New Blog!

We started a new blog because I think we ran out of space on this one! We want to post more pictures, right!!!? So click on this link!

http://cookfamilyadventuresinkaz.blogspot.com/

We Finally Meet!!!!!!

I know that you all just want to see pictures, so here they are, and my guess is that you are not even reading this!

We went to the baby house again and then we waited for the inspector to come, she came about 5:00pm went into the director’s office and they decided it was too cold in there for the baby. So we went into the music room, to wait for baby Alex to come. He finally came in with a caregiver. Oh my word! Our hearts just melted when we saw him. It was not at all like the other children we saw yesterday, we thought they were cute and all but no serious connection. I think the inspector could tell, too. We told her that we wanted him! The baby was actually happy to see us! He was bouncing up and down and hitting my chest with his little (big) fists! He was smiling and so happy to see us!!! He could hardly contain himself he was so excited!!! It was so precious! Jerry could hardly stand it!! He just wanted to kiss on him and stuff!!! We were completely in love and you could tell!!!
Our meetings with Alex will be at 11-12 noon and 3-4pm every day until the other family leaves next week. Then we will switch to 10-11 and the 3-4 will be the same. We are glad that we get to have 2 visits with him a day. We will bring 5 diapers a day and an outfit to put him in. They will give the outfits back everyday and we will wash them and then we can bring them again. I hope they fit! We can hardly wait to see him again tomorrow!!! We love him so much!!!!

Becoming Adoption Savvy!

Ok all! This post is a “preaching” post. So prepare yourself…

For any of you that know Jerry and I, you know that we don’t like to do anything normal. First, we met on the internet…10 years ago when that was rare! We dated long distance for a year and knew we were ready to be married, so we planned a wedding in 5 months (a big wedding) while I finished my last semester of University in Texas! One of our mottos is "If everyone else is doing it, do the opposite!" Of course with in reason! :)

We started building our house 2 months before we were married, but we have waited more than 8 years to bring children into the family! For those of you that ask why… we wanted to be ready for them and stable, financially. We hear a lot of “you’ll never be ready” comments… we don’t believe it! Not for a second! It always amazes us that so many people say such negative comments about having kids… we always wonder “why do you have them then?” But yet for years the same people have bugged us, “when are you going to have kids?” The weird thing is that we know that these folks love their kids and would never change the fact that they DO have children, and their children bring them the greatest joys in life! So why all the negative comments!?

By now all of you know that we are in the adoption process times two! Wow! Now we really hear a lot of strange things! Because of course everyone assumes that if you are adopting you can’t have “your own”… wrong answer!! Oh dear… I have had comments like “I wish I could just share my fertility…” as if they are sorry that we are adopting. There are upwards of 70,000,000 (70 Million) orphans in the world and 100 million homeless children! For our Christian world, in the Bible we are told to care for the widows and the orphans! Because we are so hard-headed in thinking that the only way to have a family is by our own pregnancy, sometimes God allows us to have fertility problems in order to take care of some of his other children! Another comment is, “it’s too bad there aren’t any babies available in the United States.” Most of these orphaned and homeless children are not in the U.S of A.

We are on a mission in life! To help as many orphans as possible… and do you know we feel blessed and so privileged to be traveling this path! We are amazed the God picked us for this from the beginning. Jerry was adopted as a 5 week old infant and I felt called as a young child, to adopt and care for orphans around the world… when we married, our dreams joined forces. Everything we have done in life has led us to this point for amazing reasons!!

Not that it is anyone’s business why and how we grow our family, but: No we did not have fertility problems, and yes these babies we are adopting are our own! Yes, we may try for biological children at some point, but when, we don’t know, it depends on God’s plan for our family. So, no more of that nosy question, “are you going to have your own?” It is a little offensive… God adopted us, are we not HIS OWN? Yes we are! That is the way we feel about our children in the adoptive community!

