Refreshed and Renewed

With all the "business" and emotion of preparing for this adoption I hadn't realized how long it had been since Willem and I were able to have some real fun! Vegas was the perfect get away for us. Luxurious hotel room, fun shows, great food and fun nights with friends. We danced, shopped and just got to enjoy hanging out with each other.

As we wait for our travel date we are just sitting back and enjoying the holiday season. We pray all of you have a safe and happy holiday!

DOSSIER'S AWAY!!!

It may not seem like a big deal but trust me it is! It's in the mail and will be at our agency's office tomorrow by noon. They will go through it, make sure everything is there then mail it off to Russia for translating. Then assuming everything is okay with what they see we will get our travel dates!!!

The dossier turned out to be 90 documents and most of those are multiple pages. Every document had to be notarized and every document had to be apostilled at the office for the Louisiana Secretary of State. I drove it to Baton Rouge yesterday to have that done and waited 3 hours for it then came home. (I got a little shopping in, I love the Perkins Row shopping area by the way...Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters in one spot...can't beat that.)

Anyways, it's like a huge weight is lifted and we now can breathe a little easier. To celebrate Willem and I are going to Las Vegas with our good friends the Burns this weekend. (It was planned ahead of time but the timing couldn't be better!)

Hope everyone is having a great week!

The New Kids' Bathroom

The other major problem was that there was no other bathroom on the second floor that was not an ensuite. Our guests would have to go downstairs or through the girls or our bedroom to use the bathroom. We dealt with it for a while but after Derek's arrival and the future arrival of our little Russian we realized something had to be done.
I wanted another bathroom added. Willem put his foot down and said 3.5 baths for one house is plenty. Not wanting to be in charge of cleaning five toilets I conceded....So we devised a plan. We would close off access to the bathroom that once was the girls and create an access to it from the hallway. (Savannah's tea parties and constant concoctions of what she called "perfume" was getting out of hand anyways.)
Knowing this bathroom would be used by four kiddos we tried to design it for high traffic and multiple functions going on at once. We put in high wainscotting to keep my walls from being marked and nicked from all the munchkins. The sink was something I had my eye on for some time now. We tried to find a vintage one that would function the same but no luck, so we splurged on this one from Kohler. It is actually considered a laundry utility sink. I really wanted the bigger version that allowed for three faucets but space wouldn't allow it and our budget wouldn't either! In any event I love it and I really love seeing the kids lined up brushing their teeth.

The other wall pictured here is not finished yet. We have a carpenter building us a countertop to fit underneath that light. We also have a mirror to hang above that allowing the girls to have a counterspace to put on make up and to style hair. The lockers are vintage pool lockers we found on Ebay and assembled. It stores towels, hair accessories, cleaning supplies, etc... Each kid has a cubby as well. One day we will paint those lockers a cooler color...we ran out of steam and decided it would be a project for next year some time.

The other portion is your typical bath area with tub and toilet. The tub was a terrible beige color and we had it coated in place and now it is a beautiful white. It was very cheap to do and I highly recommend it.

So there is the bathroom. It is amazing how much cleaner it stays now that it is "open" to the public. The girls used it before to play kitchen and science experiments! Now they know they can't get away with it so they don't bother trying.

NEW ROOMS!

They cleaned! Maddy did it without me asking! Savannah did it because she saw her sister do it and felt guilty. :)

Here are pics of Madelynn's room. I wanted something a little sophisticated but still fun. She loves blue and initially wanted her room blue but I decided to go with a gray and lots of blue accents. I love this space. We still have to work out places for some of her stuff and we hope to put a window seat under the big window but for now it is mostly finished.

Next up Savannah's! Savannah wanted a pink room but again I decided I was sick of renovating and painting so a neutral white with pink accents was what we went with for her. She also begged for a chandelier so we got her one. Savannah has an eye for fashion and loves anything associated with it. I got her a dress form and wanted her to have a long table so that in the future she may be able to do some sewing in here. She also wanted some Paris accents so there are a few of those. It is definately a girly room without being over the top.

I still have plans for additions to both the girls bedding. I have all the fabric to make a quilt for each but simply have not had the time. For now they are doing fine with what they have.

Now for lounge room and a pic of their massive closet...

The lounge room will soon be getting an upgrade of a flat screen to go in that recessed space where the tv is now. It'll give them more floor space and clean things up a bit. The Christmas tree makes things a little tight too for now but they love it.

