All I want for my birthday...

Today is my birthday and all I want is our home study to be approved. That and maybe for this cough to go away so that I can get more than two consecutive hours of sleep at a time. I will not lie, the past week has been frustrating. We must have given the adoption agency a hundred reasons why we want to adopt and it feels like most of them have been rejected as not good enough, too religious, not specific, etc. I'm almost to the point of asking them what it is they want me to say so that I can say it. I know this is part of the process, I know the process can be frustrating, but this specifically has been hard on me. Tim is so good, he just takes it in stride. I am not patient. I know that the longer this takes the less and less likely it is anything gets done in Russia before mid-January. We did get a wonderful surprise this week. I have been drooling over the Rosetta Stone Russian program for probably two months and our family sent it to Tim and I as a combined birthday present! BbI! (that's sort of Russian for Thank you!) We have such a wonderful supportive family we could not have asked for better! God is faithful. God controls even Russian bureaucrats. I will be strong, take heart, and wait on the Lord.

Paint, quilts, and reasons why

The last week has been crazy.

Today I took the day off of work and did a whole bunch of stuff for the kids. I

cleaned out the closet in their room and then my mom and I went to JoAnn's to get quilting fabric for their quilts. This was an adventure as neither my mom nor I really quilt, but after seeing the price of toddler bedding I knew that that wasn't going to happen. So quilts are started. I bought two stuffed animals on amazon and Tim and I painted their room tonight. It's scary to prepare this way. Nothing is assured but God is faithful and it seems right and good.

We also waited all week for our home study to be approved. It was supposed to be approved today but instead we got an e-mail from our social worker saying that the director in St. Petersburg was worried because the courts there have been especially difficult lately and she wanted us to elaborate on why we wanted to adopt, why didn't we wait and have biological children first, why now, etc. This was a little hard to hear. There are lots of reasons why we want to adopt now and why we don't want to have biological children first but all of those reasons are pretty personal and none of them are probably going to satisfy a Russian judge. We wrote back a bunch of reasons but I don't know if it's going to be enough but as my mom said "God controls Russian judges too."

Pray for our homestudy and pray that God gives us the right words to explain our hearts.

Lots of News is Great News!!!

So we finished our homestudy yesterday. It was relatively painless. Our social worker came out and was probably only here for twenty minutes.

And then this afternoon we got the email we'd been waiting for. We can get S. They found another agency. And E is still available. It's the reason she's still available that's a little problematic. We knew their mom had tested positive for HIV and Hepatitis C but that S was negative. E is still testing positive but she's only a little over a year old and apparently false positives are pretty regular up until about 18 months, although from what I've read it's can be true even later than that. We have to ask ourselves if we are prepared to raise a child with these medical problems. We are keeping the door open for now. I can't bear the thought of splitting them up or leaving my little E in what I've read are terrible baby homes (they put babies that test positive in separate baby homes). Tim is more skeptical. 

We also found out that little S just tested positive for TB. This isn't tragic, it may just delay our travel. But pray for the little guy. Pray that he heals fast and that God would prepare his heart for us. 

But we got them. We are a go!

Homestudy Started!!!

We have officially begun the homestudy process! This is very exciting because that means that our homestudy could be complete in the next two weeks and then we can begin submitting paperwork to Russia. Hopefully the St. Petersburg problem will be solved in two weeks. If you pray for anything pray that God would move mountains there so that we can bring S home.