The Others

First Day of school!

 Though it may seem that we are so involved with what is going on with Baby E on the other side of the world, that we forget to update on what is going on with Audrey and Noah, fret not!    They are still getting mucho amounts of love, affection and goodies (after they eat their well balanced meals, of course!)

Mr. Noah- 
Noah started preschool on Sept. 4 and is loving every second. Miss Joy and Miss Susie are his teachers and he is in the Wolf classroom.  We went for a new family orientation and Noah had the choice to stay with his teachers and play in the classroom with his new mates, or to go with us and listen to some lady talk.  We were thrilled when (without bribery, mind you) he chose to stay and play. 

Though he doesn't give us a ton of details each day, we have gleaned that there are monkey bars, lots of books and even some painting.  He will also proclaim that his favorite thing to do there is eat snack.  Obviously taking after his mommy and daddy with that one!

Noah and Daddy head off to the daily grind of school and work respectively.

First day of drop off

Noah posing in front of his classroom

The gals are ready to head off for some quality girl time!

She has loved playing in the water this summer!  A very direct contrast to her
aqua-phobe brother!

Girly:
Audrey has been growing oh so cute and cuddly lately.  She is managing to annoy Noah and push his buttons just as much as he pushes her's.  It makes us proud that she can hold her own, as all little sisters should.  She still digs all of Noah's monster trucks, cars, trains, etc. , but has also taken a liking to baby dolls.  We were amazed at how well versed she was at feeding it with spoons and sippy cups, brushing its hair, and trying to change its diaper.  It is really amazing what they pick up from their parents! 

She loves twirly skirts and accessories now.  Which is
great considering she has a crazy mullet and beautiful curls that tend to
resemble an early '90's Jaromir Jagr when she is all sweaty :-)

A New Story

Today we heard a new story about "E", a story marked by God's amazing fingerprints.  As if we needed more proof of His love for us and His presence and blessing in this process!

A family that we have met through the online network of families adopting through RR contacted us.  After a while you forget which person is adopting which kid, you just know you are all in this together and you support everyone.  We have always felt that this family had a fantastic story.  They sent their paperwork to commit to their chosen child.  However, just hours before another family submitted their paper work as well for the same child! I am sure they were crushed!  God's plan prevailed and the other family halted their adoption process, and this family was able to commit to their little boy.


How does this story connect to our precious "E?"  Well, in the time when they thought they had lost their chance to adopt their son, the agencies were suggesting 2 other waiting children for them.  One was "E!"  I will let you read the rest straight from the message we received!

"Judy emailed me a picture of a beautiful little girl...named 'Edena.' She wasn't listed on RR yet. Can I just say she's is soooo cute!! We both felt strongly that we were not supposed to commit to her- but I have to tell you, it was hard! We were ready for answers from God after SEVERAL months of this and we have 3 little boys and would LOVE to have a daughter....but neither of us had peace. So we decided that our role in E's life was to pray that her forever family would come. I am SO excited that you are her forever family!!!"

The thought that E had been placed on a silver platter in front of a super duper adoptive family and she was not snatched up gives us strength to keep going through this process,  believing that God knows (and knew all along!) that we were meant to be her family!  

And the thought that this family has been praying for us to come along and bring her home for all of this time makes this whole story even sweeter!

Reality Check

As we were in the process of completing our home study, there is an amazing woman (and an even more amazing Christian!) who  was adopting from the same region and was a few steps ahead of us. She had just returned from her first visit and had blogged every detail. What a Godsend.

Being a natural born planner, the uncertainty of EVERYTHING in the process is ridiculously hard to swallow.  Her blog entries have given me a little glimpse of what to expect during our first trip to visit E. Though I had hoped that details such as these would fill in the gaps in my mental picture, I find myself calmed and also panicked at the same time.

In one particular blog entry, she spoke about her first experience giving her son a bottle at the orphanage. The caretaker had urged her to put the bib on the baby.  When the baby was tilted back and the bottle given to him, it gushed out and the child quickly lapped up each every bit he could as it continued to pour out and all over him.  The bottle was quickly taken away, with the boy having had perhaps 1/4 of the bottle end up in his mouth.  Upon inspecting the nipple, it had been cut. Confirming her suspicions of the awful circumstances surrounding feeding time in orphanages.

We had learned through our classes that caretakers have many children to feed and a short time to do it.  They line up the babies in their chairs or cribs and go down the line sticking a bottle in each of their mouths.  When they get to the end of the line, they go back to the start and remove the bottles.  It just sounds so horrific to think of these little ones speed eating with a huge hole in the nipple so it spills out in massive torrents.  We liked to think that perhaps our orphanage was different and maybe E got to drink a bottle on her time, digesting well and maybe even had some time to be held or cuddled.


It broke our hearts to learn that E's orphanage was no exception.

We keep thinking of the HOURS and HOURS we spent feeding our children.  The hours spent holding, cuddling, burping, cuddling some more.  E has never had that, and due to no fault of her own. The paperwork cannot be done fast enough as we physically ache to go and bring her home.

It breaks our hearts even more thinking of all of those children who are not coming to a loving home anytime soon.