We are excited that God chose us to adopt our children from the other side of our world. We are honored that He chose these specific children for us, even though we don’t know them yet. It amazes us that these children will be so perfect for our family! We are not upset or disgusted by the fact that we “have” to travel half way around the world to go get them. We feel blessed that we will learn so much about the Countries that birthed our children. In spite of what everyone thinks, these countries do care what happens to their children, that is why we are required to be approved to “have kids,” by being finger printed multiple times for the office of Homeland Security, local county and the FBI and countless other "checks" on us as indeviduals! They do not want someone adopting their children that do not really love them and will abandon or abuse them again. When we have our children in our arms all the pains of “labor” will not matter anymore! We are looking forward to enjoying the most exciting years of our Life!!!!

Ok some new vocabulary! These are the main ones that we hear a lot.

Please say Biological childen (not “your own”) And Birth parents (not “real” parents)


The children we bring into our lives will be our OWN REAL children!

September Secret Pal Gift!

Our DTC July 2006 group also has a Secret Pal program…
Of course there are all sorts of mystery surrounding this one! So I can’t say too much! I sent my secret pal her gift this week. I hope she loves it… it was books! Hee hee… Our theme was books, so that was not a real clue!

I received, weeks ago, already a box with 4 books in it!!!!! My secret pal was fast!!!! Here is a picture of the ones she sent!!! We love them! They are really good too!

Thank You!!!!! Whoever you are!

August Cyber Shower!

In July after we sent in our Dossier to China, I joined a Yahoo group mainly for people with a DTC of July 2006. This is a wonderful group of people! There are roughly 204 people that have joined us to pass the time until our referrals come next year!
Every other month we have a Cyber Shower. We are matched with someone in the group, we send them a shower gift for their baby and they send us one! It is fun and exciting to get these gifts! Mostly because we know these other women care a lot about these babies that we are waiting for! We all understand how each other feels while we wait!
In August my Cyber Shower Pal was a very sweet lady named Jo Brabham. She sent me a travel pillow, with the little eye cover (so I can sleep on the plane), a book to help us learn Mandarin Chinese, and a yummy bag of pink and white Jelly Bellies! We ate the Jelly Bellies and forgot to take a picture of them!

THANK YOU JO!!!!!

Chinese Adoption Timeline

March 9 – Decision to adopt from China
March 13 – Signed contract with WPA, sent in I600A
March 14 – Ordered birth certificates and marriage license.
March 15 – Received Birth certificates and marriage license.
March 19 – Homestudy meeting with Jamie for “3rd” meeting.
March 20 – I600A logged in USCIS office in Detroit.
March 21 – Our 4th Homestudy meeting, Police clearance letters, Wrote Letter of Intent to Adopt, filled out Guardianship designation, Gathered pictures for Dossier. Finished questionnaire, commitment to post placements reports, financial statement.
March 24 – Letter from USCIS, with a 3 month wait for processing.
March 27 – First Draft of Homestudy
March 28 – Jerry’s employment letter.
March 29 – Medical appointment, mailed in record clearance forms.
March 30 – Blood draw for HIV and other blood tests.
April 6 – Medicals done.
April 9 – Baby Shower!!!
April 18 – Post Placement agreement signed by Adoption Options.
May 4 – Mailed Homestudy to USCIS.
May 8 – Employment letter for Christel, copies of passports.
May 12 – Received fingerprint appointment.
May 15 – Received Christel’s birth certificate back with Nebraska Great Seal.
May 24 – Redo Letter of Intent, homestudy agreement.
May 25 – Fingerprints done at USCIS office in Grand Rapids.
June 14 – I171H!!!!
June 16 – Redo Jerry’s police clearance
June 19 – Great Sealed all documents in Lansing, and fed-Exed to There’s Always Hope to submit to Chinese Consulate in Chicago.
June 20 – Documents submitted to Chinese Consulate ( for 48 hours service), except Nebraska birth certificate, which was sent to The Assistant Stork to submit (24 hour service) to the Chinese Consulate in Washington DC.
June 22 – Nebraska birth certificate submitted to Washington DC. Documents picked up from Chicago Consulate and sent overnight back to us.
June 23 – Documents received from There’s Always Hope.
June 26 – Nebraska BC received from The Assistant Stork. Assemble Dossier and make copies.
June 27 – Sent by FedEx to World Partners Adoption, Inc.
July 5 – Dossier sent to Faith International Adoptions, Inc.
July 19 – Dossier to China!!! (DTC)
August 8 - Log In Date (LID) at the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs!! (CCAA)

