No News

There is unfortunately no news on the adoption front.

Mulling the Private Decision

Decisions, decisions, decisions.... I feel like when I tell my husband I like a piece of furniture in a certain place... and then look at it and go, "Nope I think I like it better where it was." And it's always one of the heaviest pieces of furniture too.... Anyone else do that?

We were all ready to make our blog private on Friday, and then I decided to research a few things. First, people would have to log into the blog every time they read it. Not a problem for google folks, but those who don't have an account (like our folks and family) will have to create one, and then remember the password. We want this to be as easy as possible for our family to stay in touch.

Secondly, if you use google reader like I do... you can't follow a private blog. This is a newer to me function that helps me manage all the blogs I read, and I know a lot of people use it too! I don't know how I waited so long to figure this out, but it helps me tremendously!

Finally, I seem to be a magnet for blogger bugs recently. I swear if they have it, it will probably find me. (I wonder if my blog's immune system has been weakened or something... ) So I am hesitant to go private and get some bug that locks me out, and then no one can read my blog. Which Murphy's Law says would probably happen right before we are ready to leave.

Having said all that... I am still mulling the decision. Thank you all for sending me an email, if we do decide to go private...I will send out an invitation to join our blog!

Football Updates

Today, like every Saturday, is football day here at our house. Both boys had games today and they both won! Ds1 has a pretty amazing team. They have almost all played before and the team is pretty cohesive. Ds1 was sooo close to catching his first pass.... I can't wait to see when he does, and what he actually does after that. (As in run downfield or what?)

Ds2 has a brand new team. They are 7/8 year olds. His team actually won for the first time today. In OVERTIME!! They have improved so much since they first started out. Especially tackling. Our defense did such a good job holding them at the very end, right to the one yard line...when time ran out! The announcer said after we won... "I don't know if everyone is aware of this...but ever single player on the EH team is a first time player". It was a great win! :-) (Especially after last weeks blow out loss) lol!

Here are a few photos of the boys from last week. I was going to get a good posed photo of ds2, but after the game he was too hot and tired. So I'll have to try again next week....Naturally I forgot my camera today. I need to set it out and get it ready the night before a game!

Homeschol Updates- Non adoption related

Since I focused so much on the adoption front, and I'm tired of it.... I thought I would post something that is actually going well here at our house.

We have really begun to dive into history and science. The boys are enjoying learning about the Middle Ages. I am too, now that I purchased one key element. It's an audio CD of the reading in our history book. Story of the World. Totally worth every penny I spent! You see my voice seems to tire easily when I read, probably because I use it so much during the day repeating simple instructions to two boys!

You know.... "please take the laundry downstairs, please empty the dishwasher, please take this pile of clothes and put them away, and the belt goes in your closet hung up so we can find it when we need it. Whose snakes and spiders are these? You know that if you leave them out down here they become mine, and you have to earn them back..... Did you straighten the playroom before dad comes home? I hope your beds are made and your rooms look good... do I need to come and check? Who didn't flush the toilet??? Come on guys, you have to remember to flush the toilet. Please finish your seatwork.... ____ focus please. ____ no daydreaming. Okay, I'm setting the timer now.... you have 10 minutes to finish the rest of the problems on that worksheet. Are you ready for your spelling quiz? Did you review your spelling, bible verses, multiplication facts..... etc etc etc. No I don't know what a Komodo dragon eats, but we'll look it up after you finish your spelling sheet. No I don't know anyone a Komodo dragon has attacked, I don't even think we'll find that out when we look it up... did you finish that sheet yet. No, no more questions on Komodo dragons, until that is finished and then I promise you we will look it up. Yes I do think you would get hurt if you jumped off a 7 story building. I'm not sure if you would die, maybe you would get hurt really bad. No, I really don't know how hurt you would get... I don't know anyone personally who has done that.

See what I mean??? Tiring!! Plus, I have to read several other books out loud to them, and that can be tiring on my voice too. I don't know if you are like this, but when I read out loud, I don't retain as much as when I just hear something read. Maybe it's because my brain is focused on the reading part that the retention part of my hearing is not up to snuff. Maybe it's just cause I'm getting older... (probably). But I can tell that when I am listening to these audio CD's I'm retaining more and my kids seem to be too. Then I go through review questions with them to see how well they got the material. They have been telling Chris all they learned in history each night, and you can tell they are enjoying it. Plus it frees my time up to focus on a fun activity project to go along with our history. On Monday we will be designing our own block printing projects representing the block printing that the Chinese did.

