Prayers for our Bean

Often we pray for our girl. Often. We pray that Julieth has someone special that puts her to sleep. That kisses her good night. That comes to her when she cries and takes care of her boo-boos. We pray that she is attached and feels loved, even if it is a limited feeling of being loved and cared for, we pray that she has that base in her heart. Baby, we already love you and can't wait to rock you to sleep & kiss your boo-boos. We promise to run when you cry and hold and love on you! We will read you books, take you to the park, snuggle you on the couch while watching morning cartoons. Tonight, as always, we pray you feel love and a peace in your heart. We pray for smiles for you!! Love your Mommy & Daddy

USCIS is moving fast!

Holy Man, we sent off our application and prints to the USCIS on the 12th and our packet was received on the 18th and on the 27th we already received our notification to appear in St. Paul for our USCIS appointment. Our appointment happens on January 15th!! Just 2 weeks in and we are so far!! Given the holidays, we weren't feeling super hopeful of a quick response, but wallah, favor once again!!

No Way - People Rock! $2000 Donation!

Chris just shared the most amazing news with me! Chris meets weekly for a Thursday morning men's group. This week one of the gentleman let Chris know that his church has approved a $2000 donation to our adoption!!! Mind you we never knew anything about this even being in the works, so this news came as a complete surprise to us! What a tremendous blessing! Thank you Lord for continuing to provide and bless our journey to Julieth! So amazing how You work through, and in, people to move mountains! Our hearts are smiling huge!! Julieth, you are already impacting so many people here in MN! Love you little lady!

Christmas Cookies

Today Z and I spent all day making goodies for the boys for Christmas. So much fun! We can't wait until we can do this with Zahria's sister!!! Thinking of you this Christmas Season Baby! Knowing that the Lord is with you, preparing your heart for us! We can't wait to share every holiday with you, for our forevers, soon!!!

I-800A off you go baby

Today we sent off our beloved I-800A, with more fingerprints, to the USCIS (U.S. Citizen & Immigration Services) An I-800A is an 'application for determination of suitability to adopt a child from a convention country.' And because Colombia is a Hague Country, we must file an I-800A. Again, we are told that this could be a 12 week wait. Argh! And the wait begins.....

New Pics of our Growing Girl

Happy December to us! Again, who gets photo updates, even prior to getting their child's official referral, in an international adoption?? WE DO!! Today we were excited to receive 4 new photos of Julieth in our inbox! Man is she growing up! :( Little chubby cheeks and all! It is nice to see that FANA is taking care of her. Her hair got cut and it was up in a side single pony. Her clothes were clean and she looked to be well groomed. Gives us a little peace while we all wait for each other! I yearn to see a smile on her little face. I am sure she isn't used to cameras, seems like such a foreign idea given we take pics of everything and post them right to FB! ;)

With MUCHO Love From Auntie Becky

A couple months back Z and I visited JoAnne Fabric to find special material for Julieth's new baby, ok, maybe her 'big girl' blanket. Zahria dug the cupcake fabric, so that was our jumping off point for the fabric selections. Zahria's Auntie Becky made her one such special blankie back in 2007 too. When Auntie Becky & Grandma Simon came to Almaty, Kazakhstan to help Zahria and I come home, yes, they did that!, she brought Zahria's special blankie with. Since that day, this is the one blanket that Zahria uses every night for bed....in fact, I tuck her entire body up in it, so uber tightly, when we rock-a-bye each night and then I wrap it around her body, pig in a blanket style, when I tuck her in bed. :) It is THAT special! Here are a couple pics of our time in Almaty, Kaz. Such fond memories, still can't believe they both made the trip to meet Z and help me bring her home.

This is a special post from Auntie Becky to her littlest Bean, waiting for us in Bogota, Colombia. A LOT of LOVE went into this blanket, I mean the girl even put Pom-Poms on the blankie for us!! That is true love!

How to Make an American Quilt for a Soon-to-Be Columbian-American Girl My sister and her husband Chris are adopting a niece for me. It's the second time my sister has taken one for the team and brought me home a niece from another country. My sister is great like that. Our niece Zahria was adopted from Kazakhstan, and her new little sister is coming to our family by way of Columbia, South America. We're calling her our little Columbian Bean until she's in the country and everything is all legal and stuff. Dang that Hague Convention, anyway. Before Zahria came home I made her a small quilt, which has been well-loved in the past five years. Lil' Bean needs a quilt of her own, so Z helped her mom pick out some material and they sent it my way. Zahria chose the cupcakes, which is the sweetest but also proved to be the most maddening to work with. More on that later. In any case, I decided on a simple square pattern and kind of made things up as I went along. In case you have a sweet little one headed to your family and you feel like putting your love into fabric-form, some rudimentary instructions follow.

