Some kinda of fun!

My plane was cancelled. I've rescheduled it in February, but I've had to endure the fish smell permeating my house all weekend. Peel and eat shrimp Friday night; grilled salmon and some kind of scallops in butter today; what swamp infested creature will be eaten tomorrow I don't know; I've been eating the chili I made on Thursday. I have tried a bite of everything for my daughters' sakes, but I still don't like any of it after all these years; it is a texture and smell thing with me. I equate it to eating some kind of lightweight Silly Putty. I've tried to like it--really I have-- but thankfully Red Lobster and the like always have some kind of grilled chicken with special sauce for me to eat.

It has been two days of watching all three of my children play in the snow--Doug, Annsley, and Kennedi. After gasping for wind and taking days to recover from the last time he pulled the girls on the sleds himself, yesterday afternoon Doug decides to pull the girls on their sleds behind the Jeep . He gets stuck in a 3 foot snow drift. While trying to get out, he sprays the girls with mud and snow. I hear Kennedi screaming--in fact, everyone within 5 miles hears her screaming--she hates to get dirty! She ends up in the front seat. Annsley isn't real impressed with the whole sledding thing either. When both of them come in, they have mud splattered all over their faces and hats. Today, Annsley decides she'll give it another try. Kennedi will have nothing to do with it and sits in the front seat of the Jeep. Doug is driving around the barn, behind the fence in the pasture, and up to the front of the house--round, and round, and round. I'm on the computer and all I hear is Annsley yelling, "Doug--Slow like a turtle. Slow like a turtle, DOUG-SLOW LIKE A TURTLE!" (For those of you who don't know her, she calls her daddy by his first name. We don't know why.) Of course, he's creeping as slow as he can without getting stuck, but she is still very unsure of this whole sledding thing. Kennedi is literally hanging out the passenger window yelling, "Go Sisser! I poud of ooo! Good Job! I love ooo! I love ooo!" I'm sure the "I love you" statement stems from her experience the day before thinking this might be her sister's last waterloo. She never takes her eyes off Annsley and lets Daddy know when Annsley tips over. This goes on for over an hour. Later I happen to look out the window, and I see Annsley flying by the house--much too fast for her conservative mother's comfort. "Go Doug! Go faster!" she yells and giggles. On a stop, I have to remind Doug that she is only 5. My husband's reply of innocence was, "But she wants me to go fast!" And of course, Annsley pipes up, "Yeah, Mom. It's fun!" Since Kennedi refuses to get on her sled, Doug invites our neighbor's son to join them, and he and Annsley spend over another dizzying hour going round, and round, and round. I'm sure Doug burned up a half a tank of gas. On a bathroom break, Kennedi decides she's ready to try it again after seeing that her sister is free from mud today. I go outside to watch, and as she goes by the house, she is so proud of herself. "Look Mommy! I not scaaed!" When they FINALLY came inside, Annsley said, "Mom, that was some kinda fun today!" Why oh why did I not have the video camcorder charged????

So, even though I didn't make it to San Antonio, I did get to witness some precious moments with my girls and for that, I wouldn't change a thing!

With regards to Siberia...

It is snowing here. Really snowing. It was actually thundering and lightening this morning! I think we have 8 inches or more so far. All the roads are closed. I love snow! The more the merrier I say. I really don't know of anything prettier than snow. Doug's been home all day as school was cancelled this morning, and he'll be home tomorrow too. The girls are so excited. They've been out twice today. There's nothing like frozen nasal drip dried to bright red little cheeks to remind you that you're a mommy. (As Fancy Nancy would say, "That's a fancy word for snot!") So, it's been a hot chocolate, chili, fire burning, smore kinda day around here-- at least for the girls anyway. Doug and I are on a diet, so we just licked our chops and drooled. When Doug went for his physical for the home study, our doctor said he wanted to see less of him in 3 months--he's already dropped close to 25 pounds! I wish I could say I have melted 25 pounds in 30 days. That is such an injustice to all the hard working dieting women everywhere. Even though I wasn't given a directive at my physical (I'm sure he was just being nice because I have folds where there should be no folds!), I'm on the diet train as well. AlthoughRussia obviously doesn't care about one's physique, it'd at least be nice to say the only reason we didn't choose Korea was because of our age and not because of the BMI!

