Happy Holidays!

Nothing much to report on the adoption front. We're having our home visit next week, and we're starting to work on the stack of papers needed for our dossier. Mostly, though, we've been enjoying some time together with family and our little ones that are already here. We've also been re-arranging and organizing our bedroom, and even though it's not done, it's the cleanest it's been since we moved in.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and that you can continue to enjoy the end of this year and the beginning of the new one! I haven't had a chance to put pictures from this Christmas on my computer yet, so I'll leave you with a picture from last year.

Introducing Our Daughter!

We're excited to finally be able to share with you the little girl who we hope to make our daughter!

We first found her picture on Reece's Rainbow, and have learned more about her since from families who have adopted from her orphanage and met her. She is listed as "Brigitte" on Reece's Rainbow, but that is not her real name, just a pseudonym used by them to protect her privacy. We'll continue to use it here on our blog for the same reason. The picture above is the one shown on Reece's Rainbow, and it's probably about a year old. We do have other pictures of her, some more recent, and I look forward to sharing some of them here, but this is the picture I first fell in love with, so I wanted to share it first.

As things stand now she will be available for international adoption in June, so we are planning on traveling to her country in Eastern Europe then to bring her home. There is a small chance she will be adopted in her home country before we get there, but we feel like God has led us here, so we're trusting that he will continue to watch over this process.

There are a number of things we need to finish before we can adopt, but we're working on them. We have a social worker coming to visit our home in 2.5 weeks, and we're gathering lots of papers to send to our little girl's government to show them we are capable of caring for her.

Soon I'll update the blog to feature her picture as well, and we'll also get a button to put on the sidebar that links to our family's donation page, if anyone wants to donate toward the costs of our adoption. I looked the other day and found we already had our first donation! I don't know who gave it (I promise I'll find out soon so I can send you a real thank-you note), but whoever it was, Thank you!

A Few Updates

I know, I've been horrible about keeping up on this blog. I promise I'll do better in the coming months! But here are a few updates from the last month:

1. There's still no official word on the special needs list in our girl's country. Maybe in January we'll know for certain when she'll be available. (Just to remind everyone, she'll be available in June no matter what.)

2. The little boy on my sidebar, who I was a warrior for, now has a committed family, and they have accepted his file in his country, and they get to meet him tomorrow! (Actually, with the time difference, in just a few hours!) If you, like me, want to follow along, their blog is http://threemorejacobsons.blogspot.com/.

3. I finally set up an etsy shop to sell some flower hair clips and cards to help raise money for our adoption. I'm going to figure out how to put a link in my sidebar, but until then, the shop is at http://www.etsy.com/shop/vadascreations. The pictures aren't the best, but I promise the stuff is super cute! And I have a whole bunch more cards and clips to add, so if you want something specific keep checking back or send me an e-mail.

4. We're working on "officially" committing to our girl, so hopefully soon we'll get to put her picture here! At that point we'll also have a link you can use to make tax-deductible donations to her adoption, if you're so inclined.

5. We're working on our home study, should have our home visit later this month, and will hopefully have it completed by early January. We're also starting work on dossier documents to send to our daughter's country.

So, even though I haven't been updating, things have been progressing, and hopefully will continue to do so at an even faster rate!