Thinking Pink!

Well.... never believe us when we say "never". Here we go.... again.... and this time to Russia! Yes, this time it is truly "Journey for Jill" as we've specifically requested a baby girl. Her name will be Jill, after my sister, and I'm confident JC & Jacob will be awesome big brothers! Here's where we are so far...

At one point, during our wait to travel to Kazakhstan, we were told we'd only be offered little girls from which to "choose" for our family. Since that time, I've been obsessing about little girl clothes, little girl dolls, ribbons, bows, you name it. Anything girl related. To compound my "girl crush", Laney, my niece is just too cute and I cannot get enough of Ella & Tessa, both adopted from Russia. As you know, our journey in Kazakhstan resulted in Jacob, a decision perfect for our family, but I still long for that little bundle of pink. So, now that Jacob is settled in to our family, we've decided it's time to look for our little girl.

Our first choice was to return to Kazakstan. Our experience adopting Jacob was very positive. However, Kaz has become incresingly popular due to Guatamala shutting down and China tightening its adoption critieria. We were told to expect a wait of 1 1/2 to 2 years for a baby girl. That's just too long! We then asked about Russia, where JC is from. Again, we were told the wait would be much longer. After researching our options, we made the decision to use a different adoption agency and contracted with Lighthouse Adoptions out of Ann Arbor, MI. It was hard to leave Bethany, our prior agency for JC & Jacob, but we felt we'd be home with baby Jill much quicker using the new agency. So far, we've been very pleased.

We've requested a little girl, younger than 2 years old. Although you cannot request race, we've asked for her to be euro-asian, like JC & Jacob. Our agency will register our dossier in Moscow so we'll not have the additional in-country trains/planes/etc. That's very nice! We'll make three trips to Moscow. Trip one, to meet our little girl and officially apply to the courts for her adoption. We expect this trip to last about a week. Trip two will be really fast, pop in to Moscow for court and come straight home. Trip two should occur 4 - 8 weeks after trip one. Trip three is where we will take Jill from her orphanage and process her through the U.S. Embassy. This trip will be about a week in duration and should occur about 2 weeks after returning from trip two. Making three trips instead of two saves us about 15 days in Russia. Time we can spend at home preparing the boys for a major life-changing event!

It took about a month to prepare our dossier. It will leave for Russia later this week. In the meantime, we've received our appointment for Homeland Security (INS) fingerprints, the last paperwork step needed to take a first trip. Amazingly, we're being told we could potentially travel on trip one by the end of June! Apparently, the agency's director has identified a few euro-asian little girls needing a home and if we can get our INS docs quick, we just might travel before Moscow shuts down (for first trips only) during July and August. So, we'll see! That would be exceptionally fast!

So now we wait!

We've just returned from our first family-of-four vacation in St. George Island, Florida. We went with three other families and 5 other children, all adopted from Eastern Europe. We're fostering four boxer puppies & their mama and have decided to re-list our home for sale. Lots to keep our minds occupied while waiting for "the call".

We'll keep our blog updated on our journey and ask for your prayers and support as we look forward to becoming a family of five!

Cheers!

Sherri & Tim