Let's Party!

The journey toward bringing Ana home continues!  And isn't everything more fun when you are doing it along side friends?

Jen, Rebekah, Lyssa and Tania

Tania's house turned art studio & nail salon!

Yesterday Ken, Mikhail, Ana and I were all VERY blessed by the ladies in our small group from Grace Covenant.  Tania, Lyssa and Rebekah hosted a Manicure and Art sale at Tania's home to raise money for our adoption of little Ana!  It was a BLAST, and I had a wonderful time meeting some new sweet friends and getting to talk about what God is doing to bring home our little girl.  We snacked, chatted, had our hands moisturized and nails painted, and browsed Tania's dining room full of my art from Spotted Puppy Studios on Etsy (spottedpuppy.etsy.com).  When all was said and done, not only were 11 pieces of art sold, but also these sweet women were beautifully generous in giving donations toward our adoption, too.  Just amazing...  Ken and I were overwhelmed by everyone's generosity, just humbled and overwhelmed!  So many offered to keep us in prayer throughout the rest of the process, and that means the world to me.  We know God will in return bless each person involved yesterday, including my three "Life Group Girls," for their thoughtfulness and willingness to invest in our lives and Ana's homecoming.  Thank you just doesn't seem like enough!  Big adventures like these are made a lot less scary when you know you are walking through it with friends.  So, so thankful for you all.  :)

A few things from my shop

"Spotted Puppy," Grace

"Spotted Puppy," Nick

Ken pointed out that I had not posted much about our Etsy store (Spotted Puppy Studios), and what God was doing there, so I thought I'd give you a bit of history on how it all started.  When Mikhail came home I was looking for ways to help him with some of the big hurts he had from so much loss and pain in his little heart.  I ended up drawing many, many pictures that either represented something of his birth and adoption story or that symbolized a truth of how God was healing him and protecting him.  Eventually I realized that this was not only helpful for Mikhail, but it was so, so healthy for my soul, too!  Ken began calling the cart where I keep my art supplies my "therapy cart" because it was such a great way for me to unwind and feel peaceful. :)  When we began Ana's adoption process, the idea came to us that since I would probably be doing some type of art anyway, maybe we could use it to raise money for adoption expenses.  So, Spotted Puppy Studios (bet you can guess the two little inspirations for that name...) was born in February!  Ken and I are now officially business partners, and while he does all the hard work, I get to sit around and draw. :)  I make watercolor & pencil drawing for children's rooms and nurseries, and our shop can be found on the Etsy website, which is like an online craft show for all things handmade.  Some of you who are reading this blog are probably some of the first clients for Spotted Puppy Studios, so let me take the opportunity once again to say THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart!  All of you at the "Dell Division" of Spotted Puppy- THANK YOU!!! :)  This has been a very fun part of what God is doing in Ana's adoption process- something I never, ever would have dreamed He would do!  It's just like Him to use something you think is for your child to really reveal things about yourself...I think this little shop is teaching me things about confidence that I will be able to pass on to my sweet Ana.  Yep, just like Him...

How a Mama Stays Sane... and Ana's Jar

There's this funny thing that happens during the process of adoption... nothing really changes from the outside, no big thing looks different, no one would suspect anything life-altering is going on...and yet this huge, forever change happens inside the hearts of those who are waiting for the little one who is to come.  You realize this little person is real.  She's always been real to God, but all of the sudden she has been labeled as "yours."  Even without laying eyes on her or having a clue where she is, she becomes "daughter."  And this happens long before any official paper ever declares her so.  I guess you would call it falling in love.

While this part of waiting for our Ana is very special and even strategic to the relationship that will come, it also has its down side.  If you love someone, you are concerned for their welfare, want their best, feel a need to protect them.  In loving Ana before we meet her, we are forced to admit where she is right now- far away, unaware of her family waiting, lonely.  Unable to get to her, not knowing where she is, how she is doing, whether she is warm, healthy, satisfied- it's enough to drive a mama mad!

Thankfully God gives such mamas great relief in His Word:

"O Lord, you have heard the desire of the humble; You will strengthen their heart, You will incline Your ear to vindicate the orphan and the oppressed"    Psalm 10:17-18

This is real, too.  These words are not just a pretty phrase inside a Hallmark card- they are what I put 100% of my trust in for my daughter to be safe and provided for until we can have her in our arms (and after!).  So I can be sane.  I can know that she will be brought to us at exactly the right time.  I will choose to trust my very big, very capable God.