My sister sent 9" by 44" of the cupcake fabric and 18" by 44" of the dot, blue owl and yellow fabrics. She also sent a length of bright pink which I used for the border and backing. I forgot to measure that for you before I used it--sorry. Go with two yards. All of the fabrics were flannel, though that cupcake was a different type than the others, almost like a pajama-knit-flannel. Try to get the same type/thickness of each of the fabrics, and avoid stretchy fabric like the plague. You will thank me for taking that advice. More on that later. Because of the amount of fabric I had, I needed to cut my squares into 4.5 by 4.5 inch pieces. It would be easier for you to just go with 5 by 5, but you roll with whatever works for you.

If you don't own a rotary cutter, a cutting mat and a plastic ruler-thingy, I would strongly recommend buying them before taking on any quilting project. You can buy them at Amazon.com here, or in any fabric store. Walmart even carries them. When cutting fabric, it is simplest to first cut strips that are 4.5" wide, and then cut each strip into 4.5" pieces. You can find directions all over the internet for how to cut strips, including videos. You might start with this one.

You should end up with stacks of squares. Feel free to iron them at this step, but I didn't. Now comes the step that took me forever. Not really, but I spent a lot of time on it. Arrange the squares however you would like. For Zahria's quilt, which was primarily chenille, I randomly placed squares. I know random sounds like it would take the least amount of time, but it didn't because I didn't want two of the same type of squares touching. The randomness took a lot of planning. But I'm bad at random, so maybe that was just me. I ended up with this design for Lil' Bean's quilt, which was 9 squares by 11 squares, for a total of 99 squares. (Those are my mad math skills coming through there). You could certainly go larger; there were quite a few unused squares from this project. Since this quilt is for snuggling in the car, in the rocking chair, and on aunties' laps, I wanted a smaller size.

There is an efficiency to quilting squares, and if you follow the logic it will save you a ton of time and frustration. Do this. Flip the second column of squares onto the first column of squares. Then starting at the bottom, stack each set so the top squares are on the top of your pile. When you sew the right edge together, begin sewing the top two squares but then DON'T stop the sewing machine or cut the thread. Pretend you are in an assembly line in a sweatshop somewhere, and sew the second set of quilt squares with just a small space of thread between them without stopping the machine. A huge time saver.

See what I mean? You'll end up with a connected group of squares.

Snip them apart and stack them, keeping the bottom set on the bottom and working your way up to the top. That order is important. If you forget it, your pattern is going to be way off and you'll end up with a random quilt, even if you hadn't planned on one!

Go back to the quilt squares arranged on your floor. Starting at the bottom again, stack the next column of squares.

Arrange them at your machine so the sewn pairs are next to the squares from the next column. Again, notice that the top squares are on top. Open up the sewn pair and lay the solo square on top of the right side, "good" (printed) sides touching, lining up the edges.

Now sew that third column of squares onto the second column squares. Again, do not stop your machine between squares. Repeat those steps, sewing all of the columns of squares to make your rows.

When all of the rows have been sewn, you will need to iron the seams. This is really super important because this little trick is going to help your squares "lock" so the edges are perfect. Or it will if you do not have cupcake fabric. The cupcake fabric STRETCHED insanely when I ironed the seams. That meant all of my squares were 4.5 x 4.5 except those cupcakes, which became like 6 x 4.5 and caused havoc through the remainder of my project. Iron row 1 with all of the seams going to the left (raw edges pointing left) as shown above. Then iron all of row 2 seams going to the right (raw edges pointing right). Row 3 will go left, row 4 will go right, and repeat through row 11. Row 11 will be ironed to the left because it is an odd-numbered row. Holy math skills, Robin.