Julliette

Ever since we got a black Romeo we said we needed a white Julliette! We finally found her 5 years later, in Tennessee. Actually Jerry's sister found her, and called us to see if we wanted her. Of course we did!!! She only weighs 8 pounds at a year old, so she may not get as big as "the boys"! She has learned to hunt from Tiger and loves to stay out all night prowling (I guess), then she comes in mid morning and finds her pink and white fleece banket and snuggles down to sleep the rest of the day, after she purrs for a while! She first discovered the babies' fleece blankets, so we had to make her, her own! Last week she tore ligaments in her tail, we took her to the vet. Who knows how! We say she was trying to hang out with the opossums! She actually has made friends with 2 yearling deer, they follow each other around in the lawn, and sometime chase one another! Jerry even saw them touching noses one morning! She's a rascal!

Tiger!

Tiger was our 2nd kitty that we rescued... we found him in a tree, while a friend and I were walking one day. Neither of us thought that we could take another kitten home and the tree was in someone's yard, so we left him there! Well, surprise, Jerry said "why didn't you bring him home?" We tried and tried to come up with an original name, but kept coming back to Tiger, because the way he walked and moved was like the tigers we see in the zoo! He turned out to be such a sweet cat, if you hear rumbling from across the room it is probably him purring! He sheds fur something fierce though! He constantly brings little critters that he has caught, to the door, so we can see... and praise him! He weighs a womping 16 pounds, and has a white bib, belly and "boots"!!!

Romeo!

This is Romeo! Our first kitty, who came to us as a kitten that was almost eaten by a dog! He was such a lover, we named him Romeo! Now he is Mister Independant and doesn't want us to touch him too much, except when he is in a mood and then he won't leave us alone! He is spooked by just about everything, probably from his younger days of torture from us! Yeah right! He weighs in at 18 pounds, mostly muscle some how, yet he will easily jump 4-5 feet in the air trying to get a bug! Growing up in a house of no kids at all, he will have some adjustments to make, when the kids come home!

Time Line for Kazakhstan!

September 2004 - Discuss starting a family in May 2006. Talked about a life-long dream of adopting internationally.
March 2005 - Heather and Paul announce their pending adoption in China!
April 2005 - Started thinking about adopting before having biological children! Research! Research! Research!
April 25 2005 - Decided on Kazakhstan and World Partners Adoption, Inc.
May 24 - Mailed in our application to WPA.
June 5 - First homestudy meeting with Jamie from Adoption Options Worldwide, Inc.
June 10 - Received contract from WPA.
June 16 - Second and final homestudy meeting.
June 28 - Sent in I600-A
June 29 - Physicals, HIV and TB tests.
July 14 - Received Jerry's birth certificate and our marriage license.
August 3 - Bank reference letter. Notarized copies of passports.
August 5 - Medicals finished
August 9 - Received letter of employment
August 17 - Fingerprints for The I600-A, at the office for Homeland Security in Grand Rapids.
October 8 - Homestudy came with mistakes.
October 13 - Fingerprinted for the FBI (new requirement)
October 14 - New Post Placement Agreement form and Letter of Obligation
October 20 - Finished Homestudy came! Redo medical on new forms
October 24 - Sent homestudy to Homeland Security Office.
October 25 - Pick up bank mortgage letter (new), new Letter of Obligation,
November 1 - Received FBI fingerprints back, stamped "no record"!
December 3 - The 171H came!!! (gives the approval for us to bring orphans into the USA!)
December 8 - Sent Dossier to Lee at Paperwork Partners.
February 6, 2006 - We received our final copy of the Dossier back
February 10 - Dossier to Kazakhstan to be translated!
February 15th - Sent Letter of Invitation, General Power of Attorney and copy of 171H to be Apostilled in Lansing.
February 27 - Dossier has been translated and heads to the Consulate office in New York City, for 60 days minimum.
March 2 - Received LOI, GPA and 171H with apostille.
March 6 - Sent LOI,GPA and 171H to WPA.
March 8 - We learned that Kazakhstan has changed some rules and are no longer allowing 2 unrelated children to be adopted at once. :(
March 9 - We decided that we would get a dossier together for China for our daughter and still find our son in Kazakhstan. What ever it takes to bring our babies both home!
April 9 - Baby Shower!!!
April 27 - Dossier heads back to Kazakhstan.
June 27 - Sent China Dossier to WPA!
July 18 - new Medicals, HIV and TB tests again! Updated homestudy to follow! all must be apostilled. Ugh!
July 19 - DTC! Dossier to China!
August 3 - Dossier in Kazakstan for 14 weeks!!!
August 29 - The Email!!! After 28 weeks of waiting patiently.
August 30 - Sent the medical info and pictures to the International Adoption Specialist Doctor.
September 3 - Talked to Dr. Jerri Jenista and signed the Acceptance forms.
September 5 - Sent updated Homestudy and Medicals to Lansing for Apostilles and the Acceptance forms to WPA.

