I’m Sorry Sweet Girl & Facebook Official

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I’m so sorry Sweet Girl. I got so caught up that I didn’t remember. I have spend the last week doing things I felt were important. I have been so busy doing things I felt were so urgent, that I forgot to remember you. Oh, I think about you all day. You are on my phone background so everytime I look at my phone I see your face. It still makes me catch my breath when I see you on there too! You are the reason that I spend my night when we get home from work blogging, fundraising (well, preparing for fundraisers), researching, facebooking, filling out paperwork, researching flights and on and on. These “things” have started to consume me and they made me forget that you are what is more important. I stopped talking to you, I stopped praying as much for you, I stopped wishing you a good night when we all go to sleep. I got so caught up in bringing you home, that I forgot that you are living a world away from me right now. I promise Sweet Girl, I will remember that the focus here is you and not all this other stuff.

And with that, I want to introduce you to some people. Mama and Daddy made you “facebook official” today. That means that right now, lots of people from our lives, and soon to be your life, are reading this right now. They might be a little confused by what’s going on too. So with that said, facebook, meet Sweet Girl:

Sweet Girl is 4 years old and lives in Eastern Europe. She is soon to be our daughter as we are in the process of adopting her. If you’d like to follow us in this journey, we’d love to have you along. We would also love your support and your prayers. On the right sidebar, you can follow this blog. I will also start sharing new posts on facebook. There are several posts in here already about where we are in the process and some about what led us to Sweet Girl so go back and read if you like. If you have any questions about why adoption, why Sweet Girl, why we aren’t sharing her country or real name, the adoption process, etc, let us know – we’d love to share more – we just aren’t sure what people want to know!
And STAY TUNED, we are launching a HUGE giveaway on Monday 6/4. There will be tons and tons of great prizes and it should be very exciting!

REGISTRATION!

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I wish I could post a picture of myself right now. I’m a ball of nerves. 


When I saw Sweet Girl move to my family found me, it felt like when you get a positive pregnancy test. It was very surreal and exciting, but there was still a great deal of doubt and hesitation. You knew there was this life growing inside you, but you weren’t sure you’d get to keep it. 


This morning at 7:43am I got an email from our adoption agency. Keep in mind that I’ve only gotten a handful of unsolicited emails from her (meaning I asked a question and she was answering). The last email I got from her stated that Vita (our eastern europe coordinator) would be unable to register us until 6/12. It made my goal of June travel very unlikely. She said we’d ask Vita to ask the officials for a June travel date. Anyway, so when I saw the email this morning I first assumed it would be word from Vita that we could request a June travel date, but that there were no guarantees, blah, blah. What I call a no promises email. Adoption agencies like those. 


Anyway, I was rushing out the door so I wouldn’t be late for work like I was yesterday and quickly glanced at the email. I had to read it twice, I was so confused. It said “Your registration documents were accepted today! ” I was so surprised that I couldn’t process what she meant. I thought, they weren’t supposed to be registered until 6/12? But, it’s true! We are officially registered! They accepted our documents on the spot! They have 10 days to issue us the official referral and we’ll get a travel date then. June is looking likely!


The first thing I did was call him and tell him to turn down the radio. I expected a “Great news!” from him. Instead I think he was just as shocked as I was. The thought of all that has to be done in the next few weeks added on to the fact that this is becoming more and more of a reality is sinking in.


Back to my analogy… It feels like I just heard my baby’s heartbeat for the first time. Such a sweet happy thing, but oh so overwhelming at the mountain we still have to climb.

The Ultimate Teaser Post

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What do 50 prizes worth over $2000 and Sweet Girl’s 50 month birthday have in common? They are cause for a GIVEAWAY! 

 
The giveaway starts Monday, June 4 at 8am Eastern and runs for 5 days only! Did you catch that? 5 days only – put it on your calendar because if you blink it’ll be over and your chances to win will be gone!
 
Stay tuned for a preview of the prizes you can win! We have some awesome things by some very generous donors! It was hard not to keep them all, but I’ve managed to remember the bigger picture!

Registration Update and Nighttime

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I wanted to write a happy post today, something uplifting for this holiday weekend, but the fact of the matter is that life isn’t happy for millions of orphans. As I drifted off to sleep last night, I couldn’t help but think about how sweet girl’s nights might go.


For my own girls, it’s pretty simple. We get in pj’s, read a couple of books (or just throw them), get some snuggles in, sing Jesus Loves Me and then it’s off to dream land with their seahorses. Sometimes, after bath, we read without PJ’s too. They love it. 