You're ready to sew row 1 to row 2. Put the good sides together, and pin at each intersection of squares. Notice how the edges "lock" because one seam goes one way and the other seam goes the other way? That's what you want. And this is what you don't want:

If your fabric has stretched in the ironing, your corners are not going to meet. That is maddening. You'll then be forced to attempt to stretch fabric and fudge tiny little gathers to try to get the edges to meet. Your squares won't form perfect corners and the quilt will be a dead loss. Or you'll just have to live with some imperfect corners. Apparently the Amish (or some such group) say no quilt is perfect because only God is perfect, so if that helps you feel ok with it, then go with that. I do.

When all of your rows are sewn together, iron the seams between rows in the same direction.

Tada! You have the quilt top primarily done. Now to sewn a border onto it. I cut 3 inch by 44 inch strips of the same fabric I used as backing for the quilt. As a general rule, do some measuring before you cut. This worked for me because none of the sides of my quilt were longer than 44". If you used more than 99 squares, yours might be. Pin a strip of border to the left and right sides of your quilt.

Be certain to pin at each of the seams, ensuring the seams are sewn down in the direction they were ironed.

After you sew each strip of border, lay the quilt flat on your ironing surface, then push the border up and iron it flat.

The left and right sides of the border should be sewn on first, then the top and bottom. You could stop and bind the quilt at this stage and call it good. I had to put a little something extra onto Lil' Bean's quilt because I couldn't let well-enough alone.

I sewed pom pom trim onto the edge of the border. There was just a small amount of edging on the pom pom trim, so this step was a little tricky. You can't see it from the pictures, but the edging of the pom pom trim is actually on the RIGHT side. That was intentional, because when you sew the backing on you will flip the quilt inside out and the pom poms will be sandwiched between the top and back of the quilt, obviously poking out. It's hard to explain. Just trust me. If you are going to sew pom pom trim, sew the edge of the trim so the pom poms are facing into the middle of the quilt and the edge of the trim is facing the outside edges. After the pom pom trim was sewn around the edge, I assembled all three layers of the quilt to combine them. Spread the top of the quilt on a hard surface so the good side is up. Then lay the backing of the quilt so the good side is down. (Notice the good sides will be touching). Then lay your batting on the top. It's much easier to sew if you use a smooth batting like this one. Pin everything securely in place. Trim so the edges are even and you can see all three layers. Then sew around the outside edge. You hope to catch the edge of the pom pom trim in that, too, if you can--but it's almost impossible to see it when you're sewing.

DON'T SEW IT ENTIRELY SHUT or your quilt will be inside out. Leave a small space (above), maybe 8 inches, unsewn. Then flip the quilt inside out, so it actually ends up right side out. Know what I mean? Your batting should now be on the inside of the quilt, and the top and back are good sides out. You will need to hand-stitch the 8 inches remaining closed.

You could call it good at this point, but it's not a bad idea to do some type of quilting to secure the batting inside the quilt so it doesn't shift after washings and repeated love. I chose to hand-stitch around the border.

I also cut off pom poms from the left over trim, used pink embroidery floss and secured a pom pom to the center of each of the cupcake squares.

And then I called it good enough.

Now comes the hardest part. Waiting the excruciatingly long wait for the paperwork to be accepted that will allow our sweet Lil' Bean to come home. I can hardly wait to snuggle her, with or without a quilt!

Home Study Packet - Check

Holy Man, this paperwork business is serious! If only every person had to go through the ringers like this before they were able to be parents. If only :) Feels so good to get this first 1/2 of paperwork done. Check this off the list baby! What is included in this packet you might ask?? Literally every piece of who we both are since the time we were 18! No kidding! Addresses, Background checks from 6 states, Doctor's reports, Birth Certificates, Marriage License, Reference Letters from friends & family, copies of tax returns, photos of the family, 10 hours of Hague training and on and on and on :)

Today is the Day - Psych Appointment here we come!

Today is the big day. Today we go to the psychologist .... all for you baby! Eeek, freaking out a bit, I mean, I would love to get something from today, but then again, I don't want the psychologist to dig up too much...........if you know what we mean. :) Tea in hand & in we went! In the end, totally disappointing. I must say that the psych test was quite interesting though. We both had to take a test with over 300 questions, and for the most part, most questions were obvious: *Do you want to be a construction worker? *Do people steal your thoughts? *Do you hear voices? *Do you think that if someone hurts you that they deserve to be hurt? *Do you think that all people are bad and are out to get you? *Have you ever thought about being an artist? *Do you like people? And then there were those questions that were a bit more tricky, the ones that you 'think' that you should answer one way, but you really feel the opposite. And then you find yourself getting a little bi-polar about which answer they want you to answer, or if there is even a right or wrong?? Tricky! Do you believe in evil forces & spirits? Well, honestly, yes we both do, but really, would you say that? Sounds a little nutty without a good explanation. :) All in all, our appointment went well and I think that we are both sane! :)

Confirmed!

