Is it really only Wednesday and are we really only half way through January?  I spent all day Monday and Tuesday in a course becoming a Certified Distressed Property Expert.  Monday was pretty depressing because we spent half the day reviewing the statistics that show just how bad the current housing market is.  The remainder of Monday and all of Tuesday were spent learning the ups and downs and ins and outs of a short sale.  By dinner time last night I was pretty excited about the fact that I now have the knowledge to help people avoid foreclosure.

That brings us to today.  I’ve heard other adoptive parents discuss the labor pains involved in an adoption and today was full of them for me.  To begin with, we had our second home-study visit this morning.  This was the one where she interviewed Chad and I about our families and our upbringing.  When she got around to my Mom, I fell apart.  People who know me well, know that it doesn’t take much for me to tear up.  But this wasn’t just one of those – Dave Ramsey’s choked up and I can’t let a man cry alone – moments.  This was pretty much full-blown water-works.  The social worker lost her Mom too and she got a little teary-eyed and I’m sure that by the time we were done with the interview, we looked like one big blubbering mess.  The good news is that she said that we are doing great and she can’t wait until she gets to meet the kids.  We had to reschedule that visit for the 25th because Chad is flying to Denver next week for a hearing on his Grandfather’s estate.  One more visit, the arrival of our passports, and USCIS approval are all we’re waiting for now.  The end of the waiting is in sight!

We sold our Honda Odyssey on Monday and now we are looking for something that we can pay cash for.  We plan to never finance another car in our lives (Thank you, Dave Ramsey).  Because we are now a one-car-household, covering our schedules has been kind of like coordinating a 3-ring circus. Chad and I are learning to do as many things together as possible.  We both needed to have TB tests done for the home-study and I knew that I might need a couple of vaccinations, so we planned to go to immunology after the home-study and from there I would drop Chad at his office.  Upon reviewing my shot records and my blood serum test from a few weeks ago, the nurse said that I possibly needed 3 or 4 vaccines.  She then pulled up the CDC requirements for Americans traveling to Serbia and the 3 or 4 turned into 5 plus the TB bubble.  Many of you have heard me get on my soapbox about vaccinations and how I strongly recommend a responsible vaccine schedule for our children.  Well, today I became a big ol’ hypocrite.  I let them put measles, mumps, rubella, polio, hepatitis A, and tuberculosis in my left arm and tetanus (my last one was 12 years ago) and typhoid in my right arm.  Guess what?  I FEEL LIKE CRAP!  I’m not even sure why I let them give them all to me at once.  Maybe it was just the guilt over letting my children get so many vaccines simultaneously as babies or maybe it was just curiosity about forcing that experience on them.  Either way, I’m sorry!  Sorry that I didn’t protest on their behalf and sorry that I didn’t protest today.  When it was all said and done, the nurse says, “I haven’t given that many shots to anyone since I was immunizing soldiers in basic training.  Welcome to the Army!”  Ummm, I never wanted to join the Army.  And the pain isn’t over.  Tomorrow I get to have a fasting cholesterol test and HIV test and Friday I get to go back and get my results and have the remainder of my physical form filled out by my doctor, all while coordinating schedules with Chad.

The good news is that I am absolutely certain that when my fever is gone and I can lift my arms again, I will be able to focus on the fact that we are one HUGE step closer to bringing Ana-Sophia home and who knows?  Maybe I’ll even negotiate a couple of short sales between now and then to cover the adoption expenses.

I have been asked often what it is like to have a child with special needs and friends and family will sometimes ask if it is hard.  The following story does a pretty good job of explaining just what it’s like.  The only thing I ask of you is that you never never ever feel pity for us.  Seth has been that great gift in life that we never knew we needed.  Kind of like the snuggie that you got for Christmas, but WAY better.  If it weren’t for the fact that we were blessed with him, we would have never had our hearts open to adopting Ana-Sophia.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.

I can’t take credit for this.  I stole it from Bethany’s blog  http://www.dreamingonanangel.blogspot.com

A couple of days ago my facebook status stated that if the earth gets any warmer, I’m looking for a new planet.  When I first saw the movie The Day After Tomorrow, I laughed at it.  This week I’ve been living in it.  On my homepage, I have the local weather next to the weather in Belgrade and I look at it regularly just to see if Ana-Sophia is cold or wet or has snow to play in.  The average temperature in Serbia is usually about 4 or 5 degrees cooler than the temperature in Alexandria, VA.  Not today.  It’s actually 20 degrees warmer there.  Well, at least one of my children is warm.

Two days before 2009 came to a close, Chad and I wore awoken at 4 am to what sounded like a blood-curdling human scream.  Chase had a friend over for the night and they were sleeping in the basement.  We jumped out of bed and ran in opposite directions to check the kids while the dogs ran around barking and crying.  Just in case you’ve never heard a fisher-cat, here’s what our visitor sounded like:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLU_a-gDF9M  It scared the crap out of us and I can say with a fair amount of certainty that our feelings will not be hurt if it never returns.

