Just a little bit more time...

Just a little bit more time spent with Mom and Dad before they have to leave from the first trip. We have enjoyed our time here in Bulgaria, and leaving is definitely bittersweet. We are ready to see our kids at home, but we hate to leave Nick here. He is in good hands, and we pray for a fast court date.





The view of this small hill means that we are back in Sofia and preparing for our departure in the morning.


--Jeremy

Thursday

Today we had the opportunity to go with Nick's class on a field trip. We went to a new business in the city (we were their first customers). It is a children's indoor play area, with a bounce house, ball pit, and toys. They have a little seating area where we ate cake from a local bakery. Nick was able to ride with us in the van, and the other children rode in the orphanage van.

All of the children had a wonderful time. Nick enjoyed his cake, but did not seem to care for his hot chocolate or juice.

He really enjoys our visits and does not particularly like it when we leave. I think that he will fit in very well with our children at home.

Tomorrow is our last visit with him. We will leave the hotel at 9:00 to go to the orphanage, and we will stay there until 11:00. (That is 1:00 am - 3:00 am central time.) I am dreading driving away, knowing that it will be 3-5 more months before I can hold our sweet little boy again. At the same time, I miss our children at home and want to see them very much. It is strange to have your heart in 2 countries!

Please pray for our travels tomorrow. We are expecting cold temperatures, rain, and snow for our 3-4 hour drive to Sofia. We will stay at a hotel there tomorrow night and take a taxi to the airport around 4:30 am Saturday (8:30 pm Friday, central time). We will fly to Munich, then to Charlotte, and hope to arrive in Birmingham around 8:30 Saturday evening.

Thank you for following our journey. I continue to be so grateful to have this opportunity to become Nick's mother. What a blessing he is!!

Wednesday

Today, we were able to take Nick in the car (along with a worker from the orphanage) to a nearby city to have his visa photo taken. This is something that most adoptive parents do not have the opportunity to do in his country. It is up to the orphanage director to decide, and she offered to let us! He enjoyed riding in the car, and I loved carrying him down the sidewalk of the city!

Here he is dressed up for his big trip to the city:

He laughs when you tickle him under his chin:

He wears these cute shoes everyday:

This afternoon, when we arrived for our visit, there were several student volunteers from a local high school there doing crafts with the children. They come once a week with a volunteer from the Peace Corps to do activities with the children. The P.C. volunteer was from Minnesota, and there was also another couple volunteering from Colorado that we were able to meet.

Tomorrow, we will go on a field trip with his group to a bakery to have snack! Then, tomorrow evening, we are meeting with a few Peace Corps volunteers for dinner.

We are looking forward to a busy day!

Thank you for checking in on us and for keeping us in your prayers. Please pray for all of these children. We have met so many children this week whose home is this orphanage. I am praying for each child to become a part of a family on this earth!

Tuesday

It was a good day. We visited this morning for about 2 1/2 hours, and again this afternoon for about 1 1/2 hours. He enjoys visiting with us. He smiles when I kiss his cheeks and tries to get me to do it again. We were able to take him for a walk outside, observe his "school time", watch him eat lunch, help him with his morning snack. We were able to watch him take some steps, kind of "cruising" while holding onto a bar.

We also met the director of his orphanage today and his doctor. The workers in his classroom are very kind. He eats his food well, but he is still very tiny.
All children deserve to be in a family, however that is not the reality for so many. There are many orphanages in the world - some are good places, and some are horrible. I am so thankful for the good care that the workers at his orphanage are providing.

Look Who We Met!

He is so precious! I don't even have adequate words to describe the way I felt today.

I am just so very thankful for this little boy and for the workers who have cared for him for the last 6 1/2 years of his life. Only God could bring this little boy in a tiny town on the other side of the world to our family. How we even knew he exists is amazing to me! We are so humbled to be given a chance to be a part of this! Our commitment papers for him arrived in his country on his birthday earlier this year. My prayer is that we will have court before his next birthday.

Today is THE day!

It is almost 5:00 am here. Jeremy is sleeping (finally). He slept some on Saturday after we arrived, then during the night Saturday, but none on Sunday. I, on the other hand, have slept on and off since we walked into our hotel room. I am not sure if I am making up for the flights here or for the last 11 years that I have been a mother!

