It's been 3 year already

March 28, 2008 at 10:23am, I got the call from A Helping Hand. It is a moment in time I will never forget and I cherish that moment with all my heart. You have a daughter is the first words I heard on the phone. I could never imagine the impact this little girl would have on so many people. She is truly a special gift from the Lord and I love her with every ounce of my soul.

Jenna  Leigh Xiaomeng Olges!

Here she is 3years later. We love you so much.

Here are some pictures I didn't have time to add this morning.

We Are now DTC

As of Friday we are officially DTC (Date to China), that means our paper work is done and has been mailed off to China. Now we can officially be matched with Leah. Our agency thinks we should be matched in April. The new baby list comes out around the 20th of each month, so let's everyone say a prayer Leah is in the next batch of babies.
It's exciting to think we could be about 3 weeks away from seeing her face. What a great Easter present that will be. Instead of a chocolate bunny we get a Chinese baby!
If we are matched that week, we will be holding on to her picture until Easter Sunday and show our entire family at dinner on that day.


Other things that have been happening. Alex got braces and is doing good with them. Jenna's finger continues to heal, it's going to take awhile but we do see new skin growth. Adam got all his hair cut off and it looks so nice. He seems to be doing much better and we are so thankful for that. Thank you God for all the blessing you have bestowed on our family.

Have a great week everyone. I will post pictures soon.

Is it Monday already?

We had a nice weekend, fairly uneventful for us which was a nice change. Jenna's hand is still a real mess. I cant tell her wrist is starting to heal, but it's hard to say about her finger. She scream, begs and pleads for us not to scrub her hand twice a day. Last night she screamed Baba, your killing me. That is so hard for us to hear. She has to start her mornings off with a scrub, so on school mornings she is being tortured at 5:40 am, what an awful way to start your morning, bless her little heart. We go back to doctor on Wednesday, I'm not real sure what they will tell us, I'm hoping we get get news.

We should be DTC (Date to China) one day this week and hopefully about a month from today we will be seeing Leah Grace's little face. We plan on suprising our family with her picture on Easter Sunday, if we get a match in April. I'll keep you posted.

Other big news, Adam went on his own yesterday and got all the hair cut off, it looks great. He has been growing it out for 3 years or so and it's nice to see his handsome face again. He declared he needed a change and fresh start. I think this may apply in other areas of his life as well, so we are thankful to see some changes in him.

Alex got braces last week, they make him look much older I think. He is such a sweet boy, I hope he always stays that way.

I hope everyone has a great week, our computer at home has a virus so I haven't been able to upload many pictures, hopefully this week it will be up and running.

Here is a picture of my beautiful niece Madelyn and Jenna. Madelyn was going to a father daughter dance.

Treadmills are so dangerous

Tuesday night I came home to a hysterical house. Scott was crying, Alex was crying and Jenna was screaming. When the first words out of your husband's mouth are "Don't Freak Out" well everything starts running through your mind, my first thought oh my gosh something has happened to Adam, because he was the only one not there.
Here is the story:
Alex was downstairs running on the treadmill and Jenna was down there playing with her toys. She has been told at least 30 times to stay away from the treadmill because they very dangerous. She walked up to it and Alex told her to get away, being the hard headed stubborn girl she is, of course she wasn't going to listen to her brother. She bent down and touched it and it grabbed a hold of her finger and wrist and burnt all the layers of her skin off her finger but one. Needless to say she was screaming, Alex was screaming and Scott's first reaction was to yell at Alex for being on the treadmill. He felt terrible for yelling at him, since it was not his fault and poor Alex felt terrible about it and still does, bless his heart.
We are lucky that our best friend next door is a nurse, Scott ran her over there and she cleaned it up and wrapped it, but she said it is very bad so you need to call her doctor.
When I got home, she was already bandaged, but everyone was still upset. I kept my cool and was able to calm everyone down. Scott told Alex he was sorry for yelling at him, he knows it wasn't his fault it was just a awful accident.
The doctor called us back and since Crystal was a nurse he said we could bring her in the next morning to be looked at, which i was happy I wasn't looking forward to going to Kosair.
Yesterday I took her to the doctor and to say is was traumatic would be putting it lightly. It was the first time I had seen it, looks awful. The doctor says she has about one layer of skin left and it is going to take months to heal. Thet cut the dead skin off and scrubbed it for about 10 minutes, she screamed and it broke mine and her Nana's heart to hear her in so much pain. You can see the tendon and vein in her finger, it's awful. Now her finger looks like hamburger meat from all the scrubbing. She has to be scrubbed twice a day and wrapped at all times. We will take her back in a week and they will check if any new skin is starting to grow. If not they may have to do skin grafts.
I think she may have learned her lesson about how dangerous treadmills are and Momma and Baba do know what they are talking about.
Here is a picture from my cellphone this was before they scrubbed it and made it worse looking. It's hard to see the ex stint of how deep it really is. Let me tell you it's the worse burn I've ever seen in person.

Feeling much better

I first want to thank everyone for the kind emails and calls with encouraging words and hugs. They do mean a lot. It was a rough and hard week, but we made it through it. At the end of the day and the house is quite it gives me time to reflect and know that no matter what happens, God is there and won't let me fall.  It is true what doesn't  break you, will only make you stronger!
These hard times are helping me to become a better mother, wife and person. 

