Tuesday, August 13, 2013

A long overdue update

Wow 2 months since last posting. Most people probably don't even check here anymore, but here goes anyhow. We ran into so many set backs that it became very difficult to stay positive. So we wrote nothing because you know the saying "if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all" so that was the decision I made to say nothing I would regret later. All that to say we are finally closing in the end of the adoption. We needed to update our homestudy and INS clearence because Alex turned 18 so we started that in April and got everything in the middle of May took 6 weeks to get it all done and turned back into our case worker at USCIS. She sent everything to the US embassy in Bulgaria we are ecpecting to get the article 5 letter instead we were notified that our embassy wanted our homestudy re-written we were very upset, we had just done all that. So we tried to get our congressman to help us out but no go. We had to re-do our homestudy and get our USCIS approval all over again in June. And in case you are wondering there were no fee breaks every step cost us again. Oh wait while we are doing all this our medical and psychological checks had to be re-done because in all the delays they came close to being a year old and Bulgaria court was not going to accept them. Oh boy were we ever frustrated. But we complied, not with a good attitude but we did everything and we were issued our article 5 letter on June 28. Ohh happy day we were finally moving in the right direction. WHOA there not so fast in July while we are waiting to get the MOJ signature to move into the court phase it turns out that the only person who could sign on our paperworkk resigned from their position. Are you kidding me? NO we aren't. What can you even do? At any given time if we had not had the delays we would not have been affected by his reignation, God knew. So here we are waiting to hear our court date and making plans to bring our girl home still.....her 7th birthday was last week and if you had told us in January when we visited with her that she would not be here for her birthday I wouldn't have believed you. So on her birthday I went on line and ordered her some clothes....a little retail therapy. We are hoping to be in court in September and then travel 2 weeks after that. If we come to mind pease pray that we get to court without any more set backs, we just want to get her home and start our time with her. Even with everything we have been extrememly busy and the summer has flown by. We are switching the upstairs bedrooms around and re-painting and cleaning out so the girls room will be set when she gets home. Our three adult kids will be making moves her in thecoming weeks. This Saturday Matthew is moving back out into his new apartment, Beth goes back to college the next weekend and the