4th of July

We had a wonderful turnout last week on Friday for our "More on 34" yard sale, making a little over $300 in one day. Unfortunately, Chad and I both unexpectedly had to work on Saturday so we were unable to have it on that day too. This week we have been moving items from our garage to the Tin Shed here in Cameron to prepare for this weekend's big yard sale. Back in January when we formally began the adoption process, I had imagined holding a yard sale on Cameron Days because there are so many people here in town. We are really hoping the weather holds out so we can have a lot of people stop by the sale and add to our savings for the adoption. We are continuing in the "Waiting Game". DCFS still has our homestudy at this point. Apparently there is only one person in charge of reading all of the homestudies for families in Illinois. The turn around time has been rumored to be six to eight weeks. I have our grant applications completed but must send a copy of the homestudy with them. Thus, everything is waiting until we receive the approved homestudy from DCFS. Until then, I have been doing a lot of reading and researching on parenting techniques with internationally adopted children. It has been very interesting, and has caused me to consider doing my own research in this area. I have also been attempting to learn some simple Russian phrases to use while we are traveling and also to help communicate with the boys during our visit to the orphanage. Samantha attended church camp where she received the "Positive Attitude Camper" award. While I was picking her up, three different camp counselors approached me to state how helpful and bright Sam was and they enjoyed getting to know her. Someone even said Sam was very responsible in managing her diabetes! Callie missed Samantha quite a bit, but didn't waste any time enjoying being an "only child". Callie enjoys being the center of attention, that is for sure! Samantha celebrated her 11th birthday today; it was a momentous day as she woke up with her first zit on her chin. She asked me to wait until she is sound asleep and then pop it for her! She surmised that since she is such a sound sleeper she wouldn't feel it sting. We are still hoping to travel to Russia in September, but I will not be holding my breath either. Our adoption has been like playing dominoes, one misstep and everything seems to fall apart. You don't lose the game, just have to reset the dominoes and start over. We hope to see some of you at Cameron Days this weekend! This is my favorite time of the year!

Garage sale part deux

Our next yard sale is on June 18th and 19th. If anyone has any items they would like to donate, please let us know. We are hoping there will be a great turnout for the Cameron yard sales that weekend! We have been working hard to complete our dossier. Chad and I have completed online courses regarding international adoption and we have been notarizing several documents for our dossier to send to Russia. We are fortunate that Chad's bank (Midwest in Monmouth) notarizes documents for FREE for customers. We have been in three times already and will probably be in several more before this process is over. Thanks to Connie for all of her help with notarizing! Today I returned to campus to meet with students for our summer clinic. I will be supervising Monday through Thursdays in the mornings. We are thankful I was able to do this to help us continue our saving efforts. I am beginning to get pretty concerned how we are going to financially pull all of this off; the dollar figures I look at seem unattainable. We are praying that the grant applications I completed this week will be successful. I know there are so many other families who apply for the grants as well; I would not want to be on the committee to decide who gets the grant and who does not. Chad and I remain optimistic that we will continue to find ways to make everything come together. The faces of the boys on our refrigerator are extra special incentives to think of extra ways to scrimp and save! OK, so this is where we are at NOW in the process. Susan, our lovely social worker, has completed our home study report and forwarded it to DCFS. They have to approve it then we can send it to the federal government who will then give us the green light to adopt "officially". The homestudy report will also accompany our dossier to Russia. Once our dossier gets to Russia, it will be reviewed for accuracy and then we will be invited to travel to our region in Russia to meet the boys. Anna, our worker at our agency thinks we will travel for our first time in September. Let's pray that the weather stays dry so that Chad can work as much as possible... his overtime pay is AWESOME! The girls had a great Memorial Day weekend since the weather was superb. They were able to swim in Nana and Papa Mike's pool with their cousins and aunts/uncles. The girls truly are blessed to have so many people in their lives who love and care for them. Please continue to keep us in your prayers as well as the two little boys who have yet to know us.

Results of Yard Sale

Yesterday Chad and I FROZE at our garage sale! Thankfully we had a couple of space heaters to make things bearable early in the day on Saturday. We had several people come and make large purchases. Jaimey placed our signs on the interstate, which got several other customers to our house. We completed the two days with a profit over $200 dollars! Thank yous go to Amanda and Chad Maleug, Stefanie Gipson, my family, Laura and Gail Strope, Lynn Ewing, Mandy Fisher and Amanda's best friend. They all donated sale items or helped get ready for the yard sale. As for an update with our adoption, we have crossed several other items off of our list. This week we received our fingerprints from the FBI. Chad completed his physical, and I will complete mine this coming week. This week is Finals at WIU so I hope to focus on completion of our dossier. We hit a small snag in the testing of our water. We hope to solve this problem in the next few days as this will be the final component for our dossier. Before summer school begins in June, I will have our dossier finalized so we may begin the notarization process. Following notarizing our documents, I will fax them to our caseworker at the agency so she may review they are in order. Once they are approved by her I will drive them to Springfield for apostillization. The last piece will be getting our clearance by the US Government certifying we have met the criteria for adoptive parents. This is based upon our homestudy and other documents we submitted. Please continue saving aluminum cans. Also, if anyone has items you would like to donate for our future yard sale, the next one will be on June 18th and 19th. Stay in touch as things should move along more quickly at this point (we hope but in adoption who knows!).

