A Shout Out To My Village

We leave in just over a week.  ONE WEEK!!!  It seemed like an eternity when our facilitator called and told us we'd be leaving for U. in five weeks.  Time flew by like it has never flown before and here we are.  As we start packing and are tying up all the loose ends I am reminded again and again how lucky we are to have such an amazing village of people supporting us in this crazy venture.  Because without you, Village, this could never have happened.  So thank you, truly, from the bottom of our hearts.

Thank you to my mom for whole-heartedly agreeing to abandon her own life and come live ours for however long we are gone.

Thank you to my aunt, uncle and mother-in-law for offering to fill in the gaps so my mom can occasionally have a day off.

Thank you to friends and family who contributed to our adoption fund; y'all were so amazingly generous.

Thank you to my associate for being so understanding and supportive of this adoption even though it means she will be working every day until I get back.

Thank you to co-workers who, having only known me for three months, jumped head first into fundraising and have excitedly supported me from day one.

Thank you to clients who barely knew me yet contributed dollar after dollar to our adoption fund.

Thank you to our beloved day care who takes such amazing care of our children and, with this adoption, us as well.

Thank you to clinic staff who helped make our home town fundraisers possible.  They bought more tickets for things I'm sure they didn't really need, yet they did it because they love us.

Thank you for the countless number of friends who have told me to leave their numbers for my mom so that they can help transport kids from school, daycare, soccer, gymnastics...

Thank you to the mom who offered to be available for us whenever because, as a stay at home mom with four busy kids of her own, she's "not doing anything all day."

Thank you to the mom who is willing to pick up my child from school and cart her to gymnastics every week.

Thank you to the beautiful friend who, while battling cancer and going through chemo, took the time to make an amazing knitted blanket for Charlie because she'd made one for each of the girls when they were babies.

Thank you to my closest friends who have called to check on the status of our adoption and listened like it was the first time every time I complained for the 100th time about something.

Thank you to our local relief veterinarians who went out of their way to help us find someone who could fill in at the clinic.

Thank you to our amazing community for already welcoming Charlie home even though he isn't here yet.

Thank you to our children for being so beautifully excited about their big brother.

And thank you to anyone else I may have forgotten to mention.  Again, we cannot thank everyone enough.  This has been the most beautiful example of love and generosity I've ever experienced.

I will be posting updates here and on Facebook as we travel so stay tuned!

WE HAVE TRAVEL DATES!!!!!

FINALLY!!!

We will be traveling early October to go get our son!

I feel like I should be more excited.  I've had friends tell me, I thought you'd be more excited.  I am excited.  But I'm excited in the way you're excited about Christmas.  Generally, you're super pumped up about the holiday in general.  But more so when it is December and it's appropriate to hang up your holiday decor (unless you're Hobby Lobby.  In that case it was apparently appropriate in August.  Whole other soapbox...don't get me started...).  Our dates are five weeks away.  Well, closer to four now, but still.  We've been waiting so long for this that it is hard to get outwardly excited when we still have ANOTHER WHOLE MONTH TO WAIT.  And since we've had so many delays and so much down time, we are already prepped and ready to go.  Not much to do except wait.  Again.

In addition, we are feeling a little let down by the fact that, though Down Syndrome is an expedited special need (meaning they process your paperwork first and fast and give you travel dates sooner), for some unknown reason Charlie's file was marked as regular processing.  So we were expecting something to happen much faster and it didn't.

Nevertheless we truly are looking forward to finally meeting Charlie and bringing him home.  I will be posting updates on the blog as we make final preparations to leave and also as we travel.  Keep us in your prayers and stay tuned!

Charlie's Room

It's finally finished!!!  In the midst of the Great Room Swap we decided to get the flooring replaced upstairs in what is now the big girls' room.  The carpet was gross seven years ago when we moved in and, gasp, would you believe it did not get any better since then???  =)  Once we started moving all the furniture it became very obvious that the carpet had long ago exceeded its shelf life and needed to go.  So we ripped it up and replaced it with some very nice wood flooring but in the interim, all the furniture and everything else up there was stuffed into Charlie's room.  So it was impossible to put the finishing touches on his room or take nice pictures until the big girls' room was done.

BUT!

It's all done now and both rooms turned out beautifully.   I present to you Charlie's Room!

Now we are truly ready for our travel dates and I'm going to be waiting even more impatiently which I did not think was possible.  And yet...

And We're Waiting...

...and we're waiting.  Waiting for travel dates that truly feel like they ARE NEVER COMING!!!!!  This is the third trimester, people.  I'm done.  My attitude has plummeted from super excited to super grumpy.  All my best laid plans for this semester are shot to hell because we were supposed to be coming home at this point, not waiting to travel.  Now the girls are back in school and soccer and gymnastics and riding and everything else has started.  I was supposed to be home with Charlie and thus able to chauffeur everyone from activity to activity.  But Brent is doing it by himself, juggling working with getting everyone everywhere on time because I'm still at work and too far away to help most of the time.  In addition, I have been trading days at work, not taking them off, so that I can save my vacation days for when we do travel.  So I've not had a vacation since New Year's and I'm about ready to scream.

(Insert deep breath and large glass of wine here.)

I know, I know.  Want to make God laugh?  Tell him your plans.  I get that this is His timing and all but patience has never been a virtue of mine (ask my mother and my husband).  But I feel like we are stuck in this holding pattern and I'm tired of waiting.

Come on, travel dates...you can do it, I just know it!

The Great Room Swap

We have four bedrooms.  We currently have four children - four girls - and we are fixing to add a fifth child.  A boy.  Do the math and that means we've got some space issues.  Add in the fact that two of our children are only here part time and well...we've got some rearranging to do.

