and bring this angel home. I cannot wait until I can share pictures of this angel!

In Country...

Just a quick update to let everyone know we are in Country! We had our appointment this morning with the Department of Ministry, looked at Maureen's file and accepted the referral. Another great piece of news, our awesome facilitators worked magic today and we actually received the written referral instead of having to wait until tomorrow. So we leave first thing in the morning for the region she is located in and will meet tomorrow! Very excited and so happy to be here so quickly.  Thank you to all who have donated financially and prayerfully,  we appreciate all of you!

Leave in 4 days!

I thought I would be nervous, but I don't have time to be! I have spent the past two days in bed with vertigo and am hoping it passes quickly. I guess if it had to hit, then this week is better than next week after we are in Eastern Europe.  I still have a lot to do to be ready to leave on Sunday.

Our girls are very excited about seeing pictures of their new baby sister, but not so much about Daddy and Mommy being gone a week. The hardest part of this trip is going to be leaving them behind for a week to make this first trip. They have never stayed without at least one us being there.  Thankfully our goods friends, whom our kids adore, have agreed to stay at our house to make it easier on the kids.  At least they will be able to sleep in their own beds.

We are so thankful to all donors to our FSP, know matter the size of the donation, it still made a difference.  We have at least reached our goal to make this first trip possible that we have to pay our facilitator fees, which is the biggest chunk of the money.  Again, thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

God is gracious all the time...

Today has been a fantastic and humbling day.  It started out with us finding a company willing to match the donation with Angels in Disguise, not only match but they offered an extra $500!!!  I cried when I got the news as it was going to put us very close to our goal for the first trip.  Then right after I got off the phone, I looked at our profile and saw a $6,000 donation had been made and my first thought was, that was too quick, the grant money could not have gone through so fast.  So I checked with Reece's Rainbow and found out it was not the grant money, but an anonymous donor.  Then I was really crying more, could hardly talk to my husband on the phone, because this meant we were still getting the grant money, which would then give us $13,322 in our FSP.  Wow, how amazing is that!!  We will only need another $4,678 to be fully funded.

I have been so stressed all weekend, since we found out we leave the 8th for our appointment and our FSP was so low.  But I have kept faith that God was going to provide somehow and sure enough he has.  Now we just have a little bit more to go and we are fully funded and this awesome little princess will be home and getting the medical care she needs and deserves and of course all the loving from us and her siblings who are so excited to meet her!

I want to thank everyone who has donated to our FSP, everyone who has and is still praying for us and Maureen, Diana Richie for putting together the blanket and selling squares for donations and of course the Peterson family, who donated to our FSP and have put together the awesome t-shirt and bracelet fundraiser to help bring Maureen home. Thank you to each and every one of you, God will bless you and we are very humbled and appreciative of your support!