 And, well, sometimes it’s off to sleep before we make it upstairs too.


But then I think about sweet girl. How does her nighttime routine go? Does she get any individual attention? My heart hopes so, but my brain knows better. Does she cry herself to sleep or rock to sleep? Does she suck her thumb? Then, what if she has a bad dream, or can’t sleep, or doesn’t feel well? Do the staff care enough to go sit with her or rub her back so she can get back to sleep? Does she get yelled at or punished for waking up or getting out of bed?  Almost certainly the staff is minimal overnight; and it seems that most of the orphanages are under-staffed as is. I don’t know what they can do, if there are only one or two adults and several children happen to wake up at the same time. (And in one big room, probably when one kid cries they all wake up). She been there 4 years now, it’s all she knows, but does that make it okay? What if she has an accident at night? Do they go change her & her bedding — if so, are they rough about it & angry with her? Is she lucky enough to get a hug, to be told it’s ok, no big deal, we’ll get cleaned up and tell a story while you go back to sleep? (The last, I suppose, is unlikely.) What if she’s hungry, or thirsty? Can she get a snack or a drink of water? 


She deserves so much more than this. We are racing to get her because every night I spare her from that place is worth it.


We got an update from our agency, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear, you’ve been submitted. Or, at the very least, you’re being submitted next week. Instead, it was you won’t be submitted until June 12. That’s more than 2 more weeks. The probability of June travel is pretty much out, although I will still pray for it because who am I to keep my God from performing a miracle. 

A camping we will go!

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One of our favorite family activities is camping and we’re lucky enough we’ve got a great (and growing!) group of friends who loves to go with us!

We used to think this was a cheap way to get away for the weekend, but we are realizing that we like to eat well while camping so it’s not as cheap as we always think it will be 🙂

So without further ado, here’s the awesome pics (that I shamelessly stole from others because I didn’t upload my own yet). 

Our speed demon
And her cautious sister
Nighttime cuddles
Yes she got the twizzler, no she didn’t get the Coke.
Sitting on the dock
So sleepy
Kiss the fish
Bike trailer riding!
Tomboy at heart, but not when it comes to kissing the fish
My sweet family
The most awesome baby play yard ever – this is only like 1/4 of it!
Breakfast at the table Daddy made for us

While we were camping, we also got a surprise. A new pic!!! Doesn’t she look like she fits right in and could have been out there with us? Love this sweet face and this sweet girl – we’re coming baby! 🙂

 

Registration Dossier in EE!

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We got the offical word yesterday that our hours and hours of hard work and hundreds of dollars of documents made it safe and sound to Sweet Girl’s country yesterday! And no, this isn’t the actual truck. Well, I suppose it could be, but that’s highly unlikely since I borrowed the pic off the internet.

I wish I would have remembered to take a picture of the registration documents and all our apostilles before I mailed them off, but I forgot, so once again, one I borrowed off the internet will do!

This is our second major milestone (first was getting a completed homestudy without my social worker throwing me off a bridge). There are lots of people that helped us get this far, but a few that I want to thank specifically:

Heather – you are the very first person other than him I told about Sweet Girl. You made me feel like I wasn’t crazy for considering adoption with such young kids and you’ve been supportive the whole way! And you still encouraged me to change jobs in the middle of it!

Leigh Anna – I told you next. You basically told me that I was crazy. I know since I told you, you’ve prayed and cried and worried a hundred lifetimes for us. You provided me my first “challenge” questions so I got the chance to refine my answers for the next dozen of them.

Rachel- you were my first imaginary friend who had actually just completed this journey. You were and are awesome with answering my endless questions and Vika is amazing.

Paige – In true Johnson fashion you gave us a “Cool!” You made us feel like it was just another day and gave us no doubt she’d be accepted into your family just like Cranky and Happy

Traci – You were my second imaginary friend and you told me about judy and that vita rocked. You’ve continued to be my go to gal for questions on our region.

Lesli – You know what you did – thank you 🙂

Whitney – um, my new best friend? I will be soo sad if we can’t get the girls together when they get home. Thanks for “getting me”.

The lady at the Wells Fargo on Coliseum who notarized 40 documents for us – I’m sorry for the handcramp, but thanks for your super speedy notarizations with no errors.

Annie – You got up at 6am to drive to Raleigh for us for apostilles so we wouldn’t have to spend precious PTO hours. You also gush like a proud grandmother with every new picture and video clip.