So, history is going well, and so is Latin. We are using Prima Latina, and my boys love it! We have it on video and while the instructor has a wicked southern accent.... not especially helpful for Latin pronunciation. We can deal with that. My boys have remembered all 25 of their vocabulary words thus far and can tell me some English derivatives that use the Latin root word. Very cool! I'm encouraged to see how this will help them in deciphering words and their meaning as they get older.

We are also learning Russian phrases. I ordered a CD that Kim recommended called Russian Phrases for Children. It's really good, and we have learned quite a bit from the first two tracks already. It's all about repetition, repetition repetition. (at least for me). Both my boys surprise me with what they are able to say.. My youngest one has such a memory on him.... I struggle to remember what a phrase is for "you are so handsome"... and he pulls it right out of his hat, plus the phrase for "you a so beautiful" too! Stinker!

I think that's it for now. We have been enjoying our time homeschooling, it's been interesting and filled with much laughter...which is always a good thing!

Hi Everyone!

Thank you for all your kind and encouraging comments! I am doing much better. It's amazing what a little bit of chocolate can do... :-) Okay, the chocolate helped, but it was time away and in prayer refocusing that was what really helped!

Chris and I have also decided to take our blog private. At least until we are home with our children. We plan on doing the conversion by Monday. So email us if you would like to follow along on our journey. The email address is on our sidebar.

Thank you all for encouraging us along the way!!! We continue to pray we get the call.....

Jackie and Chris

I am having to take a step back from the adoption stuff today. I learned yesterday that several of our supporting documents have not arrived in Moscow, and so they obviously have not been translated yet. The circumstances couldn't be helped as to why they are not there... it was completely beyond our agency's control. So, our dossier has not arrived at the MOE yet. Consequently we are not registered yet. This is disheartening, as we know there are two children waiting for us. Well, and not really our children....because I suppose the official referral must come from the MOE. Since everyone thought the paperwork would have been in this week...and they had children in mind, we were on a fast track to travel. I'm not sure what is going to happen now. I am reminded of Becky's post in what seems like ages ago, when she wrote about the super fast train leaving the station, but they were not on that train. I can relate to that......

I'm learning a lesson...until you get travel dates and official information.... don't plan. Don't even try to plan. As usual my old stand by line is with international adoption... you never know... until you know. And quite frankly sometimes it just stinks.

On top of that we are still dealing with our old agency and trying to get our dossier withdrawn from the region... and back to us. We were given the steps to take by our former agency rep. and now the head of the agency has emailed Chris and said they will not give translated dossier's back. He said that they have invested a lot of money to have them translated and they do not return them. Chris wanted to email back, (but he didn't) that it was our money that paid for that translation and it's our dossier. So, that continues to be a headache.

Sorry this post is so melancholy. It just gets a little hard planning and trying to work around everyone's schedules etc etc etc. It's just well..... tiring. I'm going to take a little break from here until we hear some news on our official registration and I guess official referrals. No, they are not officially our referrals yet and yes, I do believe we can lose them.

I am trying hard to remind myself that God is in control of all these things. I know He is...even the details as to why our dossier is being held up. I know He has a plan, and I need to just rest in that assurance. I guess it's times like this where I need to remember my faith and try less to "understand". And I guess I better add in my sidebar, another favorite verse that speaks to my heart today. "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Hebrews 11:1

Luggage Question

Can anyone who has been through this before tell me what size luggage we are allowed to bring internationally? I'll research it myself too, but I thought I'd throw it out there. Chris and I have a gift card that we have never used for Sears and they have luggage on sale. Ours is 14 years old and doesn't even have pull bars, or even a strap to pull it through the airport. (Gasp!) We would have to actually carry it. If we have to make a run for it to catch a connecting flight, like I have seen several adoptive families do, we might be in some serious trouble! lol!

Anyway, we are excited because it will end up costing us maybe $10. Yay!!

Fingerprints.....Check!

