Tuesday, June 20, 2006

We leave July 4th, YAHOO!!!!!!!

We have officially accepted V as our referral, he turned 15 months old on June 13th, my brother Darren's B-day. Our coordinator has just met him and she said he is just adorable, a little small but average size for his orphanage. Elina said he responded well, he didn't want anything to do with her (normal at that age) and then he warmed up to her and when she put him down he got very upset, I cannot wait to hold him :) I have been busy the last 2 days trying to get our flights and rooms booked, I have everything ready to go besides our in country air I am waiting to hear back from a couple of travel agents to see if they can get us a better deal then I found on our own, we'll see what they can do, if I do not hear back from them by tomorrow I will just book the flights myself I do not want to take the chance of the tickets selling out then everything would be messed up.

We leave on Tuesday, July 4th to go and meet him, this is going to be such a fast trip we land on the 5th, fly to our region the same day visit for 2 days, sign papers to petition the court for the adoption and fly back home on the 9th with an overnight stay in Amsterdam. Unfortunately we arrive early evening so we are not even going to be able to sight see, oh well maybe next time. It will be nice to be able to stretch out before that 8 hour flight back to the good old USA!

I pray that all goes well and we will get to adopt V. There is always the chance that a family member or a citizen of that country will come forward and adopt him before we get back for court. Jeff and I will do everything not to get attached after what happened last time but boy is it going to be hard after we get to hold him, right now I know anything can happen but it will be a totally different story once we meet him.

Any ways, I will try and update from over-seas but I am not sure how the internet will be, we'll have to wait and see.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Still Nothing, ERRRRRR

OK, I am getting a little PI--ED off, I am writing this today because it seems like when I write about something that's not going right just the opposite happens, so here's hoping it works.

Of course I got this info on these 2 children last week Tuesday and I was told they would try and get me updated info by the 12th (my coordinator told me that and her assistant told me the 14th)so we could make a decision on what referral we are going to accept. Well of course there time frames are off again, here it is Weds the 14th and still nothing. I really thought this agency was going to be the one and not going to jerk us around but I am starting to doubt that and that is not a good feeling. I understand they cannot control the government and things change with IA on a blink of an eye but come on, here it is June 14th and nothing. Don't forget we were told 1 to 2 months for a referral and it is going on 4. I do like our agency and they definitely care about the kids but I wish they would be better with the time frames they tell me. We thought we would be getting ready for trip 2 to bring our baby home and we still have no idea when trip 1 will be.

On another bad note, When I checked the air fare last week the day we got info on these 2 babies tickets were about $1600 for the last week of June first week of July, of course because I wanted to book our flight and get our visas and they told me no, tickets have sky rocketed between $2200 and $2800 until after 4th of July so it looks like no matter what we will have to wait until after that. It does not seem logical to pay an extra $700 a ticket, ERRRRRRRRR, that makes me mad. They told me from the beginning that after we accepted a referral we could travel right away so I still cannot figure out why they would not let me book our flight, I told them we were going to accept on of these referrals for sure.

Any ways, as soon as I hear something I will post again and let everyone know if we are having a BOY or a GIRL :).

Friday, June 9, 2006

A Referral at Last :) :) :) :)

WOW, well we got a little info on 2 different children a 15 month old little boy and an 11 month old baby girl, I was so excited when I saw his little face, is this really going to happen? Our information is limited and we are hoping that next week when our case worker gets to our region she will get updated pictures and some more medical. We are going to pick one of them (I am not sure how we will pick one over the other)and send the info and pictures to a Dr. that specializes in evaluating children adopted from over-seas. We got 5 pictures of this little guy and almost no medical and more medical but no pictures of the baby girl. I am going to call him V and her J, I cannot say to much about these referrals because I really do not know much but I am told we should know more by June 14th. I can tell you that V is adorable.

We hope to be able to travel by the end of the month, gosh that sure would be nice. We will go on 2 trips, trip one will be to go and meet our referral and if we feel this is the child that is meant to be with us then we will petition the court for adoption, it will be a short trip 5 to 7 days, mostly travel, ERRRRR. We will then come home and wait for a court date, it can be 4 weeks or 4 months we will never know until we get the call that we can go back and bring our baby home, YIPEE!!!!!!

I'll post as soon as I know more.

Friday, June 2, 2006

I Can't Believe It's Been A Year

It will be one year on Saturday, June 3rd that DH and I jumped on a jet plane headed for Kazakhstan to adopt 2 children, a beautiful 15 month old boy and an unknown baby girl, we tried for 10 months to get to them and finally we were leaving, I thought that day would never come, we were so excited.

26 hours of travel later we landed at 3:30AM to be met at the airport, driven to our apartment only to be told just before our coordinator left that our baby boy
was no longer available. It was so heartbreaking but I knew or at
least I thought God must have had a different baby that needed us
more and they would find that baby for us. Unfortunately for us our
agency had no idea what to do with us and was dishonest . I still can't figure out how they were going to find this baby girl for us when they didn't even have 1 baby for us let alone 2.

We flew to a different Region only to be told nothing was going to
happen there either so after a week in Kazakhstan in 2 different
regions we flew back to the US with broken hearts and no baby, it
was one of the saddest things in my life, a huge loss. This
excitement of finally being a Mother was gone, that baby who I thought of as my son was gone and boy did it hurt.

We later learned that this agency is known for "bait and switch" and
that they have been investigated 3 times by the DA, FBI and the
Attorney Generals office and are now being investigated again, this
not only happened to us but to 2 other couples, all of us within 4
months of each other and ever other couple we met or chatted with had
lost their referral. It's sad that our Government still allows this
man to do business.

Fast forward 1 year and here we are waiting for a referral and
getting excited about being parents again. It took us about 9 months
to get the courage up to trust someone (an agency) enough to try this
again but here we are praying this is the agency to help us unite with
our children. I have to believe that one day I will have
someone calling me MOMMY and the child(ren) that are meant to be a
part of our family was just not ready yet and we were in the wrong
place last year. I am a believer that everything happens for a reason
and sometimes we may not ever know why but there is a bigger plan.