My imaginary friends on FB’s RR R group – whether I swamp the board with questions, share trials or praises, or just read all your wisdom you have ALL been the biggest support to my craziness.

So what next?? Our facilitator in country will translate everything and then request an appointment at the Adoption Office to submit our stuff. Then they either accept it and issue us a travel date or they request more documents. We hope for the first 🙂 And we are still hoping for a travel date in June.

Very belated status update!

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So here’s where we are and why I haven’t been blogging. We’ve decided not to really tell our co-workers or extended friend group (that’d be Facebook) that we are adopting. Why? Well, because there are so many things that can go wrong, that we were scared of having to untell. And that’s why I haven’t been working on fundraising, etc either. But, soon enough that will change! We are planning a big raffle/giveaway on the blog and we’re planning a big yardsale (collecting donations and accepting volunteers!) in the next few months.

We will probably wait until we get a travel date and maybe until after our first trip to come out on facebook and start these things though. For so long it has just been his and my’s dream and she’s been this secret we’ve been keeping, but, I realized that this blog is just as much for sweet girl as it is for us. I want to be able to remember the process so I can put it into a book for her and tell her story.

So, since we were last here, we completed our homestudy. That was stressful and took longer than I expected, but it’s done. Our social worker is really nice, but it’s hard for me to remember that this is just a business to her and she’s not emotionally invested in sweet girl. We also compiled our registration dossier. Overall, I’m estimating that our registration dossier cost us about $2500 including the homestudy, medical exams, form filing fees, document copies, apostilles and shipping charges. Our agency says everything was great on that and as of Wednesday this week its on its way to EE (eastern europe – we aren’t really supposed to use sweet girl’s real name or country on our blog to protect the children). We also aren’t supposed to share pictures, but I’ve decided that if I’m not sharing her name or her country then I should be able to show the sweet girl we’re working towards! We sent electronic copies of all of the documents to Vita (who will be our in country facilitator) so she can start the translations. Hopefully by the time the documents get there, she will be done translating and can register us in our region. Once we are registered, they will give us a travel date of when we get to go meet Sweet Girl. We are hoping and praying that this will be in late June.

Also, we’re working on our court dossier. This is another set of documents that we will have to submit to the judge. We are almost done with that, but we are missing three things. First, our doctor’s medical license (which we have to submit a copy of) expires in June and since we don’t submit our court dossier until July, then it won’t be valid so we have to wait until he renews and get another copy of the license. Second, we filed our I-600a which is with the USCIS (Immigration). They review our application and our homestudy and then we have to go get fingerprinted with them and then they issue a ruling of whether we are allowed to adopt. We don’t think there will be any problems with this, but the process takes a couple of months. We are also waiting for the FBI to process fingerprints we took at our local Sheriff’s office and send us a letter stating that we have no criminal record. This takes several weeks as well.

Anyway, without further ado, let me introduce you to the piece of my heart I didn’t know was missing, Sweet Girl:

These were given to us by a new imaginary internet friend. I think they are the most recent ones that exist. Here’s another one:

Um.. I have two toddlers?

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I have no excuses for it being 6 days since I last posted. Wait, actually, I do, their names are Cranky and Sweet and they demand a lot of attention. Add to it, that we’re in the middle of an adoption and took a mini-vacation last weekend and life is hectic. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

And since this blog is still private and I have exactly 3 readers (hi to all 3 of you!) I figure you’ll forgive me for not being so quick to update. Besides, you all get the updates through email or g-chat anyway.

We finally submitted our paperwork to RR to get sweet girl off the waiting list. As soon as our home study agency provides their part of the paperwork then we can make some of her information public. We also wrapped up our physicals and TB tests last week and this morning (to check for TB reaction) so I need to submit that. While we sat in the car this weekend, I did my autobiography for the home study. It’s hard to summarize your life and every defining moment of your life in just a couple pages, but hopefully I included enough to let her see who I am. He is working on his. He agrees it’s hard. Maybe he can find an hour to finish his tonight. Also to complete the home study we’ve got to take some classes.

Then it’s on to submitting our I-600A which is with US immigration (USCIS). They have to get copies of our home study and do background checks to approve us to adopt. At the same time I have a list of what seems like a million documents from our agency that needed filled out and signed in different ways by different people for our dossier. Things are starting to get really real and moving very fast.

