Bits and Pieces

Here are a few more pictures in regards to the new house.

The duct-work and ac/heat unit. Though not very exciting to most,
it's exciting to us because it means PROGRESS!

You can see in this picture the little blue boxes
where the electrician has prepared the wiring.

Now I know you'll think this is exciting! The "fancy"
potty for our powder room.



Above is the style of faucet we will have in the master bathroom,
only in the darker oil rubbed bronze finish.Above is the style of faucet for D's bathroom


This is the type of kitchen sink we will have, only in white.

Tuesday update

There has been a good bit more progress at the house. The electrician finished his wiring for the time being; the duct-work for the ac/heat has been completed and the ac/heat unit is in it's place in its closet in the garage. The masonry guys have been working Fri, Mon and today on the fireplace. It sure looks big! They are going up with the chimney "pipe" today and hopefully will have the chimney on the roof soon so the shingles can be placed on and complete the roof. The plumber worked yesterday and is working today on the pipes in the walls and the venting pipes throughout the house to get ready for sheetrocking. Lots going on, but little is really evident by way of seeing progress. Anyhow, here are the latest pictures.



Progression of the fireplace (I haven't been over today to see how far they've gotten)




Last Thursday we went over and wrote Scripture verses above all the door frames. We took the idea from Deuteronomy 11:18


"Fix these words of Mine on your hearts and minds, . . . teach them to your children, talking about them as you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframe of your house and on your gates so that your days and the days of your children may be many.” Deuteronomy 11:18

• Over D's room I wrote: I Samuel 1:27“I prayed for this child and the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him.”

“Train a child in the way (s)he should go, and when (s)he is old (s)he will not turn from it.” Proverbs 22:6

• Over the bedroom which will belong to our new child I wrote in both English and Russian:

“For nothing will be impossible with God.” Luke 1:37
After a while, D said she wanted to write something in her room so I gave her the pen and said she could write whatever she wanted. I figured she'd write something like "D loves horses."
But when I went to check on her, this is what she was writing - all by herself - from memory!"

Adoption Related Post - can you believe it??

It's not any news of our own to share but still good news nonetheless.

Rainy has a wonderful video on her website. If you've never seen Rainy's photography, you'll just be beside yourself wishing you lived in Atlanta so she could photograph your child!!

PENNY AND CHRIS have a courtdate! Yay!!! I've felt a special connection with Penny and Chris since they're also in the ministry (part of the club ;o) They've also waited so, so long. It does my heart good to hear that children are FINALLY coming home!

Also, since I've been out of the blog loop for a while with no internet access at home, I totally missed that CARRIE AND MICHAEL have ALREADY been to Russia to meet their soon to be son! They were there over Christmas and are now re-doing documents and waiting for the wonderful news of a court date! I've felt especially connected to them as well being part of the ministry family club.

The Kouri's had a successful courtdate and Julie is staying there solo as she awaits the 10 day appeal period to bring Creed home. It sounds as if Creed is learning daily that she's his mama, and brrrrrrr it looks cold!

Wow - Busy day at "the land"

I guess we ought to graduate from calling it "the land" to calling it "the house."

About 8:15 hubby called this morning to tell me "they're putting in the windows!" So I threw on some clothes and pulled my hair up and jumped in the car to drive over there. Of course I had on no make-up! I got there and it looked like an army of ants scurrying everywhere. There were guys on the roof, guys at several windows, guys inside the house. The front door was already installed! Woo Hoo!

The fireplace guy was there and had questions about the fireplace. He was expecting the delivery of the supplies to come today so he can get started building it tomorrow! I'm glad I was there to discuss things with him. There are so many details to cover. Hubby met us there and we stayed for about 30 minutes. It was cold!

A couple hours later, hubby stopped by again and there were even more people there! The sheetrock people came, the plumber came and the electrician and as hubby was leaving, the brick delivery man came! They installed sheetrock on the two walls surrounding the fireplace and they sheetrocked out the air-condition unit's closet in the garage. So we have our first walls!

