Bunk Beds!

So a store by us is doing a give away of these amazing bunkbeds.  So I am sharing their page on here!

http://www.epochbydesign.com/blog/epoch-design-blog/post/giveaway-mckenzie-natural-3-piece-twin-bunkbed-set-in-aurora-colorado

Check them out!

WOOT WOOT -a matching grant!!!!

The Amazing Anonymous Angels (yes I love alliteration ;-)  has offered us a matching grant of $450!!!  We are sooo grateful to them and to you guys.  So for every dollar donated to our FSP, they will match it up to 450.  That is just awesome.  It is so stressful having lots of garage sales and trying to come up with the money to go over and get our sweet girl.  We are going to sell everything that isn't nailed down LOL.  Yes, as many people have mentioned, adoption is very expensive.  But we look at it like this.....people pay so many thousands of dollars on cars over here.  We just figure that we would rather drive old cars instead and help this sweet girl get a family and the medical care that she needs.  So we will sell things, fundraise, and take loans......whatever it takes to get sweet "Rita" home.  We are so grateful to all of you for your help....it means the world to us!!!

Being Translated!

Ok, I know that I just wrote a post an hour ago....but I just found out that our dossier is in Eastern Europe right now being translated!  Woo Hoo so excited.  It is a holiday week there so it will be next week before it is done, but I am still really happy just knowing it is over there and not over here LOL

Waiting, waiting, waiting

Do you see a theme in international adoption..........lots of waiting!  So our dossier is being reviewed by our placing agency.  I am hoping that it will be sent to be translated very soon.  It is tough not knowing when we will be traveling.
 Luckily, we are distracted by all of the end of the school year craziness.  Jack is filming the highschool graduation for the school and doing a live stream on their website.  He is very excited....and a little nervous.  But he loves cool equipment.  This is Jack and Grace's last Friday of the school year.  The littles still have two more weeks.  Rose is in Panama for Army Reserve duty.  I hope that it went well.  She should be getting home this weekend.  Today we are having our second garage sale.  We had one last weekend.  It was a bit slow.  I am hoping that today is busier.  We are using the profits from the garage sale to pay some of the adoption fees.  So every little bit helps.  The weather looks nice, so that is a plus.

Almost there!

I was so excited to see that they moved us to the "Almost There" page on Reece's Rainbow.  We are getting there slowly but surely.  We also had exciting news this week.  Our foster toddler "Baby A"'s case went to termination.  We are very much hoping that we can adopt her too!!  What an amazing year we are having!!

Finally!

WOO HOO!  We have been waiting for 6 weeks for our USCIS approval to come back.  This was the last piece we were waiting for to complete our dossier.  We received it yesterday!!!  So this morning we are going to run around and get the last couple of papers notorized.  I will then drive to Denver to get the last pieces of the dossier appostilled.  At that point we can mail the whole dossier off to our agency to make sure we have everything correct.  It will be sent to Eastern Europe to be translated and submitted.  Once we are submitted we will wait to be invited to travel to meet our new daughter and offically except her referral.  It is so exciting that we are making progress!!!

Finger prints, finger prints, finger prints

So we just received the letter in the mail with our appointment to get biometric finger prints done for the USCIS.  We also need to do finger prints this week for the FBI.  We will have pretty much been finger printed by the whole world.  ;-)
But at least it is a step forward.  Once we get approval from USCIS we will be approved by the United States of America to adopt.  So we are getting there one step at at time.
I am really hoping that we get to go on our first trip to Bulgaria in June, but I guess we will just have to wait and see.
While we wait I am trying to do lots of research on Arthrogryposis.  Turns out that one of the new treatments is Estim.  This is placing electrodes on the muscles.  Turns out that is the same thing we have been using for Baby A's clubbed foot.  So we already know how to use it....wooo hooo.  I also love Baby A's pt at Children's hospital.  So I hope to use the same pt for "Rita."  It is so helpful when you already know the services that are available.  I think back to when Grace was born and we had no idea about specialist etc.  We've come a long way baby (shout out to an 80s commercial ;-)


Thanks for reading!  We are off to a classic car show for our buddy Austin Williams.  Austin has been fighting an amazing fight against cancer for the last 2 1/2 years.  He loves cars, so we are going to do support him.