If you didn’t know, I also start a new job tomorrow. I’m a little nervous because when I applied for this job we had no clue the adoption would move so fast. We thought it would be next year before she came home and now I have to break it to them that I will need to take 3 weeks off this year to travel to EE to bring a little girl home. I’m also hopeful they will let me take some time off once she’s home to help her bond and acclimate to her new life. I can only pray that they will be understanding about the timing and realize that this isn’t normally me and I don’t traditionally need this much time off! I hope they are willing to get past the next 8-10 months and see that I can be a wonderful employee – just give me a chance!

Updates for 3/27/12

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I know I promised a post about ways you can help, but I’m still working on some final details for that so bear with me, it might be another couple of days.

We are currently in the middle of the homestudy. I felt last Thursday and Friday that it was moving a tad slow, but yesterday, wow! I emailed the agency to ask who I should send some notarized things to and she replied right away and also asked if we could do our first homestudy visit TODAY! I mistakenly assumed it was going to be a phone conversation, but quickly found out it would be in person! Um.. I know my family saw my house on Saturday so they can attest to the utter disrepair. It’s hard to be in busy season, changing jobs, have 2 13 months olds (who had ear tube surgery this morning), and did I mention we’re going on a little getaway this weekend? So anyway, of course I told her she could come! He and I spent a little time yesterday on the downstairs after the girls went to bed. I attempted to remove the cat hair so she wouldn’t think that we had dead animals in all our corners. I also cleaned the floor under the highchairs. Ick. Oh, and the guest toilet… it needed serious attention. Today, while I’m nursing the girls back to health, I also have to work on the upstairs. Mainly the office which looks like a paper explosion and the nursery which looks like a clothes explosion.

I’m not particularly nervous about the visit. Since the girls were born we’ve had lots of people in and out of our house and I feel like I’ve had to share intimate details a dozen times. We’re an open book at this point. I am nervous about the fact that this is one step closer to being all in. Not that we aren’t already all in, but every thing that gets checked off the list brings us closer to our sweet girl. It’s just becoming so real. Like infertility… you want to get pregnant so bad, but once you are finally pregnant you worry for months and then once the baby is finally here you worry about a whole new set of worries. I’m trying to learn to let go, ride the story and pray for God to take my worries.

I’m afraid to hope for it, but everything seems to indicate that there is a chance she could be home by Christmas. Wow. Awesome. And what a great segway to share some pics of our Christmas from last year – Cranky and Happy’s first! We tried to keep it simple. My plan was 3 gifts per girl, but I think it ended up being 4.

Here’s their Christmas Eve Lovefeast dresses. Absolutely adorable, way too expensive to only wear for 2-3 hours.

Oh, is there a kitty over there!?

Oh, bow!

Mama! She took my shaker!

Huh?

Sweet Cranky

So Pretty!

And the progression of the smile when you say “CHEESE!” to Happy.

Ah, so in love.

Wish we were sharing pics of our new sweet girl..

Anyway, we’ve stepped out in faith to try to bring her home.. now it’s our job to watch God write our next chapter. Until then, imagining what our next Christmas might look like 🙂

Welcome!

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So who are we? We are us. Hmm, that was easy.

How about a little background? He is my soulmate, he is my strength, he is my protector, he is the most wonderful father of my children. He is loyal, and devoted. He is stong and quiet. He is so quiet that I doubt he’ll ever post on this blog. He is sensitive. He is shy. He is a researcher, and a planner, and a saver. I think his favorite place is playing with his girls or playing in his shop. His favorite presents revolve around tools. He loves to be outside no matter the weather. He loves his family and I love him.

Doesn’t he look like all that?

Me.. hmm.. harder. I am her, wife to him, mother to Cranky and Happy. I am stubborn, passionate, and shy. I will go out of my way to avoid awkward and uncomfortable situations when I can. I want to to make a difference in the world, but don’t know how. I love to read, to watch tv. Oh yeah, He loves TV too. Especially if it involves Alaska, gold, alligators, cars, or any other random reality tv show. I try to be strong, but sometimes I break down. I am compassionate and will bawl when I read other blogs.

Here I am. I’m rarely not behind the camera so these pictures might be few and far between.

But togther we are just 2 people who love God and our family. And those two things have led us to a sweet girl halfway around the world. And we pray and hope that God sees us fit to be her parents because we’re gosh darn going to try to bring her home.

On our last childless vacation.

That’s good for now, we will get into how we met, our marriage and our sweet girls next!