Yes I know I'm Feeling Sorry For Myself, Guess What? I Don't Care! I Throw In The Towel..

Let me tell you, nothing is harder then raising a teenager! Nothing is more frustating to see you teenager hurting and you can't fix it for him! Nothing is more upsetting then to be told you have no control over his medical care anymore just because he is 18 years old!
I hate the number 18, on December 8th I had total control and on December 9th no control. That is hard to deal with. I just want to fix it for him, make him smile and laugh. I want my old son back.

Jenna has been a handful the past week as well. I'm not sure if it's because of all the stress with Adam. Or if she is going through her own not appealing phase, but we have not really enjoyed her company for about a  week now.  I guess I'm not use to having two of my kids bucking up against me at one time. One i can handle, I'm a determined and bull headed person. But two of them doing it to me, is really wearing me down very quick.

Yesterday I checked on the status of our tax return, probably wasn't a good idea since nothing else was going right this week. Well of course there is a problem. My wonderful dad who is a tax preparer, called IRS and talked to them about it, first off all they lost all the documentation we provided on Jenna's adoption, so they weren't giving us any adoption tax credit, which caused the return to drop $5100.00. To say I felt panicked is a understatement. Luckily the man we talked to was very nice and helpful. He let us fax over the documentation, since they are the ones who lost it. Then he recalculated our return and because the adoption tax credit was listed before the dependant tax credit it was calculating a higher refund. He says the adoption tax credit should be listed second, needless to say this means we are getting $2000.00 less then what we thought. I'm trying to put on a brave face and say we will figure something out, what can i do argue with them? Nope, not much I can do. But $2000.00 is a lot of money when you are trying to come up with $30,000.00. for an adoption in a very short amount of time. Pray I know that's about all I can do these days.

Then after taking the day off yesterday to try and take care of myself mentally, I came back into the office today and had a email from A Helping Hand stating they may have found a problem with our paper work! Are you kidding me? This is the straw that broke this camels back.  They were suppose to be taking our paper work to Frankfort yesterday to have it Certified and Authenticated before sending it to Washington DC then to China, well they discovered that our FBI clearances, did not have a women by the name Kimberly J. Del Greco signature on the bottom of the form and they think it may be required. They are checking on it for me. Of course I'm sure it's will be required and then we have to send it back to them for them to fix their mistake. Needless to say this hold everything up and most likely are paperwork won't be mailed off next week. At this rate we probably won't be matched with Leah in April.

I just would like to have some good news, and yes I'm fully aware things could be worse. If I hear one more person say that to me I'm going to rip my hair out. Or if someone says it will all work out, as my husband just now said to me on the phone.  Right now I don't want to hear that I think I deserve some feeling sorry for myself. I've had it this week. I throw in the towel.   

A great weekend

It was a great weekend, just went by way to fast. Jenna was a little out of sorts she has a cold, but other then that it was very relaxing. Friday I did some much needed clothes shopping for myself. I always dread doing clothes shopping, I never like the way clothes fit and look on me, but this time everything i tried on fit and I liked the way they looked, it was great.
Saturday my niece Kayla came and spent the night with us, we went out to dinner and watched a movie. It was nice getting to spend time with her. She is home on spring break from college and asked if she could come stay with us. I love having my babies come stay and spend time with us. They are all getting so big, so I cherish all the moments I can with them.
Sunday Alex came home from Disney World, he was tired but had a great time. It was sunny and in the 80's his whole trip. He had many funny stories to share with us. He even bought his brother and sister a gift, which I thought was very sweet. We really missed him and glad he is home safe.
Today is Monday and a new week begins. My hopes and prayers for the week are that my baby girl starts feeling better, it always worries me when she gets sick. I also pray  A Helping Hand can get our paper work to Washington DC early this week and they will have a fast processing time so it can be sent to China some time next week! Hope everyone has a save and happy week..

It's in the mail

Jon from USCIS called this afternoon and said he got the information he was needing from our social worker (thanks again Kristin) and that he had just approved us and put our I-171H in the mail.
Thank you God for those answered prayers!
So what does this mean you ask?
We will get the form in the mail Friday, take everything to A Helping Hand, they will take it to Frankfort then it is sent to Washington Dc. The Washington DC part take about 6-8 days, then it will be off to China.
Once we get a LID with China we can be matched with Leah.
A new list of babies comes out around the 22nd of March, but I doubt we will make it in time to be matched.  We saw Jenna's picture for the first time on March 20th and was matched with her on March 28th. It would be great to make it this time around, but I think it will be April.
Thanks OK, I'm just glad to be finally at the end.

Could it be, are we making some progress?

I got a phone call yesterday afternoon from Jon at USCIS, he has our case! To say I was excited was an under statement. The only thing is, he was calling for a reason, our home study was missing some required information on Adam. Since he is 18 years old the home study is required to have certain information on him and it did not. Thankfully, Jon said our social worker can write up an amendment and fax it to him and this should be fine.

Our wonderful social worker Kristin called me back a few hours later and  said she would get this faxed over to him some time today. Thanks Kristin, you are the best! We love you and all the hard work you do is greatly appreciated.

So we are keeping our fingers crossed and saying some prayers we will have the I171H in our hands sometime next week.

Have a great day!