By the end of this week, every single form that needs to be filled out for the adoption will be mailed off.  The dossier file has grown by an inch or so in the past month and it is exciting for us to be entering the waiting period.  The fact that the time is drawing near when Ana-Sophia will actually join our family has made us acutely aware of how poorly this house is laid out.  Every since we moved in and the wiring issues began, we have had a hard time feeling comfortable here.  When we did our home inspection, we found significant issues in every single room.  We have plumbing, electrical, appliance, and structural problems and thus far our landlord has taught us exactly what kind of landlords we NEVER want to be.  If you’re praying for us right now, please pray that God gives us some peace with living here.  We still own a home in Georgia and I still hold partial ownership to a house in Baton Rouge.  Our goal is to sell the house in Georgia at the end of this year, buy a lot, and build here.  Just pray that God gives us some comfort for whatever time we have left here.  Of course, it’d be nice if He just gave us the means to get out of this place!

“This is what the LORD says… “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”- Isaiah 43:16, 18-19

2010 was welcomed with open arms around here.  In the past year we were reminded over and over again that God loves us.  2009 brought with it more challenges than we could have imagined, but every challenge just provided another opportunity to be blessed and because of the bitter, the sweet just tasted that much better.

I was asked once at a parenting conference to say in one word how I would want others to describe my adult children.  I chose the word “happy”.  Something I’ve come to realize is that “happy” is how God wants others to describe His children.  He longs to bring us joy by blessing us with the desires of our heart.  This year our family will grow.  This year our spiritual lives will grow.  This year we will chase the dreams that God has planted in our hearts.  And this year, we will be happy.  Our pastor preached an amazing message this morning on making the most of 2010.  I started writing a book two and half years ago.  I have heard very clearly in the time since then that if I finish it, He will use it.  The book is all about healing and there are a couple of parts where I have gotten stuck because I chose to push those wounds down deep instead of letting them rise to the surface so that God could do His thing.  In the past 6 months, I found those chapters rising up and being healed without much effort on my part, yet I still chose to not put it down on paper.  I guess I’ve just been waiting for “perfect” conditions.

Ecclesiastes 11:4 (New Living Translation)

⁴ Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant.
If they watch every cloud, they never harvest.

So…with the new year, I’ve been given a fresh start.  The conditions may not be perfect.  They’ll probably never be perfect.  But it’s time for me to finish writing.

Christmas at the Calvaresi house was bitter-sweet.  Since Chad was on leave for the week, we took advantage of the time and had our fingerprints done and our child abuse clearances notarized.  We have 2 visits from the social worker scheduled for next week and one more the week after to complete our home-study.  Even though we’ve had to completely scrap the time-line we were hoping for, it is so exciting to be making progress.  And being who I am, I have high hopes that our dossier will be complete by the end of January ;).

Spending so much time in the days before Christmas working on the adoption is where the bitter part of Christmas came from.  We wrapped gifts for Ana-Sophia, our friends brought her adorable pj’s that hung in our living room window, and Chad’s Mom stuck a card made out to her on the Christmas tree.  All around us were reminders that she is called to be a part of our family and those reminders all acted as daggers in the pain they caused because of her absence.   Chad and I started the “3 gift rule” several years ago.  Since Christmas is about Jesus and since he only received 3 gifts at his birth, our kids only receive 3 gifts from us.  It is beautiful to watch them narrow down their lists to the 3 things that they desire most and then to watch the satisfaction and pleasure that they get from those three things on Christmas day.  We never have to deal with frustration over gifts getting thrown aside and forgotten about.  On Christmas night, Chad said that next year the “3 gift rule” is out the window.  We’re going all out for that little girl’s first real Christmas.

ISAIAH 9:6 For unto us a child is born…

Perhaps the biggest happening for us on Christmas day is the celebration of Kira’s life.  On Christmas day 1994, she came into the world and made us parents.  It was the greatest gift we could have ever been given.  She has spent the past 15 years making us immeasurably proud of the fact that we were chosen to be her Mama and Daddy and I can say with all certainty that we would not trade her for any other 15-year-old girl in the world.

We approach the end of the year watching our dossier grow thicker and counting our blessings.  I’ve quoted Isaiah 43:5 on here before and as I wrote the letter that went out with our Christmas cards this year, I was reminded of its significance in our lives in 2009.  From January to June, Chad was in Iraq and I was faced with the fear that my thyroid cancer may have recurred.  Our summer was spent facing a move after only a year and with uncertainty about where we would actually live.  We clung to “Do not be afraid, for I am with you…”. As soon as we found a house, Ana-Sophia came into our lives.  It was then that the second part of the verse became meaningful. “…I will bring your children from the East, and gather you from the West.”