Our prints arrived, now let the 12 week countdown begin. No whammies, No whammies :) Why is it that we know we are both ok, but the thought of someone doing a national background check on you kind of freaks us out???!!!*** :)

DHS / FBI Prints in the Mail!~

Today we visited the Elk River Post Office and sent off our Fingerprints for our DHS (Department of Homeland Security) / FBI fingerprints! We are told that getting our results back from this national level background search can take up to 12 weeks. Lord, please grant us favor in timing here! Again, don't ever think that what you did when you were silly and 18 won't come back to bite you later in life! So, all in all, we are having background checks in every state that we have lived in since we were both 18 (Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Texas) plus we are having background checks at the National level...........all for you little lady!! Now that is just a little glimpse into the love & dedication we have for you!

Pray for us

November 27th we have our psych evaluations. Pray for us. Lord please do not let the psychologist see how nutty we both are. ;-) I also got my new passport in the mail today!!! Christina Fellerman it is! Woop Woop! Pretty impressed, we sent in the application for my updated passport 2 weeks ago, and we chose not to pay for the expidited service, and wallah, 2 weeks later I have that little puppy in my hands. Every day we get closer to our Bean!! We pray for you each night Baby.

Physically & Mentally Healthy = Check

Yep, to any of you who have questioned this, we have proof, we are both physically & mentally healthy! Per our Doctor's professional opinion even! Take that! :) Physicals for our Homestudy and Dossier done - Check!

Adoption Moment - What is a Home Study?

Educational Adoption Moment #1 So, you may be asking, what exactly is involved in the international adoption process (I believe that Domestic Adoptions are pretty similar too.) Well, let us share the process in a nutshell: Research Countries / Programs (We needed to find a country that allowed for one divorce, older parents, not a super long wait until the child came home, not huge in-country stays for both parents, find a country that allows the adoption of the age range of child you are interested in adopting, one that was financially feasible, etc.) Research what Adoption Agencies work in those countries that we had interest in. Then Research each Agency. Read their reviews. Speak with families that have worked with the Agencies. Dive into their processes, support, fee structure, relationships in country, children available through that agency, etc. Send out for the Agencies Adoption materials. Meet with the Agency Coordinators either in person, on the phone or via email. Pray. Sign the application to commit to work with the Agency. Start the Paper Chase - This is when us Adoptive Parents say that we are 'Paper Pregnant!!' Ahhhhhhh and now the beloved paperwork starts. If only every person that got pregnant had to go through these next steps, it would sure change our world! So, what is a Home Study??? A Home Study is a HUGE packet of paperwork that basically exposes every little thing about your background to your agency & your child's country. SO, if you think that 'what you did in your 20s doesn't matter................' Not so much! It does, and it matters a lot! First things first, we meet with our Social Worker at our home, she asks us a lot of questions about us, why adoption, how we parent, what our family dynamic is, how we plan to take care of a child. She looks through our home to be sure it is suited for a child, that it is safe. (Truly that part was a breeze, usually the visit by your SW isn't as bad as many fret about.) Here is the paperwork we are collecting for our Home Study: Individual Fact Sheet, Photo of Adoptive Parents, 2011 Taxes, Guidelines Written by Family (5 page list of questions to answer about your upbringing, past, feelings about a million things, why you want to adopt, any issues you have, any medications you are on or have been on, etc.) Permission to Release Information, Legal Names Forms, A Copy of Any Arrest Records you have had / Court Documents / Certified Copy of Proof fines were paid and community service was completed, 4 Reference Letters, Medical Insurance Coverage Proof, Physician's Report (you must get a physical from your primary Doctor and they fill out a fact sheet on your health), Certified Copies of your Birth Certificates, Certified Copies of your Marriage Certificate, Certified Copies of the Divorce Decree, Attitude Toward Disabilities & Behaviors, 10 Hours of Approved Adoption Training, Addresses since 18, Background Checks in each State you have ever lived in (Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota, Texas, WI and MN for us) plus a Background Check from the Department of Homeland Security. Yowza! The good news, you don't have to be perfect to adopt = thank goodness (because we are not, have not been, perfect), but you do however need to pretty darn awesome..........and thank goodness we ARE just that! :)

Daddy's Birth Certificate

Check! Today we visited the County office in Maple Grove and scored a copy of Daddy's Birth Certificate for the Home Study and our Dossier. Each day we are working towards bringing you home sweet baby girl!

