Busy weekend!

Friday night Amy had a GNO (girls night out) with Mel, Carrie & Lisa. They went to the Cardinals game and saw Albert #5 hit the game winning home run in the bottom of the nineth. Go Cards! Justin, Lucas, Phil and myself worked around the house. Mulched & removed stumps from the trees that we had cut down earlier in the month. The yard is really starting to take shape.

Saturday was football! The Wentzville Wildcats hosted the annual preseason jamboree. Justin's 4th grade team played 3 scrimage games. The are sooooo improved over last year. The difference a year makes is amazing. After the jamboree I headed down to the airport to finish up some outstanding items I had to allow me to take my Instrument rating test. Flew great, this weekend I do paper work for the big test. Saturday night was quiet, had a very busy day.

Sunday was painting and church dedication. I was able to get 2 full coats of Pixie Dust Pink in her room and trimmed it all in once. I need to put one more coat in the trim and one more coat on the walls and it will be ready ! Our new church was dedicated Sunday afternoon. Great job to everyone who worked hard to get that completed!

Pink update: We are finishing up our documents for the Moscow Court. Our accountant is putting together a couple of letters for us that should be back today or on there way back. Say a small prayer to keep our process moving and for Pink, she is out there waiting to come home to Defiance MO.

Oh yeah.. and today is my 40th Bday.... Pray for me... LOL

More news to come!

See what's in the back of my truck.

We are so blessed. Praise Him.

More news to come.

Sorry for the delay...

What a great weekend!

Would like to thank my beautiful wife for throwing me a great surprise birthday party Saturday night! I would also like to thank: Justin, Mel & Brookie for helping Amy throw a great party. Let me also thank everyone for their well wishes, gifts (which were not neccesary) and coming to celebrate with us.

Update on Pink:

We are back to paper work! Friday afternoon went to CHI to have a meeting with our Moscow specialist Leslie. She is the person who will be getting us throw the last bit of paper work that is specifically for adopting in Moscow. We worked over the weekend when we weren't celebrating my birthday and have all but one piece ready for the notary. Hope to have that last piece dug out and ready to go this evening. If so all paper work should be back from the Secretary of State by Friday ready to be turned into CHI. Praise Him.

We did get a little disheartening news though. There is only one spot left for September acceptance into the Moscow city program. If we don't get that one we have to wait til October. Which really isn't a horrible thing, its just that it pushes us back one month. I keep saying God is driving, we are just along for the ride!

Keep us in your prayers or thoughts!

More news to come.

First day of school...

Yesterday was the first day of 4th grade.. Yeah! It was a half-day, can someone explain that to me? Im not for sure if its the children easing back into school or the teachers?? LOL

Melanie was kind enough to let Justin go with them to Pizza Pro for a little after school party lunch session. Amy & I were both at work. Here is a picture that was taken there and posted on facebook, so I borrowed it and put it here.

One more piece to the puzzle...

Today when we arrived home we found a great surprise in the mailbox. Its the approval letter from the US Department of Immigration. Praise him! We are so excited, this basically says that the US goverment has approved us for international adoption of one little girl, 36 months or younger.

More news to come!

Sept 1

Status... As we know it. Our documents have been sent to Moscow for translation. The Ministry of Education is currently on summer vacation and will return to work September 1. We are praying they will have our paper work on Sept 1, and will accept it and us into the program.

We will start working with our Moscow City specialist this week, really excited to get to know her!

Friday night we went out with the Pitman's to get their information on adoption & Russia. Had a great evening went to Oishi's in Chesterfield for dinner and drinks. Went back to there house for some home movies. Really amazing and over-whelming.

Saturday Justin had football weigh ins in North County. I went to the airport and studied with my back up CFI. Saturday night Amy and I went to Babies R Us, wow things have gotten expensive since Justin was little. We were kinda shocked at how much stuff we realized we will need. Ofcourse we do not know "Pinks" age yet, but still; 3 and under she will need lots of accesories. LOL

Sunday we went to church and worked around the house. Lucas came over and worked in the yard for a few hours. We had a few of our ILS freinds over BBQ later that evening.

