Teeth, pillows, powdered donuts, forts, bowling and hats

I just thought I would do a little Travis update. First of all, he lost his two bottom teeth already!! I was in total shock....my little boy will start kindergarten with two big teeth!!! I tried to get a picture, but it is harder than you would think!

Travis has also been very interested in making forts out of the couch pillows or pillows on the bed. He has been getting very creative too!

This picture is how Travis eats a powdered donut!

For Father's Day we all went bowling, it was Travis' first time. My dad really took pride in showing him how to hold the ball correctly and how to swing the ball. Since my dad is the "bowling pro" of the family he wanted to make sure Travis learned the right way from the beginning.

I had to include Grammy, she wanted to show Travis how to bowl too!!

Then after bowling, we were at Target and Travis came around the corner modeling these hats. Since I had my camera still with me from bowling, I decided to take some pictures of him. He is so much fun!! I was cracking up! I am sure people in Target thought I was crazy, but I just couldn't resist such a Kodak moment!

Well, on Saturday we are off to California to visit friends and family. Tomorrow (Friday) I plan on dropping more paperwork off at our agency. After we get back we will have our Dr. appointments and Daryle needs to finish his autobiography. Then we can schedule our psychological exams and then we can get the homestudy done. We didn't get it all done before vacation like I had hoped, but it will be ok. If I find time to post from California I will.

Out of the mouths of babes...

I have been busy getting paperwork together, poor Travis has been tagging along with me like a trooper. The other week when we went to our agency and began the paperwork, the lady we are working with at our agency gave Travis and I each a little treasure to take home. She laid out some pretty stones and she picked one for me (she let Travis pick his) and she told us to hold onto them as we wait for our adoption to be complete. She said it was just something tangible for us to carry around and for us to know this adoption WILL HAPPEN. (Daryle was not there, she said she had to see him in person to pick out his stone!) So, we came home and put the stones on my dresser next to two framed pictures we have of each of us with Travis outside of his orphanage. I also have some white roses by the pictures that were given to me as we awaited Travis. Anyway, every day Travis will pick up the stones, give me mine, and we will hold the stones by our hearts and say a little prayer for "our baby". I always say something about keeping our baby safe and healthy etc. Travis always adds "And if our baby is crying I hope somebody gives them lots of hugs and kisses too!" (I think I said that once so now he repeats it!) It is really cute. Well, anyway, tonight at dinner we were telling Daryle about our day and somehow it came up that we said a prayer for the baby today. Here is how the conversation went:

Daryle-"So, Travis, did somebody hold you when you cried in Russia? Was it Lenia?" (Travis liked this caregiver and we got a picture of her holding Travis one day at the orphanage)
Travis- "Um...let me think...it was God."

Ok, as you can all imagine my eyes welled up!!!! Daryle couldn't believe it either, he mostly just laughed at me because he knows how emotional I get about things like that, but I know he was laughing so he wouldn't cry too! So, that wasn't enough, and I had to pursue this conversation further. So I asked him if Jesus and the angels also held him because while we were waiting for him to come home I prayed and asked Jesus and the angels to hold him and he said "Yes,they did". (I know MANY people also prayed for this including my entire first grade class at the time.)So, I asked him if he knew what they looked like and he said no. Daryle asked him if God told him that his mommy and daddy would be coming for him soon and he said no. I think he was getting tired of our questioning so he decided to fall off his chair and change the subject. (Or do you think maybe one of those angels pushed him?)

Paperwork...

