Hi Everyone,

We have good news our dossier has been translated (remember the dossier is all of our official documents for Colombia).  At the Casitas next meeting our match will become “official” meaning that they will give us a travel date. I am not sure how often they meet. I hope though that it is weekly. Once we get the travel date then the kids get the video and the albums and start to learn about us. Hopefully, they will like be happy and excited. Probably like us (Jim and me) they will also be uncertain and a little afraid (ok very afraid). I can’t wait to go.

In Medellin every year they have an annual poetry festival all about peace poetry. We may be there at that time. That would be pretty cool if we could get tickets for it. Poets from all over the world will be there.

 Hay if anyone has any ideas about toys/games that we can take to Colombia that would not take up a lot of room and the kids would enjoy let me know. We are thinking about cards, legos or blocks, coloring books, play doh, maybe some matchbox cars and barbie. We are limited in what we can bring but we will be in Colombia for a whole month so………

 Also if you get the chance check out the Brittany’s Hope Website. www.brittanyshope.org

They have helped us find and are helping us bring home our kids. We are going to help them by working on the Sunflower Project. It is this really cool project to help kids who are aging out of the orphanages. It is for the children who have never gotten adopted to help them get ready for life on their own. It is very sad but Jim and I feel grateful that we will be able to help in some small way.

Take Care,

Gina 

Hi Everyone,

 It is friday night and I am probably driving Jim a little nuts. For the first time in a long time I have no adoption stuff to do tonight. We are waiting for our travel date letter from Colombia. We need this letter in order to be able to get our Visas. So there is actually NO paperwork for us to fill out right now.

 The kids bedrooms are perfect or at least as perfect as they can be. The photo albums have been sent. The kids clothes have been bought. There is very little left to do. We need to buy socks and tees shirts, toothbrush and some cups and dishes but that’s it. We are going to wait until my next paycheck to buy that stuff.

 So for now, I sit in Houston and wait. Now I know I have lots of Spanish studying to do but I like to have friday as a non studying day. So I will just wait and wonder……. What are Jorge and Yamile doing?????????????????? They are probably in bed sleeping. When are they doing to learn about us? What will they think? Will they be pleased? Nervous? Scared? Happy? Sad? Maybe all of the above I think!

 Goodnight,

Gina 

Hi Everyone,

Jim and I went  a little crazy tonight. We went to Target just for a few things milk and a closet divider (his broke). Well they were having a sale so I picked up a few things- four pairs of pjs, 8 new towels, another set of sheets, dress pants, about 10 shirts, 8 pairs pants, several skirts way too much stuff. It is all adorable and so exciting. I hope they like everything and I hope it all fits!!!!

Sometimes I can’t believe that this is all real, that Jim & I are going to be parents. It is all so wonderful.

Goodnight everyone one! 

Hi Everyone,

Good news regarding our adoption. We received the offical adoption agency travel package today. Jim and I are so excited. Also while Jim was a the university someone was selling pictures & Jim bought two, one has a prayer in Spanish he thought would be nice for his “kids”, the other is a great picture of a mountain that we are going to put in Jorge’s room. We are currently thinking about renaming Jorge -Jorge Diego. Diego means Jim in Spanish. We think it sounds really good. A really neat thing that happened on thursday. Jim and I spoke during work and he told me that he was really enjoying the day it was sunny and beautiful. He saw students and professors playing ball and he began imaging us and the kids playing ball. He said it made him start to cry. He is a gem.

I want to thank all of our family and friends for their support thank you and we love and miss you all a bunch. We miss our family in Florida, Philly, Indy and our friends who are scattered all across America.

 On a really sad note my aunt Joanie’s husband Pete died on Wednesday night at 10:10 pm. Pete fought cancer for a really long time and he fought till the end. He was a great supporter of Jim and I and we will miss him a lot. Please pray for my aunt that she find peace and comfort knowing that Pete is with God in heaven. Thank you.

Hello Everyone,

Good news everything is in Colombia, our dossier, our psychological evaluation, our photo albums and our video. Whoppee. This means that everything will get translated and then we will get “offical” approval. We have been unoffically approved so offical approval is awesome. This also means that our kids will get their albums and the video and the little presents we have put in them. They will also start therapy to learn about us and our family.

 We have put great photos of many of you in the album. I wonderful if they will remember any of your names. We will also take photos with us so that may help. It is looking like we will be going in mid June. I can’t wait. Not only am I excited to get the kids but to learn about their land, their people. They will have years learning about our land and our people. I want to relish the time we are going to spend their to truly savor it.

 Colombia looks like a beautiful country - I know it is filled with beautiful people and I just can’t wait. Medellin here I come! Another bit of good news they have sent us our travel packet. We should get it by friday - lovely.