It started today.

It seems like we JUST redid everyone's rooms and here we are, at it again.  We decided that it would be easier to rearrange than to repaint as only one of our rooms is square with normal windows.  The others have large half circle windows or slanted ceilings or elevated ceilings or one thousand nooks and crannies that require a 12' ladder, a prayer and a stiff drink to paint.  We also needed more furniture.

As of this afternoon, all the preliminary moving of stuff had been done.  The new furniture is ordered and will be here next weekend.  Charlie has a new bedspread on the way and we made out like bandits today at W@lmart.  Normally I despise that store but we live in a semi-rural area and any other store is a minimum of 45 minutes away.  I never really find anything I like, want or am looking for but today I hit the jackpot.  There must be one day a year that they put out all the good stuff and today was the day.  I have two girls sharing a room and getting them to agree on bedspreads that even remotely match each other much less the paint in the room is a negotiation the likes of which you have never seen.  But today I found a bed set that both girls agreed on AND it matched the room.  I also found sheets for everyone, throw pillows for the futon upstairs in our big girls'/tv room and accessories for Charlie's room.  And no one had a melt down in the store.  Kids or mama.  =)

I know everyone loves pictures so here are some work-in-progress shots.  I'll post some final pictures once everything is done.  The last picture is the small pile of boy stuff I've accumulated.  Remember, we have four girls.  Everything is pink.  Or purple.  Or teal at best.  I've enlisted friends for all kinds of advice and hand-me-downs to help us stock up.

 This used to be the little girls' room.  You can see the remnants of pink.  This will be Charlie's room.

The hallway of hell.  I cannot stand clutter and it seems to originate from the very grounds of our property.  Notice the pink???

This was one of our older girls' room.  This is the room I previously described as a painter's worse nightmare.  So, rather than subject Charlie to purple, we moved Amelia out, moved the little girls in and gave Charlie a more suitably colored boy room.

This is where our older girls will be.  It is a HUGE room (300 sq ft) so one end of it will have two daybeds and the other end will be our kids' tv room.  We only have one other tv in our house so this is SOOOOOOOO nice because, let's be honest, there is only so much animated tv you can watch before you just need some cuss words and nudity.  

And here is my small Charlie pile.  It is fixing to get much bigger but the humble beginning makes me happy.  =)

That's A Wrap

I was waiting on our USCIS approval to come back from being apostilled and got it in the mail Thursday afternoon.  I knew people were traveling THIS weekend (like tomorrow!) and I wanted to get our dossier to them if possible so they could carry it over for us so that we would not have to mail anything directly to Charlie's country.  So, as soon as the envelope arrived (and I had been impatiently stalking tracking the package and checking the mailbox multiple times a day all week) I quickly starting asking for addresses so I could overnight everything.  I got a thumbs up from someone but never got her address.  I waited...and I waited...and I even messaged her again asking for her address...and nothing.  Now the post office closes at 4:30 and it was nearing 4:00 so I was starting to get a bit irritated.  I went to message this poor, kind soul YET AGAIN when I suddenly remembered something.  Once upon a time someone had been trying to send me Facebook messages and though they swore they sent them repeatedly, I never got them.  It took someone telling me that there was an "other messages" box that you can only see from your desktop to finally get all the messages.  Maybe that's where the address went!!!  So I frantically logged on and yep, there was the address, sitting in that d@mn folder since 2:30.  I grabbed the paperwork, jumped in the car and raced to the post office.  Thank goodness nothing in our town is more than five minutes away.  I leapt out of the car with 15 minutes to spare and ran into the post office.  I was so nervous.  As I put the dossier into the envelope and double checked that it would be guaranteed to be delivered, I asked the postwoman for a prayer.  She looked at me like I had just asked her to mail her kidney.  What is it about working for the post office that makes people so apathetic?  Anyone else experience that or is it just me???

(Here is our dossier being wrapped up.  I swear giving that paperwork to a stranger was like giving her my child to mail.  Or my kidney.)

So that's it.  We have submitted our paperwork.  All of it.  There is nothing left to do but wait.  According to our facilitator we should be traveling in the next 30-ish days.  How utterly terrifying and exciting all at the same time.  Normal feelings, I'd imagine, at this stage in the game.  Ready or not, here we come!!!

  

Happy Father's Day!

Yes, I do know that Father's Day was in June but, as any divorcee knows, you don't always have the luxury of having your children on major holidays, so we celebrate when we can.  This weekend we are all together and what better way to celebrate than with BBQ, beer, fireworks and and a three day weekend?!  

Even though we dedicate a weekend to celebrating fathers, I know for a fact that my husband does not get nearly the recognition he deserves.  So, I'd like to take this moment to let him know how much we truly do appreciate him.

My husband does 90% of our cooking.  He probably does at least 60% of our cleaning.  He is our designated handy man, bug squisher and heavy stuff lifter.  He works full time and is half-owner of our clinic.  He takes call and works nights, weekends and holidays so that our business can be successful.  He parents not only children here but also two he doesn't get to see all the time.  He drives every other weekend on Friday evening after working a full day to pick them up.  A large portion of the time he drives all the way to where they live (about three hours away) so that he can watch a piano recital or softball game.  He then gets home at 1 am and gets up to make us a big breakfast on Saturday morning.  He plans weekend camping trips so we can spend time as a family.  He willingly jumped on this crazy adoption roller coaster with me and has been a major catalyst in getting our paperwork done so quickly.

There are a million more things this man does for us and sadly, often, we forget to thank him as much as we should.  So this weekend, Hubby, is for you.  Though you may not always be doing what you'd like, we are always thankful that you're a part of our lives.  I can't imagine them without you.

Love always,
Wife