Naming AJ

'AJ' is not actually his name.  It is a screen name given to this sweet baby by the good folks of Reece's Rainbow to protect his true identity.  Jeff and I have the sweet pleasure of naming him his forever name.  I have a couple of baby books loaned to me by a dear friend that I am pouring over each night.  So many of the names are wonderful, yet, none have jumped out at me like I have been praying they would... not yet, anyway.

I want a name with great meaning.  I want a name that sounds good with the middle name of Scott...'cause we DO have his middle name picked out and Scott it is!  ALL our boys share Jeff's middle name of Scott.

So, baby AJ remains baby AJ for now.  Soon, sweet boy, you'll have a wonderful name.  I promise!

Great verses for families...

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, children are a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons born in one youth. Happy is the man who has filled his quiver with them.
Psalm 127:2-5

Flurry of paperwork and a few definitions

Right now we are at the tail-end of a ton of paperwork....LOTS of paperwork. Once we get through all this paperwork and our medicals, we will be able to send our completed home study off to USCIS to be prayerfully approved, then we'll go get our FBI fingerprints and once those come back we'll be able to send in our dossier to EE. THEN, we wait for our court and travel date to EE...YEAH! Seems like I'm leaving out a kigillian steps in there but at least we can start to see the light at the end of this tunnel. We are beyond excited and ready to bring our little man home. He needs us and we need him!


For those wanting to know:


USCIS is:


United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is a bureau of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It performs many administrative functions formerly carried out by the legacy United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which was part of the Department of Justice. The stated priorities of the USCIS are to promote national security, to eliminate immigration case backlogs, and to improve customer services. The Bureau is headed by a director who reports directly to the Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security. USCIS was formerly and briefly named the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS), before becoming USCIS.


Dossier is:


(dôs e a)


1. A collection of papers, especially legal and/or other sources, containing detailed information about a particular person or subject, together with a synopsis of their content.




EE is:


Eastern Europe is the area our little man is from. We have been instructed not to say publicly exactly what country he is from until he is legally ours. So, for now, we put EE.

Father's Day 2010 ~ A day of firsts and lasts

Today is Father's Day!  Happy Father's Day to three very important men in my life:  my own daddy, my husband's daddy and my children's daddy, my sweet husband, Jeff!  This is the first Father's Day that Jeff is the dad to 7 children!  This is the last Father's Day that Jeff has to celebrate it without AJ!  Today I will call my daddy, tell him how much I love and admire him, I will love on him as much as I can over the phone.  He is a wonderful , beautiful person and I'm so thankful God chose him to be my father!  Jeff  has to go in to work today so we will celebrate with him later this evening.   We'll be thinking of little AJ on this Father's Day, hoping he somehow knows there is a large family in Texas full of life and love waiting to bring him home.  

Passports are in...

As of 6-14-10 we are the proud new owners of USA passports!  Now we can get busy on all the paperwork that requires passport numbers.  I wish, wish, wish there was a quicker way to make this adoption move along.  It really is maddening how long it takes to send in paperwork, get it back, send it in for apostilling, get it back, and send it to EE.  Maddening I say!  

POA's and CSP *SENT*...

So, maybe I'm a little cautious, just a little.  I took the envelope down to the FedEx place this afternoon filled with our precious POA's and CSP forms.  I did not seal the envelope before getting there because I wanted the FedEx person to help me finish filling out the packing slip and put everything in correctly.  The lady at the counter was so helpful as I fumbled to finished writing in the proper box's.  We debated on the spelling of Kiev.  Was it Kiev or Kyiv?  Turns out it is either...so we put both.  The envelope will get there with either spelling and will for sure get there with BOTH!


I paid the nice lady $114 to send the envelope the fastest way possible.  It will still take 6 days and that is waaaayyyyyy too slow in my book.  I might try UPS for the next set of documents and see if they can do this faster.  Every day we wait for things to ship is another day sweet AJ spends alone in his bed.  We cannot get there fast enough. 

I felt good that we got that done and I drove off set to go home.  Half way home, I remembered that I did not seal the envelope and turned around and headed back to the FedEx place.  I do not think the lady at the counter was too surprised to see me.  I must have looked like a new momma returning to check on her baby in the church nursery.  I told her what I had done and she smiled and assured me that SHE had sealed the envelope for me.  I was very thankful.  She even showed me the envelope.   We talked again about the spelling of Kiev and looked it up in the FedEx city handbook.  We then talked about these all-important documents and I told her about our adoption.  She said her sister has adopted three from Russia, with one more on the way.  Very neat!


I will be very glad when these documents make there way to Eastern Europe!  Wish it were ME! 

"He knows my name"

We sang this song in church tonight like we have so many times before.  Only this time I cried.  I cried because I heard it from the view point of AJ, as if he were singing it to God and to us.  I pray AJ feels he has a Father, both earthly and Heavenly, who knows his name, who will NEVER leave him, no matter where he goes.  I pray AJ can some how feel our love.

I have a maker
Before my heart,
before even time began
My life was in his hands

He knows my name
He knows my every thought,
He sees each tear that falls
and hears me when I call

I have a father,
he calls me his own
He'll never leave me,
no matter where I go

He knows my name
He knows my every thought
He sees each tear that falls
and hears me when I call

He knows my name
He knows my every thought
He sees each tear that falls
and hears me when I call

He knows my name
He knows my every thought
He sees each tear that falls
And hears me when I call
He hears me when I call

First set of apostilled documents are back...

We received our first set of apostilled documents in the mail today, back from the Secretary of State of Texas!!  Now on to Eastern Europe...Yeah!

Home Study, Part 1

Today we was the first of two home visits for our home study.  It went great!  Our social worker is such a sweet, sweet person and put us at ease from the very start!  The interview was literally like talking to an old friend ~ nothing hard about it!!  She visited with Jeff and I and then each of our children.  We did a walk through inside the house and outside. Jeff and I have quite a bit of paper work to work on between now and our second home visit but that is good because it will keep us busy and keep things moving along.   One step closer baby boy, one step closer.....

Things are starting to move

We applied for our passports yesterday.    We went during Jeff's lunch hour and were very short on time.  The postal worker was so sweet.  The line was *very* long and the postal worker saw that we had a document folder...and a baby...and asked us if we were there for passports.  We said 'yes we were' and he waived us to the FRONT of the line.  I am so thankful we did not have to wait.  The cost to apply for passports sure has gone up over the past 30 years since I last applied.  It was just under $200 each, well, we did expedite the process so that did add a little.   At least this process is done and Jeff was still able to grab a bite to eat and get back to work on time since the nice postal worker waived us through the line.  So thankful!


I was able to send in our first set of documents for apostille this morning.  The lady at the post office said the documents should arrive in Austin by noon tomorrow.  The cost for this...$69.15!   We should get these back in a couple of weeks and we can send them to Eastern Europe....cost for that, $200.  No body ever said rescuing an orphan  was cheap....but well worth every penny!