Changes for 2012

Lost his 4th tooth

Snow tubing in Wisconsin

Indoor waterpark

First snow we had at home.

Well so much has happened since our last post. Christmas came and went. We all had a nice holiday. We spent New Year's at Wisconsin Dells at an indoor water/amusement park. It was a wonderful present from Santa. Thank you Santa!!!
As far as the adoption goes, we switched our country from Ukraine to Russia after many let downs. Ukraine's government was changing so much and the new rules for adoption were just not working for us. They raised the age to 5 as being the youngest age that could be adopted out of the orphanage. We were having a real hard time with this factor and then after we submitted all of our dossier, Ukraine rejected some of our paperwork saying it was copies and not originals..I did all I could to tell them they were originals but nothing worked. So after discussing more with our agency we decided to switch to Russia. We are now set up for 1-2 children ages 9 months-42 months, boys but either is accepted. All of our first set of paperwork for Perm region of Russia is submitted and we hope to hear something in February.
Now on to other news. I am going to transfer with my job to Texas. We will be North of Dallas area. The transfer will not take place until early summer which gives us time to sell our house and find new housing in Texas. We are all very excited for this new change in our lives. We have been talking for several years about a move and when this transfer came up we could not pass it up.
Everything is happening all at once making 2012 an exciting year.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

When I got home today I checked the emails as I always do and there was an email from our social worker Katia. It took me a while to open it. I was so afraid there was going to be something wrong with our dossier but she said everything as far as they know is good. So this make for something else to be THANKFUL for this week.

Dexter has been busy with school and reading like a crazy man. We are amazed at how far he has come since the beginning of the school year. Dexter has also gone to a couple of boyscout events and has enjoyed them a lot. The first outing he got to shoot b b guns and archery along with some fishing. The second event was a their camping area near Farmer City. The younger boys joined the older boys for an afternoon of fun. Also, this past Sunday, Dexter rode a float in the Farmer City Christmas Parade. He said, he had fun throwing the candy to kids he knew from school.

Chris and I started attending a group at our church called CHOSEN Adoption and Orphan Care MINISTRY or chosen-fcc.org. We met several families who have or are in the process like we are of adopting. It was amazing to hear their stories of how the process is going for the country they are working with. The countries included Columbia and Ethiopia. As for all of us who were waiting we all have submitted our dossier and are just waiting for our travel dates. There were two families who had adopted from here in the US and one family that had already adopted twice from Ethiopia.

We are hosting Thanksgiving for our families. Everyone have a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving!! Mor pictures to come.

How to Be The Village

I read another families adoption blog and they had a link to the following blog post from another adoptive family.


How to Be The Village

Dossier Completed

Cub Scouts Rocket Roundup

Cousin Anley Ella

Camping with friends Peyton and Ty

Well after one year of paperwork and then redoing paperwork our dossier was sent to our adoption agency on Tuesday. The process so far has been more frustrating then our first adoption with Dexter. Everyone that had to do something for us this time around seem to get in no hurry. I consider myself a patient person but there were several times I felt I was being tested. So all we can do is pray that evertything with our dossier is GREAT and the next thing we receive is our travel date.

Dexter is now in the 1st grade and loving it. We are so proud of the progress he has made in the almost four years of coming home. He has joined cubscouts and is considered a Tiger Cub. Chris is going to be the Tiger Cub Den Leader.

Chris and I took a camping trip to North Dakota at the end of Aug for a week. Dexter stayed with his grandparents since he had already started back to school. We had a great time traveling the state seeing parks, lake and camping at different places every night. We went this past weekend with friends to Shades State Park in Indiana to camp. The park has several hiking trails and we roughly came up with 8 mile that all of us hiked in one day. All of the boy(9,6 and 4)did great and never complained.

Dexter became a new cousin to Anley Ella. My sister and brother-in-law welcomed her in late September.

The weather has turned to a Indian Summer here in Illinois with our temps this week back up in the mid 80's. Planning to go to the pumpkin patch sometime this weekend.

Over Due Pictures

Kindergarten Field Trip-Decatur Children's Musuem




Coach Pitch Ball


Florida Vacation





Ball Pictures


6th Birthday


4th of July 2 mile run in Bellflower


Swimming at FC Pool


Making forts in the living room


Here are some photos from the last few months. Sorry I have not posted earlier but this summer has just been crazy.

Preregistered date/Legoland

Dexter working hard on his car and trailer

Finished project




New legos he bought and built his church.

We recived an email letting us know our preregistered date is October 20, 2011. This mean we have until first of September to get our Dossier paperwork turned in to our agency so then they can forward it on to Ukraine. This date is actually earlier then we were expecting for this step so we are happy.

Dexter and I went to Schaumburg, Il to Legoland. Above are some pictures..Enjoy:)

Another check

Well tomorrow Chris and I go to Indianapolis to have our fingerprints done for Immigration. I had last Friday off so I picked up our amended homestudy and drove to Springfield to get it apostilled. I got it sent off from there and hopefully we will hear from Ukraine by next week sometime with more information about our preregistered date.