We Have a DTC!!

Our Dossier went to China on July 19, 2006!!! We are using the same agency for our Chinese adoption as our Kazakhstani adoption! World Partners specializes in Kazak adoption, so it is only fair that they partner with a company that specializes in Chinese adoptions, Faith International Adoptions. So our Dossier went with Faith’s other families’ dossiers to China! DTC! Dossier to China! We are so excited! We are officially “pregnant with paperwork" again! See!

Chicago!

We went to Chicago twice in July!

July 5-6 we went there with Jerry's parents and Terri, Robby, and Maggie. It was the most beautiful 2 days! The weather was more perfect than we could have asked for! Sunny and 70 degrees! We had a blast! We went to American Girl and they now have some Asian dolls!!! So of course I had to buy the Asian Bitty Baby, for Kimi! Maggie and I named the doll Mei Ling! :) So I am a mess, what can I say?

I also figured out how we were going display all the kids books! I found these shelves at Menards! The one is for shoes, the other...? Who knows? It is part of a shelving system for a closet. But I put all the little books in the shoe shelf and some little toys, and all the large books on the other! It looks so cute! I think the kids are going to love it!

Again!

We went to Chicago again on the 15th! We went to the museum of Science and Industry, and then met some friends at Shedd's Aquarium! We had so much fun with them, and their kids are so adorable! We just loved "playing" with them! Afterwards we went to a really great Restaurant in Greek-town! We had never eaten at a Greek Restuarant before! We loved it! The poor kids were so tired, but were quite good through dinner! We finally had to say goodbye though!!!

In the Morning on the 16th, we met with Heather, Paul, Ryleigh and Kristina (their neice) at the train station in Michigan City, and we headed back to Chicago to go to the Chinatown Summer Fair! We had so much fun! We bought some stuff, and ate Chinese of course! I found the best flip flops for only $4!

So after we were exhausted from Chinatown and the heat (95 and sunny!!) we got on the train to head back downtown! Then Jerry and Paul went home and we girls stayed overnight! We went to our Hotel to cool off for a while and then went to dinner at the California kitchen on Ohio Street. We had a fun evening, Ryleigh and I , playing with the Chopsticks that came with my salad!

We came home the next evening, we were all so tired! from being so hot all day!!! But we were really glad we went!

June!!!!!

On June 30, 2006 at 6:00 am we “turned over” the most amazing gas station we have ever built. It is the Speedway station on Milham Avenue just down from Westnedge in Portage. We started this job on May 9, which makes this a 52 day job, and as far as we know; a World Record Built Gas Station!!! This job went so fast that our subcontractors didn’t even have time to bill us! Today, July 4th, we are trying to pay them so we can get waivers, so we can get paid!