This coming Sunday, the paint will be applied!

More news to come.

Speedy recovery...

Thursday,, we had what we hope was our big "oops" in our process. We had sent our paper work into the state to get appostiled. They came back with one of the papers incomplete because we forgot to have the notary stamp it. I hung up with Anna at CHI and 25 minutes later walked in and picked it up from her. I don't know if God liked me speeding or not, but he defiantly made sure there were no officers on the highway while I was heading there & back.. LOL

I got the form picked up from CHI, got the notary completed, got it to the post office, shipped it overnight to the state and made it to pick up Justin and the Lemen girls all in less then an hour. That is a speedy recovery!

Our paper work leaves for Russia today! Praise Him for getting us this far!

More news to come!

Eat more Chicken!

Last night CHI held a fund raiser for a child in need at Chick-fila in Chesterfield. I believe a certain amount of the reciept was donated to CHI. Amy and I drove down to the the valley and ordered up a dinner to go. Good as always!

Today the documents should be back from the state and be packaged up to Russia! Thank God and all that he has done for us!

Justin is off to spend the day with the Lemen girls. :)

More news to come!

Midweek news...

Spoke with Anna at CHI.. who is the best!!

Our documents should be back from the state of Mo tomorrow and then off to Russia!! The last of our docs needing appostiled from the state of Missouri should be back to CHI in the AM and then they can be packaged up and sent off to Russia. Once the documents arrive in Russia they will be translated and be waiting on Russia's Education Dept to accept them. Pray for everyone in that department to be in a good mood after Summer vacation. They actually start back on September 1st. It would be great if we were the first package accepted into the system!

As I understand it, we will actually get a list of paper work to start filling out for our region next week. Moscow City is our region. Pray that our paper work for our region goes as smoothly as it did for the rest of our process.

Our little girl is out there and we are on our way!

More news to come.

The game lounge is gone!

Wow.. what a busy weekend!

Friday night I had to work late. I stayed at the office in Chesterfield til 7 or so but then came home to finish out the evening here, got finished around 1am Saturday morning.

Saturday morning we got up early and hit it hard. Justin had his last baseball game and won! The only left handed catcher that we know of. His wrist is still hurting from the fall at camp the other day. Tomorrow Amy is going to refer him out to one of the Dr's in the area to review his Xrays she shot at her office Saturday afternoon.

I actually stayed home and worked all day Saturday. Phil from work came out and ran the skid loader and worked on expanding the yard. Got alot of the area cleared back. We reset the sprinklers in the yard to help cover the newly graded area. I seeded and fertilized all of the yard, new and old.

Friday Amy went to St. Louis and got her finger prints taken at the Federal building. We had to have some of our papers re-appostiled because of a typo on the States part. So we reprinted the forms, had Mary Beth renotarize them and dropped them off with Anna at CHI to send to the state to be appostiled. We are working hard to go to Russia in September! God willing we will make it! Just a big Thank You to all of the people who are helping us along the way. Without your support we could not being doing this.

Sunday we worked in emptying the "Game Lounge" as it used to be called by Justin. The LCD tv has been moved to his room along with the PS2. The Wii went upstairs to the loft. We purchased 2 gallons of Pixie Dust Pink to begin the remodel. The pink is over taking the Fridleys!

More news to come!

Bless this brown box!

Dear God please bless this brown box and its contents. Amen

The brown box holds all of the paper work that we have recieved from the State of Missouri, that CHI needs to send to Russia. If I understand correctly we are finished with paper work until we get back from our first trip to see out little girl. Can you believe that????

Anna is out until Thurday morning. Also the Russian Edcuation Administration has not started back to work from Summer break so our paper work will reach them just at the correct time.

Justin's baseball season is finally winding down. Their team had a no hitter Saturday in the pouring down rain. He is the catcher... a lefty catcher!!!

Football!!!

Tonight was the first night of football for Justin. Go Wildcats!!

Our Basic registration packet will be UPS'd over to CHI tomorrow.


More news to come tomorrow.