DTR

As I was recently visiting with a new fellow Rwandan adoptive mom, I realized I have learned quite a few new acronyms since the beginning of this journey. Without a doubt, my favorite one so far is DTR. Today, our family is officially DTR! Today, April 29, 2009, the Spore family's Dossier made it To the right desk in Rwanda. Two to five months from now, we will (Lord willing) be approved by the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion. Shortly thereafter we will see pictures of our newest family member/s. We will then await a court date and decision. After that, we will travel to Rwanda to unite our family forever!

Preschool Program, Proud Parents, and Poyle

C's Preschool Program was this past week, and Chad and I were very proud. This is about a third of Union Community's Class of 2022. Can you spot C?

C and Mrs. Monroe, one of C's two great teachers.

Each kiddo was introduced to the audience by telling their name and what they would like to be when they grow up. Our C would like to be a Lego Designer. I wonder where she gets ideas like that!?

We are following the progress of our dossier en route to Rwanda through a FedEx tracking number. The first time I checked, it was in Indianapolis....how boring. I was hoping for someplace in Europe or at least somewhere closer to Rwanda than where it started in Virginia. Today, we have news that it is in Poyle, UK. We're looking forward to seeing where it goes next!

Friends and Family

Happy Easter! Jesus is risen, and we find so much hope in that reality.

Chad, H, and C pose outside our church during the egg hunt

What a fun week we've had! My good friend from college, Stephanie, came for a visit with two of her four lovely girls last Friday. The kids played so well together....and as you can see, H and Audrey really hit it off!:) This happy little couple could tie the knot in about 20 years or so.
Thursday brought Chad's sister, Heather, niece Alea, and Gram and Papa. It was fun to share Easter weekend with them.

Okay, because I'm bad at rearranging photos, here are Stephanie's kids with mine.

H had a beautiful new dress to wear for Easter, and she really enjoyed the egg hunt at church.
Below is C with friend, Sophie. What a good friend she was to share her Easter basket with C! They looked so cute as they ran along carrying the basket together.

Also with us for the day were my sister, Ellen, and her family, sister Meg and husband, Mom and Dad, and Grandma Spore. They all made it in time for church, and it was fun to have them there for our special Easter choir production. Below is Ellen's growing family.

No news on the adoption front. We only know our dossier is at the embassy and could quite possibly make it to Rwanda by May 1!

Dossier On Its Way

On a UPS truck somewhere, hopefully quickly approaching the America World Adoption Agency offices, lies our enormous pile of papers (dossier). Yesterday was a big day, as Chad and I drove to Des Moines to pick up a corrected homestudy, have it and our I 171-H certified, and off to a UPS store to make three copies of every piece of paper. We then overnighted the whole shabang to AWAA. It will be a miracle if there are no mistakes, but hey, we know Who we serve and that He's definitely in the business of miracles. This, as you can imagine, brings some relief to our stress level. I realize waiting through the next phase will be really difficult, but right now I'm basking in the "doneness" of paperwork.

H and C have their spring conert tonight and are so excited for us to see all they've been preparing. Little H will have a sitter so Chad and I can actually pay attention to the whole concert. Next year at this time....well, let's just say one of us will probably be watching from the hallway again.:)

Two Sweet Words

Try to imagine my joy as I called my hubby today to deliver these two sweet words: "It CAME!!!" The I 171-H came today! I guess I had resigned myself to waiting at least another couple weeks. Praise God....IT CAME.

So tomorrow brings a trip to Des Moines to get the last documents certified, gathering and photocopying all the papers, and overnighting them to our agency. They will deliver them to the US Sec. of State's office to be authenticated and then drop them off at the Rwandan Embassy in D.C. We are so excited to be almost finished with this part of the process. Thanks so much for your prayers!

Spring Has Sprung

With C and H sound asleep, Big H in Kansas City for the weekend with Gram and Papa, and Big C updating his blog, there is a hush in the house (besides the "Mom, how do you spell...?"). Springtime in Iowa is so, well, unpredictable. And while I've lived here all my life, I struggle with cloudy, windy, cold spring days. I guess it only makes sense that God would transition us gradually. Who could really handle going from 90* July days to five feet of February snow packed around their mailbox, all in one day? The transition from winter to summer could go a little quicker, in my opinion. However, since A) I'm not the Creator of the Universe and B) I live in and love Iowa, I will do my best to enjoy 45* and clouds.

Speaking of mailboxes (I think I did), I seem to be checking ours with more optimism with every passing day. After all, if our USCIS worker looked at and approved our file the day after we were fingerprinted, the I-171-H could possibly show up today. There is obviously a battle going on inside of me between "Realist (aka pessimist) Heidi" and "With God all things are possible Heidi". We are rejoicing with two families from our agency who just received approval and will receive a referral in the coming month. Two more cribs in that orphanage will soon be empty!

Fingerprint Appointments!

Ah, the long awaited fingerprint appointment letters came today! We are to be in Des Moines at 10:00 sharp two weeks from today. (Why must we wait so long?) There was a little drama regarding USCIS last week, with emails going back and forth a couple times, a new homestudy report, and a quick call to our family coordinator. The first bump was that our homestudy did not say how many "siblings" we were approved to adopt. It simply states that we are approved to adopt "biological siblings under the age of 48 months." Our original application says we would like to bring 2 orphans into the country as our children (might as well aim high). Okay, can "siblings" mean any less than two? And we know that we can't bring in more than two because we only asked for two. So, what the confusion was, I'm not sure. We did, however, have to submit a new homestudy report approving us to adopt "two biological siblings". Then, we received an email asking if we were adopting from Rwanda or Ethiopia. We are requesting to file for our return visa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as the US Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, does not yet issue these. Apparently, this confused our "friend" at USCIS. Most Rwandan adoptions go to Kenya to get the visa. One quick phone call to Ryan (family coord.) to get the right words to say to our "friend" and an email to our "friend" later, we got the whole thing straightened out. And today, we found out we will wait two more weeks to actually begin our wait for the I-171H. Boy, that sounded ungrateful, didn't it? I'm so thankful for our fingerprint appointment notice arriving today. God is good, all the time.