Quick update

Hello everyone, yesterday we found out that we will not find out any news for another two weeks due to the in country contact being on vacation. We are bummed about it but at least it gives us a time frame and we are not checking our email all day.

The next piece of the puzzle (From Linda)

First we want to thank everyone who has joined us on this journey.  This was amazing.  We are very thankful for the opportunity that God has allowed us to partake in.  Honestly from the bottoms of our hearts THANK YOU!

We would like to share with everyone where we go from here. His plane has just landed and he is in the process of making the lengthy trip back to his foster home.  Most likely he will have to return to school on Tuesday.  Please pray for him.  Pray for an easy time adjustment.  Pray for him not to be bullied.  Pray for his little heart.  I pray that he turns to God during this time.  We know that God knew him long before we ever did.  We pray that he wraps him in his arms and gives him comfort and protection. Once he gets settled we plan to call him in an attempt to continue communications with him.  There are no rules in place about contact after hosting, so we will just have to see what his foster family will allow.

Yes, we are pursuing ADOPTION!  We are so excited to share this news with all of you.  Oh we love him so much.  At week 3 of hosting, there is a question on the routine weekly reports about intentions of ADOPTION.  Not all families want to adopt and not all families can adopt.  Each country has rules about the age gap between the parents and the child.  Some children are host only because they are to old to be adopted.  Thankfully I exceeded the age gap by less than 1 year.  New Horizons for Children puts together a list of the children who are being advocated for, so that other families who are looking to adopt can view a portfolio of the children and possibly speak to the host family.  In most cases arrangements can be made for a potential family to meet the child while they are in the United States

When week three came for us, we were praying for God to lead us.  This was HUGE for us.  We went in with the mindset that we were host only.  We were told that he is most likely available when we signed up to host him, but we were just going to advocate for him to find his forever family.  That is one of the reasons that we decided to start this blog .

Our lives were forever changed when that little boy stepped off of the plane.  It was very easy for us to say yes because we did love him and our emotions were running full speed.  We wanted to make sure that this was what God was leading us to do and not our emotions.  We were wanting this little boy to find his forever family.  We really needed God to tell us a clear strong yes and we strongly feel that he did.  This is the first baby step in this process.

Right now we are waiting for official paperwork saying that he is available to be adopted.  Please pray for an answer as we have been waiting to hear back for 2 weeks now.  Once we have that, we can move on to our home study.  Once that is completed someone in L@tvia will ask him if he wants to be ADOPTED.  Not all children say yes.  This is huge for them to leave everything they know.  Leave their hopes of family returning for them, friends, their language and everything.  Even if he says no just to know that he was wanted will be worth every hour of paperwork, and money well spent.  We love this little boy so much.  I wish I could explain it better   Our hearts just broke putting him on the plane. Not knowing if he was available just killed us.

Two years ago we started praying and trying to have another baby.  With all of our children it has taken the use of fertility drugs.  While pregnant with our third child I had to under go a surgery.  After my third C-Section Ryan said we were done having children.  He said he was so scared and he could not go through it again.  At times I struggled with his decision but I always respected it.  I knew if it was Gods plan his mind would be changed.  I was shocked when Ryan said he wanted to have another child.  So we started the heart wrenching process yet again.  After 6 failed fertility attempts, I was devastated   I could not understand what God was doing.  While at a family event I was talking to an extended family member.  She casually asked if we were done having kids.  My answer was this " I don't know if I will ever be done.  I just pray that if God wants me to be done that he takes this longing desire out of my heart."  You should have seen her face LOL.  I think she thought I was crazy.  Months upon month of pumping my body with fake hormones had taken its toll.  I told Ryan that I had to stop.

So now hopefully you can see why we were so hesitant to just jump right in.  My heart was broken.  The thought of adoption wasn't really on my mind when we went into hosting.  We wanted to serve God by serving this little boy.  I was so scared to say yes to the Adoption.  Scared to death.  This was putting my already broken heart out there yet again.  Yes once again I admit my selfishness.  I was so scared.  I am so thankful for my husband and his strength to lead me.

We do not know what God has in store for us.  I do know that God has given me a 4th child.  I love him.  I worry about him and pray for him always.  I want to be his mother but most of all I want God's will to be done in his life.  I take comfort that this is in God's hands.  All the paper work, notarization,  court dates and finances are all far to much for us to handle on our own.  So while I would love to do it all by myself.  I know I can't.  I have completely humbled myself at my creator to carry this for me.

