Nearly There :)

Well, after a chaotic few weeks, we are nearly ready to go.  We have had lawyers, flights, ballet exams, our son rushed to hospital, husband sick, on top of trying to get ready to go, aahhh.
I hate leaving my kids so much, it's particularly hard with the little one, expecially when she asked me today if I will come back, poor little thing.

Things I am excited about:

Meeting this new little person
Catching up with the 4 families who are traveling at the same time as us and staying at the same hotel.
Hopefully some relaxing involved??
Getting this process started again.
Seeing Rachael, Durham and Olive from   http://www.livinghope.org.nz/

So it is 12 hours to go before we travel to Auckland to begin a new journey, hopefully I will be able to post while we are there.

I came across this post by an adoptive mum, and it made me laugh because of how true it is!
http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2012/08/21/the-truth-about-adoption-one-year-later

Off To Russia!!!

It is hard to believe it has been nearly 10 months since we did trip one to Russia.  We are really excited to say we have had a referral come through, and we are leaving in less than two weeks to go and meet ????.  If you don't know what a referral is, it is a child/children that have been matched to your family for adoption.  

Timeline from now:

August 2012 trip one to meet the 'referral'

Lots of waiting

Trip two to go to court and be granted custody, fingers crossed

30 days later, trip 3 to pick up and bring them home.

This has been a long journey for our family, we are hopeful this time it will happen.

Adoption Vladivostok "2nd time lucky"?

Well, ALL and I do mean ALL of our adoption paper work is expiring this month in Russia, so we have started at the beginning with it all, getting all the documents ready, notarizing, and of course hoping they arrive on time.  We have adopted from China before, but paper work for a Russian adoption is a whole other story.  

It feels surreal being back at the beginning of the process again.  It has been nearly a whole year since we meet the boys we were meant to adopt, and then lost.  Hard to believe where the time has gone.   We are hoping to hear good news soon, have been saying that for a while now.  We are in a really good place, but it is hard waiting, it has been soooo long, and we are really excited to be adopting again.  So many families who were a few months behind us in the process have returned with their children, and we are still patiently waiting :).   I love seeing all those gorgeous kids coming home to their families, and watching them blossom after only a month or two.  This was our little girl when we meet her and then a month later.  So love seeing their little personalities coming out.

Fiji mission trip

Our oldest son just returned on Saturday morning, from a two week trip to Fiji, helping the people on the Island of Labasa.  We missed him so much, but it was so great for him to be able to go.  He has wanted to do a mission trip for a while now.  It was such an experience for him, even got totally bitten by 'bed bugs'!!

My gorgeous boy 

The kids club help helped with.  

Jackson at one of the churches they helped in.

This is his feet after a night with bed bugs

He was invited to a kava ceremony

coconuts

Helping to local villages by planting watermelons

One of the horrible insects found while planting!
Very poisonous apparently

*** Jasmine ***

This week has been an eventful week.  Our oldest son is on a mission trip to Fiji for two weeks, helping in Villages etc, quite a huge deal for him and us.  This week has been also about little miss Jasmine.   We finally managed to have her birthday party, after waiting patiently for the movie to come out at the cinema.  Lots of fun was had but all her little girlfriends.

And two days ago, we again enjoyed reminiscing about the first time, 8 years ago (hard to believe) we first saw our daughters little face.  It was the date she was allocated to our family and we were given her photos.

Birthday Fun, and JUST LOTS of waiting............

Been a bit slack updating my blog lately, but since I am getting lots and lots of questions about what is happening with our adoption, I thought it was high time I wrote something :)

The good first:

In amongst all the sad parts of the last two months (loosing our boys), there have been very fun family times, and two birthdays.
Jasmine turned 9 and Jason....Well I'm not allowed to say.

We took the family up to Auckland for a long weekend to have some birthday fun, at Rainbows End and the Zoo etc.  We are still tired, :)

Daddy and his 2 girls

Chanel

trying to soak each other

Our family almost used up all the boats

ADOPTION:

Waiting....... is the word that best describes how that is going.  We are finding it really hard to understand why it is taking so long for us to receive another referral from Russia.
We have three friends who lost children after their first trips and received referrals the day after, so for us waiting this long seems excessive.
We are aware there are children there that appear to match our profile.  Is it really hard, not being told anything, and not having any idea what is going on.
So the whole situation is pretty sad and disheartening for our family.  We were so looking forward to adopting again.
There was an update of 'our boys' on the internet this week with their new family, which is so hard to see.  That would have been us home with them, but instead we are still in this process with no answers and no child.
So all in all we know as much as you .. nothing.  I so hope we have some good news soon.  It is 7 months since our first trip to Russia.

Our second oldest

Birthday Girl turns 9

My oldest boy

In the weekend my oldest born went to his first school Ball (for all my American friends, that is a Prom)
This event certainly made me feel a little older!
They went as a group, had a nice pre-ball get together with all the families,  and hired out a Limousine for an hour drive around the city before it started.  Very exciting.