Chasing Paper

Every day we are checking things off our paper list. :)

Today's tasks: *Send out Mommy's old Passport so she can get a new one with her new'ish' name! FELLERMAN! Must do that. *Get certified copies of our Marriage License. *Get certified copies of Daddy's Birth Certificate.

Zahria's Clothes

Ahhhh SO many memories! This afternoon we brought out all of Zahria's old clothes... my heart. Why is it that clothes bring back so many memories? It was so crazy to look at some of those outfits and think that she fit in them....Z was such a little peanut, even at 1 year. Zahria helped us go through her old clothes, we had a donate pile and a, save for Julieth, pile. It is going to be so fun to see Julieth in Zahria's old clothes. SISTERS!

Paperwork & Football

Go Team Fellerman!! Today Daddy, Z and Uncle Greg headed up to Duluth to watch Alex, Chris' oldest son (#74), play football. Alex attends Crown College in the Cities and plays ball. So fun! Here is a pic of Devon (18), Alex (22), Nate (14) and Ben (15.....16 in 2 days!)

I, on the other hand, stayed back to tackle what is left of our HomeStudy. :) KTIS playing in the background, coffee in my hand and Julieth Paperwork spread all over our desk. Perfection! Can I just say that I am one lucky lady!! My husband is SUCH an amazing friend, husband & daddy! I am not really sure there are many men out there, at least not enough, that would offer to take the little one to a football game, 3 hours away, and let their wife stay back to have a quiet day to get things in order back home. I am so blessed! Julieth, your Daddy Rocks!

Julieth in Her Piggies

Oh my word, today, while we were in class, we got the BEST email ever! Updated pics of our little bean, Julieth, in our email box. She had piggies in! Our hearts sored! 3 new pics of her. So stoic. So beautiful. Thick pursed lips. Big brown eyes. Dark brown hair. Chubby cheeks. Piggies in her hair. Oddly, she looks so similar to Z. Two girls from opposite sides of the earth, and they look so similar. LOVE this!

SOLD

Wednesday we recieved an offer on our flip home in Zimmerman and today.......we finalized it!! Our first flip is on its' way to closing. So exciting! Although the dollars aren't as great as we had hoped, this sale will help us with fund most of our journey to Julieth! Feeling so blessed, over and over and over and over :)

Background Checks..... Check

Holy Man, you have to be squeaky clean to adopt! For anyone that might think that adoption is an easy alternative, it is nothing of the sort. They make sure and double sure and triple sure that all parents are fit to parent! Today we sent off our fingerprints for background checks in Texas, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota and Minnesota. Holy WOW, that is a lot of searching into our backgrounds. They require that we get a background check in every state that we have lived in since we were 18. Good thing it is only every state and not every county, we would be SO in trouble then. :)

Offer!!

Woop Woop - We got an offer on our flip today!!!!

Fingerprints - Check

Every day we move closer and closer to bringing you home. Working hard on getting our Home Study done! :) Yesterday we visited the County to gather important paperwork and get our fingerprints taken, times two, for our Adam Walsh background checks and our DHS (Department of Homeland Security) checks too. Jumping through the hoops baby.

Our First Open House at Zimmerman

Hello Sweet Baby Bean. We continue to plan for you, and dream about you, every day. Today we held our first open house at our flip home in Zimmerman, the sale of this home will help us travel to Colombia to bring you home! We are praying for a speedy sale! Your sister Zahria was there with us today, getting the home ready to sparkle!

18-24 Years of Addresses - Seriously?

