European partay in the house!!!!!

It has been celebration time in our household!!!  Robert and I drove over an hour to find one of the few DHL offices left..... in order to mail out our dossier! 

When we arrived I felt extremely mixed.  In some ways I just wanted to shove that paperwork over and finally release myself from the responsibility and worry of holding on to it myself.  On the other hand, that two pound pile of paperwork was worth seven months of work and time, $330 of notarizing, and $1000 of apostilles!

I watched the clerk's every keystroke into the computer and luckily caught her before she actually listed the value as being $1000 (okay fine, the reason why she knew is that I had complained to her too!)  If that would have been left in there, our dossier would have been stuck in customs for who knows how long.  Technically, that pile of paper had no worth whatsoever....Robert had a hard time with putting that zero down!

And then, I watched Robert carefully peel the sticker off of the envelope and ever so carefully seal the contents and push out the air. 

And, he slowly pushed it across the counter to the cashier.

She promised to be extra careful with it.....
And so Tuesday night our dossier began it's three day flight across the world and should arrive in the twin's country on the 23rd.

What an amazing and eerie feeling that was, walking out of that office.

But, we didn't pause too long, because we had plans to attempt to be fingerprinted with immigration two weeks ahead of our scheduled date.

USCIS Fingerprinting:
When we reached the building, I turned off the car, took a deep breath, and told Robert that we had to pray before we went in.  It was so important that we be allowed to fingerprint early because it could take two months for the fingerprints to come back.  And, we can't get a court date until that happens.

And, I *truly* want the twins to be home with us at Christmas.

So we prayed.  And then, I realized that God must have been snickering at us.  Because here is how many people were in the building:

Okay, this is not our USCIS office but it looks similar to ours just much nicer without the creepy, bleak, and sterile look ours is sporting. 

But, what is exactly the same is that this huge long room with rows of chairs was EMPTY!!!

Why on earth were we asked to wait until October with the potential of making the twins miss Christmas with our family....when the whole place was EMPTY???

Well, I shouldn't complain because ultimately we were fingerprinted and now we're DONE!!!!!

All of the paperwork, homestudy interviews, doctor visits, criminal and background checks, notarizing, apostilling, fingerprinting....all DONE!

Now, it is just a matter of raising the rest of the money for the attorney and for all of the traveling.  We have tapped into our savings and our 401K and we're pretty much at the bottom of it.  So, fundraising has now become a must.

Our new website!
The great news is that I have finished with the basics of our online store and here it is:
http://www.walnutgrovetraditions.com/

Please come to our web page and check out what we have to offer.  We actually own a professional digital garment printer so we are able to do almost any custom job that you or friends and family might need...please come check it out!

I promise to discuss more about our giveaways and incentives but for now, please know that any purchases will still be included in our upcoming drawing even though it hasn't been announced yet.

So, back to our celebration!

Eastern European partay!
 We went to a European food store and got some incredible food.  Some of which, actually came from the twin's country!

Here's a fun game....We have many different countries represented with our feast, but our twin's country is represented by at least one of these foods that you will see and possibly more.  Can you figure out where we are adopting from?

If you think you know....don't post about it on the blog because I won't be able to publish it.  But, you can sit back and feel very smart until we are finally able to make a more public announcement *after* the adoption.  Be careful, it may not be as obvious as you think! ;)

So we started with some amazing rye bread with caraway seeds and real butter:

And we had pork dumplings....soooo good!

Along with some cherry filled dumplings with a cherry dip.....this one was a little strange

Here is a sampling of their hot food (I have no idea what country these are from) but they were incredible

L to R was a meatball, meat filled roll, and cabbage roll(like sauerkraut inside corn bread)

Okay, this is cheating a little but Mary had been requesting Chinese food so we ate in appreciation of Chinese adoptions!

And we had cake!

This cake had no labels but was so pretty we had to try it. It had many layers that my daughter said were like tofu...I'm not sure about that but it was completely different than any other cake I've ever had.

I love the beautiful baby on this candy!  Not sure if it was this one but one of the candies tasted like a musty basement....

These candies were so sparkly and pretty!  They tasted like a cola drink....very yummy!

          And, phenomenal chocolates...especially if you like jelly filled.

And last but not least...ice cream!  Wait, no...the lady that helped us, said in her really cool accent, "Oh no no, note ice cream....cheeeza!"  Well, it tasted more like ice cream than cheese but it was truly good!

After that, we played a you tube search game.  We put the twin's country into the search box and then went around the family and asked for a random word to go with it.  So, we saw weddings, pop music, a cartoon, a street workout, and a group singing their national anthem.  The children danced and marvelled at what a wonderful country!  We are truly blessed to be allowed to adopt from such an amazing culture and hope to keep the ties strong and maintain their language. 

This is the same language that our dossier will start to be translated into....TOMORROW!  Yes, tomorrow is a big day....the day that the dossier will arrive in their country!