Here's a picture of winter in Siberia. It is truly beautiful, don't you think? I was reading some guys' blog this afternoon about their trek across Siberia a few years ago. The pictures are amazing. It was -60
degrees most days. They have pictures of their ice and snow covered windows that their car defroster, running on high, could never melt. It is the middle of the day and because of the snow on the windows, they have lit candles inside their car so the passengers can see. Later in their trip, they learned to put double windows onto all their windows. That looks like something out of the Roger Moore 007 movies! Vodka froze. Yikes! Didn't know that was even possible.

Keeping with the Siberian theme, reading about their adventure today reminded me of a book I read several years ago that is awesome! It is a true story about a soldier during WWII who was thrown in to a Russian prison and eventually sent off to a Siberian work camp. He and 7 others escaped on foot and made their way to British India. It's like the Diary of Anne Frank on steroids. Worth every penny to buy!
Tomorrow I leave for San Antonio to spend the weekend with my sister. My plane will leave on time...my plane will leave on time...my plane will leave on time. This will be the first time since Annsley was born (5 1/2 years) that Doug will have the girls by himself for more than a few hours!!!!! The three of them have been planning their menu since I booked my flight several months ago. I don't like seafood, and Doug, now with free reign in the kitchen for the next couple of days, has convinced his daughters that shrimp and salmon are the way to go. They were planning a field trip to the junk yard, but I'm sure the snow has put a damper on THOSE exciting plans. Please pray that my house will still have some resemblance of what I left when I return!

Vocabulary to enlighten your day!

I've been busy getting everything ready for our accountant, so adoption stuff has been on the back burner for a few days. Eventually, everyone needs a break from the adding machine, so here I am. My adding machine has tape. Do they still make those? It was my grandmother's when she worked as a secretary many many moons ago. Come to think of it, most of the stuff in our house is old. Our living room couches are the ones we bought when we got married--nearly 20 years ago. Up until about 6 years ago, they were pretty new as we were hardly home to use them. When we moved from Dumas, we had some senior high school boys help us. This one kid, whom I had taught, would pick up things that looked antique, and ask, "Is this iron older than I am?" "Yes, I took that iron to college with me." Loading up the huge 100lbs. speakers he'd ask, "Are these older than I am?" "Yes, Doug bought those when he went to college 21 years ago." Of course, my favorite was when he asked what the record turntable was for. "I know this has to be older than I am!" And that led to a discussion about 8-tracks and cassette tapes. I referenced our computer in another post. Since then, the iron blew up, the speakers are waiting for the garage sale, the computer is sitting in the barn, but we still have our 1990 style couches! Whoo Hooo! Making progress!


This has been one of my many reads on adoption. Those of you who know me well, know that I read, read, read, research, research, research before doing something new. (I read book after book after book on how to ski before I went skiing the first time as a kid. Somehow, Jean Claude Kelley made it look a lot easier in the book than it actually was!) Although just beginning this adoption journey, I have already had to learn new vocabulary. Here are just some of the terms:

USCIS: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services--These guys are part of the new Department of Homeland Security--that sounds so ominous doesn't it? They are the ones who give us a visa for our child. They also decide if we are capable of parenting an adopted child as well as making sure our child can be legally adopted.

I-600A: This application determines our ability to parent an adopted child. Our home study will be a BIG factor in getting approval. (Doug asked me the other day if people can really flunk the home study??!!)

I-171H: The form you get when USCIS approves of you. Russia will want a copy of this one!

I-600: This application is used when we get our referral, so the USCIS can determine if this child meets the definition of an orphan.

Apostille: (a-pos-teel) Everything that goes to Russia has to be notarized and apostilled. The apostilled is essentially a notary of the notary. Russia wants to make sure that you didn't buy Granny a fancy stamp at Office Max and have her witness all your signatures. Once we have everything notarized, we send all the papers to our Secretary of State's office who will apostille them. Thankfully, our fun stops here. We are considering ourselves lucky in this regard. Since we live in Texas, our notarized papers head straight for Austin. Other states, like Oklahoma, have you send them to the county clerk's office then the state. Some countries then have you send the state apostilled documents to the US State Department. It gets better. Then those documents are sent to the Embassy of Foreign Affairs to get authenticated.