So here is our rough timeline:

• Get official notification that he is available
• Start and finish our home study (approx 1-3 months)
• Someone asking him if he wants to join our family FOREVER
• Scheduling of our fist travel date.  We will have to make 3 trips to L@tvia.  The first being 2-3 weeks hopefully with permission , we will be allowed to bring him back home with us on a special visa (commonly done)
• Possible Summer hosting for 5 weeks if our travel will be later
• Our 2nd trip for 3 days
• 3rd trip for a week.
• 4 post placement visits (after 1 month, after 3  months, after 1 year and after 2 years)

How can you help?

PRAY, PRAY, PRAY

Pray for official and accurate paperwork that he is available.

That our home study goes smoothly

For our children.  So many emotions going on .  There little hearts are broken.

For the funds to be available.  It is roughly $30,000 $35,000 - $40,000 to adopt

We will be in great need of fundraising ideas!

Day 34 - The Final day of hosting

Today Saturday January 19th brought departure day to us. After we woke up and had breakfast this morning, the kids decided to play hide and seek one last time.  I must say that he is an amazingly good hider if hider is a word ;)  After they ran out of hiding places in  the hotel room i decided to start throwing pillows at people and started a pillow fight.  I think I ultimately lost because everyone turned on me.

As we were getting ready to leave the hotel, I took a load out to the car and had to put a few last minute things into his suitcase.  As I was putting the items in I found myself being over come with emotion.  I was putting dirty clothes in his suitcase.  How does someone get emotional putting dirty clothes in a suitcase I thought to myself.  I wasn't crying i just felt my eyes well up and my face did something funky.  I walked back into the room and Linda informed me that I looked terrible.

We loaded up the van and headed to the airport.  We made our way into the parking garage and found a spot.  We knew that when we left the house his suitcase weighed 46 lbs.  The suitcase could not weigh over 50 lbs or there would be an astronomical fee.  We learned from a family that sent their host child home last week that had several bags inside the  suitcase that they could pull out and put in the carry on.  Since we added the items to the suitcase, we decided to pull out a bag that had some pretty good weight to it.  We got inside and met the AAI rep that was going to be escorting him to New York City.  She was a very nice lady that helped us through the process.  We got the bag on the scale and it weighed in at 49.5 lbs.  Whew we made it (barely).

We got to security and the Rep went to check to make sure she was not going to have any problems getting him through security.  There was not much said by anyone as we waited for her to come back.  She came back with the all clear and the time that we did not want to come was here.  All of the kids got hugs from him, followed by Linda and then myself.  I picked him up and gave  him a big hug with him giving me a big hug back, and not wanting to let me go as he buried his face in my neck.

It was time for him to go and they headed through the security line.  As they walked away the emotions were overwhelming.  There are really no words that I can use to describe the feeling.  I think the thing that I would compare it to would be the death of a family member.  I do not say that lightly.  The pain that I felt watching him work his way through that line was real and RAW.  It HURT.  I moved myself around while holding Caden so that we could see him every little bit that we could.  We were able to asked the TSA Agent how far we could go and he said as long as we didn't cross the blue line we were fine.  That allowed us to get one last exchange with him and blow him a kiss.  He made it through the metal detector and they walked around the corner out of sight.

We stayed at the airport until his plane departed just to make sure that there were no issues.  We ended up going back upstairs. Where we were able to see when his plane left the gate and then watch as it took off.  He was gone.

The friends of ours that had hosted in the past that you have heard us talk about suggested that after he left that we should plan some one on one time with our kids.  So we thought that was a great idea and I had purchased tickets to the monster truck show in Champaign, and Linda was going to take the girls out for a girls night.  this was all planed out well before we picked him up at the airport for hosting.  Little did we know that he would be staying another week and be departing the same day that we had planned these things.  We had mixed emotions as the day wore on.  Caden was excited and knew that he was going to love it, but shortly after I told him what we had planed, he reminded me that his L@tvian friend would have loved it as well.

As the day wore on there were more and more reminders of him.  One of us would say something, or someone would do something.  When we got home we saw things around the house.  Even little things.  It is going to be a process for us to work through our feelings and we would greatly appreciate your prayers as we work through them and find the best way to handle them.  This will probably be my last post for a little while however it will not be my last post.  We (I) will continue to blog on occasion sharing my thought with you and trying to help others as well.

Thank you all very much for following this journey that we went on.  PLEASE, I encourage you, If you were moved by reading our blog and feel like it is something God is calling you to do.  DO IT!  Even though today was very hard for us, and will be for a while, as Caden told me this evening, it was life changing.  Yes, my 7 year old told me that what we just went through was life changing.  He was absolutely correct.  If you have any questions feel free to email or leave a comment.  If you want to fill out the pre-application for New Horizons, you can do so by clicking the link on the left.

Thanks again!

Day 33 - One last fun day!

