Full of emotions!

Grab a tissue

So, we FINALLY have our travel dates! The real ones. That won't change. Because, now we know these dates are from above! We leave on August 15. Bobby's birthday. Our first year of not having him here to celebrate and yet we have found yet another reason to celebrate his special day! As most of you know it is also Taylor's birthday! I have promised her we will celebrate in every country we go through on the way there! The beginning of our adventure to bring our Princess home! She will know, not only where she came from and how she got here, but also about Bobby, and why he was so very special and is her guardian angel!

Here is Bobby holding Taylor when she was three weeks old!

Taylor's Last Day

I guess that title sounds bad! LOL. It's really just Taylor's last day as the baby of the family! God willing, and if the judge agrees with Ian and Mariana, who are representing us tomorrow in court, N will officially be a Hess!!! I am so excited and we are so optimistic that it will go according to plan! I have just prayed that the judge have an open heart to N having a family in America that can provide for her every need and love her for the rest of her life! And that no legal complications hold back his or her decision!!! What a great feeling it will be to know that the only step left is to go get her and bring her home! We won't know our travel date until sometime after tomorrow. They will need to issue a new birth certificate, get her visa and passport work going and her orphanage will need to prepare to let her go. They love her so much there and I know it will be very difficult to say good bye. It is the only home she has ever known so I continue to pray that her heart will be open to us and she will quickly accept us as her family! We have so many plans for her. Vacations to take. Places to go. The girls talk about all the normal, every day things that we will need to show her for the first time! We need to finish the bedroom, buy a car seat, get the clothes washed, organized, packed! We have many things to think about for our trip. The girls want to come so we will need to buy all the plane tickets, get a place to stay for 10 days, figure out transportation while we are there, get packed, figure out what to do with a 3 year old on a plane for 11 hours!!! CAN NOT WAIT!

Do not be anxious of anything, by prayer and petition bring your request to The Lord.

Philippians 4:6

3 weeks gone

It has been 3 weeks since we said goodbye to N at the orphanage and left B\/lgar!a. (Creative huh?!) So far we have been waiting for our government to get the Visa applicatoon done and approved. We got the second approval on Monday and are now waiting for the letter that goes to B to get signed and get the court date set up. Can you tell I don't truly understand it, I just do what Super Nina tells me to do next!! We have to get medical clearances again, luckily, I feel okay, so therefore I am okay! We might have to get ANOTHER set of fingerprints done for the FBI, but I think ours are good until August so we might be okay there! Those have to be less that 6 months old. So I am really hoping that we go the first weekend of June. However, that means the girls have to miss their dance recital, so if it gets pushed back to the second weekend in June I won't be happy, but we can live with it. Any later than that and it's going to start getting very hard! This spring is so so busy that it will go very fast! 

I want to thank everyone for supporting us! Please check out Reeces Rainbow and donate to them to get some of these special needs kiddos home to their families, or even just to be a prayer warrior for them! We found N on Rainbowkids.com, they also deserve support for what they do, it's just that with them you can't support the individual kids! Also, since Caroline and Taylor are going to come with us, you can support us by going to my Origami Owl website and designing an amazing living locket for you or someone you love (Mom). That would be awesome! www.loveyourowlahess.origamiowl.com, (you may need to copy and paste that!) 

I also have jumped on board with It Works! I love this stuff! I'm telling you, this crazy wrap thing really works! If you would like to jump on board also, let me know! We can set up a FREE wrap! My wrapping website is www.wrappinitahess.myitworks.com (may have to copy and paste this also!)

Or click the You Caring button to the right!

The girls are SO excited to go! Their passports came today, so they are ready! Now we just need to come up with plane ticket money! This entire adoption is costing around the $35,000- $37,000 mark and we have been doing pretty well so far. Traveling halfway around the world twice in 3 months and paying our last $3500 has been a lot. God has this and it is going to work because it is what He wants. I have complete faith in that!

Just in case you forgot how cute she is...

Lol, she will fit right in!

Saying See Ya Later

Of course, she has no idea why we were there and showered her with attention. She has no idea why we left. When we come back she probably won't understand that either. The being said she does understand more than we think. You can tell she is trying to process what Mama and Dada means. She probably thinks we were just given easy names to say! She doesn't know what she is missing in a family. She has wonderful caregivers that may not be able to give her a ton of individual attention, but she feels safe with them. She doesn't know she needs anything else! Matt was saying today that it will be so fun when we can get her in speech therapy and she can really express herself! Right now she just looks at is like we are aliens (with iPhones!). 

It was sad to leave her today, but we know it is just part of the process. We have all the forms here signed and filed. There are a couple more things to prepare when we get home, and it will take close to 3 months to get everything ok through each government.

LOL. We did have McDonalds today. I hate McDonalds but I think we were missing American food! Although the authentic food here is wonderful! We had a great dinner at a local restaurant. They eat mostly chicken and pork. With various sauces, mushrooms, spinach, etc. they also have markets with tons of fresh fruit and vegetables. When we come next time it will be fun to be able to buy some of the fresh stuff! We will probably get an apartment next time so that we can have more fresh food!

Matt went to get us some of our new favorite dessert before we go to bed and get up at 4am to come home! This has been so fun, but we are ready to get back to where things are familiar, and we aren't the odd balls! It is so different being the one that doesn't understand anything! Although, many people here speak, at least, a little English! And they have been so kind everywhere we have gone! For that reason, I am looking forward to coming back!