The electrician had come yesterday afternoon and started installing the little blue boxes everywhere for the outlets and switches. I had to go over yesterday afternoon and approve all their locations. I only switched one. So today he came and started running all the wires.

Whew, we went from house construction famine to feast! It had been 8 days of nothing and then today everyone showed up at the same time!

Ok, so here are some pix of our exciting day! Oh, by the way, we have all the exterior doors and windows in except big garage door and the one tiny window in D's bathroom, I guess they forgot to order that one :O)Our new house with windows and doors!

Our first "real" wall! Soon we'll be able to do no more
ghost walking through walls.

Our bricks and fireplace stone!

January 18

Today is Viktoria's third birthday. It's hard to believe she is already 3 years old! I think she'll forever be 20 months old to me. That's how old she was when we visited her in October 2006. I've just prayed that her new family is celebrating her life as it should be with a special birthday pie and some sweet gifts.

It hasn't been as hard as I expected, just a little melancholy. I think it is good that we've had this time to heal before bringing a new child home.

Speaking of home . . . nothing was done at all on the new house all week. Nothing. We did go to the brick yard today and choose the hearthstone for our fireplace. We'd chosen the facing stone a couple months ago when we chose the brick, but we didn't realize we needed to choose seperate hearth stone. The town where we had to go choose it is about 30 minutes from our town and it snowed all the way there! This is very unusual for our area! Of course it didn't stick, but it was fun to drive through, especially for D. We learned that the bricks will be delivered on January 28! Yay! So that MUST mean they plan to install windows next week! I don't like these no work weeks.

Blue Ink??

Ok, this is a question I've been meaning for a while to post to other Russia PAP's. On your dossier paperwork, are you required to have everything signed in BLUE INK?

I've not heard this detail in the "conversations" others have shared on their blogs.

The reason this concerns me is that we're still waiting for our Rental Letter for the dossier from the people who own the mobile home we're renting while our new house is being built. I forgot to tell her to sign and have it notarized in blue ink. I'm thinking we'll just let it slide, but if I hear from others of you who have heard this Blue ink rule too, I'll call her and ask her to re-do it. Ugh.

Ok, so BLUE INK or not BLUE INK? That is the question.

***WOW, thanks for so many responses. Although varied, I think erring on the side of blueness is still for the best. The letter had not yet been done by the people who own the house we're renting (the husband had mislaid it.) So, I gave all new instructions with much emphasis on blue ink. Hopefully I'll be able to send the dossier to Austin on Monday. You think FedEx will run on MLK day?

Weekend Update

The Adoption: Good news. We learned on Friday that we will not have to update our home study afterall. Our most recent update is good until Mid-April, and hopefully we'll be in our new house near that time (probably a few weeks later). So, our case manager says we can go with the current home study for now! Yay! I was NOT looking forward to having an update at this mobile home. It would take an amazing miracle for us to have a new child while still living here. Not that it couldn't happen, but most likely it won't. If it did happen to occur that way, we'd just update the home study at the mobile home before going to court. So, all but two documents of the last dossier are now done and ready to send to Austin and hopefully I will be able to send that by Tuesday. We're on the adoption road again!

The House: They worked again on Saturday! They were there by 7:30 and worked until noon. It looks like we will have windows and doors within the week! Here are the latest pictures.

Thursday, January 10- They started bright and early adding the decking to the roof and by late afternoon they had all the decking on and the front part of the black stuff added.

Friday, January 11 - They began building the Dormers This was really exciting to me because this is one of the details I really, really wanted on our new house!




Saturday, January 12 - They continued working on the dormers, they began the detailing on the gable above D's room, they finished wrapping the front of the house and finished framing out all the windows (except for the window in the laundry room which for some reason,
they haven't cut out yet!)
Lots of progress this week!

In response to some of the comments asked on the January 9 post.