We are leaving later this morning (around 10 am Monday our time, and 2 am Monday Central time) to drive to the area where our son is. We are expecting the drive to take around 3 1/2 hours, and I am told that some of the roads are mountainous. Please pray for us as we travel.

I am very excited to meet our little boy. I have looking at his picture and praying for him since April 2009. That is when his little picture arrived in our mailbox after we asked to be matched with a child to pray for! His picture hung on our Christmas tree last year before we knew that we would be pursuing his adoption. It was late January when we committed to adopt him. I am absolutely aching to see him in person!! Thank you, God, for bringing us on this journey!

Thank you, friends and family, for the prayers for our family's health. I feel like I have started to improve. My ear is not hurting as much. Julia and Joshua were added to the numbers of the stomach bug, but they both had a short fight with it, and seem to be recovered. So, only Josie is left of our children, and one of my sister's children who have not had it. Hopefully, it will just skip right over those 2 and be gone!

I am off to try a couple more hours of sleep.

We are here!

We are glad to say that we are here! We did have delays, but managed to catch all connecting flights anyway. The most interesting was when we landed in Munich after 8:30, were supposed to fly out at 9:10, and were at the back of a huge airplane. We were walking very fast (I mean almost running) through the airport, looking for our gate. We had to go through security again there as well. The running turned out to be unnecessary, and I had time to even find a restroom (there are alot less of those in Europe than in the US, apparently).

Toni (our facilitator/attorney) met us at the airport, along with her brother. They were very kind and we were so glad to see their faces at the end of our trip. They brought us to the hotel, which is nice, and we crashed. We had a hard time getting our wireless connection to work, but the staff here is great (and they speak English, which is incredibly helpful) and now we are connected.

After a great nap, Jeremy plugged our adapter into the wall, then plugged our power strip into that (so we could charge everything at once) and tripped a breaker, which caused us to lose power. At this point, we were sure something was wrong with our adapter (turned out to be the power strip). We were concerned because without the adapter, we cannot contact our kids through the computer and we have no way to call them without it. Toni had told us to wait until Monday to exchange money (so we could do it at a bank and not be overcharged). This is fine, but would leave us no way to shop for a new adapter prior to that. We are just planning to stay here in the hotel until then, so we can rest. We can eat in the restaurant here and put it on our room bill. If we go out of the hotel to eat or shop, we need leva, which we don't have.

I am telling you - all this week with our family being so sick, I have felt that satan was trying to attack this trip. When the lights went out and we sat in the dark for a bit, I realized that satan works in darkness. It is his trademark. He wants us to not be able to see the truth that is revealed in the light of Jesus. Jeremy and I sat and prayed for God to give us His peace, and that we would not be ruffled by circumstances, but to know that whatever He allows us to experience on this trip will be used by Him in our lives for His purposes.

We went downstairs to eat dinner. The food was WONDERFUL!!! After supper, one of the hotel staff came to our room. He had a little trouble with the electricity problem, but was absolutely trying to be as helpful as he could. Jeremy and he ended up finding the breaker box in a storage area of the hotel near our room, and they got us hooked back up! I was so thankful for that and was able to see the kids on Skype!

Please continue to pray for us. Originally, we had planned to drive to Kazanluk on Sunday, then meet "Nick" on Monday morning. Toni has had some trouble with paperwork for another adoption that must be handled Monday morning, so now we will wait until Monday to drive there, and hopefully meet him on Monday afternoon. We really want to meet him, but we are glad to have another day to rest in Sofia. We are both feeling sick with upper respiratory stuff. I am almost positive that I have an ear infection, so I started taking antibiotics Saturday night (Bulgaria time) and Sunday will give us another day to rest and recover some from this upper respiratory yuck.

Thank you for checking in on us!

Joy

It's Friday!!!

Today is the day! Please continue to pray for us as we travel, for our children and for my family who is caring for them.

My next post should be from Bulgaria!

Joy

So Much to Do...

So little time!

We leave Friday morning to meet our son in Bulgaria! We will not be able to bring him home this trip. Bulgaria is a 2-trip country. The first trip lasts approximately 1 week. Then, we will come home, fill out more paperwork, wait for court, and return. The average time between trips seems to be 3-5 months.

Please pray for us this week as you are led. We have sick children (breathing, wheezing issues for 4 out of 5). I would feel much better leaving if they make great improvements between now and Friday.

I plan to post updates from Bulgaria here, with pictures and maybe video.