 Bye for now,

Gina

Good Afternoon Everybody, Jim and I received the best news in the world. Our dossier is being sent to Colombia as I write for translation. We are so excited. Now all we have to do is wait to hear when we will be able to travel. Whopeee In the meanwhile, the kids will learn about us and start to receive counseling to help with deal with the adoption and move. Please pray for them, that they will be happy about the adoption and they will realize after seeing the video we made and looking at the albums we made that we really really want them and will do our best to provide them with a stable, loving home. We can’t wait to become their parents. Jim is going to be an awesome dad, a little too overprotective but awesome nonetheless. I don’t know if I will be as good a mom but with the grace of God I am going to try my best .

Take Care,

Gina

Hi Everybody,

When I last bloged I was talking about our two referrals:  Yamile and Jorge and another brother and sister.  After much prayer and discussion with family and friends. We decided on Jorge and Yamile. It seemed like they were being sent to us. More than a few people said this is a sign from God (Go Heather, Jim and Lee).  All these months of looking at their pictures really impacted us. We felt close to them.

Jim and I definitely believe that God has a plan for us as a fmaily. It frequently is different from the plans that we create. His plans are always so much fuller than ours, more substantial. We believe that Jorge & Yamile are part of God’s paln for us : ) 

 We then set out to finish our dossier. We discovered that the man who processes the divorce decrees in Chicago was fired for not doing his job and that was why we had not recieved it yet. We received an apology and the decree a week later. We then found out that the FBI had not complete our finger prints we submitted the wrong kind of check, two weeks later we received that.

We then called our psychologist who told us that she was on vacation and had not completed our evaluation. Now please understand. We first saw her in January and this was then end of March. Also for Colombia all you need is a three page report. As a psychologist I know that it could have been completed in a few hours. We called her two weeks later and found out that she sent our test results to the wrong people and still did not have a report (first week of April).  - What an odd series of events huh!

During the first week of April we received some really good news. The orphanage had recieved our letter of intent to adopt the kids and we were approved. Also our case manager had found some one to complete our psychological evaluation for a very small some of money. Isn’t God and the power of prayer amazing.

Peace,

Gina

The photolisting on Rainbow kids is how we found the two little Colombian Angels we hope to call our children, Yamile (Age 8 ) and Jorge (age 3). We first saw them in Spring of 2006, at the time I was trying to find out about waiting children from Peru. Somehow the waiting children of Colombia came up instead. I saw lots of children available for adoption. Several of them caught my eye, one was an 11 year old girl, a 2 year old boy, three sisters and Yamile and Jorge.

At that time Jim & I were not ready to adopt. I would frequently go to the website, look at the kids and imagine what our children would look like. I prayed nightly that the children on the website would all find homes. Jim and I decided after much prayer and research to apply to the agency that respresented all of the children we had seen. We submitted our application in July 2006. We did not think about adopting any of those children, surely we thought someone would adopt each of those children before we were ready to adopt. Rather we thought that this particular agency had a lot of waiting children so by the time we were ready to adopt there would be lots of children to potentially learn about.   

Jim and I had lots to do before we could complete an adoption we would have to save money and find a new place to live. At that time we were in a one bedroom apartment which we loved. Our lease would not be up until the end of January 2007 and we could not break it. 

 All summer long we visited the website. I even showed my mom when we visited Philly. In September 2006, we began to complete our dossier. We also noticed that Jorge and Yamile had not yet been adopted. We prayed they would find homes. We then started to pray to God for guidance perhaps we were meant to be their parents. We contacted our case manager who said that no they had not yet been adopted. We told her that we were interested learning more about them to see if we would be agood match for them. At the end of September we felt that God was telling us to go for it. We began to look at new apartments and decided to move in December and pay rent on two apartments for 2 months.

We also worked hard on our dossier at that time. We recieved our birth certificates, our marriage certificate, our parenting training, we found a home study agency. We found a beautiful new 3 bedroom apartment with two nice size bedrooms for our future children. 

At Thanksgiving we had a major blow, Jim’s mom died. Although she had been ill we were not prepared for her death we raced Indy to get to see her. Luckily, Jim was able to spend time with his mom before she died. i thought that maybe we should place the adoption on hold. Jim said no way his mom would want us to continue, so we did. 

In December we moved and two days later had our homestudy. We left to visit Philly two weeks later. We got back to Houston on 12/31/06. We then contacted our doctor to start completion on our medical forms. We waited one week, then two weeks, then three weeks. At week number 4 we were informed that his office notary had been terminated and we needed to schedule our visit. We did. They then changed our visit day and time. I was starting to feel blue. Our homestudy could not be completed without the doctor’s home, our governmental approval could not come in without our homestudy.

