Dossier en route!!!!!!!

6:40 am- wake up and head to the capital to get the last apostille. It is still dark outside and feels like 5:40 because of daylight savings.

7:00 am- heading up the hill to the capital. Coming over the top of the hill in the dark morning, seeing the capital lit up gave me this rush of energy and excitement as I realized this was my last step in the dossier

7:05 am - walk into Lt. Governor's office, planning on paying the expedited same day fee and coming back in a few hours, but instead the lady did it for me right then!!! (still had to pay the higher fee but didn't have to make another trip)

7:20 am- walk out the doors of the capital as the sky is getting light holding the final documents in hand for our dossier!!!!!!

These documents are now in route to Kareen's country!!!!!!!

Documents that have been our top priority over the last few months

Documents that have taken all sorts of running around, appointments, notaries, signatures, stress and worry

Documents that our children have prayed for "please bless that mom and dad can get the fliers done quickly so we can get Kareen"

Documents that will allow Kareen's file to be pulled from the system and officially start the legal process in EE

Documents that say to her country that KAREEN IS WORTHY OF A FAMILY

Documents that say KAREEN, YOUR FAMILY IS COMING FOR YOU

Documents that will change one little girls life FOREVER!!!!!

Now's when my life begins

I LOVE the movie Tangled! My girls and I listen to the soundtrack all the time and lately I get so emotional as I listen to the song where Rapunzel FINALLY gets out of her tower! I can't help but imagine my little girl feeling these same things one day soon when she gets to touch the grass, and feel the summer breeze......

Look at the world -- so close, and I'm halfway to it!
Look at it all -- so big -- do I even dare?
Look at me -- there at last! -- I just have to do it
Should I?
No.
Here I go...
Just smell the grass! The dirt! Just like I dreamed they'd be!
Just feel that summer breeze -- the way it's calling me
For like the first time ever, I'm completely free!
I could go running
And racing
And dancing
And chasing
And leaping
And bounding
Hair flying
Heart pounding
And splashing
And reeling
And finally feeling
Now's when my life begins!

Kareen-soon you will feel this freedom and for the first time ever you WILL be completely free!! Soon we will come to get you and that's when your life really begins!!!!

Threads

We don’t accomplish anything in the world alone and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that create something."
— Sandra Day O'Connor

It is amazing to watch how the common threads of our lives weave together to create miraculous events in ways we could never have imagined.

Last year around this time, I started a new thread in my life with an incredible woman named Lisa. She was a fellow blogger, mom to a beautiful girl with Down syndrome, and was on her journey to another beautiful girl with Down Syndrome on the other side of the world. I was so captivated by her journey and would often talk about it with my husband and friends.

I vividly remember the day I saw this picture on her blog. I remember sitting at my computer and I wept, and wept, and then wept some more. Then I told others about it and wept some more!

Here was this innocent little girl cast out of society for having an extra chromosome. This little angel had been dreaming about what it would be like to have a family and after 3 long years of waiting, SHE had one. Falling asleep with her family in her arms.....a dream come true!

Little did I know that this journey of Alina's to her family, was going to one day help another little girl, find hers. It was through Lisa's blog that I found Patti. Patti quickly became another thread weaving through our lives leading to Kareen. Yes, I had already felt impressed that maybe we were supposed to adopt, and that maybe it was supposed to be through Reece's Rainbow, but I had not had the strong confirmation of who, until I found Kareen's sweet face on Patti's blog.

As I scrolled down the page and Kareens picture came up I sat there with tears rolling down my face as I looked into those big beautiful, captivating eyes, and the song playing on the playlist was "Ordinary Miracle", and I knew she was meant to be mine. I knew those eyes were staring into my soul saying "Mom, I need you to come and find me"

Then a a few days later I came upon a post on Lisa's blog titled "Just say Yes"

Again, there was my girl reaching out to me and these were the words under her picture

"Don't wait any longer. Please, if you are considering adoption, choose today to commit. Say yes today."