Pop Quiz on Friday!

It had to be the chicken!

Annsley woke up last night about 11:00 and threw up. Doug's first question was, "What did she eat?" After the second time, he asked, "OK, Mom, what did she have for lunch?" I gave him the menu for the day. Could it have been the rolled tacos? the avocado? or the deceptive mandarin orange? I slept through the 3rd time; he was a good daddy and tended to his daughter all by himself. Kennedi woke up at 6:00 throwing up. After I get her cleaned up and back to bed, he asks again, "What did they eat that could have made them so sick?"

My question is why do guys always look at food as the culprit when somebody throws up? Never mind that his school has a stomach virus running through it. For the nearly 20 years of marriage, every single time he has gotten a stomach virus/flu he has always known it was because of the "chicken" he ate the night before. The last time he got the flu, I was telling my sister on the phone about it, and I could hear my brother-in-law in the background ask, "What'd he eat?" What is it with guys??? Is it simply more manly to say, "The chicken got me!" rather than admit your body succumbed to little microscopic invaders? Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon?

My goal is to have all our tax stuff ready to be mailed to our accountant by January 31. Trust me, it is a good year when I have it ready by April; however, knowing that Russia is probably going to want a new tax return has spurred my ambitious side a bit. I scanned our photo listing to Joylyn yesterday and she said it all looked great and no redo! That was really good news as my house is no longer clean. It's amazing how fast it can go from that "Mr. Clean Ready for the Home Visit" clean to crunchy floors and papers piled on the kitchen counters. Yes, my floors crunch when you walk on them a majority of the time. I make a move to mop them when my socks stick though. On a really bad day, I just wear shoes. Who in the world has time to bring out the sweeper vac 4 or 5 times a day? So it's out there...I'm not an Alice...I used to be and then the children came. I need an Alice!

Doug just called. He's not feeling 100% today. He wonders if it could have been the brisket we ate last night! (Never mind the fact that I have no symptoms.) He then asked if I had fully cooked the girls' tacos yesterday.... It's always the food to blame!

Picky, picky, picky!

Here's the low down on the whole region thing for the mini dossiers. One of our dossiers will be submitted to Krasnoyarsk, so we will definitely be registered there. The other mini dossier will be held by our agency's Russian staff whose office is in St. Petersburg. They will keep a look out in that region and the one nearby (Pskov), and if a baby comes available within our parameters, they will file the other mini dossier in that region. Joylyn said as fast as things have been moving in Krasnoyarsk over the last several months, she feels that is where our referral will come from. I, too, have a strong feeling about Krasnoyarsk!

I've been working on the documents for our mini dossiers this week. It seems like I am filling out hundreds of the same thing all week. We have to fill out applications for each of the three regions, their obligation letters (which essentially says we will care for the orphan and submit the post placement reports), and questionnaires. It is odd how Russia wants everything. Doug and I each have to have separate applications and questionnaires. The only difference on the papers is our names. The applications and questionnaires contain the same information only in a different format. Some regions want each spouse to have 2 applications and 2 questionnaires per adoptive parent. This is truly a paper pregnancy--instead of morning sickness there is carpal tunnel syndrome; in lieu of sonograms--a scanner; instead of ob-gyn appointments--a dossier specialist to check on your progress.

A note about the scanner: this will be my first time I will use one! I know, I know, it's 2010 [Doesn't that sound so Buck Rogerish when you say like twenty ten???!!], but you need to understand that until December the desk top computer and the inkjet printer we had been using was made in 1995. Yeah, read that again. No typo. When our school district bought computers for all the teachers' classrooms, they offered us the same computer to buy personally. It cost around $2500 and we could pay it out of our paycheck for 2 years interest free. We have simply been upgrading the windows software, but really, enough is enough. Let the poor dog die. Doug has had his laptop, which I had pretty much taken over the last two years, and when we moved, I still haven't unpacked the dinosaur. I broke down and ordered one on Black Friday. Imagine my surprise when our new desk top came in from Dell and the computer cable for the inkjet wouldn't fit into the new CPU. It seems that USB cords are the way to go in the 21st century!