If you are praying for us, thank you.  Would it be too much to ask that you send up some extra prayers for all of the children living in institutions who may not find families??

God is in the details!

Today, I had jury duty. 

I have no problem serving my civic duty, but since the kids were scheduled to be at the child care center at Dave's work, I thought it would be the perfect day to go to Harrisburg and get our dossier apostilled.

We didn't get some of the required documents the night before and I was actually called in to jury duty  (sometimes they excuse you the night before), so there went my plans for the day.

So I woke up, trudged down to the courthouse and as soon as I sat down, we got a call from our social worker saying all of the documents were at my doorstep.  This didn't do me much good as I was sitting in the jury room.

At 10:35 am, the court official informed us that they needed 45 people to head up to the court room.  There were only 52 people in the room.  When they called the 45th number, I immediately started crying.  I wasn't called!  There was nothing they could do with the 7 remaining jurors, so I knew I would be let out!  2 of the women next to me that were also left immediately asked if I needed a tissue and if I was ok.  I told them about E.

So then there are 3 women bawling and we had an awesome, God-filled conversation about our adoption. They waited until all of the called jurors left the room and then the court staff dismissed us.   The remaining folks rushed me to the front of the line so I could be scanned out.  Before I could dash out, one of the sweet older women took my shoulders, looked me square in the eye and told me that her parents had adopted her.  Though she probably gave them some grief about being adopted when she was a spring chickadee (her words, not mine), she now realizes the amazing feat of love adoption is.  She then hugged me with all of her 72 year old might.

I cried. And then I dashed out of the courthouse.

I sped home, got the documents in order, and made my way to Harrisburg.  By 2 pm, all of my documents were apostilled. At 2:15 pm, I realized that I totally forgot to feed the parking meter in my rush, and found no ticket on my car when I returned!  By 4 pm, I was home and the documents were nestled into their Fed Ex envelope, en route to the agency.

What are the odds of me not being picked for jury duty?   What are the odds that one of the 7 of us not picked would have such a powerful adoption story? What are the odds that parked RIGHT IN FRONT of the state capitol with state cops EVERYWHERE I would not get a ticket??

That is God.  And I truly believe He is in the details of our lives! And more importantly, yours too!

The Process

The process, while not hard per se, seems never ending right now! 

For some reason, it was much easier to be patient during pregnancy than it is through this process.  Perhaps it was the fact that we knew our children were in a safe place, well cared for and nourished.  Perhaps it was that we wouldn't miss a single moment of their lives on the outside.

As we speak to folks and tell them about this major step out in faith upon which we are embarking, it is amazing how everyone seems to know someone who has adopted or share a story of their own.  The guy who ran the UPS store where we did our home study finger printing had adopted from Russia, a few folks at Dave's new company have adopted, and even a few of my bosses have nieces and nephews through adoption.  It is amazing to see how prevalent adoption is, yet how much of a stigma there still can be about it, not to mention how many orphans still desperately need families.

As we go through this process, we through out terms like USCIS and apostilled, and even though someone might have a friend of a friend who adopted, we still might be speaking Greek to them. We thought we should outline our process to clarify. It is different in ever country and even in different regions of the same country.

Of course, we are also outlining this just in case adoption has ever been on the hearts and minds of anyone else that might be reading it, and we would love to share information to encourage others as they make the big decision!

Step 1:  The Home Study
 Our home study began on May 25 when we signed with the agency and committed to E on RR.  There were in-home visits with included a house tour (making sure everything was safe, clean, enough space and proper exits, fire extinguishers, etc.), individual interviews for Dave and I regarding our family and background, joint interviews with questions geared to our parenting styles, beliefs and values, conflict style, and also general observation as we interacted with our children.  This part of the process also includes lots of paper work.  Birth certificates, marriage licenses, medical forms, abuse and criminal clearances, etc. must all be gathered.  This process takes approx 2-3 months.

Step 2:  USICS Approval
After the home study is complete, we can move into more paperwork. YAY!  We fill out some forms for the US Government, attach our home study, get finger printed (again!) and wait for approval from US Customs.

Step 3.  Registration Dossier Compilation
(Step 2 and 3 can be done concurrently for our region)
Once the approved home study is received, we can fill out a bunch more paper work, get it approved by our agency, get it notarized and then apostilled.  This less-than-awesome part of the process involves taking our notarized documents to Harrisburg get more officials to verify the dates, signatures, etc.  Fun, huh?  Then we send this to our agency who sends it to E's courts in her country!

Step 4.  Travel Dates for trip 1
Once E's region receives our Registration Dossier, they will send us travel dates!  They tell us when to be there and by golly, we will be there!    During this time, we will also be working on our Court Dossier, more papers to be gathered, notarized and another trip to PA's 4th largest city to get the apostilled.

Step 5: Trip 1
YAY! If we make it to this step, we will actually get to meet our daughter!  This will hopefully  be less than 3 months after the home study is complete.  We are moving as fast as possible to bring her home.  We will fly into a major city then drive to her region.  We will visit meet the orphanage director, her caretaker and get to visit up to 2 times a day with her.  Then we hope to have our court paper work to take to the court there to keep the process moving!