Holy Man, today's feat was uncovering every address that we have ever had, (apartment #s, counties and length of time at each), since we were 18! Do you realize how many places that is? In college alone we must have 15 different addresses in that 5 year period. This is a crazy feat, but we can do it, we can do it, we can do it. I, Christy, went through all of my old credit reports and pulled my addresses. Yes, I am kind of a saver of that kind of information. Weird maybe, but it comes in handy sometimes. Note: right now! Chris, no Chris is not a saver, instead, he is the personality that just throws credit reports in trash with little regard to all of that personal information that lurks on those pages. Chris instead, goes on line and googles, and finds the most amazing website www.intelius.com and for $1.95 he had all of his addresses that he had ever lived at. Ok, so maybe that was pretty smart on his part!! ;) On to the next piece of paper. Tomorrow, off to Anoka County for fingerprints, copies of birth certificates, etc.

Bean's First Baby Blanket

What a fun Mommy Zahria date we had! About a month ago, Z and I went to JoAnne Fabrics and picked out our favorite fabrics for a blanket for her little sister. Z specifically picked out the cupcakes, it was very important that we had those cupcakes in the baby's blanket....so, we designed the blanket around the cupcakes and it is going to turn out just great! Mommy then picked a couple faves too! It is going to be a comfy soft blankie, perfect for Bean to cuddle up in for years to come. Auntie Becky is going to make our Bean her first baby blanket, just like she did for Zahria. Z still snuggles in her blanket every night when we rock-a-bye and when she goes to bed.

Totally a 'God Thing'

Let's go back a bit to July 19th, 2012. This is one of the major days that changed all of our futures!! I mean REALLY changed our futures!! :) That night, we met with some past clients of ours at their home in Big Lake......the focus of the meeting was to discuss the idea of partnering up to start investing in distressed properties, rehab them, bringing them back to their glory days, and then resell them for a profit. Here is the total God part, Chris and I have dreamed about this opportunity together, but pre-this meeting with Andy & Candy, it was just not a reality for us financially. This is one of those amazing times when you see God truly does LOVE big prayers! He knew that adoption was on our hearts, and He knew that we were totally unsure of how, and when, and where, an adoption could even be a possibility for us. Over the past 2 years we had dicussed our family on several levels, and we both felt lead to international adoption, but financially, we were not yet ready, or able, to make those commitments. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, God presents this AMAZING opportunity to us. It is like He said, 'Trust in me. In Me, anything is possible. Just have Faith! I put adoption in your hearts for a BIG reason, because that is the plan that I have for you, and your family. Do not worry about anything, I am bigger than you can even imagine. Continue to move forward in Faith and I will provide for you.' And He has! Out of (what seemed to be) nowhere, we are presented this amazing opportunity, to team up to start flipping homes. I mean, who does that happen to? It happens to US, a couple with a dream in our hearts, but not enough money to make it a reality....at least not until July 19th! :) Needless to say, we have been SO incredibly blessed by Andy & Candy's invitation to us to partner up with them in this exciting venture! Since that day, we found, and closed on the purchase of our first 'flip home.' Check out some of the before and after pics. So fun! Our prayer is that the sale of this home will pay for our adoption costs to our daughter!! :) August 17th we closed on this home and for the last month and a half we have been working on our updates. Today we listed the home! Good Luck to us!!

Colombian Coffee at Dunn Brothers

Tonight Chris gave me the green light to take our Home Study packet to Dunn Brothers... Ohhh what could be better than quiet, coffee & making progress to bring our baby home??!!! So, as I was grabbing my Latte, I looked over and what to my wondering eyes would appear but Colombian Beans! And so it is, our baby is our Colombian Bean now!

Videos of Julieth

Seriously, who gets this??? In reading Julieth's preliminary medical reports, there were a couple items that triggered questions for us. When we spoke with Patti, our friend that works closely with FANA, Julieth's orphanage, we shared our questions with her. Within about a week, Patti was able to share 4 small video clips of Julieth with us! What? Who gets that when they are adopting internationally?? Blessed!! We got to see our daughter in action and it melted our hearts! Julieth was playing with a noodle, rocking on a horse & eating a cookie. The videos not only helped answer our questions but it really connected us all the more to Julieth. Such a sweet little peanut! We even got a glimpse of a smile, which was so nice to see!! Such an amazing treasure to have as Julieth grows older!

LOI Baby!

After reviewing little Colombia's light medicals, and meeting with our new potential agency, we have decided to submit an 'LOI' (Letter of intent) to adopt her. Okay, so call us crazy, we feel so much peace in this little girl, how we learned of her, the agency and the possibilities of what might be that we are jumping!! We sent the letter off to the agency that works with Julieth's orphanage in Bogota, Colombia and they will now send off our 'Letter of Intent' on to FANA (her orphanage.) Safe Travels little LOI!!

