Happy 2013

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and a Happy New Year. December has been exciting. While we didn't do a whole lot with gathering information, we did get some good news and things are still moving along. We sent our federal forms in and received confirmation already that they received them. Now we are waiting for them to process our information and send us an appointment date and time for us to go in and have more fingerprints done. We also just received a letter from our county stating we are acceptable to adopt. I'm not a fan of that word "acceptable" but I was estactic with the news. Even though we can't think of any reasons why they wouldn't approve us, it's always worry for each stage that we need to be approved. We are very excited to see what 2013 brings. I can't believe that there's a good chance, by the end of the year, we might be parents! We are still trying to gather funds so we don't have to stop at any time. I also don't want to stop and have things delayed because we have documents that expire after 12, 15, and 18 months that I would hate to have to pay to renew.

This month I plan on continuing to decorate our child's room. I want everything to be just right when they finally come home. I also plan on getting documents gathered for our dossier. That way, once we are able to send it we only need the notarization and apostiled stamps and don't have to waste time realizing we need more stuff.

The other thing we really need to get accomplished this month is to find a facilitator and translator. That seems to be our hardest part. It's practically impossible. We have no idea where to go. We're going to try contacting some people who previously adopted and see what they did. The faciliator and translator will be our lifelines while in Ukraine. Not only that, but they will also translate our dossier and all that other good stuff. They are probably the most important people in our process. Hopefully we can figure that out soon.

Happy New Year to everyone again. We need all the good thoughts you can sent our way to help us out. It will be an interesting year. I'm expecting a roller coaster ride with the best ending. I'm anxious to know around when we will be able to get out there, but in reality, we need to wait on people throughout this whole thing, so we couldn't even estimate a month. We are just hoping it will be this year. I would love summer time so we can escape the heat here though! :) (not to mention it will be easier with Tim's job to be during the summer). Take care! More to come.