So, it's a good thing, a very good thing actually, that we bought this new printer because Joylyn wants us to scan all our documents to her so she can check them for accuracy. Russia is VERY particular, and although I haven't experienced anything first hand yet, I have heard stories. The friends of ours who adopted from Russia a few years back signed a document with only a middle initial instead of writing it out. It cost them 2 months because they had to redo it. The lady at the court records department yesterday told Doug (as he was getting a copy of a record from his delinquent years some 2 decades ago--sigh), we need to find out what color ink Russia wants everything in, or we'll be back to see them. Uggghh! So, my baby boy could be hung up in an orphanage because we used black ink instead of blue???? I know from all my reading that Russia in recent years has made it more and more difficult for foreigners to adopt from their country; only a few years ago Russia was the number one country for adoptions. Now it is like 3rd or 4th. A lot of people just don't want to go through all the red tape. It just creates such a burning when I think about something so frivolous keeping children bound to a system that cannot nurture them into the gifts that God created them to be; unfortunately, since Putin came into power, Russia looks at it as losing a citizen instead of moving the child to a better environment. So, I'll be taking a blue pen with me every where I go.

Pink for Boy?

Every agency works in any number of regions in Russia. Our agency works in three: Leningrad, Pskov, and Krasnoyarsk. Leningrad is the St. Petersburg area, Pskov is just east of St. Petersburg, and Krasnoyarsk is in Siberia, a some 4-5 hour flight west of Moscow. Please be in prayer for these regions. Our little boy will be coming from one of these three! (You may have better eyesight than me, but if not, you can click on the map and it'll enlarge for you!)

Our agency will have us submit two mini dossiers to two of the three regions. These mini dossiers mainly consist of application type documents to be submitted to each region requesting a referral. Once we receive our referral, we'll submit the big baby--the main dossier-- before we are assigned a court date. I forgot that today is a holiday, so I haven't called Joylyn, our dossier specialist, to find out which two I need to be working on. I'll do that tomorrow. In addition to the applications, we also have to submit a photo listing of our house. I've been working on that this morning. We're suppose to send to Russia pictures of all the rooms of our house. Kennedi will be moving into her sister's room when our little boy arrives, and her room will be the nursery. Joylyn suggested that we make her toddler bed back into the crib for the picture. The challenge I'm having though is my youngest daughter loves pink. Her room is "Princess Pink". I can only hope that the
Russian directors and judge are either color blind or have a sense of humor at the very least. I do plan to repaint it when the time gets closer. Do I score points for that? Poor Kennedi! I never got to her room to finish decorating it--just the pink. I knew we were contemplating adoption this fall when I could have been working on it, but I didn't want to have to redo everything a few months later. Now that Kennedi will be the middle child, is this how Jan Brady always felt????

Whew! That's Over!

Home study--Done! Jenna came today, and I just have to say to anyone who may be in the process of working on your home study: Don't worry about cleaning your baseboards! There was no black light or briefcase of vials to take samples of anything that looked like it might sprout spores. Go ahead and clean the ceiling fans though--more on principle than anything else. I certainly need an excuse to do that and a social worker coming to your house qualifies for me. I ended up cleaning my Jeep out yesterday afternoon. I was afraid Jenna, after witnessing my pristine home, would peer into the window of my car and see the 16 pairs of kids' socks, dried out french fries, markers with the caps missing, and other paraphernalia covering my floorboards, and think to herself, "FRAUD!" (The last time I cleaned my floorboards Annsley said, "Mom! You have carpet in your car!") It was in vain I tell you. She didn't even ask about the state of my vehicle let alone peer into the window. I haven't the slightest why in the world I thought the cleanliness of my home would override my answers to questions like, "How would you describe your marriage? What discipline measures do you use? Why do you want to adopt?"

