Details

Details.  Anyone who is even thinking about adoption needs to excel at these.  Al has done a wonderful job at keeping all the paperwork running smoothly (which is no small feat), but time and time again in this process, we have seen little God details, and that makes this whole process exciting and reassuring.  Here is one such example.

My sister, Rebecca, lives in Austria.  She runs a business that essentially helps business professionals refine and polish their business English.  One of her more recent customers/students/friends, is actually from Lithuania!  Given our recent life-changing events, this was a super cool connection!

It gets better.

It turns out that her friend is from THE town our twins live in.
She has not only been to their Baby House, but has WORKED there! (many years ago, before our twins where there, but still, how amazing?!)
She knows the director of the Baby House and considers her a friend.
She knows this is a great place- that they really work hard at exposing the kids to lots of experience, that they love the kids, that lots of the kids are there only temporarily (foster care).
She will be there, potentially when we will (around Christmas!).
She is happy to be a tour guide/translator for us!

Even when we bring the twins home to the US, we will have a connection to their home town!  We will potentially get to see the best that their town has to offer from someone who knows it and love it.

How incredible is this?!?  I love that God is in the details!

Speedy Paperwork

Today the official paperwork arrived on the twins!  It is really amazing at how quickly this is all falling into place- kinda makes me think that God wants these twins in our home sooner rather than later!

Here is how "fast" this is happening.  We received the email referral on Thursday, October 3rd.  October 10th all paperwork arrived at the Lithuanian lawyer's office- they stated it would take a week to a month for this to happen.  Today, October 16th, all documents arrived, fully translated.  That's SUPER fast to translate all these documents AND get it to Michigan!  What a huge blessing!

We have composed and sent in our official acceptance.

What does this mean?

It means that potentially tomorrow, Friday, October 17th, Asher and Annalise will learn that after 4.5 years, they finally have a family that wants them.  If they don't learn it Friday, they should be told on Monday.

I can't even imagine what their reaction will be.  They have lived in this Baby House their entire lives.  That is all they know.  BUT We have been told that kids are VERY excited to be given a family- that at 4 1/2, they understand what a big deal this is, and it tends to be a rather exciting time for them.  I so wish I could be there, but I can't.  Instead, we will send a care package to them.  It has things that we have been told they enjoy- water colors, a doll, and a coloring book for Annalise; matchbox car, Legos, and a coloring book for Asher.  Also included is a book full of pictures of us for them.  There is also a ton of little plastic key-chain monkeys for them to share with all their friends.  Little things- but things that I hope they treasure and know that are sent with lots of love!  We can now also send weekly emails and pictures via email!

We are SO excited!  Please continue to pray that things go smoothly and quickly.  Pray that we can sell lots of raffle tickets as the final $10,000 is getting super close, super fast!

Care package ready to be mailed!

Raffle Time- Round One- Katie Kraft Photography!

Time is quickly approaching when our twins will be coming home!  Yay!  Friends have been incredibly generous in wanting to be a part of helping to bring them home.  

Now it's YOUR turn to help!  The best part- we BOTH win!

Each week, for the next few weeks, we will raffle off one prize.  This week- a mini photo session with the amazingly talented Katie Kraft!  Next week, a collection of 31 products- think of it as all your one-stop-Christmas shopping for teachers/moms/daughters/girl friends!  The following week, an entire season of i9 sports!

Details about Katie Kraft Photography:
The mini session can either be family or child, will be an outdoor session for 20 minutes, for up to 5 people, will include 5 high resolution images, expires end of 2014. Samples of her photos can be seen at: http://katiekraft.com

How will this work?

DONATE to our adoption fund through our WEPAY account in the right hand sidebar- just click the embedded link that essentially our beautiful faces!

FOR $10 you get 2 entries.

FOR $25 you get 7 entries.                  

FOR $50 you get 15 entries.

 You can also share for 1 FREE ENTRY PER DAY until the raffle closes on Saturday, October 19 2013 at 5pm ET.  

So share on Facebook!  No more than one free entry a day (so that’s a possible 9 free entries for this amazing deal), but you will still get major props from me if you blast it from all of your social media outlets or share on your blog 4 million times a day. 

Referral

It came today!  The best news so far!  A sweet email stating that our request to adopt our twins was granted!

What does this mean?  It means we wait for the official paperwork from Lithuania (birth certificates, proof of orphan-ness, etc).  Once we have that we will send it, along with our form (i800), to the USCIS (which is still open and working since they are paid by fees and not the federal government, whew!).  They will look over the documents and forms and send us another form.  This new form we send to Lithuania and a judge will set a court date.  Once that date is set, we will know when we will get to travel- squeal!

We are boldly praying for Christmas- to have our family of 6 under one roof.  It may be January, but December is most certainly a possibility!

Adoption Services- aka ALMOST matched with the kiddos!

Adoption Services- We are finallllly here!  What does this mean?  It means that the people who get to decide what children we will be allowed to adopt, have all our paperwork.  It may not seem huge given the gazillion steps we have already done, but this is huge.  HUGE!  Hopefully soon- in a week or two- we will have our referral!

An added bonus- when we got the email, on Sunday, that we were at AS, it came with new pictures of Asher and Annalise!  Asher is actually laughing in one picture, which made my Mama's heart SO happy as he has looked rather pensive in the other pictures we have.  Annalise has crazy, beautiful curls, that evidently the orphanage just piles into a waterspout pony tail on the top of her head- so totally adorable!  In the background of these pictures are other kids playing and lots of fun, colorful, clean toys.  This also made my Mama heart happy.

As we drove around today- the song that we have deemed "Asher and Annalise's Song"- Love Never Fails- we heard it 5 times!  FIVE!  Each time we hear it we stop what we are doing and pray for Asher and Annalise- and we are so excited to have been reminded to pray for them so much today.

Good things will be happening soon.  I can just feel it!

Chick Fil A

Adoption isn't cheep.  But we aren't letting the cost stop us!  Another fundraiser we were able to was to have a Chick Fil A Night!  It was lots of fun and many people were exposed to the fact that there are millions of children world-wide that need Forever Homes.  And hopefully we will get a little money to put towards the adoption!

Signs we had out by the spinning wheel

The Spinning Wheel- we got 100% of this money!

This part of the restaurant was entirely full of our neighbors, friends & students!

This sums up these two- SO excited to tell people about their brother and sister who they can't wait to meet!

In Translation...

Our documents are being translated.  This is super exciting and also another chance to practice patience.  Hopefully the translated documents will make it to the Adoption Office in Lithuania soon.  By mid-October we should have our official referral in our hands!!  And by the end of October we should know when we will be traveling!

So. Super. Exciting!

And So. Super. Scary.

I can't believe how drastically our lives are about to change forever.  It's scary and exciting all rolled into one.  God is good, though.  We are continually blessed by friends and family- always at the perfect moment and in the most perfect way.

Almost daily we get little confirmations that God is lining things up for our new kiddos- finding out our current eye Dr has a staff member who speaks Lithuanian, finding out there is a family at my school who has 2 children from Lithuania, finding out that there is an elderly Lithuanian lady who just lost her husband and desperately wants a new project (us!).

While we wait, Al and I read and learn all we can about Brain Balance, Out of Sync Children, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum, and all things Lithuanian.  The more informed we are, the better parents we will be for these two- and lots of what we are learning is actually helping us be better parents to Alden and Adeline!

Hopefully we will know something soon about our kiddos!