One of Mikhail's biggest struggles about his own adoption is wondering what Papa and I were doing while he was waiting for us to come for him.  I don't blame him- that's a good question!  As much I've tried to explain the complicated maze of paperwork & approval from the powers that be, I think watching it all unfold while we wait for Ana is the biggest help of all.  To try to find a way for Ana to have this same question answered, we have started an "Ana Jar" as a visible way to show her how much we loved and prayed for her while we waited for her to be home.  Each time we pray for Ana, spend time daydreaming about her, or fill out some random piece of paper needed for her homecoming, we add a little paper heart to her jar.  On hard days, we add a whole handful.  It's funny how something so simple gives such a sense of relief!  I hope this little reminder of our love will speak to her heart some day.

Mikhail giggles as I tell him we couldn't find a jar big enough to hold all the thoughts God has of Ana.  "How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!  How vast is the sum of them!"  Psalm 139:17

Praying for Ana, too?  Stop by and drop your own heart in the jar. Or send us a note... Big Brother would be thrilled to add a heart or two on your behalf!  :)

Homestudy is Done...One Step Closer!

Mailing contracts to CAS!

Yesterday, Jenna from Adoption answers came back out to our house for the first time since Mikhail's post-placement reports were finished a few years ago.  It was good to see Jenna again and to work with someone familiar to have this new homestudy done for Ana's adoption.  It was great, too, to get to "show off" our sweet boy and how he has grown and matured since she saw him last. :)  Jenna will need a few weeks to get her notes and all our information organized the way they need to be presented within the dossier, then our agency (CAS) will approve everything inside the homestudy and it will be ready to head off for translation in Russia.

While Jenna is getting her part ready, I have been given the go-ahead to start gathering the rest if the documents for our dossier.  Whoopee!  We sent in our signed contracts to CAS last week so we are officially part of the Russia Program at CAS now and working on our dossier.  In my strange little brain I enjoy this step because it gives me something to have some control over in this whole event that is waaaaay too complicated for me to pretend like I can be in control!  I will be running all over Austin, San Antonio, Houston, etc. to get what we need, so there will be a lot of "car-schooling" taking place in the next few weeks....but it will be fun to have my sidekick along while we keep making progress toward bringing little sister home.

My sweet guys at work!

We used the homestudy as an excuse to get Ana's room painted.  I've been daydreaming about how to decorate her walls (my favorite part!), so I think we will be painting birch trees on one wall with Russian dancing bears on canvases or in frames on the other walls.  I think it will be very peaceful with the soothing colors and sweet matroyshkas and smiling bears all around.  Seeing her room come together helps the realization sink in that there will soon be another little human being in our house. :)  God speed, Ana!

Poor, Poor, Papa...

Papa tangled in cords

More prep for the home study!  Well, another child means another room needed for keeping said child...which means Ken's office/music room is officially bye-bye.  Not that he gave it up begrudgingly (sweet, wonderful man that he is!), but the part that was a struggle was going through all of the stuff that needed to be relocated.  Hard drives and motherboards and tangled chords, oh my!  My guy is a collector of all things techy, so the good news is that he found LOTS of good garage sale fodder in all of his stuff.  And hey, what we sell means adoption money, but equally important is that we don't have to find space to store it. :)  Don't worry, I'm doing my share of pitching of clearing out and making garage sale sacrifices, as well, to be fair!  Of course you could hardly call it a "sacrifice" compared to what we are gaining... won't she be so cute peeking over the edge of that crib at us?????  :)  And by the way, the music and computer things are not all gone... we now have a drum set, etc., etc. set in our master bedroom...

Sweet Cheeks on the train with wonderful Blue Sippy

Oh, the adventures that await you, Green Sippy!

On another note we made a trip down to REI today, almost entirely to look for sippies.  Yes, I know Target carries them, too, but we found the cutest Nalgene sippy there when we were waiting for Mikhail to come home and thought how cute he'd be hiking with us with his own little hiking bottle like ours.  Little did we know that first night we received custody of our boy and whisked him away on the Trans-Siberian Express, that blue sippy would become one of the greatest forms of entertainment for all three of us.  The idea of full access to his own little pint-sized, spill-proof water source was just too good to be true!  Blue sippy barely left his sight until we got home and he opened the cabinet to reveal a whole HERD of sippies all just for him!  Anyway, we felt the need to repeat the REI trip in hopes of finding just the right sippy for little Miss Ana.  Yes, I know it's green and green is my favorite color, and yes, there was a pink one to choose from too, but honest, we let Mikhail pick.  And no, I wasn't disappointed.  Oh, how I can't wait to watch her enjoy Green Sippy!

