We are in Paris France!!!

Well, actually our dossier is, not us personally. ;)

Very exciting to keep track of our important papers as they travel to our facilitator in Olga's country.
On Monday we went to Indiana Secretary of State office bright and early to get all documents apostilled and ready to go. Seems like we always run into red tape. We were allowed to have 20 documents apostilled and have them back same day, any more than that it would take several days to get them back. We were hoping to have several of the documents bundled together so we would fall below the 20 mark. Evidently you can not bundle papers together if they are each individually notarized, even if they are the same notary. How on earth was I supposed to know this. Ofcourse, after talking with her for a few minutes I was not getting anywhere. She was very rude which in turn made me start to cry. I ended up leaving the room and Joe spoke with her. She ended up agreeing to have them done that day but would not give us a time.
It ended up being a nice day spent with Joe. We ate lunch and did some shopping for Olga. The papers were finished at 5pm and we were able to get them to the fedex right after that.
So now, our dossier is on its way. Hopefully it will be there by the end of the week. WE know now that we will not travel until April, due to the interpol form taking approx 40 days to clear. The interpol form is an international clearance. It may be sooner we are not sure. We do know that this is in God's hands and we will be with our baby in His time. It may not be when we want it to be, but we are praying she continues to be cared for and remains healthy. We are also praying that our dossier is perfect and no changes need to be made. We will be spending the time before we travel getting things in order with our business that we own, continue to prepare the kids for when we are gone and getting all of our travel stuff in order.
I have cards for the kids to open each day to encourage them, they will also have fun things to do while we are gone, movie tickets, bowling passes and small 'We love you" presents to open. We know they will be in good hands and we are grateful for that.
Please keep us in your prayers as we wait for news from her country.

WE GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!

We recieved our 171H approval letter from immigration today!!!! We are now offically allowed to bring one child under 48 months with special needs into the United States.

We are soo excited!!! Actually on my way to get our doctor to sign the last form and then we are good to go. I will go the the Secretary of State office on Monday to have things apostilled and then will send the entire bundle of paperwork to Olga's country!!
I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel now. We wanted to travel in March, so this works out great. Hopefully, we will not have to do any corrections on our paperwork and we will get our court date quickly after Oleg translates it all and submits it.
We are taking the kids out tonight to celebrate!!! We are almost there Olga, mommy and daddy are coming soon.
Thank You JESUS!

Still Waiting....

The wait continues.
It seems like everytime I go to the mailbox I hold my breath and say a prayer, but the one piece of paper that we are waiting on is still not there smiling back at me.
When the day comes that I see it there I may not be able to control myself. It seems like forever since I mailed the i600a app out. Granted it was Dec.28th but it still feels like forever.
I continue to email and harass the immigration on weekly basis. We now know our fingerprints have cleared!!! Very excited about that. She did say in the next sentence that we "are in line" to get adjudication, the final go ahead.
In the meantime, I continue to make Lyndi work hard and find my constant mistakes with my medical forms. There is acutally one more form that I need to go have restamped my the doctors office to have everything complete for our dossier. I seriously think the our doctor will go crazy this time. It will be the fifth time I have gone in there wanting changes to be made to these documents. Not sure he was real enthusiastic about it to begin with. So Im sending Joe this time. I have went the four times before, now its his turn. Thanks honey!
We are also trying to get everything together for our will, so that when we meet with our attorney we will have everything together.
Will post as soon as I get that approval letter!!!!Keep Praying

Some new pics!!

I wanted to share with you a picture of the table that I set up at our church. Sold quite a few of my tutus, thats actually what I should be doing right now!!
Gracie has also been drawing a lot of pictures at school that include Olga. She is soo excited. This one in particular is my favorite, she has such a sweet heart-most of the time ;)





I also wanted to post a couple pics of Noah and Gracie. They are soo excited about bringing little Olga home and we are blessed to have such an awesome family!!




We are currently waiting on our approval from immigration. We are hopeful that it will be here this week and we will be ready to submit to our country we are traveling to. I have had to fix a few problems on our documents, but nothing to major. And thanks to our wonderful notary, TONY!!!, we have been able to get things finalized quickly.
Keep us in your prayers!!!!

God doesn't give children with special needs to strong people; He gives children with special needs to ordinary, weak people and then gives them strength. Raising a child with Down syndrome doesn't TAKE a special family, it MAKES a special family...

Lyndi posted this on her facebook and I had to copy it ;)
This has always been our goal. To get people to see that God is guiding us. He is in control and has set us out on this journey. The only thing Joe and I did was be obedient to Him.
Last year at this time if you would of asked us if we wanted more children, the definite answer would of been NO!! But God had different plans for our family. And we are soo excited.
We were able to get our immunizations for our travel last week. Ouch!! I think we each got three, and I convinced Joe to get the H1N1, so we would not have to deal with that along the way, which would not be fun.
Our SW sent our police checks and summary homestudy to us, so now we have every piece of paperwork needed. We can finally breath a sigh of relief.
Will definetly let everyone know when we get the immigration approval letter. Everyday I say a prayer as I pull up to the mailbox, and even though it has not been there, I do find a comfort knowing that it will be on its way soon.

Our Weekend!!

Our family had a very important and busy weekend. This was the weekend we were able to get in front of our congregation at Fountain City Wesleyan Church and speak about how God is moving in our lives and to ask for prayer and support from our church family.
We were very moved by the responses we received from each of the three services. We were able to convey the message regarding the treatment of special needs children in Eastern Europe and to also talk about how God has sent us on an amazing journey to bring little Olga home.
I was able to sell around 9 more tutus, which is great and will keep me busy during this nervous time. And we have not yet ran a total on what was donated, but we are forever greatfull no matter what the total is.
We were able to hear from people within our church their own adoption stories and also a few stories of how they were deeply touched by Olgas smile and her joining our church family.
Joe did the talking at Saturday night service, and was doing well until he saw Olga's picture on the slideshow and he almost lost it. Bless his heart :)
I was able to talk during the two services on Sunday, and even though talking to a crowd at one service that had probably 600 people in was overwhelming I think it went well.A few pictures will be coming shortly.
Can not wait to bring her home and show her off now!! Hopefully immigration will be quick and we can receive our approval and send our dossier off.
Keep Praying!!!!!