We are still in the "waiting" part of this adoption. We are waiting on our home study to be approved by Beacon House (the Russian agency that works here in the U.S.). They are located in Iberville Parish in Louisiana and they work with adoption agencies like ours (Building Blocks Adoption Service) here in Ohio. We chose Building Blocks because of their Christian facilitation of adoptions and because they were a "one stop shop," where we could be guided and provided home study services as well as help and guidance through forming the paperwork (called dossiers) for Russia. Two of these packets are required for Russia. One of them is submitted before we meet our little Katie Allison and the second is submitted after our first trip to the region in order to schedule a court date.
We wanted the process to be as simple as possible and though there is A LOT of paperwork, they are awesome at guiding us through it and are always there when we need to talk to them via phone. I even got to visit the agency the other day when I went up to Cleveland (their offices are located in Medina--about 45 minutes outside of Cleveland). I saw a bunch of bulletin boards with babies and children that they have placed in "forever families." We can't wait to add our Katie Allison's photo to that board when all this is final. Well, now on to the actual real purpose of this note.
So, Aaron and I had a wonderful day today! We took a walk around the block near our apartment because it was SUCH a beautiful day today with so much sunshine!!!! As most of you know, we have been living here in Beavercreek for over two years now (going on three) and we did not even know about this little furniture store around the corner called Woodcraft. It is awesome!!! Apparently, a lot of their furniture is made by the Amish and the quality is amazing. Plus, how could it get any better?
The prices are phenomenal and they will stain almost anything to match other items in your furniture. Her furniture is mostly Cherry colored, with her dresser being a darker version of Cherry...but I don't mind so much if there are some variations of the wood colors.
I now have an official wish list of stuff from this place for Katie's room and for her in general. We purchased the rocking chair below, but here are some other things I spied that I want for her room and her little play areas:
1) Armoire (since Katie doesn't have her own dedicated closet, we will need a place to hang all her pretty little dresses). We fully intend on dressing her in cute little dresses as often as possible. Aaron said, "You're going to make her a girly, girl aren't you?" To which I replied, "I certainly am."
2) Wooden Toy Chest (this is nice because it has a safety feature on it where the lid locks into place and won't come down on her little hands or head).
3) Shelving unit (my plan for this is a place to put pretty colored canvas fold-out boxes to store diapers and her personal things...maybe bath stuff, etc.) and then the lower shelves can be used for books and her toys
4) Her own "Katie size" rocking chair!!!
Man, if you had seen this place and you were expecting or adopting, you'd have felt like you were in furniture heaven!!! I can't wait til' we get some more stuff for her room and our house for her arrival. I guess the beauty of it is that we have a few months before she will be our forever baby girl!!!!
Hello from the wonderful U.S. of A!!! I am so GLAD to be home and in our own environment!!! Our air travel didn't exactly go as planned and we made it home after 1am! She is SUCH a trooper and handled the flights miraculously!!! She slept the entire flight from Vlad to Moscow. The first night in Moscow she went right down to bed and did wonderfully! The flight from Moscow to Washington D.C. was quite a different story for little miss! She didn't want a SINGLE toy that I packed for her to play with or even anything to eat. There were a lot of Russian men on the plane and she must have went up to every one of them, charming them and then they picked her up and said something to her in Russian and this trend continued for the 9 1/2 of the ten hour flight. She did not sleep but just for 30 minutes on that long flight from Moscow, so neither did I. (I am about to go to sleep as Aaron has stepped in and kind of taken over until ...
So, today was one heck of a day! I was down in the dirt and worried about what that woman in Tennessee did with sending her child back unaccompanied to Russia. And, we got a call and our home study was approved by Beacon House!!! We are SO happy!!! So, from here, we just have to wait for the home study to be sent back to us, notarized and certified then we can send it on to immigrations. We have to wait for our I-171H approval before we can officially submit our first set of dossier documents!!! We are half way there, according to our agency!!! I can't believe it! This is one of those "small victories" that life sends us on days when we really, really need it!
Today, we visited Katie again at the baby home in Ussirysk and returned to find out that the entire city of 800,000 in Vladivostok has no water today. They turned it off apparently to fix pipes before the cold season. This is really roughing it for us! No showers tonight and no laundry either. I was going to wash some clothes, but we will just have to do without tonight. Often, as Americans, I think we forget some of the luxuries we are afforded when others in this world, like our Katie are not so lucky. But WE are the ones who are eternally blessed that God allowed this match between us to happen. Here are some photos from today. We will have to save the videos to upload when we return next week. The internet is just too slow here. Ussirysk Baby Home #3 Waiting for them to bring her to us today... She LOVES bananas!!!! She already really loves walking around holding BOTH our hands... My favorite l...
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