Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Thank You So Much

We are so grateful to you all for helping us meet our matching grant!  Fundraising is hard.  Having people donate money to our adoption journey is humbling. This whole journey has really pushed us out of our comfort zone......and it is a good thing.  We get a lot of questions about how much adoption costs.......and yes it costs a lot!  Our adoption is costing us about 28,000.  Yes, that is a ton of money, but we figure that people spend that much on a car.  We think  that our girl is worth more then a car. :-)  People have asked us where does the money go: well some goes to the local agency that did our home study, some goes to the placing agency in the USA, some goes to the country where are girl is currently living, some goes to pay the translator that stays with us during our two trips, some goes to the driver that takes us to and from the orphanage while we are there, some goes to pay for the visa for our daughter, some goes to the medical appointment for her before she can leave her country, some goes to our governments immigration department, and quite a bit goes to travel costs ie:flights, hotel and food while we are in country-twice.  So yes, adoption is expensive...but so worth it! We are so grateful for all of the donations we have received.  We can accept donations to our FSP account on the right of this page until we finish our second trip to pick her up. We have sent in our I 800 to immigration.  This was the next step in the process.  We have a few papers that we need to get notarized and appostilled this week and sent to Eastern Europe.  Then we wait and wait and wait for stuff to happen over there.  Eventually, we will get a court date and then once that is completed we will be invited to go pick up our girl.  It is a very long process....usually about 5-6 months between trips.  We can't wait to get her home!

Now on the home front
We are so amazingly happy to announce the adoption of our daughter Angelita Jane Mayr!  (formerly known as Baby A ;-)  It is so exciting to know that she is ours forever!  We had a wonderful day in court on Oct 9th.  All the kids sat in the jury box in court.  The judge had them all raise their right hands and swear to tell the truth. Paul and I just tried to not cry our eyes out.  It was an amazing day. She has been with us since March of 2012 but now it is forever!