August 27, 2010

On this day 3 years ago Chris and I sat in a court room in Ukraine in hopes of officially becoming Milana's parents. The judge talked a lot and asked a lot of questions. He went over our entire dossier while we sat and listened to him speak in a language quite foreign to us. Our facillitator translated and told us when and how to answer when he asked questions of us.

Before rendering his decision the judge went back to his office. Eventually we were called back and given the good news that he would allow us to be Milana's parents.

And so began the ten day waiting period....

Just thought I'd stick a fairly recent picture of Milana on here.

I really love this picture of her. It shows off her wild and crazy side. Wait..is there another side??

We Have Travel Dates!!!

Four weeks ago our dossier was submitted in our children's country. We waited anxiously for travel dates. About a week and a half ago we had heard that we most likely wouldn't get our travel dates until sometime in September because the government was on vacation for the rest of the month. Regardless I continued to check my email in hopes that there might be something. I checked EVERY day SEVERAL times a day. (Wouldn't you)?

Last Friday life got a little more hectic than usual. Checking emails was not an option. The thought of travel was so far from my mind. Flash forward to yesterday. It was a teacher workday. After spending six hours in trainings my team and I decided to head to Panara for something to eat. As the car turned out of the school parking lot I realized I had tons of emails. I started deleting emails and then screamed. I had a travel date. There in my inbox was an email from Shelley - gosh I love that Shelley. Talk about a wonderful surprise! Our travel dates came when I was least expecting them. I love it!

So...in a month I will finally get to meet our two newest little ones. If you have adopted before then you know how excited I am! The thought of finally getting to hold them, play with them, snuggle them, love on them is just so amazing. I start to tear up just thinking about getting to meet them. If only I could bring them home at the end of this trip. Sigh :(  That is not how things work in their country. I understand that. It stinks a big one though. For now I will just be happy knowing that I get to meet and hold and love on my babies! Feeling so very grateful :)

Family Fun At The Beach

Cards For A Cause Fundraiser

We have been given a wonderful opportunity to fundraise for our adoption. We will be selling these beautiful handcrafted greeting cards in order to help raise money to bring Danny & Riley home. At this time we will only be selling them locally as it is a bit expensive to ship them. If you live in the Raleigh/Durham area and are interested in purchasing one or more of these sets of cards please let me know.

The cards are just $30 for a box of 30 cards. Box 1 contains 30 handmade all occasion, individually designed and embellished greeting cards and coordinating envelopes in a keepsake box. Box 2 contains 30 handcrafted and novelty cards for kids, with matching envelopes and funky stickers. These cards come in a convenient magnetic storage box.

Feel free to share this information with your friends and family. The more boxes we sell the more money we raise to bring our little ones home!

Thank you so much for your support :)

Winner of our 2nd American Girl Doll Fundraiser

Once again I would like to thank everyone for your support! Thank you to everyone who donated and/or shared our American Girl Doll Fundraiser.

And now for the winner. The winner is.............Sally P. Congratulations Sally :)

Back By Popular Demand - American Girl Doll Fundraiser Take 2

It seems that this was quite the popular fundriaser. After drawing a winner yesterday I received a couple of donations marked specifically for this Fundraiser. I started emailing people and they asked if I was doing another and if so to hold onto their donation for the next one. This morning I woke up to a couple more donations. So....I guess this IS the next one. No sense putting it off.

Once again, as soon as we get 20 donations of $20 we will draw a winner. Donations can be made through paypal to djennifer2@yahoo.com. This is helping us bring our two angels home - Danny and Riley.
www.reecesrainbow.org/sponsorwojcik

As always we thank you for all of your support! Good luck to everyone :)

Today Was A Good Day

Today was such an amazing day. It started when I checked my email at about 6:20 this morning and saw that I had an email from Shelley telling me that our dossier had been approved yesterday and we had gotten our verbal referral. Now all we are waiting for is a signature from the Minister so that we can get our travel dates.

I can't begin to tell you how excited I am about this - how excited we all are. I am a ball of nerves just thinking about meeting our two little ones. I can NOT wait!!! Oh...to get to hold them and hug them and just love on them!!! It's going to be difficult waiting for that signature! I hope and pray that we don't have to wait too much longer to get to go meet them!

The other reason today was such a good day was that I got a fabulous package in the mail. This fabulous package contained a jar of dark chocolate toffee and a jar of white chocolate tofee. It is SO delicious!!!  If you have ever tried Renee Tam's Smitten goodies you will know why I was so excited. If you have not tried them....well you should! Talk about delicious!!!

Hope everyone had as good of a day as I did! Thanks for all of your love and support!