Unfortunately, Asa came out from underneath the bed, but I don't think she put the physical state of our 16 year old cat in her report. I'd post a picture of him for those of you who haven't gotten to see him lately, but I'm afraid PETA might come looking for me. We had to shave him a few months ago--Doug was the barber and just giddy with excitement and rather than do a full body shave, we elected to just shave off the matted hair balls. A quick glance and you think he has the mange, and coupled with the fact that he is much too skinny because he has gotten very picky in his old age, he looks more like some nappy eel in a Chihuahua's body.

Thank you all who were praying for us. This home study was a big deal as it goes on to the USCIS office as well as Russia. We should get Jenna's rough draft in a couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see how she writes it up so that Russia will receive it well. Our adoption agency will look over it, tweak it, and then we'll get the final copy. We should have all that finished within 4 weeks.

Tomorrow I start on the papers needed for our mini dossiers.

Probabliity of you being an ax murderer inquisition

I took a break last night from cleaning the dust off the top of the electrical outlet plates to finish our adoption training. Our home study agency requires 10 hours of education. I'm not sure that is enough. You just really think about the medical side of the adoption, but there are attachment issues, grief, loss, dealing with others' negative opinions about adoptions, etc. Did I feel this inadequate before I had Annsley? Adoption is a whole new ball of wax--more like those Bendaroos or Wiki Stix that have recently inhabited my house. The training was online and so dry but full of information which neither of us had thought about. At the end of each course, we had to take a test. When we got started on the first one, Doug noticing a little clock ticking, said, "Oh shoot! They're timing us!" That was probably a knee jerk reaction to all his years of defensive driving tests over the internet. Never fear, we scored 100 on all of our tests. Does that mean I'm going to be ready to parent an adopted child? I know I can change the diaper although I'll have to learn about those teepee things, and I can take care of diaper rash, but it's going to have to be by the grace of God to help us nurture this little being into the boy that God designed him to be!

Doug and I each have to write an autobiography for our homestudy. Mine ended up being 4 1/2 pages, single space 10 font. I had given Doug the outline about two weeks ago and reminded him to be working on it whenever he had a free moment at work. As of last night, he couldn't remember me giving him the outline. He calls me from school a few minutes ago and tells me he's already written one page and has answered only 4 of the 25-30 questions. He wants to know if it gets faster. I reminded him he hasn't even gotten to the questions about his turbulent adolescent years yet! We're not suppose to read each others until after the home visit, so I'm not, but I'm dying to know if or how he's spun those high school and college years to make him the wonderful man he is today!

Our home visit is scheduled for 12:30PM Sunday. Please be in prayer with us that goes smoothly! Doug called a friend of ours who adopted a boy from Russia a couple of years ago and asked what was going to happen with this home visit. Philip told him, "Hey, they're just going to be checking to see that you're not an ax murderer or something!" If that is all it is, then I think we're going to be OK!

To santize or not to sanitize?

Our home visit is this Sunday. I know I've read that our social worker is here to help us bring our baby home, and although Jenna, our social worker, has told me not to be nervous, there's nothing like your house, you, and your children being under the microscope. I've always thought we were OK, lived in a clean, safe home, had a great marriage, but I guess this is where the rubber meets the road! I've cleaned the ceiling fans, windows, and baseboards so far. You must understand that I leave these three items only for visiting dignitaries, heads of state, and other notables, so to accomplish that feat without the fanfare is, well....a feat! How often do you clean the tops of your baseboards? The area where dirt, fuzz, and splashed Coke seem to find a permanent resting spot? I was debating the whole ceiling fan thing, and then I had a vision of a pile of our dirt flying loose off the ceiling fan and landing on Jenna's papers as she writes. The thought did cross my mind to just not turn on the ceiling fans, but then you would be able to actually see the lint and cobwebs hanging from the fan blades. If they're rotating at a high speed, optically they look clean. Right now I am seriously disappointed that I did not purchase that portable steam sanitizer. I could be strapping that thing on and killing all the micro-organisims growing on my toilets. I know that I know that Jenna is not going to take a some kind of black light and peer into the bowl of my toilet, or will she? I used to be an infomercial junkie, and I really just enjoyed watching those things more than anything, but after a few late night purchases, I realized that they were made of cheap plastic and were grossly overrated. However, I do remember thinking when I watched that lady clean her sink, toilet, and shower door with the portable Steam Saver Whatever that could certainly come in handy! Little did I know...