Step 6:  Trip 2 and Court
After we submit our court documents, we will receive a court date.  We will then go back for our medical exams and our court hearing.  There is a 30 day wait between the court date and the time you can take the child.  There is a chance that this 30 day wait could be waived and we could get to bring our little lady home at the second trip!  This would be so huge!!  If court goes well, they will declare the child ours!  If we have to wait, we will come home and wait.

Step 7:  Trip 3 (potential)
If the wait is not waived, I will head back solo and pick her up in her region, take her to the major city and take her through all of her processing! Then we get to bring her home for good.  For keeps! Forever and ever! AMEN!


Whew!  That was a long one, folks!  And that was only writing it. Living it is going to be so much harder.  Please pray for us as we  move along these step.  Each one involves an amazing amount of time, energy, patience and money, all of which are wearing thin!  We are so fortunate to have an amazing community of family, friends and even online supporters to help us through. Oh, and God is on our side through all of this.  We know that without a doubt!

If it's on the internet.....

It must be true!! 

Here it is folks, the big news on the Lewis front.

http://reecesrainbow.org/38638/sponsorlewis-2

We have decided to adopt a sweet little girl from Eastern Europe!  We'll call her E for now, as we haven't decided what her official name will be!

This is huge!  We enjoyed living the cushy, safe, comfortable suburban life since we were married 5 years ago.  But, we've had enough now.  Now it is time to do something big. Something good.  Something scary. Something that God tells us in His word that we should do.

We had a friend who was thinking of starting a journey on an international adoption and in response to a naysayer, she listed all of the things she had going for her:  Solid faith, strong marriage, healthy lifestyle, the ability to stay at home with her kids, steady employment for her husband, supportive family and friends, etc.  She then asked said naysayer, "If we aren't prime candidates, who is?"

That stuck with us.  We have an amazing life!  Are we millionaires vacationing on our own tropical island?  No.  But do our blessings abound?  YES! We have been so blessed in really, just about every way possible and why shouldn't we bring a child into our home to be a part of this?  We love kids and always wanted a large family, so why not help give a child a future that she wouldn't otherwise have? And really folks, who wouldn't want to be a Lewis?!

Those were just some of our reasons.

One of the biggest reasons was E herself.  Having seen her picture on RR, I eagerly tried to get my friend to adopt her.  She was born in March 2011, just like Audrey.  Audrey and E both had dark hair and eyes and I just knew they would be best friends (besties, BFF's, whatever the new lingo is). When my friend chuckled and continued to show me other children that she had been considering, my heart sank a bit. How could she not see just how amazing this little girl was?

Then it sank lower, and lower.  The thought of life without Audrey's best friend, her "fake" twin just sent me on a crying fit.  The fit lasted over a week. I couldn't do anything at home without thinking what it would be like to have 2 little brown haired girls toddling around in cute dresses and uttering cute phrases.  2 girls to take prom dress shopping.  2 little girls to send away to college (YIKES!) God was screaming to me that this little girl was meant to be in our family.

When Dave and I talked, his first response was, "It's a great idea, too bad we can't afford it right now."  Lucky for him, I have our family budget spreadsheet forecast out until 2018 (totally not exaggerating here) and I showed him that with a few lifestyle changes, some tapping into his work adoption assistance benefit, and some support of friends and family through fundraisers, perhaps she isn't out of reach after all! It would take a lot of sacrifice, but heck, Jesus died for us, surely we can pull our belts tighter and have some uncomfortable conversations with friends asking to support her grant! This may be the first time we get to truly sacrifice for our kids; we get to really rely on God to make this happen!

We decided to wait 6 months.  After seeing me crying (again) the next day, Dave suggested waiting a few weeks instead. Then the next day (surprise- another day of crying over her beautiful little picture!), we decided to call the agency the next morning.  After hearing about the number of inquiries she had had, we got all the paper work from our adoption agency, RR (the partner) and our home study agency filled out in 1 day and overnighted everything.

The next day, we saw her on the My Family Found Me page on RR.  What an amazing feeling!

Now the fun begins! We prepare for mountains of paperwork, physical exams, psychiatric exams, home study evaluations, finger prints, a dossier and a few (3 to be exact) trips to Eastern Europe. A short 8-10 months later, she will be ours.

And I am still crying!  Go figure :-)

Why is it that....

You get your house all ready to sell and in the process fall in love with it again??

The past 4 days have been spent sawing, nailing, trimming, priming, painting, steaming and even power washing.  Our perfect, out of our dreams finished basement is officially finished and we will be leaving it asap. Awesome, right?

We can finally say that the house is ready for the market.  We can also say that we are old and in pain from it all!

We have also decided that we are too old to have all of our friends load up our moving truck for the low low price of free pizza and beer.    If you are a fan of How I Met Your Mother, you may recall the episode where they made a list of things they are too old for.  This tops ours!    For the first time ever we will be hiring movers thanks to the fact that Dave's new company will foot the bill.

You are welcome friends, very welcome :-)

Now bring on the buyers!