The closet isn't the cleanest but I can't expect too much...

Hope you like it...I'll post pics of the bathroom tomorrow.

Girls' Bedroom Suite

One of the things we wanted to do before bringing our adopted son home was get some much needed renovations done on the inside of the house.

Our girls are polar opposites. One likes pink and everything girly, the other loves blue and sports and asks for boy toys for Christmas. We always wanted the girls to share a room and to be close. They have shared ever since Savannah moved into a big girl bed. But, as they have gotten older we were finding it harder to mesh their very different tastes.

When we moved into this house there was a huge room the same size as our master that had an ensuite bath. At the time it was the best room for the girls. We quickly found however that bigger is not always better. While they had tons of room for their things, they also had room to make huge messes. They would manage to fling socks, toys, clothes all across the room and then the inevitable "I didn't make that mess, my sister did!" response would bellow down the hall.

We decided we wanted the girls to each have their own room but we still wanted them to have to share a space of some kind. We also didn't want their rooms to be huge. Just enough space to study and sleep and have some personal space. They end up sharing toys and they like to watch movies together so we wanted them to have a "play" area that would be shared. So we divided the space into three smaller rooms. The bathroom we will get to in another post. Anyways, here is the floor plan we came up with.

The girls room is accessible through a room we call the lounge room that is off of the main hallway. They have a TV in there, a couple of mini couches that fold out into mini beds and a bookcase/storage unit where they house their toys and books. When they have sleepovers they pile into this room. I wish it could be a little bigger but it is what it is.

This room also gives access to their huge walk in closet that they share.

Construction began on July 5th and they moved into their rooms around Aug. 15. Their rooms were not decorated by then but liveable. Here are a couple of pics of us in mid construction. I'll post pics of the girls individual rooms later (need to clean them up and get some pics).
By the way, the girls are writing scripture on the "bones" of their room. They also ended up drawing smiley faces and something about a peanut....Everything turns into a game with them.

the dossier...i'm tired just thinking about it

November 2nd...that was the day we got our referral. It has been a whirlwind since then complete with lots of highs and lots of lows...

First we were elated. How exciting a beautiful little boy and it is all happening way faster than we anticipated. The kids couldn't wait to tell their friends and classmates. We couldn't either for that matter. Maxim's name is always on our kids lips. Derek asks about him daily and asks when can we go get him. He is in our kids' bedtime prayer time and Savannah always prays he has a good meal when we ask God to bless our dinner. It is very sweet. The girls realize it isn't a sure thing that Maxim will be "the one" but we all decided even if he isn't the one he will be one prayed for little boy.

Then there were doubts...Should we accept this referral? Will he have medical issues we can't handle? Will he have severe attachment problems? Should we have a little boy so close in age to our biological son? How will we know until we meet him? And worse case, can we have the strength to make the best decision for our family and possibly turn down this referral after we meet him?

Then there were moments of acceptance....God has put us on this path and it is our job to have Faith that He will see it through. We know that we don't have all the answers but He does. Adoption is a huge leap of faith. This is where we are...today. We will likely go back and forth but ultimately I know that God has us in His hands and he will be with us through it all. Friends, just remind me of this fact if I start doubting again. :)

Emotional roller coaster aside we have been pushing forward. Our dossier is mostly complete. We are waiting on a few documents from our home study agency and then we will have it on its way to our agency and then Russia hopefully by the end of next week.

For those of you who are wondering a dossier (for adoption purposes) is a super duper report of every aspect of our lives. We have documents in there like passport copies, marriage certificates, home deeds, financial reports, bank statements, pictures, police records, doctor's evaluations, and the list goes on and on! And every one of those documents has to be notarized and then apostilled by the secretary of state for Louisiana. It is a huge undertaking and sometimes takes months to put together. We were asked to put it together in a little over a month at the busiest time of the year.

I am told our document collecting has gone very smoothly compared to some families. As annoying as some of it is I have to admit it wasn't that bad. We could not have done this in this time frame if it hadn't have been for a couple of great friends and notaries. Jim Welch and Marti Thomas...you are our heroes. Sorry for the cramped hands and the crazy amount of signatures. Please know that you were a huge blessing to us. We would have gone broke paying for notaries and for you guys to travel to our doctor's offices, police stations and banks to notarize documents on the spot free of charge is amazing and we will always be grateful.