• Chelley, This house is about 1000 square feet bigger than our last house, but the layout makes all the difference. There is no wasted space and lots of closet/storage space. The total square footage is 2,552. Our old house had no storage space!
• And yes Chelley, we're using the same agency to complete our adoption. We've already paid completely everything we owe to the agency, so to switch agencies, we would be totally starting from scratch financially. That is just impossible for us. We love our agency, but don't love that they've been without accreditation. If money were not an object, we would definitely switch to a currently accredited and active agency.
  
• Deb, I am praying that we'll hear accreditation news before the end of the month! But February would be ok, I guess.
  

United Nations Boots

Dear United States Postal Carrier,

The package you are delivering is very special. These are United Nations Boots. These boots were bought in Palestine Texas for our Russian born, Texas raised daughter to wear as she visited her birth country in March of 2006. Her feet had never before touched more than 1/80th of an inch of snow until she stepped on the ground in Moscow Russia at age 5. The soil and dried snow debris is purely Russian.

As you can plainly see, the boots were on clearance for $7.00 and they are for boys. In East Texas during late February, snow boots are a very rare product. We took what we could find.

The boots are now on their way to Minnesota, where they will be worn by a little boy who was adopted in Guatemala.

The next time these boots touch soil or snow, the Moscow soil picked up by a Russian/American/Texan girl will be scattered on the ground of Minnesota by a Guatemalan/American/Minnesotan little boy.

Now if that's not United Nations, I don't know what is!

Sincerely,
Suz

"RED AND YELLOW, BLACK, BROWN AND WHITE;
THEY ARE PRECIOUS IN HIS SIGHT. JESUS LOVES THE
LITTLE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD."

And so do we!

Wednesday Update

The Adoption: I worked all day today on updating the dossier. It's nearly finished. Hubby has to do an update of our financial statement since the first of the year brought an increase in salary (yay!) and our home situation is all different. Still waiting on the letter from the owners of the house we're renting. Then we'll be up to date on paperwork and ready to send to Austin for apostilles.

The House: Two days of no work :o(. Yesterday was thunderstorms and tornado watches so nothing was done. Today was beautiful, clear and high near 60*. The contractor had a delay in the delivery of the solar decking sheets for the roof. But when hubby drove by the house around 5 p.m. tonight, it had been delivered! So hopefully they'll get started tomorrow on putting the lid on our house!

Here are the latest updates in pictures.

Monday, January 7 - They worked on the eaves and corrected a misplaced window on the front porch. When I posted those last pictures, I realized we weren't going to have room for our shutters and that is because they had placed a window incorrectly in the family room. They got that corrected and a few other odds and ends that aren't outwardly noticeable.

Lots of Progress on the House & a Little Progress on the Adoption

THE HOUSE: It now has it's roof frame and is ready for the decking next week! We just got finished sweeping and cleaning the house and the yard area where the workers just drop their cups, cans and bottles any and everywhere. I'm sure the neighbors will be happy the trash won't be blowing into their yards! It looks great now, so clean! It was the first time I cleaned my new house :O) I wish there were a way to post the smell of the wood online, I love that smell!

Here is D "sitting on the toilet" in her new bathroom. Not much privacy from the neighbors at this point!

December 31 - they started enclosing the framework with solid wood!

January 2 - More enclosure!

January 3 - They started putting a bunch of bracing in to prepare for the roofing. They also began doing the plastic insulating wrap around the house. They've got the back side of the house wrapped but for some reason they haven't finished.

January 4 - they began building the roof framework!

January 5 - yes they worked on Saturday! They completed the roof frame-work and now it's ready for the decking to be added hopefully next week! I didn't get a picture of it completed, I'll have to get that later.

THE ADOPTION: I spoke with our casemanager and they are scheduling our home study update and we should hear next week when that will be. I finally dug out all our last dossier to see what we really need to get done. This will be dossier number four. Our I-171H fingerprints expire today. Our I-171H is good till September, though, so hopefully to goodness we'll have a child by THEN!