The Heavens Have Answered!

This announcement is a little late on our blog, but I've been out of town for the past 4 days and unable to get on here.

If you haven't heard yet, we learned on Friday July 8th that our God is bigger than any government closure...we received an email stating that the SDA has decided to continue special needs adoptions throughout the 3 month closure!!!!

What does that mean for us?  Well, it means that we are some of the first in line to get a travel date in the next couple weeks!!  It means that even though we had resigned ourselves to waiting out the next 3-4 months...we need to prepare to leave in the next 3 WEEKS!  It means that as soon as we let go of control and gave all our hopes for Danil's adoption over to Him...that He came through and showed us that it is HIS timeline that we are working on, NOT any earthly government's.

Technically, it means that this new procedure will be published this week, and SDA appointments will be handed out soon after that, so we are looking at an unknown timeline of 2-4 weeks or so.

Um, it also means that the ticket home that we bought for Bryan's mom will be used quickly and then replaced with another to fly her BACK out here!!  It also means that I have to get to packing, resume organizing, and start memorizing the phonemic pronunciation of those Russian phrases...!

Oh. Em. Gee.

We will be bringing our Danil home SOON!!  I can hardly process it.  Un-flipping-believable.

Missed it.

This was the blog entry that I was praying that I didn't have to write.  I just saw an email from the US Embassy in Danil's country that stated that only dossiers that were submitted in May would be receiving SDA appointments before the closure in July.

We missed the cut-off by 9 days.

And now they will reopen in "approximately 3 months" with the promise of a better system...which is great, you know, if we weren't so.dang.close. to bringing Danil home right now.

I'm trying really really hard to find comfort in God's timeline.  Because surely there is a reason why we feel so ready to make our family complete, and we can't.  Right?

I know it means that I now have the rest of the summer to enjoy my boys here...to eat popsicles and go swimming with them.  I have time to settle the school placement issues before school actually starts, and to go back to school shopping and take Chase to speech camp every day and talk to his therapists, and be at his OT eval coming up.  I know that now I have time to get Guy full-time into his Elmo underwear and maybe even get myself to the dentist (which I've been putting off for the last year...)

I know all that, but I still feel completely deflated.  And simply sad.  Because we were supposed to have all 4 of our boys home at the end of this summer...and now we will still be missing one.  I'm having trouble with that.

I'm having trouble with that because I am sitting here at my computer, crying at the months more that will be lost to us in Danil's life...wondering if I had prayed a little harder, moved a little quicker...what if?  What if?!?!?  We'd be there now.  We would.  And now we aren't.

It's gonna be a long few months with part of my heart still across the world.

Calling all Harley-Davidson Lovers!

We're sacrificing the hog...we are almost fully funded, but still have a bunch of extra expenses coming up that we need to cover.

Bryan LOVES his bike (and secretly, so do I)...but we LOVE all our kiddos more.  We see travel expenses for getting friends and family out here to help with the boys, we see some extra therapy costs in light of an oral-motor evaluation we just had for Chase, and simply the added expenses of one more little Maddex boy at home with us.

We're cleaning house, we're simplifying, and it's simply not our season for owning the bike.

But it could be yours!!  Or someone you know!  Please share our craigslist post!!  Thanks :)

PS- Act now, and I'll throw in my Pink Power Ranger helmet and jacket...AND Bryan's leather chaps!!  LOL!

Closing Deadline

We got word last week that Danil's country will be closing their adoption offices on July 11th for approximately 3 months, and reopening after that in a new office, with a new staff, and new guidelines, etc.

Good news:  The fine people at Reece's Rainbow seem to think that we have enough time to get our SDA appointment in, our orphanage visit, and to schedule our court date before the closing.

Bad news:  You never know what is going to happen in his country, or how fast or slow or haphazardly.

We are praying, praying, PRAYING that we can slide in before the cut-off.  We've been told to be ready to travel quickly, so we have suitcases out, Grandma DiPiero flying in from CO on Wednesday, and Papa and Gaga ready to change their work schedules around at a moment's notice to take the kids.

Please pray, think about, ask the universe, light a candle, chant, or whatever you do when you need a favor...we need our dossier to be on someone's desk who sees urgency in our situation, and who has compassion for a child who has been waiting for a family for 4 years, and knows in their heart that he/she has the power to make a miracle happen in JULY and not NOVEMBER.

I guess 4 months, in the grand scheme of things, really isn't that long...but how long would you want YOUR child to live apart from you?

Patience

is tough to have.

We're still just waiting around for our SDA appointment.

Ian is the most anxious for it out of all of us, mostly because he knows that when we are ready to leave the country, he is going to go to his cousins' house in Florida (Thank you Todd and LeShayne!!) and hang out there til we get back (or until they get sick of him).  He also gets to fly model airplanes with his Grandpa Doug, so that is way exciting.

Any day now.. :)

Submitted!

In case you are ignoring me on Facebook and you haven't heard already...

Our dossier has been successfully submitted today!!  

I know that they only submit on Thursdays, so when our dossier arrived in-country last Wednesday, I was hoping that was enough time to get it translated and ready to go by this Thursday...and it was!

On a related note, our original prayer before we had all the parts of our dossier together was to get it to U* by June 1st and submitted before June 12th.  Well, it arrived on June 1st and was submitted on June 9th.  How's that for an affirmative answer to our prayers?

Surreal

Just taking a moment here to reflect on the fact that we are so close...teetering on the edge of our "3rd trimester" of adoption.

In the busy days, it is easy to concentrate on the task at hand: dossier prep, fundraising...and everyday things; breakfast, the getting-ready-for-school-tornado, paying bills, cleaning up, building towers of blocks and crashing into them with the thousands of hotwheels cars and trucks we have in the playroom, dinner, baths, bedtime stories...

But there, in every activity that we do, I see Danil's little face.  In the rearview mirror, I can see the empty seat in the van where he will sit.  When I put Chase to bed, he's there, laying in the bed on the opposite wall.  When we eat dinner, I wonder if I should pick up another booster seat for the empty chair, or will Danil be able to peer over the table without one?  When we walk into the store, he's there holding his brothers' hands on the way to get a free cookie from the bakery.

Oh, how I wish I knew what was going on over there!  Our dossier arrived in U****** yesterday.  We are waiting on news of it being submitted.  Are our other papers there already?  The ones that we could send ahead of time to begin speaking for him?  Does anyone at the orphanage know that we are coming for him?

And even heavier than that thought...when will his family be notified?  I cannot even begin to imagine the torn feelings that come with giving a child up for adoption...what the situation must be.  But it seems to be done out of love...out of wanting the best option for him.  But how must that feel to know that your prayers for a family have been answered...but that will ultimately and finally take your child away- halfway around the world- from you?  I just know that it must be a huge flurry of emotions.

So, prayers for a near SDA appointment date, and prayers of comfort for Danil and his birth family.