Today started off a bit later than we had anticipated   I am sure it had everything to do with the fact that we were up WAY to late last night.   

Everyone had a good time at the zoo.  He was less than impressed when the black rhino had to relieve himself, and then proceeded to kick it at us!  His favorite animal to see was the Bangle   tiger.  He thought that it was pretty cool.

After the Zoo, we went for a late lunch and headed over to Fitz's Rootbeer.  I must say Linda ordered the pulled pork sandwich and it was very good. (she let me have a taste).  If you have never been before they make and bottle their own soda.  They make and bottle 12 different sodas.  While we were there we were able to watch them make and bottle grape soda.  The process was very cool to watch.  The machines that they were using looked to be VERY Old and I would almost imagine they were the machines that they have used from the start.  At one point one of the places on the conveyor kept  opening up and crushing bottles of grape soda making them explode.  It was pretty cool to see, however it looked like it might have been a bit stressful to the guys that were working.

After our late lunch we headed to the hotel to finish our Hosting journey the way we started it,  swimming.  That is one of his absolute favorite things to do is to swim.  We swam for almost 2 hours.  The video below is there reaction to me jumping in!

We did one last American thing and ordered Pizza in.  After some pizza, and popcorn it was our last bedtime.  At bedtime we had our last evening of translating.  He had lost track of his days and was a bit deflated when we told him that we had to take him to the airport tomorrow, so that he could start his journey back.  We  had one last precious bedtime.  Below is a sample of the artwork that he drew for us.  It just happens to be on Linda's hand!

We ended the night with the three of us praying.

Until tomorrow.

Day 32 - Packing day

As I was leaving for work this morning the above caught my eye.  Every day that I went to work while he was here his name tag was hanging right there as it is in this picture.  Today was the last day that I will head to work and see this hanging here.  Tomorrow morning we are off to spend the day in St. Louis.  One of the things that he wanted to do while he was here was to go to a zoo.  Thankfully it looks like the weather is going to be decent tomorrow.

Since we are going to spend the day in St. Louis tomorrow, we had to pack up everything that he is going to take back with him.  We are limited to 50 lbs in one suitcase and whatever he can carry in his backpack.  I must say that I did not think we would be able to get everything into the allotted space, but we did it.  We did have most of his stuff still in the suitcase from last week so it was not terrible.  Linda had most of it packed up by the time that I had gotten home from work.

This evening we decided to go and create a keepsake to remember him by.  We went to the Next of Kiln and painted some ceramics

Everyone had a great time creating their own masterpiece.

Day 31

One of the things that we wanted to do with him before he headed home was to take him to see a movie at a theater.  That was something that he had never done before.  Since he got sick we did not think we were going to be able to take him, however since we were blessed with another week, he was able to go.  The only place that is currently showing a kids movie is a little over an hour from our house, and only showing it during the day.  I could not believe that there were 0 kid movies in the theater now.  So Linda and the kids went to the movie yesterday afternoon and he was able to see not just a regular movie, but a 3-D movie.  He thought that it was pretty cool.  He came home and had to show me the glasses that he got to wear.

Today, they got to have one last play date with the cousins.  They are not home yet but I am sure they had a ton of fun and I will hear all about it.

Throughout our journey you have been able to see just 1 of the over 220 orphans being hosted from L@tvia and the Ukr@ine.  Take a moment to watch the video below.  You will get to see a some of the other children that were loved across the country.

If the children in this video touch your heart, there are many many more that will be making the trip to the United States this summer.  If you want to be a part of their lives and open your family to a child like this click the link to the right and fill out the pre-application,  If you are in the Midwest you will have the same awesome coordinator that we did!(She created the video as well)

Linda's Thoughts on Hosting

So I would like to share with you some more of our journey from my view.  Last summer when our friends hosted, I thought wow how wonderful, I would love to do this.  We followed their blog and enjoyed reading every post.  We followed them through all the ups and downs that they faced.  They dealt with some teenage problems.  I kept this in the back of my mind just assuming that behavior problems were just going to go with the program.  PLEASE understand what I did NOT.  Some children really struggle, some have problems, and some THRIVE.  

This fall God opened our eyes again to New Horizons For Children.  I have to admit, I really debated.  I wanted to do some work on the kitchen.  I know... Change a child's life, show them God, give them love, show them a family, or get new flooring.  Ryan and I prayed about this separately.  Quickly I was told that this is what I was supposed to do.  Shortly after that Ryan and I talked about it.  He opened the conversation telling me that this is what God has told him to do.  He was prepared to make me see things his way. LOL What he did not know is that God had already changed my heart  We were just going to host.  We were going to be there for this child.  I had no idea what I was getting myself involved in.  Looking back now I just laugh.  Thankfully God gave me an inner peace.  Yes I was scared. I was letting a pre-teen boy in my home that I knew nothing about.  I am so thankful that God had given me that peace.  I got many concerned reactions.  Some were out of love and others were well we just wont go there.  I had come up with many of my own concerns, but God truly told me to do this.  