Once again, the threads had weaved in a way that gave me yet ANOTHER answer to my prayers.

One week after this we committed to our girl!

Patti had been brewing up something fabulous on her blog a month or more before we found Kareen there. This amazing woman, the mother of 10 children, the youngest of which has down syndrome, felt inspired to help a little girl named Olga from Reece's Rainbow.

(Olga's forever family is now coming for her too)

So she started advocating for Olga and started raising money for this sweet girl. She was so successful (she raised $12,000) that the director of Reece's Rainbow asked if Patti would add another angel to her list to help. One who was in danger of being transferred soon. That one, was Kareen. By the time I found Kareen, Patti had already raised over $3,000 for our little angel. This was just the beginning of a great connection with a fabulous lady!

As we went through the commitment process, I often talked to Patti, via email and we were both so excited to finally be able to "announce" that we were Kareen's family. You see Kareen had accumulated quite the following of fans, through Patti's fundraising and she had even more "prayer warriors" out there. The prayers of these people, came straight to our hearts and opened our eyes to what the Lord needed us to do.

Patti and her children were all connected to Kareen so when she told them Kareen had a family they all cheered with excitement, and cried. As Patti and I talked she said "wouldn't it be great if we could meet Kareen someday" thinking this was probably a far fetched dream. As we talked we realized that Patti lives in Oregon and my family has traveled to the Oregon coast every summer, or at least every other summer, since I was in high school. So we cried together as we dreamt about what that day will be like, when Kareen gets to meet her prayer warrior and advocate who helped save her. We cried thinking "of all the people in the world, what are the chances that we would really have our paths be able to cross someday?" So we are already planning our trip to the coast next year and Patti (and any of her friends there) will be a stop on that trip, and what a sweet meeting that will be.

When we announced that we were Kareen's family, we were flooded with love and support and words of encouragement and congratulations from SO many of Patti's and Lisa's friends and family who also held a little place in their hearts for this darling girl. We are grateful to each and every one of them!

Not only did Lisa's journey help me prepare for what was going to come, she has also helped me in SO many ways through this process! She has become a confidant as I emailed her in the early stages of this decision, and I think she knew even before I did, that we were going to commit to Kareen. She gave me support, love, has answered MANY questions, I have gone over her adoption journey many times as Alina was from the same country as Kareen, and I could not have made it to this point without her.

You HAVE to go HERE to see today's post by Lisa celebrating Alina's birthday ! I could not stop crying reading this today! It touched me a little too close to home right now as I picture my little girl so alone right now, but very soon will know what a family is all about. She will know that she is loved and that she is worthy of love and she will blossom, just like Alina! Love it!

The paths that are lives take and the threads that they weave are amazing to see. Sometimes we see how these threads and paths are forming and why, and sometimes we may never know. As we have been on this adoption journey we have been blessed to feel the love and support from many threads of our lives coming together to help weave a new path and a new tapestry for a special little girl. Some threads started long ago like this, some are more recent, some since birth, and all of them (along with SOO many others) have weaved together and have become a part of Kareen's miracle and a part of our tapestry and we are forever grateful!

WE HAVE BEEN APPROVED!!!!

NO...we don't actually have our "golden ticket" in hand but I called the USCIS office today and they said we have been approved and they will be mailing it out probably tomorrow!!!!! I was crying....I am SOO EXCITED!!!! Now, the only hold up is praying that our document that we had to send to Texas to get apostilled, gets here soon. I sent it last tuesday and they said they haven't got it yet, let alone processed it. So needless to say I will be calling them every day to check and get them to get it done!!

Some paperwork updates

I LOVE seeing our status on Reece's Rainbow moving up! We have now moved into the "Dossier complete, awaiting USCIS approval" category! Come on USCIS just get us that golden ticket so we can get our girl!

Last Tuesday we were able to walk in and get our fingerprints done. We had an appointment for March 14 but decided to see if we could do it early and we were able to. So now the fingerprints, our homestudy, and birth certificates are assigned to an officer at USCIS and then the officer will go over everything and approve us for international adoption.