I woke up at O' dark thirty this morning to get ready for our drive to get our biometrics fingerprints done. Let me tell you I am sooo not a morning person! A Night Owl, that's what I am. My husband kissed me on the forehead and informed that it was time to get up (6:00am). I wasn't quite sure he had a head left, after I nearly bit it off. A shower helped somewhat and of course coffee. Do you know that at 6:00am not even the birds are up at my house. We have a tree right outside our bedroom window and I didn't here a peep from any bird! I can't even say getting up that early is for the birds, because they weren't even up! At almost 7am I was downstairs in the homeschool room which is right next to that tree, and I finally heard the birds chirping.

Anyway, we had packed lunches the night before and baked blueberry muffins for our road trip to USCIS. I even got a roast with potatoes and carrots ready in the crockpot for dinner. I'll be glad I did that when we get home at 8:30pm from football practice!

So, here I am typing in the car, as Chris has mobile internet on his laptop. Fingerprints are done, and it went really smoothly. We were in and out in like 20 minutes! Almost all our schoolwork is done for the day as well, as we had 2 hours both ways in the car to work on it! So, today's been a success so far. My goal on the adoption front will be to work on the video connection. I'm dreading it....I hope it's as easy as Skype was.

Quick Update... and new goals

Kim- Once again Thank you for the tip on the Russian Phrases for Children. I emailed the gentleman just in time before he heads on vacation for a week. It ships out today! Yay! We are going to have a crash course in Russian phrases our children can understand, but it will be worth it. Chris and I did a good job cramming in school, so this will be good! lol!

Thanks to everyone for posting comments about carrying your laptop in country. Good stuff to know! I will absolutely be using MSWord and then pasting into my blog to save on internet time.

Goals for the week: Now that Skype is up and running and my dad is enjoying talking to me via webcam, it's time to tackle another technical job. I'm going to figure out how to upload video from our camera to the computer. Then I'm going to figure out how to send it in an email. I think this will be really helpful if we need to send video of our children to the IAD Dr we are going to work with here in the states. Plus I want to send family video of our trip too! So that is my technical goal... wish me luck as I'm not really that techy as they say.

We will also be contacting and confirming our IAD physician. That is a must handle this week!

The first set of fingerprints went out yesterday, and later this week we will drive to get the other set done. I still need to label the children's photo albums. I have the albums already.... Here is a picture here.

It's a busy week on the adoption front, just handling all the little details. I just don't want to have to do all this little stuff when we get the call with travel dates. I'll have enough to do when that happens!

Questions?

For those of you that have done this before.... how exactly did you go about labeling your pictures for the new children? I mean the alphabets are completely different. Any direction like to a website or something....would be so appreciated! Hey, email me offline if you have step by step instructions.... :-)

Secondly, Carrie you mentioned the seeing the little ones before they come home from Russia. (Meaning family back home via webcam). Did you take pictures of S on the webcam? Did you bring your laptop to the orphanage? I think that is a great idea, but I think I'm missing something? I probably am! LOL!

Since most of you brought laptops to Russia. Did you carry them with you all the time? We have a snazzy laptop backpack (okay, it's just black...but it's pretty cool- Chris won it in a raffle at his company picnic). We are going to make sure dh carries that around on the plane etc. We don't really have a slimline laptop and the thing is heavy! It will work much better on his back.

More questions about carry-on bags in a later post....

Skyped Up!

I am sooo excited! That was the easiest thing to download and get set up. Really... it was a piece of cake, even walking my dad through it on the phone. Then we tested it all out. Clear as a bell, and totally free between our computers. How cool is that? But then the best part... web cams!!!

We got one when we purchased our laptop and dad had one on his too. It was such a cool thing to talk and see each other! I just took a leap into the 21st century and brought my dad along with me! I can't wait to talk like this when they head to Florida. And my girlfriend in California! Oh, to be able to see her and her new baby in real time.

Yep, I am one happy girl!

Our week: A Look Ahead.

This coming week is fingerprint week! Yep, that's right Chris and I have multiple sets of fingerprints to give. First up is for our FBI clearance. This one is done at our local police station and the prints are mailed with an application of sorts to the FBI, or one of their processing centers. This we need to get done tomorrow! I will feel much better when that item is checked off my list.

Second stop is for our USCIS biometric prints. Yes we did these a year ago, but they expire. Thanks to my friend Kim we were able to send a letter and request the one time free fingerprinting. We just got our invitations in the mail Saturday.... yay! So, that will be handled this week as well.

