WE PASSED COURT!!!!

We passed court at 10:30 am in Bulgaria.  Our lawyer over there represented us!  She is now legally ours!!!  So now we wait for 7 days to get the court decree.  Once our lawyer receives that we will be given travel dates to go pick up our girl.  It is finally real!!  It is such an exciting day.  We were also so lucky to receive another matching grant from my amazing parents for $1000!!!!  We would love to be able to match it to pay for our flights.  Because we won't have more then a week or two notice to book the flights....they are very expensive.  Also the second trip is now longer because of newly required TB testing, so this adds more days of hotel stay.  But in the end it is all worth it to get our girl out of that orphanage!
So I am happy to introduce

##########. Maria Caroline Mayr  ##########


On another fun note....it is Grace's 14th birthday!  She got another sister for her birthday!  This is awesome because had we not had Grace, I'm not sure we would ever have looked into  special needs adoption! Thank you all for your support for this part of the journey!!!!

COURT DATE!!!

Sorry for the lack of posts.  Honestly, our adoption has hit so many slow downs that I was getting kind of depressed.  Finally, today I got the magic email.....we have a court date!! It is February 25th!!!!  This is Grace's 14 birthday, how perfect is that!!!  "Rita" becomes a Mayr officially on February 25th.  We are so excited......but now I am in panic mode LOL.  It means that we could be traveling to Eastern Europe in a few weeks......time to get organized for the trip!!!  I will write a longer post later, but I wanted to keep everyone posted!!!

Wonderful News!

Adoption is such a strange journey.  There are so many highs and lows.  Sometimes it feels like we will never get our girl home.......but we have to have faith and keep moving forward.  Today was an amazing day.  I was feeling kind of low....fighting off a cold that my generous son shared with me.  I was on Facebook when my amazing friend Jen messaged me and said that there was a family that wanted to give us a matching grant!!!  This was such an amazing pick me up to my spirits.  This awesome family doesn't even know us......isn't that unbelievable!!  We are so grateful to them, Jen and all of you who have helped us in our journey!


So we have passed our article 5 interview (ok honestly I have no idea what this is, but it is part of the process)  Our dossier was submitted to our sweet girls country for the next step.  Now it gets bounced around getting signatures from two different locations.  Once those are complete we will get a court date.  Our amazing lawyer Toni will represent us in court.  That is a really important day because after court she will legally be a Mayr.  We are hoping to get a court date soon.   This has been quite a marathon but we are nearing the finish.  Well, then we start a whole new journey of getting our girl here, helping her become comfortable with us, her new family.  We are excited to get to that point.  Once again, thank you so much for all of your love and support!!!

As 2013 Ends

It is hard to believe that 2013 is just about over.  It was so exciting to officially add Angie to our family in 2013.  Now I am excited for 2014 to finally get our sweet girl over the sea home.  We had a wonderful 2013.
On the adoption front......earlier in December we were notified that we passed our Article 5 interview.  I am not exactly sure what that means, but we were assured that it was good news .-)  Once that was completed our dossier was resubmitted to the government of the country of our daughters birth.  There is one judge out of six who is now requiring a new FBI background check in between trips one and two.  Since we don't want to be delayed once we get a court date, we went ahead and got new prints done. So this added more fees.  We sent those out to the FBI channeler last week.  However, because of the holidays they are taking a while to get back.  I am hoping that they come today.  Once we get those back we will send them to Washington DC to be authenticated.  When that step is completed we will send them over to join the rest of our dossier in country.

  So now the wait in for a court date.  That will be so exciting because it means she is legally a Mayr.  What an amazing day that will be.  Typically, you travel about a month after court.  So we are really hoping that court happens soon.  We hope to travel to pick her up by the end of February, but it may be the beginning of March.  Either way, it is hard to believe that after 18 months on this journey.......we are only 8-10 weeks away from the end!!

  We sent our sweet girl a box for Christmas.  We know it made it to her country and we really hope that it was given to her.  We sent her a book called "Guess How Much I Miss You."  This book we recorded reading it to her.  We also sent her a teddy bear that we recorded "I Love You" in her language.  We also through in some Christmas candy.  I just wanted her to know that we miss her and can't wait to get back to her.  I am sure she thinks we were some crazy people that went out to visit her for a week and then disappeared.  I am sure it is hard for her to imagine that we are still coming back for her.  6 months is such a long time for an 8 year old.  I am so glad that the wait is almost over! 

Everyone have a wonderful New Year!!!

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.