Interesting week...but decorating helps! :)

Ana's Nursery Fabric

Some of you may have seen the articles posted on multiple major news networks about Russia suspending all adoptions to the US.  On Monday our social worker told us to postpone our home study because of all of this.  After spending a very stressful Monday wondering what lie ahead, we found out that it was untrue.  Tania Griasnow, the Russia Program Coordinator from Carolina Adoption Services told us to proceed "without delay!" on Ana's adoption process. :)  O.K. by me!  All three regions (including the region where Mikhail is from) that CAS is currently working with are running smoothly and processing adoptions consistently.  In fact, two families with CAS are traveling for their court dates as we speak.  It sure was a thrill to hear all of that!  As soon as I can get my incredibly handsome IT guy to help me figure out how, I will post a map of the three possible regions it sounds like Ana may come from.

Such a good reminder that it's so silly to pretend like we are in control of this whole thing.  God alone can orchestrate such a complicated process to bring our child home from half way across the planet.  "The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes."  Proverbs 21:1

In the meantime, all this week's uneasiness has been made better by day dreaming about Ana's nursery...  fabric arrived last week, paint to come on Thursday. Ahhhhhh......  nesting is good for a Mama's soul. :)

We are gathering documents to give to our social worker for our home study that has now been scheduled.  Yeah!  Big step!  March 3rd will be our home study, so no one call us on March 2... we won't hear the phone, we will be vacuuming. :)

Alas, one of the documents required our doctor to sign off that Mikhail was up to date with all his immunizations...except there was one guy we missed, so...  his first opportunity to be BRAVE for little Ana!  Seeing Mama get allergy shots twice a week has done a world of good for him to be not so nervous about getting one himself.  He handled it like a champ!  Ken and I got off much easier- no shots, no additional co-pays.  Whoo hoo!  Thanks, Dr. Hughes!

Ice cream for a brave boy, and three more checks on my list of home study documents.  Good day!

PART 2: How It All Works... sort of

(So sorry, been feeling icky.  Better now!)  So after we receive our referral with info about little Ana, here's what comes next.  I know, it's long, but you guys have been asking! :)  The process really is this complicated.

• First Trip to meet Ana.  This is a bit hard to say because different regions in Russia handle this part differently, but we will assume for now it will be similar to Mikhail's process.  We were required (by the Russian gov't) to meet Mikhail in person before continuing on with perusing his adoption.  We expect this will be the same for Ana.  This was a quick trip for us with Mikhail's adoption and we only got to see him for an hour or so on two days.  We were able to speak to the orphanage director (also an MD) and find out a bit more info about his general health and any during this time, for instance this is when we found out he would need hernia surgery as soon as we got him home.  We will be so excited to get to see Ana for the first time on this trip and learn more about her, but it will no doubt be one of the most difficult parts of this process- meeting her and then leaving her there for however long is necessary until we can return for our court date.  A torturous 7 weeks with Mikhail.
• Second trip to bring her home!  Again, this is sketchy because of differences in regions, and there is even the possibility we could only make 1 trip, or it could turn into3!  After the first trip, we will be notified of when the Russian court for that region has set our court date.  At that point we will head back ASAP in order to be there in whatever region Ana is in for that date.  We will likely have to speak to a judge (through an interpreter, of course) and answer his or her questions about why we want to adopt and some personal info about whether we can afford the child, how we will parent her, etc.  This was very nerve racking for us with Mikhail, but by the end of the time with the judge we ended up standing next to her behind her desk so we could show her a little PowerPoint slide show on Ken's laptop of pictures of us with Mikhail at our visits with him in the orphanage.  I will never forget that mental picture and watching the judge's face turn from stern and serious to all smiles as she saw us interacting in the pictures with our boy. :)  Of course when she said we were approved to adopt Mikhail I cried like a baby.  I'm pretty sure she was a bit misty eyed, too.
• 10 Day Waiting Period.  Russian courts require there to be a waiting period after the adoption has been approved just in case the birth parents or other relative speaks up and has changed their mind about wanting to relinquish rights.  After the 10 days, the adoption is finally considered FINAL for the Russian courts.  We will most likely not have Ana with us during this time.  We will not get custody of her until the wait period is over.  We may get to visit her at the orphanage during this period, though.  We visited Mikhail 3 times in our waiting period before we actually left the orphanage with him.
• Get our baby girl!  Oh, the blessed day when we walk out the orphanage doors with little Ana Fortner, never, EVER to be called an orphan again!
• Citizenship stuff in Moscow.  We will likely leave whatever region Ana is in shortly after we have been given custody of her, then will need to stay in Moscow while her passport, visa & citizenship papers are being processed.  This took a full week with Mikhail.  But we won't care!  We will be having too much fun getting to know our girl, spending all day playing and playing and playing in a hotel room somewhere in expensive Moscow. :)  Even the ridiculous hotel rates couldn't dampen our spirits of having that time with Mikhail.  So many memories and so many firsts will happen during our time together in Moscow!
• Home!  An exhausting 14 hour+ airplane flight with 2 cranky kids, multiple layovers and 2 of the happiest (yet exhausted) parents on earth. :)