And just to make the year a little sweeter, Chad was promoted to lieutenant colonel and I finished college.  Even though our daughter is not home yet, we face 2010 with the absolute certainty that we are blessed much more than we could possibly deserve.

Well, I said I should be blogging more so I’m going for two in one day.  I’ve complained and complained about the fact that my kids have school all the way through the 23rd of December.  Who schedules school right up to Christmas Eve?  Despite my complaining, I filled my schedule for the week with Mama things to do and banked on the fact that the kids would not be around.  Well…Friday night it started snowing.  It did not stop until early Sunday morning and the measurements in our yard were anywhere from 20-30 inches by the time the storm had passed.  School got canceled for the entire week and now I’ve got to figure out how to finish up all my Christmas stuff and entertain the kids at the same time.  I’m not complaining.  We have a giant igloo in the front yard that was built with a recycling bin and we spent Sunday afternoon sledding at the golf course.  It’s gonna be a white Christmas!

I really should be blogging more.  I have said this to myself repeatedly in the last two weeks as life has been happening at its usual supersonic pace around here.

I worked for an OB/GYN my senior year in high school and my first year of college.  She said to me one time that any woman can take away your man, any thief can steal your things, but nobody can ever take away your education.  This truth has echoed in my head for years.  On December 11, I submitted the very last assignment that I will ever submit to Troy University.  You see, I started LSU 20 years ago and although I’ve gone back a couple of times, I never finished.  My Mom placed a huge value on education and I lost her in July of 2006.  Just before she died she asked me to promise her that I would finish school.  I enrolled at Troy University that fall and continued to take classes through cancer, deployments, and a couple of moves.  I now hold degrees in business and psychology and I graduated magna kum laude.  I thought it would feel like a big burden had been lifted.  I did feel that, but the overwhelming feeling has been pain.  My Mom’s absence has never been so evident.  I just wish I could share this moment with her.

She spent her life doing advocacy work and the last decade of it was spent as the state director for ARC (assoc. for retarded citizens).  We had no idea that all that time she spent lobbying and advocating for people with special needs would benefit her own grandchildren.  So…thank you Mother, for the woman you were and for the encouragement and inspiration you have always provided me.  I miss you!

When Ana-Sophia came into our lives back in September, we checked out every library book we could find on adoption and on Serbia.  We subscribed to every blog on Serbian adoption and quickly developed our own time-line based on all of the experiences we read about.  We were certain that by now (3 months in) we would have our dossier submitted and simply be waiting on a travel date. Well…that’s not exactly the case.  Since we changed home-study agencies mid-stream, we are still in that stage of the process.  However, it looks like it will be done by Christmas.  I made a master list of all the things that needed to be done  for both the home-study and the dossier and while we’ve been waiting on the home-study, I’ve basically completed the dossier list.  It feels so good to open my little notebook and check off one more thing.  Every check mark brings us a little closer to bringing Ana home.

On the funding side, things have been a little slower than we had hoped also.  Last month we started the process of converting our VA mortgage on a house that we own in Columbus, GA to an FHA with the hope of cashing out some equity that would cover the actual adoption fees in country.  The online appraisal sites that the bank based the offer on all placed our house at around $265,000.  We only paid $162,000 for it back in 2002 and so we felt very safe taking a little equity out.  Well, the formal appraisal came back last week at only $210,000.  Neither of us feel comfortable with taking equity out with it being that low, so we’re just going to leave it alone for now.  We are not worried about the funding though.  God has given us every dime that we’ve needed for every step in the process thus far and He certainly will not fail us now.

I read this verse this morning and felt very clearly that this is God’s promise to Ana-Sophia. Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

This past week was all about Thanksgiving and around this house we found ourselves giving thanks for an amazing man.  Chad’s grandparents played a big part in his upbringing.  He lived with them on occasion and when his grandfather saw him making bad choices in middle school, he paid for him to go to St. John’s Military School for all of his high school years.  I attribute so much of who he is today to the faith that his grandfather had in him and the opportunity that he provided.  Archie Calvaresi immigrated to America from Italy as a boy.  He came through Ellis Island with nothing and he truly lived out the American dream.  He taught us all what it meant to work hard, to set goals and strive for them, how to passionately stand up for what we believe, and how to show compassion and support to the family that God gives us.  We’re gonna miss you, Grandpa.

As if we weren’t motivated enough, I came across this special tonight that Ann Curry did on mental institutions in Serbia.  I’ve read before that disabilities are still very shameful in Serbia and that children with disabilities are put into institutions so that the general public doesn’t have to be exposed to them, but I had no clue just how terrible it truly is.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26332429//

I am ready to go get my daughter!