I800 Approval!!!

Thank you all so much!  We have reached half of our matching grant!!  Hopefully we will have met it by Christmas!
The day before Thanksgiving we received a request for evidence for from USCIS (us immigration).  It was asking for a form that we were just sure was in the paperwork that we sent to them.  But since it was the day before Thanksgiving our officer was off.  So we scrambled and got a scanned copy of the form from our home study agency.  We emailed it to the officer and sent one snail mail to her.....we wanted to cover all of our bases.  Then we just tried to enjoy our Thanksgiving since we were pretty sure we wouldn't hear from anyone until the next week.  Well on Monday afternoon the officer called and said that she received our email and voice mail and that she would look at our file again.  The next afternoon she called again and said that sure enough she found the missing paper in our original paper work.  Go figure ;-)  We received our I800 approvals by the end of that week in the mail.
So now that approval joins up with our paper work that is already in  our daughter's country.  The next step in the process is an Article 5 interview.  We are hoping that happens in the next two weeks or so.....then we wait for a court date (ok I think there are more signatures and stuff between the two, but I am just hitting the highlights ;-)  A month or so after court we get travel dates.  So we are still hoping to travel in February but with all the delays it might not be until March...ugh.
So this matching grant will really help with paying for some of our three flights for the pick up trip (2 round trip and 1 one way)  Also, because of the added TB testing we will be in the country longer that we knew when we started the process.  So hotel/food etc will also be more then what we budgeted.  But we know it will all work out in the end.  Our girl is totally worth it!!  Thank you all for your love and support!!

Thankful!

Well, it is Thanksgiving week......we have so much to be thankful for!  We have another MATCHING GRANT!!!!!  We are so grateful for this. Giving to our FSP is tax deductible.....this is a great time of year to get your contributions in before the end of the year.  We are waiting on one paper to come back from USCIS.  Once we get that it will be sent to Eastern Europe to join the rest of our papers.  It will then be time to wait for a court date. So this matching grant is perfect timing.  Once we pass court we will be invited to travel.  Flights will most likely cost around 4000 for the three of us.  Some things have changed while we have been in this adoption process.  The USA has added a tb testing requirement.  This is most likely going to extend our time in country on our pick up trip.  So this will up what we thought we would need to cover hotel/food while there. This will probably be another 1800.  It is all worth it.  We can't wait to get her home!  This week we have been packing up a box to send to our sweet girl. I am sure it is so confusing to her.  We were there with her for a week and then we disappear for 6 months.  We are sending over a new photo album (we already left one with her), a teddy bear that we can record 'we love you' in her language, and a book that we can record so she can hear our voices.  The kids are drawing her pictures to put in the box.  This has been an amazing experience for our children!  So once again thank you much for all of your support and good thoughts during this incredible time in our lives.

 

My Heart is Breaking for Angela's family

The Noonan syndrome family and the Arthrogryposis family lost an amazing person this past weekend.  Angela had her fourth child a few years ago and they thought that she had Arthrogryposis.  It turned out that she had Noonan syndrome.  So I was able to learn about Angela and her family from both groups.  Angela died unexpectedly this weekend.  My heart is breaking for her family.  She was the most amazing mother and advocate for her daughter Aubrey.  Aubrey is medically complex and Angela was a rock star in dealing with doctors and therapists and keeping all of her facebook friends updated on how things were going.  It is just such a loss to everyone.  Please keep her amazing family in your thoughts and prayers.
Angela's passing really drove home to me how fragile life is.  You never know what is going to happen.  You just have to go for it and live life to the fullest.  I am so grateful for my amazing family and friends. 

THANK YOU!

Thank you sooooo much to whoever gave us some more donations.  We are so grateful.  International adoption is expensive......very expensive, but so worth it.  People go into debt to buy cars, go on vacations, buy furniture etc. We feel that our girl is totally worth it.  But we are amazingly grateful for the help we have received.  Our girl was aging out of her orphanage.  She didn't have time to wait while we saved more up to adopt her.  So we saved, had garage sales, and took out a loan.  It is all worth it!

That Was A Wild Ride

Well, we have had about 20 people visit our blog today.
 That is pretty normal for us.  However, last week after the article on yahoo shine came out about us, it spiked to over 4000 hits on the blog.  It was great having the article raise awareness about foster care and international adoption.  But I made the rookie mistake of reading the comments section....big mistake.  While most comments were very nice and positive, there were some down right creepy ones.  It really is sad what some people believe about foster care and international adoption.  One comment said that we were being paid 10,000 per month by the government to care for our children......anyone who does foster care knows that is soooo not true.  We actually don't have any foster kiddos any more now that Angie is ours.  So no money is coming in from anywhere.  Not to mention that where we live foster parents are given between 14-23$ per day for most kiddos.  So in other words you could work about 2 or 3 hours at a minimum wage job and make more then foster parents are given for a 24 hour day. So I don't think anyone is doing this for the money.  It was weird having strangers make comments about our family, but at least people were talking about adoption and fostering so that is the important thing!  We were grateful for the opportunity to talk about these topics!

On the international adoption front.....all our paper work is out of our hands now.  So now is just the waiting game.  it is really had to guess how long it will all take.  We are so hoping that everything goes quickly and we get back to our girl as fast as possible!

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! 

Woot Woot We have a matching grant!!

I'm so excited to announce that we have a $200 matching grant!!!!!  So,the way this works......for every dollar we raise....they will match a dollar up to 200$....... So we will get $400 !  That will cover 3 days of our hotel in Eastern Europe on our pick up trip!!!!!   We are so grateful! ( thanks to my amazing family!)
We have the donation button on the right of this blog, or checks can be sent to Reeces Rainbow for the Mayr family fsp.
I'll leave you with a picture of our sweet girl when she was 6 1/2
               
Thank you, thank you thank you!!!!