we are home!!

Well we are home! All went well with getting our VISA and now we are back in the USA. We are a little jet lagged but very happy to be back. Briana is doing great. She is adjuting to her new brothers. She already loves Emily. She did great on the plane ride home. Better than I did actually. I find it very hard to sit still for that long. I have to tell everyone that we had an awesome coordiantor in India and we could not have done everything without him. Of course I give all the credit to God for keeping us safe and allowing everything to go so smoothly. We are just so happy to be back home witht the rest of our kids and now we can begin to become a complete family now.
Thanks for all the prayers.
Blessings, Jill

embassy today.

We are getting ready to go to the embassy this morning. Praying that all goes well there. We miss our 3 boys bck home and are ready to head back to the US. Briana was quite fascinated by the airplane ride yesterday. She was so excited when we got to the airport and she saw the airplanes outside. She has been a real trouper through all this. She was a little quieter than normal last night and I think she was a bit overwhelmed by all that has gone on. I did post one picture for you to see. She is with our 10 yr. old Emily. As you can se she has earphones on and is listening to Taylor Swift on the Ipod. Well continue to pray that all goes well today. Will try to post again later.

Blessings, Jill

Briana is now with her new family!

What a day it was yesterday. We left here around 9:30 and drove for about 1 hour. The drive was very interesting. Lots of people and lots of poverty. Finally we pulled up to a gate where our new daughter is. The gate opens and we are there and it doesn't seem real. We are finally there. We are taken to the directors office and then led to the famliy room to await Briana's arrival. We are all nervous and excited at the sme time. Will she like us? will she want to go home with us? Is she excited? Then in walks our beautiful new daughter Briana Srabani. She is dressed in a traditonal Indian outfit of Blue and Yellow. She sits down with us and we give her a gift we brought her. Then we decided to pull out the Ipod and show her some pictures of her brothers. That was all it took. She loved the Ipod! We stayed in the room for a little bit getting to know her and then we headed out on a tour of the facility with Briana as our guide. We went to her class room. She recited her numbers, the alphabet etc. We walked around some more and the other kids followed us too. The orphanage staff provided our lunch and it was very good. We then went to hand out some suckers that we had brought to give away. Briana loved that. Then it was time to head back to the hotel. Briana was ready to go, she put her shoes on and started walking to the car. All the doubts about whether she wanted to go or not were gone. She was quite fascinated about all the sights we saw on the way to the hotel. She also has had her first swimming pool experience and she seemed to like it alot. All seems to be going well so far. She adores her big sister Emily! She follows her around and does just about everything she does too. She is communicating what she needs to and she seems to understand what we are saying to her. We will leave for new dehli today and then the embassy tomorrow and Tuesday. We will try to post some pictures when we get back to New Dehli. We are using the computer here at the hotel right now and we aren't able to do it.
IFS families: Rajeev is as wonderful as everyone has said. We couldn't have done all this without him. Do whatever he says and you will be alright. I took some picture for one family and Rajeev said he had taken the ohter pictures before I got to them. I delivered all the gifts that I brought with me.
I will post when we get to New dehli. Thanks for all the prayers. Keep them coming.
Blessings, Jill

Today is the day!!

We are getting ready to leave for Basundhara. We will finally be picking up our new daughter! We are all very excited!! I will try to post again tonight after we get back. I will try to get pictures for all the IFS families that I can.
Blessings. Jill

We are in India!!

We are finally in India. We had about a 2 hour delay in Atlanta. We landed in Newark at around 8pm and our flight for New Dehli was to leave at 8:25 pm. David and Emily and I ran through the airport just to find out that our flight was delayed until 10pm. That dealy ultimately truned into a 3 hour delay. I think we finally took off at 11:30pm. The plane ride was not too bad. Getting our luggage took a while. Rajeev was waiting for us and now we have checked in to our room and need to go to sleep. Rajeev will be here at 10:30 am to take us for our flight to Bhubaneswar. I will update when we get there. We didn't get to see much tonight. Glad to finally be here.

Blessings, Jill

Leaving on April 1st.

We leave arpil 1st to go get Briana Srabani. We will return on April 9th. will post when we get to India.
Jill

FINALLY MAKING PLANS

We are finally making plans to travel!!!! We have our ICPC ok and we are gettingready to go. Will update with final plans.
Jill

PRAISE GOD DOCUMENTS ARE HERE!

We woke up to an email this morning stating that our documents had finally arrived. We now begin the wait for ICPC approval which is about 3-4 weeks. Please pray that it will take less time instead of more time. Briana we are getting closer everyday!
Thanks and hope to update again soon.
Jill

documents maybe???

Well I ahve been told that our documents are expected this week. Seeing that it is Friday the chances are getting slimmer. Please pray that we get them today or tomorrow and they can be scanned. If that happens then the ICPC process can start asap. Would really love to be going in march. Hope to post very good news soon.
Jill

Still no travel dates.

Here we are at the beginning of Febuary waiting for those court documents to be translated. I still can't believe that it is taking so long to get this done. It has almost been as long as it was for us to pass court. 10 weeks this thursday since We were told that we were out of court. It looks like it will probably be sometime in March before we get to go. It just amazes me how things work in international adoption. You truly never know how long something is going to take. The waiting and wondering is about to drive me CRAZY! I know GOd is in control, but I still often ask Him why it is taking so long. Please continue to pray that we get some good news this weeek. If we don't then we will probably have to get started on updating our homestudy, it will be year old in April. We really didn't want to have to do all that again but we will if we have to. PLease, Please let us hear something this week!! While we wait Briana is waiting also! It just kills me to know we are this close to bringing her home and we can't go yet.
I hope I can update soon with good news.
Blessings, Jill

No travel dates yet

We are still waiting for our court documents to be translated so we can get ICPC clearance. We thought we would be leaving this month but it looks like it will be sometime in Feb. Please pray that we hear something very soon. The waiting is hard sometimes. I get anxious but I know God is in control and He has a reason for us to wait. Hope to report good news soon. Briana we will be there as soon as we can.
Blessings, Jill