Moscow, here we come!

Well, not right now, but our passports arrived today! I have to take back every nasty thing I've ever said about the government's inability to do much in a speedy and streamline fashion. Maybe the streamline comment still stands, but they did process our passports in two weeks, and that was without us expediting them! The government website quoted a 4-6 week turn around. A big thank you and kudos to them! That was one of the things we had to have in order to submit our mini dossier to Russia.
The whole adoption thing has become very real over the last two weeks as we are dropping money like crazy--a couple of thousands to our agency, passport fees, $870 for USICS I-600A app and biometric fingerprints, and this weekend our homestudy fee will be due. After this first rush we should have a break to catch a breather...at least on the money thing. The paper chase is just beginning though!

No, I want a dog!

Our girls have been interesting to watch their reactions as Doug and I have begun to share with them that a little brother will be joining them. We started early in the process because those of you who know Annsley will know that she needs ALOT of time to adjust to any changes going on in her life. When we first asked her what she thought about getting a baby brother, she emphatically crossed her arms, made a face, and said, "I don't want a baby brother. I don't like boys. I'm only a big sister to sisters!" Of course, Kennedi, Miss Copycat, crossed her arms and announced, "No buthers! Only issers!" A few weeks later Kennedi had really been getting on Annsley's nerves, and Annsley said to me, "Mom, how about if we give Kennedi to Victor [our neighbor], and then I can have a baby brother?" Now she's in the trade mode. I'm still not 100% convinced that I've made her realize that she really would miss Kennedi if she were not here. I appealed to Annsley's "mother hen" side and noted that this little brother was going to need her to teach him all kinds of things. I thought I had finally won both of them over with that and then the dog came into the picture. One night when Doug was getting the girls pajamas on, he asked them if they were excited about their baby brother coming to live with them. Once again, we got the crossed arms, pouty face, and this: "I don't want a baby brother! I want a dog!" Kennedi copied saying, "No buther. Doggg!!" When I was putting together our announcement bottles for our parents, Annsley asked me what I was doing. I told her that we were letting all the grandparents know that we were going to have a baby boy in our house. After thinking for a moment, she wrinkled up her face and asked, "Whose tummy is this boy going to be in? Yours?" I told her that he would be in another momma's tummy, but she would not be able to take care of him. He wouldn't have a mommy or daddy to take care of him. I asked her if she thought it would be a good idea if we brought him to live with us so he could have a mommy and daddy. Annsley said, "I think that would be a very good idea! I will have to teach him lots of things because I'm the big sister!" So right now that's where we are. It's a good place I think, but will it hold? Right now Kennedi wants to name her brother Reece or Rhubarb. Our social worker has to interview anyone 3 years or older for our home visit. That is going to be an interview for the ages I afraid!

Why Russia?

Going to Russia will fulfill a life long dream for me. As a teenager, I was always fascinated by the country, wanted to travel there, and had thought I would learn to speak Russian eventually. Why the tie? I have no idea other than my great grandmother, who I never met, was from there. Maybe it was the whole "Iron Curtain" thing and the mysteries surrounding what life was really like there. As for Doug, he's still dealing with the fact that the Cold War is over. So why in the world would we choose Russia for our adoption?

Doug's first choice was to adopt domestically. After looking into it, we realized that because of our age and the fact that we already had two children, we'd be "at the bottom of the barrel" so to speak--at least for an infant. With international adoption, there are literally millions of children available for adoption, and most countries don't have restrictions on parents' age or number of children already in the home. Most importantly however, international is where God was leading me. That is where my heart is drawn right now, and that pretty much trumps any argument for anything else!

