A Year!!!!!!

Sweet Claire has been with us a year.

Here are some pics over the past year to re-cap:)

NY vs GA

Things we love about NY:

The snow!!!!

Stewart's chocolate peanut butter cup ice cream. 

Lots more farmer options. Nothing growing now but I already have a local egg source! 

The apples!! 

No bugs!!!!! Well there are ticks. 

No one has honked at me for driving slow in the snow. Of course I still have my GA tags on the van. 

Rachel Ray is better than Paula Deen (Rachel is from the Albany area). 

Things we miss about GA:

Family

Friends

Good Mexican and Asian food. 

How small Savannah really is and how there is really only 2 degrees of separation in Savannah. 

Things that are weird about NY:

I can go grocery shopping then run other errands without worrying about my frozen goods. In GA you almost need a cooler in the summer to make it 10 min home. 

There is a dunkin donuts on every corner. Seriously! We live 12 min from "town" yet only 5 from a DD. 

Upstate NY is pretty much anywhere that is not NYC. So we live in Upstate NY. 

Everyone thinks we are from Atlanta. No matter how many times we say Savannah. 

There are 2 Cracker Barrels here and several BBQ places. (Carolina and Memphis style can both be found!) 

We all own snow boots and snow pants. Very weird. 

45 degrees is now warm!!

The money post!

Adoption is so expensive. I think everyone knows that but they don't understand why. For China it is about 24-30 grand depending on some of the fluid expenses-which are mainly travel and different agencies have different fees. There are fees that are paid to both governments. 

Here is the breakdown for Alex's adoption

Agency fees- 7k and our agency is one of the cheapest and we got a discount for re-using our paperwork. Thankfully this has been paid in full. 

Fees to the US government for immigration. So far it has been 1100. We still have to pay for Alex's visa which is a few hundred I think. 

Fees to the Chinese government- 1500 for our dossier and translation fees for various paperwork.  5800 is what I have to carry with me for the orphanage fee. Last trip I got to wire it ahead. There is also a few hundred for the passport fee in country and for the adoption paperwork. 

That brings us to about 15,800.

But wait- there's more!! We have to go to China and get him!  Visa fee so I can enter the country- 140 plus the courier fee to take it to the Chinese consulate. My travel partner graciously offered to pay her own visa. Plane tickets 2 people there and 3 coming back- we paid 1800 per ticket and 1200 for Claire's. So that's 5800. Hotel, flights in China, etc is being estimated at 3500. Could be more or less. Then we need to eat and we need money for tips etc- 2000 is recommended. 

Travel could be 12,000. Add the orphanage fee and the passport fees for Alex and that is what we need in the next 10 weeks. 

Prayers appreciated.  We will be staying at Marriott hotels so if anyone has a bazillion marriott points they want to transfer to me- let me know. 

I did get a job and hopefully will start soon. Yet our house in GA has not sold- so we are paying mortgage and rent. Prayers it will sell would be great. At this point we will probably lose some money on it- so no big cash will be coming from that to help with expenses. We have no boat or vacation timeshare we can sell. 

And Scott and I are not alone in the "how will we pay these expenses" boat. We have friends that are on their 3rd Ukraine adoption in 18 months. The family of Alex's foster sister adopted from China last year too, and actually this is their 4th China adoption. They will travel in 3 weeks on pennies and prayers! We have friends beginning an adoption journey that needs 6800 in 14 days to continue. If we were independently wealthy it would be so fun to write them anonymous checks. But we aren't.  

So why are we doing this? Because we love Alex. He is our son. This is what it costs to save our child's life. If we are paying it off for the next 20 years it is worth it. 

Here is the link to our Reece's Rainbow page. 

http://reecesrainbow.org/65313/sponsorgilreath

Here is the link to Alex's foster sister's page

http://reecesrainbow.org/63380/sponsorcampbell-2

And here is the link to our friends adopting from the Ukraine again (although last time they ended up bringing home 2- I would not be shocked if they do again!)

http://reecesrainbow.org/70398/sponsorknofczynski-2

If you do help us out- know that we appreciate every single dollar. If you help by praying or sharing our link- we greatly appreciate that too. 

LOA!!!!

We got our LOA yesterday!!!!!!  I played with dates and looks like a 3/17 or 3/24 gotcha day unless we hit snags. Yay!!!

We also got an update on our Alex right after Christmas. We got new measurements, one pic(bringing the total number of pics we have to 4), labs, and they answered some questions I sent. He likes planes and his favorite color is red!!!

Next step is for US immigration to basically pre-approve his visa. This will take about a month probably. Then the paperwork goes to the US consulate in China so they know we will be coming. They add paperwork that basically says they will issue his visa when we get there. Once the Chinese government has that they will invite us to travel (issue our TA). For Claire we were on a plane 4-5 days after TA. 

While we wait on the two governments, I have to get a power of attorney since Scott is not traveling, and my visa to be able to travel. 

Here is the new pic we got!!