We also said goodbye to some very dear friends! Anthony and Lianro, who are moving to Florida, where Anthony will be a pastor, and Lianro a school psychologist! We are going to miss them so much! They are such fun and wonderful friends! The folks in Florida are really lucky!!!













Last week, Jerry’s sister, Terri and the kids came up to visit, Greg couldn’t come. We are going to Chicago for a couple days this week. Gotta’ visit the American Girl Place and of course the Lego Store!!! The guys, Jim, Jerry and Robby, are going to go to a White Sox game, while we girls, Ruth, Terri, Christel, and Maggie have dinner at the American Girl Café. We are going to have fun!!! Maybe I will get a glimpse of the Chinese Consulate office!















On the Adoption front:
We have not heard anything from Kazakhstan yet!!! We are getting anxious!! Our Dossier has been there for over 9 weeks! We thought we would hear something at 4-6 weeks…



On June 26, our Dossier was complete for China! It was a beautiful package of paper!!! We Fed-Exed our “paper baby” to World Partner Adoption, so they could check everything and get it out to Faith International so they can send it to China!!! We are so excited!!! Our 171H (the approval from Homeland Security to bring an orphan into the USA) even had approved us for twins!!! Oh that would be amazing!!! Probably won’t happen though… but we will see in about 12 months!! This is going to be one long pregnancy!!!!!

The Babies' Room!

Here's the nursery! We have had so much fun decorating the room!In the corner above the glider we also hung these beautiful "balls" of lights. They are Christmas lights that we found at Frankenmuth, when we went there for our 8th anniversay last December. We hung 4 of them. Blue, orange, multi-colored and dark pink! The multi-colored one sparkes! I think the Alex and Kimi are going to love them! The only things that we are missing are bookshelves above each bed, one on the floor, a toy box, and some babies!!!

We are expecting a letter of invitation [to travel] from Kazakhstan, sometime in the next 2 months or so. We are so excited! I can only imagine, right now, how we will feel the day we get to meet him! It is going to be amazing!!! See the doll in Alex's crib? That is a little Mongolian Boy. We also found him at Frankenmuth, where we of course were looking for everything Kazak! We were wandering around the doll store looking for Asian dolls when I saw him! I just knew he was Kazak...he has the big cheeks! The "nurse" at the counter said "her" name was Mongolia... After we bought "her" we said to one another, "Mongolia is not a name!" So we named "her" Lily. When we returned home, I was showing "her" to Tissiana on the website (we frequently show each other stuff on line while we are on the phone), Tissiana suddenly says, "Its a boy!" We were mortified, as if he was alive or something, and we had mis-judged his gender! We searched online but couldn't find a Kazak name that we liked! Maybe that is because we can't pronounce any of them!We finally decided to call him Ivan, until we find out Alex's Kazak name, then we will rename HIM! Ha!

Because the room was done before we received the news that Kazakhstan was only allowing the adoption of one un-related child at a time, we will be leaving Kimi's bed ready for her until she comes home. Originally we thought we would be able to go get Kimi about 6-8 months after Alex came home, but recently the referrals have been taking 11-12 months from the day the Dossier logs in, in China, to referral. We are sad about that, but we think once Alex is home later this summer, time will fly! Because we will be having so much fun with him!

Tulip Time!

Sunday Heather, Ryleigh and I went to Holland, MI for Tulip Time Festival. It was a beautiful day! We had so much fun, we walked and walked, and I (crazy) took about 200 pictures! But I got some amazing shots of Ryleigh with the tulips!

Kazak Tulips!

Here are some pictures of my Kazak Tulips that I planted in January. I was so excited when I saw them coming up. They are not your "normal" tulip! They have the neatest shape, and such pretty leaves. The coral colored one is a Kaufmann, and the red/orange are Greigii. They were discovered in the Tien Shan Mountains in Kazakhstan that border China and Kyrgyzstan. I discovered them in the grocery store of all places! I had been searching online for weeks last fall, and could not find any to buy. Because I love flowers so much I was obsessed with finding some of these bulbs. Everywhere I went I would check through the tulips to see if they had any that even looked like the native Kazak ones! One day, there they were! I was shocked! Next year I will get more!