After the fingerprints I headed straight up to the capital to drop off our dossier documents to be apostilled and then I picked them up yesterday! Each step we check off is more and more exciting because it means we are one step closer!

These beauties cost a pretty penny! At $15 per document, for 33 documents, the grand total was $495 just for a pretty gold seal on each paper.....crazy!
We had to send one of our documents to be apostilled in Texas since it was notarized there so we should get that back this week and then we will just be waiting for our "golden ticket" (which from what I have heard really isn't golden and is actually quite plain, but it is called the golden ticket because it means we are good to send the papers to her country)

We have started to have slight panic attacks about all we will have to do to get ready once our travel date comes...they are exciting panic attacks but still, this is such unknown territory we are encountering traveling to another country and leaving our kids behind for over 2 weeks (and that is just the first trip)!

Many people ask about what all the costs cover. Here is a little breakdown of what we have spent so far:

$775 Homestudy

$710 apostilles

$1275 trust deposit

$ 60 vital records (i.e. birth cert. marriage, etc)

$30 state police clearances

$200 medicals and labs

$150 shipping

Total of $3200

So we have really only scratched the service of costs. Total costs are estimated to total between $25.000-$30,000.

Through this crazy paperwork chase I have been on the last few months, I have learned to be assertive. Usually I am fine to wait until someone gets back to me, but when my little girls life is at stake, I am not about to sit around and let people get to things when they feel like it. I have become comfortable in continually checking up on things to make sure they are not forgotten.

So now we wait again.....we wait for the golden ticket!!

Dear USCIS,

PLEASE send us our golden ticket SOON!!!

With love,

Kareen's mom and dad

Everyone needs a mom when they are sick

As I was sitting up all night last night with Bree, fighting her 105 degree fever, it suddenly hit me that Kareen has never had someone to comfort her when she was sick.

Last night Bree had a mom to hold her and comfort her while trying to cool her body down, and she had a dad at her side who was right next to her holding her hand. She had a mom and dad to hold her hair out of her face as she was throwing up and to cuddle her until she could get comfortable enough to fall asleep for a few minutes. Kareen has never had this.

Even though I am grown and I am now the mom, I still remember those feelings of being taken care of by my mom when I was sick. There is just something about your mom taking care of you when you are sick that makes it all a little more bearable. I sat holding Bree last night looking into her face as she was moaning and trying to get comfortable, and was thinking how sad it would be to be sick as a child and have no one to care for you. Yes, I am sure there are orphanage doctors and staff that try to care for the children when they are sick and they may meet the childs medical needs, but it just isn't the same as a mom and a dad who can provide the love and comfort too. We pray every night that Kareen is safe and healthy, because we have no idea what her current condition is. We pray that somehow in her little 4 year old heart she will know that she has a family who is doing everything they can to get to her soon so that she will know what it is like to have a mom and a dad to hold her and comfort her the next time she is sick.

In honor of Dr. Suess

(Adrie made a cute Dr. Seuss hat at school today and Bree made a crown for her feast)

A fellow adoption mama shared this adorable poem through an email and I love it! A college aged cousin wrote this for her daughter and it is so cute! He had to write it for a college scholarship letter on the lines of "Oh the places you'll go"

"Dearest Marina,
I'm glad to be writing this letter to you. I've waited for years and your parents have, too. You're a smart little girl with two special brown eyes. You can do what you dream, no matter your size. You may have flown from ******* to be here with us now, but we never gave up; not never, no how. And in the same way that we brought you back, just know that you're loved—in love you don't lack. You may think you're different from the kids that you know, but hold your head high—let your confidence show. And one day when you're grown and are ready to fly, we'll watch you flourish—and I'll tell you why. You're kind and so sweet and compassionate too--don't get discouraged we don't look like you. And though other kids may not act the same way, we'll always be with you; in our hearts you'll stay. So don't think of yourself as a child with no home; you have a new family, and a house of your own.

Love Always,

Cousin Mayfield"