Russia ended up being our country of choice by simple elimination of all the others. For example, we were too old for Poland and Korea (and I seriously doubt that either of us could pass the BMI requirements right now although that is about to change!). Neither of us were drawn to Rwanda, Colombia, or Ethiopia although the Ethiopian babies are beautiful!! Some countries were either currently closed or unstable: Guatemala, Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia. We want a boy, so coupled with the 3-4 year wait time just for a girl, that basically eliminated China. We looked at Armenia, but it is a small country with a small program, and the wait time for a boy was 2-3 years. That led us the Eastern Europe where there are more boys ready for adoption than girls (the exact opposite of China). A lot of Eastern European countries such as Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, and Ukraine had generally older children than what we feel would be the best fit for our family right now. That left us with Russia and Kazakhstan. Kaz was eliminated because of the really long in country stay and the fact that the government will not allow for gender choice any more.

I think the only major concern for me is being away from our girls while in a foreign country. It pretty much freaks Doug out, so I think he doesn't think about it if he doesn't have to. God is leading this adoption, and we know He has already provided the laborers who will take care of our girls. We both know that God will supply all our needs, and our girls will be in great hands as we travel.

Sharing our big news!

We've told our parents our big news. I wanted to wait until we found an agency and had started the process before we let anyone know our plans--kinda like, "there's no turning back now" sort of thing regardless of their reactions. I wanted to make this announcement as special as we made it when we announced our biological girls. When I was pregnant with each of them, I mailed stuffed animal storks with a future birth announcement, Grandma picture books with a message, or a message in a bottle. This time I mailed them all a "message in a bottle" with a birth announcement and a letter explaining our decision. My mother-in-law remarked that we have her well trained to quickly open a box we mail her. She said she was surprised that she made it to the car without opening it this time! We have wonderful parents. They all have squashed any apprehension that I had about them not being very excited about this new turn in our lives. We either got crying (for joy--at least I think), squealing, or "I figured you guys might do something like this!" I had read so much about other people's experiences of lackluster reactions that I think I had prepared myself for a less than enthusiastic response. For us at least, all our friends and family that we have thus told have all been very supportive and excited. We are so thankful and blessed to have such awesome people surrounding us! We know that we will be leaning on them throughout this process.

Why adoption? God began to work on my heart while we were trying to get pregnant with our first child. I had never had a insatiable desire to have children even though Doug did. After being married for 14 years, I guess we finally decided there was no time like the present, especially since "time" was literally ticking away for me! I had to spend a year and a half mentally preparing myself for this baby thing. I watched Father of the Bride Part II, Nine 1/2 Months, A Smile Like Yours, A Baby Story. You name it--if it was about a baby, I was soaking it in. There was an episode on A Baby Story where the parents adopted a child from Kyrgyzstan, I believe. That episode has stayed with me, and throughout the years, God has been gently tugging me in that direction. Doug has always seen a little boy when he has pictured our family picture. He has brought this fact up to me quite a few times over the years, and my unknowingly prophetic response to him has always been, "I hope that boy is Chinese because that's the only way that's going to happen!" Doug has always wanted lots of kids--enough for a football team--but when you start as late in life as we did, there isn't enough time for even a 6-man team. Did I mention we are 41 and 44? I told him I wasn't going to discuss anything with him until our youngest was 3. She turned 3 this summer. I think our conversation basically went like this:

Doug: "When are we going to have another baby?"
Me: "There's not one coming from my body!"
Silence.
Me: "I think we're suppose to adopt."
Doug: "I have known for years we're suppose to adopt."
Me, about to throw the wrench in the cog wheel: "I think we're suppose to adopt from Kazakhstan."
Doug: "Huh? Silence.-- Long Silence--... Where's that?" (I know he's thinking that it doesn't sound very American.)

So there it is...our high tech adoption conversation for all the world wide web to see. Our stunning play with the English language should make even the most gifted laureate aspire to higher linguistic standards!

With all my difficulties in both my pregnancies, I have not been interested at all in carrying another pregnancy, and with Doug's desire for a "quiver full" of children, adoption seems to be the answer for us. "Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the affected and needy. Deliver the poor and needy; free them from the hand of the wicked." Psalm 82:3-4. I know that some are called to help financially, others by prayer or labor. We, however, feel called to adopt. We know that God never gives a vision without providing a way; this is really His journey--we're just trying our best to be obedient servants.