Our Trip to England!

On April 15, we left for a trip to England, but not just any trip and we did not fly to England, we cruised! Or as we soon learned it was a "Crossing" not a cruise.

We boarded the Queen Mary 2 through much security and found our "Stateroom" with no problems. Our Stateroom was about 12 x 20 including the 2 closets, bathroom, a desk, a table, 2 chairs, 2 twin beds, and 2 bedside tables, and no window! We were going budget style! ha! The room was a little cramped, but the beds were comfortable (we figured out that we could have the steward put our beds together)! We didn't spend much time in the room anyways! We Scrapbooked! Poor Jerry! Really, he did good, all the girls were impressed with his quick learning. He had fun too. He was tired of it by the end of the trip though, so he worked on his bid for the next job. We got tons of cool free stuff in our classes everyday. (We had to pay $25 more to bring our overweight luggage back home! It was worth it!) Our dinner mates were 3 ladies from Alaska who were on their annual scrapbook cruise together! We are lucky to have sat with them. We so enjoyed each dinner we spent with them. The food wasn't too bad either! *wink*

When we landed in South Hampton, we discovered that the Mayflower had sailed from that harbor. Of course it looked a lot different then, but we read the plaques and went into a small museum.

We rented a car there. That was fun! Driving on the "wrong" side of the road. But Jerry had it down in no time, in fact, after a couple days, when we came to an intesection where there was not a round-about, we weren't quite sure what to do! ;) Driving through the countryside was our favorite part of the trip. It was peaceful and so beautiful, as it is Spring there too. We went to a most amazing garden called Leonardslee, it was unbelievably beautiful, and we were a month early for the majority of the flowers! We also saw several castles, and cathedrals! It was amazing how old some of the stuff is. Some were nearly 1000 years old!! Crazy! It was all so beautiful!

We finally ended up in London. We saw the London Bridge (which makes me start singing that song from childhood!), and ate Italian, Indian, and Thai (not at once). We also went to the zoo, and the Phanton of the Opera at the Theater. That was fun! We love that we can drink the water there and they have just about every amenity there as we do here in the US. That made the trip very relaxing.

On our way home we stopped in New York City to visit the Twin Towers site. We had been there the week before it happen in 2001, and not since. The day we were there the clean up crews had just finished, and the construction was planning to start the next day. We could see a lot of damage from the buildings coming down, many of the nearby buildings are still not repaired. So much work to be done! It was quite sobering, but we are glad that we went.

When we returned home we found an email letting us know that our Dossier had been released from the Consulate's office in New York, and it was back in Kazakhstan already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Baby Shower!!!

WOW!!!!!!
Last weekend my friend Tissiana, threw me the world's most amazing baby shower! We had about 40 of my friends there! It was so much fun and I still can't believe it was in honor of us! We recieved so many wonderful gifts! We got books, books, and more books! I loved it! Now I think we are completely ready for the babies! Except diapers and the carseat. Here are some pictures from the party. Every thing was decorated with the spring/baby colors. We had Fannie May chocolates and lots of other yummy foods. Everyone dressed up in tea party attire and looked so beautiful. Travis and Jerry had the job of filling 200 balloons with helium for the ceiling. They had a good time. Then they went to play with the 4 wheelers with the guys. We had baby shower music and the ladies played some games and then I opened "millions" of presents! It was amazing. We had to make two trips home with the gifts... we recieved several large ones.

This is Tissiana, my friend who hosted the shower! My wonderful friend!

Our friends Heather, Paul and Ryleigh. They came home from China in December with precious, precious Ryleigh. 

Richard and Margaret, Christel�s grandparents, live in Nebraska. They are retired and love to travel, entertain, visit with family and pass on family history.