Meeting with the Adoption Agency

This morning we met with Jill, the Assistant Director at Crossroads Adoption Services here in Minneapolis, MN. Both Chris and I were very impressed with her. She answered all of our questions about the agency, their relationship with FANA (the orphanage where Little Colombia lives), who FANA is and some additional light information on Julieth.... yes, her name is Julieth! :) So far, so good! Chris and I are really feeling at peace. We plan to talk, and pray, about everything and see if this peace grows or if we sense hesitation in this, what seems to be, crazy awesome God experience!

Yard Work @ the Flip

This weekend we got the boys! :) Saturday we headed up to the Zimmerman flip to start working on the yard as a family. It was fun to see the whole family pitching in to help! Boy this home has amazing land, all 3.54 acres of it! Makes us ponder living here... ;) NO! Don't get attached. Focus. Focus! Naters took to creating the firepit and Bennie was all over hauling and cutting (or at least pretending to cut the wood with the chainsaw.) Zahria had so much fun playing, and working on the rock pile and clearing wood, with Andy & Candy's Kids. Z loves those kids.....all 5 of them! Chris was busy powerwashing the deck and I was on cleaning up the Kitchen Cabinetry. All of this to bring Julieth home!!! TOTAL MOTIVATION!

Could it be - FellerBaby #6?

Today we got a call from friends of ours that have a close personal relationship with an orphanage in Bogota, Colombia. They personally have adopted their 3 kids from this orphanage in Colombia. :) Chris has been good friends with this family for years, his boys are great friends with their kids and Chris has been in his Men's Group for a couple years now. Great people! We actually met with them, Jay & Patti, about 8 months ago to discuss their experiences adopting from Colombia. Well...... There is a little girl that needs a family. Crazy thing, we need a little girl too and just a couple days ago, we decided that we both were feeling led to Colombia. :) Could it be? Today, they sent us a photo of her sweet little face, with a little medical & mobility information. She is 2 now and just as cute as a button. Dark brown hair, big brown eyes and the chubbiest cheeks ever! Reminds us of Z when she was littler!! She is considered a 'Special Needs' adoption as there are potential motor, and possibly genetic, concerns. Her medical notes, quite extensive really, state that she has been receiving some occupational therapy to help with her motor delays. She is now walking at just over 2 years old. :)

Kaz or Colombia?

This past year, Chris and I have been discussing our family. How are we going to grow it, and when? This past year, we discussed growing through adoption, both domestic & international, adopting through the foster care system and we entertained having a biological child. We both are quite certain that we could get pregnant should we choose this, but honestly, it just hasn't felt like the right decision for our family. We've spoken with a couple agencies, attended seminars at the county and sat in on teleconferences. Little by little we have narrowed in our thinking, we know that adoption is the right path for us and for our kids. Now, the million dollar question is will we go to Colobmia and Kazakhstan? :) As many of you know, our hearts are quite tied to Kazakhstan....since our beautiful 5-year old daughter was born in Aqtobe, Kaz. However, the time in country has us concerned as to whether we can truly logistically make a 2nd trip to Kaz a reality. And then there is Colombia, we are loving a lot about the adoption program in Colombia. In Highschool, our family had a foreign exchange student from Cucuta, Colombia, Sergio, and we LOVED him so much! Sergio was a Junior when I was a Freshmen! He taught us about 'women's work and man's work.' Who knew! And he was serious! He was horrified when my sister and I helped stack wood or did anything that semi-resembled outside work or heavy lifting. Likewise, he would not, I mean would NOT, be seen in the Kitchen. No way, that was 'women's work!' Dad loved it! After Sergio's Junior year, he returned home to his family in Cucuta. For the next 3 years we all stayed in touch, and when my sister was getting married in 94', Sergio was planning to come. But, no word, Sergio didn't make it to the wedding. A year later, our family received a letter from Sergio's Mom. Sergio passed away that year. Come to find out, Sergio found out that he had Cancer the year he left us, and sadly, he didn't want to 'burden' us with the news. We all mourned, and still think of him often. We wish dearly that he had let us all know. Maybe we could have helped? He could have come back to the U.S. for treatment. So, yes, parts of my heart are in Colombia!!