Well, it is all coming back to me now! Getting all this paperwork together can be such a test of patience!! One thing we have to get is a police clearance letter saying we have never been convicted or arrested for any crime in Queen Creek. Well, our little town of Queen Creek doesn't really have an official police station. So, they told us we had to call the Phoenix police department to get any paperwork done for Queen Creek. So, I called last Thursday and of course I was transferred to 3 different people. The third place they sent me the lady said she could help me. I thought "Wow! This is great!" I figured she would tell me where to go and that I would have to show my ID etc. Well, all I had to do was give her our SS numbers, name, DOB and address. That simple! She said we would have it in a day or two. I kept thinking "This is just too good to be true! I wonder what will be wrong with this letter." Sure enough, in Saturday's mail we each get a nice notarized letter stating that according to law blah blah blah that they were not allowed to give out any criminal history for a foreign adoption! For pete's sake!! I told Daryle, this letter will not work. I wonder what we will have to do now to get this cleared up. So, today I went over to our agency and showed them the letter. Of course it will not work. They were surprised too, but of course, they haven't had any adoptive parents in Queen Creek before...I warned them that working with the Hawes family would be frustrating like that!! So now we have to get an extra set of finger prints done and I have to send off a cashier's check along with the prints and a self-addressed envelope to somewhere back east and they will send back the prints with a stamp that says we are ok. The trick is to time it so that it doesn't expire and we have to do this again. Oh well...sigh....I know this will not be the last of this type of situation. This is why I am prepared to wait 2 years!! Ugh, government!!

A bit more information....

Wow! I was so happy and excited to hear from so many of you regarding our news! Many of you have asked for more information on where we go from here. So here goes. We sent in our initial application the end of May and had our first meeting with our agency to start paperwork June 2. We have LOTS of things to do in order to get a new homestudy done in Arizona and we have to get a lot of things together for our Dossier. (A big fancy word for the file of papers needed for an adoption. Just so you know, Travis' dossier is about 6 inches thick!) We just submitted our paperwork for our INS approval (that is government permission to adopt a foreign born orphan) and we will wait for a letter in the mail inviting us to get our fingerprints done. We also have to complete 30-35 hours of parent training so we can be approved to be adoptive parents....yeah....go figure. We get NO brownie points for already being adoptive parents according to the wonderful state of Arizona!! Oh well, I just hope to learn something worthwhile in those classes! Many of you are curious about if we are requesting a boy or a girl...we have decided not to specify and leave it up to chance. As you all know, we originally were going to Guatemala before we were diverted to Russia where we found Travis... he was obviously hand picked to be part of our family...so we decided that it is not in our control and we will see how this puzzle all comes together. There is a greater chance it will be a boy but there is always a chance it could be a girl too. So, stay tuned for that surprise at a later time! And as far as a time frame goes...our agency says it is taking 12-18 months....in case you forgot, it took almost 2 years for us to get Travis home (that included a change in countries ). So....we are being patient, we are taking this whole thing in one day at a time and we know in our hearts that our child will be home with us in God's time. Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes...we need them!!

Here we are!

Well, we made our decision to go back to Russia around the beginning of May. I do know that on Mother's Day we had decided that a special someone was missing from our family. I did some research and found an agency that is about 20 minutes from our house. It will be so great to have an agency close by this time around! We turned in our application at the end of May and I had our first meeting to go over the mountains of paperwork on June 2. I can't believe how fast it all happened!! We honestly were not thinking about doing this again...I think some angels were shouting in our ears to get us to listen!! Anyway, we are SOOOO excited! Travis is so excited to be a big brother. Actually, he first wanted a "boy sister"...umm...we had to explain that one....then he wanted a boy and a girl so that Mommy could have the girl and he could share the boy with Daddy, oh, and with Rock too! (That would be the dog!!). Then just yesterday he informed me that he wanted 3 babies, he explained that two more carseats can fit in the backseat and that another one could go up front and that daddy could just ride in the other car. Gee, the simple explanations of a five year old!! I told him we were getting ONE baby to bring home, hopefully that will sink in one of these days! He is too funny. I found out yesterday that we will have to be careful...when people ask Travis if he has any brothers or sisters he says "No, but we are going to get one!" and it makes it sound like either A. I am pregnant or B. that we plan to snatch a baby from a stroller any minute now! I have been getting some peculiar looks. Sometimes I just smile and shrug my shoulders and other times I feel I have to give a quick explanation, which actually turns into Adoption 101 for those who don't know much about it! Oh well! And the journey continues...thanks for joining us!