 So going back to our friends hosting experience this summer.  I was preparing myself for the worst.  Our friends are our "experts" they have done foster care, hosted before and had gone through training.    So with us having no experience, I thought we will for sure have problems.  I went into this trying to have no expectations, but like Ryan said I set myself up with negative expectations.  When we were all at the airport waiting for him to arrive our children were so excited.  We were all lined up holding our welcome signs.  One mother next to me said it best.  Her daughter was going to grab something from across the room,  Her mother said, with tears rolling down her cheeks  "Nothing is more important than this moment".   The kids started coming down the hall.  There was a little boy standing in the middle.  I kept saying his name and finally we caught his attention.  I have to admit he was so out of it I thought OH MY.  I remember looking at Ryan scared to death.  Remember, I prepared for the worst.  By the time we got to the car he had woken up, and I realized O.K. I can do this.  By the time we got to the hotel, I thought we are all getting along, this might work.  The first night I slept maybe 2 hours, remember Lexie was sick.  I prayed that entire night for our journey.  The next morning we went swimming.  That was the BEST thing we have done.  When Ryan did a canon ball into the pool, I hope I never forget the look on his face.  His personality started coming out.  He couldn't stop it even if he tried!  By the end of our two hour swim he could say in English:  On your mark, get set, go,  wait, jump and all of our names.  He was smiling and laughing the entire time.  My fears were getting smaller and smaller.  

When we got home all was going well, then I realized that Ryan was going back to work.  If you are a mother  you know the fear of being home alone for the first time with your baby. Or when you have more than one child and you go grocery shopping by yourself.  There was real fear, however all went well.  The first week was crazy.  I have to say he was wonderful.  My kids on the other hand were awful.  I had many times during the day where I thought to myself, what is this, who are these kids, where have I gone wrong.  Remember we were supposed to show him a happy family.

Then Christmas came.  My kids were starting to get it together, and he was starting to get more comfortable with me.  Thankfully, Ryan was able take off several days to be home with us.  I was so excited for him to meet our families.  They all loved him and willingly opened their hearts and homes to him.  Our church family as always was amazing.  I have always thought that the children in our church were wonderful but seeing them play four square with him in the basement made my heart smile.  He felt welcomed and included.  There was no language needed.

After Christmas was over, we started in with our first time experiences and family outings.  Chuck E Cheese, Build a Bear and roller skating to name a few.  Tears ran down my face with every new experience.  I could not prepare myself for the transformation that was taking place in my heart.  I wish I could describe it better but I do not think the words exist.  I was prepared to deal with behavior problems, not prepared to fall in LOVE!  The relationship that has formed between our family and him caught me by surprise.  More like took my feet out from underneath me.  No, I am not talking about my fall at the roller skating rink!  God was giving me an amazing gift, far greater than anything that I had expected.  Remember we were supposed to help him, show him God and show him a family.  To my surprise, he has shown me love, taught me how to love freely, and has shown me God in more than one way.  FAITH?  Faith has taken on a whole new meaning. 

As we headed into our last week, our 

family was running smoothly.  I was starting to think about saying goodbye.  The tears kept on flowing.  Little did we know that the chicken pox were in the future.  With travel dates unclear, I was thinking did we do enough?  Did we do to much?  Did we have enough family time?  Did we show him God in our lives?  Thankfully God gave us an extra week.  He was really sick with the virus and I was able to stop everything and take care of him.  I am so thankful for that time with him. It was not easy but wonderful all at the same time.  

He is now feeling better, but he still can not make it through an entire day without resting.  My kids are going crazy with him being sick.  We are usually an on the go type of family.  I think we have rented every movie and Wii game that the video store has.  We have painted, colored, played with Legos, hot wheels and puzzles to name a few.  I hate puzzles by the way. Yesterday he translated to me on the computer "Can we please go out tonight?".  I first said no because I thought we should stay in a couple more days.  I am so glad Ryan said Yes we should go.  We all needed it.  The walls of my house were closing in on me. It is driving me nuts that my Christmas stuff is still up.  I only have 4 days left and I am not about to take away our precious time to put them away.  They can just collect dust.  I have no idea how I am going to get through the rest of the week.  I am trusting in God. I know that God will get me through this.  

I want to end with this quote "Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all" Lord Alfred Tennyson