Done!

We are very happy to report that we completed our final homestudy visit this past Saturday. Now, we can move onto the next step once our homestudy report is complete: submitting our I-600A to USCIS. In the meantime, we will be preparing our dossier, and I am slowly gearing up for that. Of course, we couldn't get anything done for a whole week because we were buried under 5 inches of snow, which for the North is a normal occurrence but in the South, where there are no snowplows, etc., we enter a State of Emergency and everything shuts down.  The biggest problem was that everything would just freeze over at night because of the extremely cold temperatures.  It was really an amazing sight to see everything just glistening from the ice on top of the snow. 

I did not make any special preparations before the snow came, but we had plenty of food and whatever else we could have needed. We tried to sled (without a sled) down our hill unsuccessfully. Too bad as we live on the top of a very steep hill. One of these days, we will just have to find ourselves a sled. Rolling down our backyard had to do. Annalee was having the best time. It is amazing how much she has changed since she can hear! Every day, I praise the Lord for giving us the wisdom to move forward with her BAHA (What's a BAHA you wonder? Stay tuned, I am working on a separate post just for you :)!) Ellie on the other hand was much more afraid, which is very classic for because she does not have depth perception. Although in general she has learned how to know depth, it is impossible in snow because there is no light or darker, etc. (Yes! There is also a separate post coming about strabismus, amblyopia, and the benefits of vision therapy). The two littlest ones had a hard time because they were sinking into the snow and couldn't move anymore (No! There is no post coming about short legs!:)) The girls had a classic case of cabin fever, so we actually ventured out today. No one was harmed, and we made it home safely!  Here are some pictures of the snow, although you all probably have plenty of your own! 

Making a Snow Angel

I'm Back

After having been sick with the flu for almost two weeks, I finally feel like Corrie is slowly coming back!  :-)  So much has happened the past two weeks, and yet it just all seems like a blur right now.  Christmas time is my favorite time of the year, and this year I did not get to do any of the traditions I so love to do.  Maybe I can catch up a little this week!  We did have a wonderful quiet Christmas just as a family and celebrated with a Happy Birthday Jesus dinner and cake!  We even got snow on Christmas Day!  Our family has never celebrated Christmas as a time to get presents but as a time to give to someone else something that is very valuable to you, just like God did for us.  This year has given the girls a new meaning of what it means to give to someone else what they could never have otherwise.
We did have our first home study appointment on December 18th.  It went well, and neither Abe or I really had any time to think about it beforehand.  We have an awesome social worker, and she is very knowledgeable about adopting from Eastern Europe!  She is trying to get our homestudy done and our I-600 in the mail as soon as possible.  Our next appointment is January 1, and then our last appointment should not be too long after that at our home.  Once we make it into the new year, we will start compiling our dossier and doing some fund-raising.  I could start now, but I think it will be best to wait until the new year and after our I-600 is in the mail.  Thankfully, we have a friend who has agreed to do all the notarizing for us so that we can be sure it is done correctly the first time!  I have met some wonderful families who have been through what we are about to go through already, and they are a huge help answering all my silly questions.  THANK YOU!!! 
I have finally completed our "About Us" page, but be aware it is a rather long summary of our family!  :-) I am reading a book called "Adopted for Life" right now, and am looking forward to sharing some thoughts from this book with you soon!
I hope you all had a very merry Christmas with your family!  We look forward to a very special first Christmas Celebration with Vika next year.  I will leave you with some little clips of our girls singing Christmas carols in front of our German Advent Tree in their pj's.  Ammadea got a little distracted by her Papa.  :-)