May Yard Sale

We are working hard to get ready for our yard sale next weekend (May 7 and 8). Tomorrow Amanda and Chad (Chad's sister and brother-in-law) and Stefanie (Chad's other sister) are coming over to help us price things and clean out the garage. Many people have donated things for our sale and we are hoping to continue to receive more donations in the next week. We had our last official homestudy visit with our social worker this week and by next Monday we will have everything DONE. The next step is to review our homestudy report with our social worker and then forward all of our documents to our case worker at the adoption agency for review. We must get all of the documents notarized and once our agency approves our documents, I will drive to Springfield for them to be apostilled. Apostillization is a process in which the state government certifies that the notarization is valid. So many steps to the process! We hope to submit our dossier (a fancy name for all the paperwork) to Russia ASAP... of course with a large price tag attached! If you are wondering how you can help, here are some ideas. Either donate or BETTER YET shop at our yard sale! Collect aluminum cans and we will come get them from you! Praying for us is great as well (and may well be what we really could use)! The US delegation met with Russia yesterday and determined it was necessary to convene an "expert panel" to determine ways to protect Russian children following adoption. Adoptions are continuing in Russia as you read this, and we are optimistic we will be able to eventually meet our boys and bring them home. My sister Jessica is now engaged to be married to Matt Cargill. They will have a June 2011 wedding in which I will be the matron of honor while Sam and Callie will be junior bridesmaids/flower girls. My niece Christian will also be in the wedding. Jessica is hopeful the boys will be here by then so that they may be in the wedding as well; they will be the first boys of the Lydic family!

UPDATE

We continue to wait to hear from the Russian government if there will be any changes in the adoption process. Due to the volcanic ash in Europe's airspace, the US delegation was unable to fly to Russia for their meeting last weekend. They are scheduled to meet in Russia on April 29 and 30. Chad and I are feeling more upbeat as adoptions continue to move forward in Russia. It is particularly exciting that one family from our agency received their invitation to travel to Russia in early May. We continue to meet with our wonderful social worker to complete our homestudy process. On Friday Chad and I met with the psychologist to review our results. As we expected, she highly recommended us both as adoptive parents. We also took over 140 pounds of cans to the scrap metal place in Galesburg. We earned $74 dollars; thanks again to everyone for saving their cans! We will continue to do this. I have to admit I am getting a bit overwhelmed by the large amounts of money we are working to save. I cannot imagine traveling somewhere with thousands of dollars strapped to my body! We are holding our first GARAGE SALE on May 7 and 8. Please let us know if you have donations or better yet stop by as you may find something special you have been looking for! I am wrapping things up for the semester at WIU. Chad is expecting to get called back to work any day. Sam and Callie have field trips in the next few weeks and then they will be out of school for the summer.

Adoption Situation in Russia

Hello everyone. I know, it has been a LONG time since my last post. We have been quite busy with our everyday lives as well as completing tasks for our homestudy. We have been very lucky to choose a wonderful social worker whom is completing our homestudy this month. Chad and I have also had our psychological assessments completed at WIU. They were interesting to say the least. Our bowling fundraiser netted over $200. A big thank you to everyone whom attended and assisted in the day. For those of you who may be wondering what exactly is going on with our adoption plans due to the media reports regarding Russian adoption, here is the scoop. At this time (4/16/10 at 1:35) Russia HAS NOT closed to adoptions for Americans. I have cyberfriends whom are currently in Russia completing their adoptions today. However, nothing is certain at this time regarding the continuance of adoptions via Russia. Next week government officials will be meeting to discuss changing current agreements between Russia and the US to protect the children being adopted. Our social worker feels that Russia WILL suspend adoptions in the near future. I spoke with our caseworker at our adoption agency this afternoon to see what the agency's take was on the current state of affairs. She felt that adoptions will proceed without an interruption after the meeting takes place next week with some changes in the current agreement. I asked what will happen IF Russia does suspend or close their adoption program. If this does occur, we will be assisted by the agency in determining another country and moving forward with our adoption there. The worst part of the situation is not knowing, and then thinking about the boys we are hoping to adopt and what may become of them if we are unable to become their parents. We ask for everyone to be thinking of us during this time as we may have to make some very important decisions in coming weeks.

Home study

Today Chad and I had a phone conference with a social worker regarding our home study. LOTS of paperwork is to be completed in the next few weeks. I have to write a list of all the things we need to complete so I don't lose my mind trying to think of everything that needs accomplished. On Sunday we will have our Gipson Family adoption Bowlathon in Galesburg at Northgate Lanes from 2 to 4. This event was to initially be held in February, but the bowling alley unfortunately had a fire. We will earn a portion of every game bowled as well as the shoe rental fees. Chad's mom Jackie is making burrito pie and we will also hold a bake sale so please bring your appetite! Next week I will be on spring break from WIU but think I will stay busy gathering the necessary documents for the home study and CLEANING the house for our home study. Last weekend Chad and I went hunting for scrap metal (thanks to my dad) and loaded up quite a bit of aluminum siding to take in to the recycling center along with our many bags of smashed cans. We hope to see many of you on Sunday!