We can pick up the Visa tomorrow!

Our adoption journey is almost complete.

Andrea, all of my envelopes are empty now, before I left Andrea said she organized all of her payments in envelopes, it was a good system, and now mine are empty, which means we have done all of our paperwork, paid our fees and now we await Amanda's visa. I have not even been here two weeks, this is incredible!

Once I have the visa in my hands we will see what we can do to leave Estonia a little earlier, but that is dependant on the cost to change the tickets. If it is too costly, we will stay until July 10Th. I admit part of me wants to stay to see more of this beautiful city, but I also miss my family.

I am so happy and relieved I feel like pinching myself, I so wish Ukraine would adopt a simplified adoption process, it was so terribly stressful to go through their very complicated system ( though I did enjoy my time with Yelena).

Igor said he and Signe simplified Estonia's adoption process a couple of years ago, and I am very grateful for their hard work. I understand why parents say it is easier to adopt in Estonia, but I think you need to adopt from a more difficult place to truly appreciate the ease.

Either way, long process or short; God has blessed us with two beautiful daughters and we are thankful to their home countries for trusting us to be Kara and Amanda's forever family.

In 2006 when I got up the courage to ask about a little girl named Eve (who turned out to be a boy named Evan) I never thought I would be the Mom to two new daughters from two different countries in less than 2 years time. This is such a miracle for me, for us, and I am so happy we listened with our hearts instead of letting rationalizations and naysayers preventing us from going on this journey.

Now we need to get back home safely and start on our new lives with Amanda. Hope she is ready for three sisters, four brothers, a dog, a few cats and a completely different climate! She has our hearts already.