 When we saw the doctor we told him that our forms were time sensitive and its lack of completion was seriously impacted our dossier completion. Nonplussed he told us we that happens sometimes. I admit I began to get irritated. Then he took my blood pressure. For the first time in my life it was elevated. (150/90) He mentioned high blood pressure medication. I informed him that I felt tense and nervous over not having the homestudy completed and that is what I attributed my high blood pressure to. I agreed to start monitoring and come back a week. Sure enough it was lower but still he did not complete the form. We also found out that another family was interested in Jorge and Yamile.We hired a notary to come with us and finally it was completed. Whoopeee. And yes, my blood pressure dropped dramatically after that (120/70 See what stress can do) (DUH).

So now our homestudy was completed but we were dealt a sad blow, the other family was going to adopt Jorge and Yamile. We were crushed. I felt happy for the children but sad for us. I also felt really confused because I really thought that these were the children God had meant for us.

 Jim and I were not sure what to do. To complete the dossier we still needed Jim’s divorce decree, our fingerprints and our psychological evaluation. 

We decided to take a break from the adoption and spend time just being together. We were not sure if wanted to continue with our particular agency, if we wanted to wait six months and just take a break, if we wanted to look at another country. We just felt tired. In February 2007, we planned to go away for the weekend to a little bed and breakfast. The day before we recieved a call from our casemanager. She had a referral for us for an 11yr old girl and her 3 year old brother. We did know what to do. We agreed to view their information. 

So here we were at our romantic weekend in an empty bed and breakfast reviewing information about our referral. It was hard because we were still thinking of Jorge and Yamile. On Tuesday we called our case manager and  told her about our concerns regarding the referral. The little boy was unable to speak. There was no known cause for this we asked that they get more information for us.

 A few days later, Jim received a call from our case manager the people who were going to adopt Jorge and Yamile had changed their minds. Were we still interested in them. Jim called me. Honey are you sitting down he said, are you sitting down. Oh my God - has someone died I thought. Jim just tell me what is happening. Jorge and Yamile are available for adoption. I should have been overjoyed but I was confused.  This would take lots of prayer.

Hi Everyone,

 As you may or may not know Jim and I met on Eharmony.com. I had recently moved to Houston to complete my doctoral internship for clinical psychology and Jim was a professor at University of Houston. It seemed to me like we went on our first date and it has never ended. I feel like I have known Jim forever and find it difficult to remember life without him. I am truly married to my best friend. Jim is honest and kind and patient. I feel like a better person around him.

Even before we got married we thought about adoption. I was adopted and feel like I have had just the best life. I have a great mom and day, sister and brother and the coolest extended family in the world. Hi Everybody! We would love to give that kind of love to a child.

 Right after we got married (August 5, 2005) we started to look at adoption. We were still trying to get pregnant but not having any luck. My tumors are pretty large and it makes a successful pregnancy very unlikely.

 Jim and I spent months researching adoption at first we thought about adopting from Texas. It seemed though that many of the children came with restrictions about who could adopt them and where they had to live. Since Jim is a prof. we can’t guarantee that we will remain in Texas, in fact we would very much like to move closer to our families in Philly  & Indy. We quickly moved to idea of an international adoption.

We also decided that rather than one child we would like to adopt two. We thought that adopting two would make for a better adjustment in the children. They would same someone who was familiar with them and whom they felt close to. It would also provide them with someone to talk to when they felt the need to confide in someone other than us.

Yes we realize that two children will be difficult but we think it is best for them and isn’t that what it is like to be a parent to do what is best for the child even though it may be harder for the adults?

We also discussed ages for the childrena and decided against very young children, we have lots of reasons for that, the need for parents for older children is greater and that is probably the most important reason. We looked at a bunch of countries, Russia, China, the Ukraine, Haiti, Brazil. We finally began looking Latin American countries. This seemed like the natural thing to do. Jim speaks Spanish as do several of my relatives. Latin America seems like a place where we can continue to visit often enabling our chidlren to maintain their cultural ties.

We looke at several Latin American countries such as  Guatamala and Peru but finally decided on Colombia because of all the waiting children we saw posted online from there. It seemed like there was a great need for couples to adopt from that country. 

He–y everyone. Gina and I have set up this blog to keep each of you abreast of our forthcoming adoption of Yamile and Jorge. We are VERY appreciative of the wonderful grant to us from Brittany’s Hope (http://www.brittanyshope.org) to help us expand our family. We also are very grateful to our families and Drs. Gary Kreps, Monica Marquis, and Heather Wheatley.   

In the ensuring months, you will learn more about our journey AND we will also be calling on you to aid our efforts to help fundraise for Brittany’s Hope so that other kids may be placed with loving families. As I have shared with Gina numerous times, I believe this adoption was meant to be as a wonderful way for her to give back. She was destined by the good Lord to do this and I am privlieged and honored to be her partner and co-parent. I will close for now. bgty *SS*…Jim