So two sets of fingerprints and a whole lot of prep work to get done. I want to try and download Skype on the laptop and on my folks as well. Wish me luck, as I'm going to attempt to explain this set up over the phone. Not an easy task, and one that could have me banging my head against the wall pretty quick!

I also want to try and find some luggage for our trip and get the pictures in the albums for the kiddos all labeled in Russian if I can. Hmmmm.... That should be interesting!

I'll keep you posted on everything else... and Kim, if I haven't emailed you (which I know I haven't) I would love that excel spreadsheet!

What's in a name?

Well, I don't really know what's in a name.... but I DO know Chris and I aren't on the same page picking a name!

Let me start by saying we aren't even sure if we will be giving the children a new name or keeping their Russian names. I guess we won't know until we meet them etc. But we wanted to be prepared with some name ideas just in case.

So, I went online and checked out a baby name finder sight. We both went through around 300 top baby names, and picked about 14 we liked. Separately. Then we got together and each took turns calling out a name to see if they made it on our individual lists. Do you want to know how many we had in common?

ONE! Can you believe that? I thought we might have had several that matched....but only one match came up. And it's not even one of my favorites! LOL! I cracked up as we kept reading off a name and saying, "It's not on my list."

Chris said I needed to go back and pray about my list.... Ha ha! I told him he better re-check HIS, because I liked the names I selected! ;-)

Great Information!

My friend Kim has posted a great packing list of sorts for Russia. Things she definitely needed and things she could have left at home. For those PAP's who are still waiting for referrals and haven't traveled yet, you might find her post helpful!

Picture Post!

I found the camera! Yay! First I have to share that we used these closets as extra storage for a ton of stuff. They were filled to the top! Now we have to find another place in the house to store it.

Here are the before and after shots.... as you can tell we have quite a bit of work to do.......

Before Photos of each closet and the rest of room:

After photos of each closet and the rest of the room:

Chris still needs to add the hanging bars for clothes in this closet. Oh, and we need to find some clothes too!

And this is the rest of the room! Now where in the world are we going to put all this stuff?

Is this the right place???

If you just did a double take and wondered if you came to the correct blog... yep this is it! I just did a little makeover. It's a little wild and busy for my taste, but I guess it matches my whirlwind feeling pretty well! Now if you feel like you need to lie down after reading it...let me know and I'll change it back!

I still haven't found the camera, but when I do, I'll be posting pictures of the bedroom. (No it is not done yet!) But you can see the closets, before and after, along with the residual mess that is left!

Racking my brain....

I'm sure many of you can relate to having misplaced something. So you know the feeling of digging and digging to try and find it, and you can picture it in your mind. That's how I'm feeling today.

Chris and I worked on the new bedroom today. (Pictures coming as soon as I locate my camera). No, that's not the thing I'm missing, although it is another thing I misplaced. To say our house is slightly topsy-turvy right now, would be an understatement. If I had the camera I would show you the bedroom with all the stuff piled everywhere!

What I AM missing is a bin of clothing. I have pretty much saved most of the clothes from when the boys were little. I have just about everything but the size 2T- 3T. I actually have some summer 2T stuff, but it's all the winter 2T-3T that I am missing. Chris has been in the attic 3 times looking for it, and he pulled every bin down for me to look through. No luck. What a bummer. So, our older referral has some sz 4 clothing, if it will fit him. But our younger referral has nothing! I guess I will have to wait until between trips and go shopping like crazy! lol! I won't buy anything new until I get their actual sizes and measurements. Then I will be hitting consignment, and ebay. Oh, it's gonna be a fun time! lol!

I am also hoping I can find some bedding I need. I have a crib set from when DS1 was born. And believe it or not I still like it. I have the accessories to it and everything. I am hoping to find another one on ebay. Naturally I just saw one a month or so ago, but I didn't buy it, as I wasn't sure if I would need a crib quilt or what. But I was reminded that toddler beds actually fit a standard crib mattress, so that quilt would have been fine. Can I find it again? No........

I'll keep looking though. No sense buying two whole new bedding sets, when I like what I have. You know me... if I can somehow decorate frugally, and make it look awesome... I will! However, don't be surprised to find a picture post of brand new bedding that was on sale, that i just happened to fall in love with. This is the fun part for me... I love to decorate!

That's the update for now. I sure hope we find that bin of clothes, but I have a feeling it is g-o-n-e.