Here are a few pictures from today...

The mountain (covered in clouds) just outside Sofia. Skiing is huge here!

Eating Caroline!!  Ouch

The playground part 1

Playground part 2

Chao for now Daddy!

IKEA is here!! We didn't go. How would we get it home?! LOL

Day 4- Visa picture

Today we took N on a walk to get her visa photo taken! The worker that came with us said it was the first time she had been on a walk outside of the orphanage. This is mind boggling. We asked Caroline if she could imagine being in her house her whole life and never going on a walk! It makes me realize once again that what we are doing for her is going to be the only way she will ever experience life and everything it has to offer! She is very delayed in her speech, however, she can understand everything she is asked to do (in Bulgarian) and can imitate gestures. So I guess we will be trying some sign language with her!! She is not potty trained as I had assumed she wouldn't be, but she is a wonderful sleeper! Point for me! 

We went over all the official paperwork that will be presented in court on our behalf and reminded that it will still take another 3 months-ish to get everything complete. Traveling in June would be perfect. I would love to bring the kids over if we can pull that off, but it will be expensive! 

Tomorrow we say see ya later to our new princess. It will be so hard to leave her here, even if they do love her and take great care of her... We are just ready to start our new normal. Matt has been so good with her. I think she has already wrapped herself around his finger! I am mostly good for pretzels! I think we need to learn a new method of distraction though! LOL

Funny story... We had the best cab driver tonight, bless his heart. He couldn't speak much English, we couldn't speak much B and he didn't know where we needed to go, even after we showed him the card! It was an expensive ride, but well worth it because we had so much fun laughing at ourselves for not being able to communicate! Thank God for my iPhone, I learned to say "turn left" (Naliavo)! 

 

Chow chow!!

Day 2 Visit and History Lesson

We had a very long, but fun and educational day today! Of course, we started at the orphanage and saw our angel! She was in a great mood and responds very well to anyone that will feed her! So they give the bag of pretzels to me and I am her new best friend! They are trying to teach her to say mama and dada, but since I can't understand and she can't really talk that part is not going as well! No hard feelings, I really wasn't expecting her to start depending on us for much! That will take time! Plus there is going to be such a gap between this time and next time, I will be super happy of she recognizes us then! So after feeding her lunch our translator/attendant took us into the mountain where there is a Church built in 1012. It has 2 additions onto it. One in the 1200's and one in the 1700's. The painting inside is incredible and it is beyond intersting to see how the artist viewed Jesus and the saints at that time. Wow. I bought a book so I can show everybody! Then we went to the history museum and saw things they have been finding in graves as they built modern buildings. Some of these things were from 6,000+ years ago. It was incredible that these things have been saved. They had a collection of pure gold bowls and glasses that had been buried with a king that, she said, travels around the globe because it was such a rare find! It really was neat and I am not that much into museums!!!

We returned to the orphanage to visit for the afternoon and played in the tiny room for awhile, then we were able to go outside again! I will probably sound like I am repeating myself everyday, but this is the routine. It was nice, she gave us hugs and kisses when we left and made me feel even more guilty that when Friday comes we are going to have to leave her there. 

We ate dinner at Leo's pizza again because it is the only place right next to the hotel. We haven't tried the hotel restaurant yet, maybe tomorrow! We then headed out to the mall to check that out! I got a couple of things I can't mention because they may be for people reading this:) 

I am hoping tomorrow we can go back downtown for some souvenir shopping! Thank you so much for all the love and prayers you are sending this way! I find such comfort in them!!  Until tomorrow.....

The snail house is used for a daycare or preschool. Matt knows more of the history but he fell asleep already so I will have to update later!

Half way? - Day 3

What? Half way through the week? We had a great day today! The morning was beautiful and we spent it outside. Did I mention how much she loves to swing... I mean like 30 minutes at a time! At least, right now, we have nothing better to do than swing!! She had lots of her friends out today with us. It is so interesting to watch the children together. They compete for everything, from toys to food! So, it may take awhile to teach her that she will no longer need to do that when we eventually get to take her home!

We spent a little time souvenir shopping today. There is not the abundance of souvenir shops here, so it has been a little difficult to find what we want. Apparently, B is very known for rose (oil, lotion, perfume, everything!) however, pure rose oil is VERY expensive! We have found a few things for the kids and I am trying to find things to give N over the years. Things are not as cheap as you would think so I am having trouble here also! But I have found a few small things. 

In the afternoon we went back to the orphanage and visited again. However, it was raining so going outside was not an option. This is horrible, because the room we get to visit in is TINY!! Like maybe 6'x8'. It the size of a nice bathroom, with a bench and a small table and a few chairs. So not much room to do anything. Ugh. We ended up going up and down stairs and chasing her through the hallway. 

I really hope and pray the weather is better tomorrow! I think we get to sign the papers verifying that we accept Natalie as our daughter! That will be so exciting!!! It will be so so hard to leave her here on Friday! Not thinking about it yet!

OMG. Forgot to tell about something I saw for the first time! Remember that I am easily amused! Apparently, a hundred or so years ago someone brought 100 Redwood Trees to B and planted them and they have continued to grow in the mountain!

I know you are jealous!

Here are some pictures from today!

Oh and look what I finally found! Maybe not one every corner, but at least on one!!!