Year in Review

This has been a crazy busy year for us Densons!  It started off with myself, Denise, going back to work for 3 months covering a former co-workers maternity leave.  Little did we know the significance of this.  What we were initially going to do with the money was to make some home improvements to our home, and to invest the rest of it.  Well Jan. 4th was a day of reckoning.  I had an appointment with the WORST infertility specialist ever.  After hearing "well just get pregnant and we won't have to worry about this," for the 3rd time, and major trust issues broken with this doctor, the decision was made to adoption. 

It took us almost a month to decide on an agency and the chase was on, we were very quick with our paperwork if you ask me, applied Jan. 28th, and DTR on May 6th, little over 3 months.  All funded with the income that I made.  No home improvements were made obviously!  Then the chase was on to raise the rest of the estimated $40,000-$45,000 that we needed.  We garage saled, and then garage saled, and for Christmas we did peanut brittle, which we are still doing, we are still getting orders. 

As we near our 1 year mark, we are not as far as we hoped to be, we were initially told to expect to travel Dec. 2010 to meet our daughter, now we are looking at May 2012.  All because of an insane woman who in April almost shut down adoptions in Russia for good.  Who would of thought?  This is bittersweet for us.  Yes, we want our daughter, but we are not there financially yet.  We still have about $17,000 more to go to pay-in-full for our adoption.  We are committed to paying cash for our adoption, we will get there.  Thank you again to everyone who has donated goods for our sales, and bought peanut brittle, and also who just donated funds to us, we are extremely grateful.

Randy graduated nursing school in May, now he has to take his board exam to get a nursing job as a part-time job for his days off.  He currently works 24 hours then is off for 48.  Plus it would be a great way to pay for our adoption. 

Camden is amazing.  He is the best little boy that anyone could possibly know.  I asked him the other day if he wanted a sister.  Though he probably doesn't know what a "sister" is, he said "Yes!  I want a sister!"  It brought tears to my eyes.  He is currently 2 1/2 and as busy as ever. 

Myself, I am finally at peace, I can wait.  Though it will be hard, God is delaying us for a reason, just like not being able to get pregnant again, it is for a reason and she is in Russia.  I don't know if she is born yet, or even conceived yet, but little girl whoever you are, we are coming for you!  Rest assured, we are coming! We love you very much.

Denise

Peanut Brittle Fundraiser!

As the holidays get closer, you think, what is a great holiday treat??? Peanut Brittle that's it! Well my husband is a master at making peanut brittle. We are selling it as a fundraiser for our adoption. All proceeds benefit our adoption. If you make a donation, we will either hand deliver or mail you a bag of peanut brittle. Please click on the donate tab at the right of our blog!

Donations

1 Bag of Peanut Brittle which contains 2 discs of Peanut Brittle $3.50
2 Bags of Peanut Brittle $6.00

Shipping, please add $2.50 per bag for shipping.
1 Bag, total donation will be $6.00
2 Bags $11.00

If you do not want to do paypal, please email me at ddenson@kc.rr.com for our address and you can send us a check for your Peanut Brittle.

If you would like to place a larger order please email and we can give a better discount on it!

Little bit of Good News-Never Mind

We got this email from our homestudy agency, which got it from an email from Joint Council of International Adoptions.

The adoption tax credit has been extended through December 31, 2012.


The refundability of the adoption tax credit will remain in effect for 2011.

The refundability expires on December 31, 2011 and will not be available for 2012.

Not sure what the refundability part is, but the tax credit extending is good.

Unless you OWE money to the government in 2012 you get NOTHING back as far as the tax credit.  I will be writing my congressmen and senators on this one! That is ridiculous!

I am better now.

Though I am still horribly frustrated!  I think that there was so much going on that week, and then hearing that news it just about made me lose it.  Plus I was angry at our agency.  I had a scheduled conference call and I sat on the phone for 20 minutes waiting for them to call in.  Finally I had to hang up, since I only have a cell phone, call the agency, ask where they were, call back into the conference call, and then they didn't even apologize for forgetting about my call. 

We are staying with our decision to stay with a girl, though if Randy changes his mind I will be on the phone with our agency at the drop of a hat! 

In more Positive news, a girl referral went out this week, plus another one, but it didn't state if it was a boy or girl, I am going to lean towards a boy though.  Lots of court dates also.  The main region that our agency works with stated that they will not be giving out any more referrals or court dates until after the Russian holiday which runs from January 1-10.  All government agencies close during that time as that is their Christmas time. 

Peanut Brittle sales have been AMAZING, we have sold over 600 bags of peanut brittle, and we got more orders to deliver!  This has been an amazing fundraiser.  Can't wait until it is done to give the final tallies!  God is providing, since we got turned down for Grant #2.  Don't know if I am going to try for Grant #3, we will see.

Paka till probably after Christmas,
Denise

Prayers Needed

If you all could keep us and our adoption in your prayers it would be greatly appreciated.  I spoke to our agency yesterday and while yes we are number 9 in line for those waiting for a girl that are not assigned a region, what I didn't know is that the three families that are assigned to regions have been waiting for two years for their referrals!  They told me that we MIGHT get our referral by May 2012.  If Russia stays the way that it is.  Initially we were told in January 2010 that it would be 12-18 months to finish from Dossier submission date.

If we switched to a boy we could have our referral in the next 6 months. 

From the beginning I didn't care what gender of child that we got, so I was open to this suggestion.  My partner in crime is not though, he really wants a daughter and if we were able to get pregnant again after the adoption we can't guarantee what we would get.  I have called other agencies and they are ALL quoting 15-24 months for a girl.  FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!

We are NOT giving up on our adoption, but never in my wildest dreams did I think that this could become a 3 year process.  We started January 28th, 2010, DTR (dossier to Russia) May 6th, 2010.  If we got our referral in May of 2012, then home for 3 months for court it would be September-October before we came home.  Camden would be 4 years old.  I don't want to make him wait that long to become a big brother. 

If you could either 1. pray for peace for me, because I just want to cry right now, or 2. the agreement is signed and things really pick up in Russia.  I don't know if I can wait that long.  I know that there are people out there who have it worse than me, I already have a child, but my heart breaks for the child we are meant to have over in Russia.  I want them to experience the love that we can give them.  I appreciate your prayers.  If you don't hear from me for a while, don't worry, just needing time to think.

Denise

Camden's Big Boy Room

I know that I have promised pictures of Camden's new rooms for weeks, so here we are. We still have some touch-ups to do, but 95% of the room is done! We do have the top bed in now, and it looks amazing!

Life

It seems, though it gets confusing, I keep the previous email that our agency sends out every week that states travels, referrals, etc. for our agency and compare it to the new email, but it seems that two new families got assigned regions over the last two weeks. We did not get an email Thanksgiving week as they were only open for 2 days that week. Hopefully that is the case and just moves us that much closer to our goal.

We had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving and I did my first ever Black Friday shopping! I was at Wal-Mart at midnight and then went to Old Navy and stood in line for an hour and half for a pair of jeans!!!! But they were $15 a pair and Randy and I desperately needed new jeans. As we save for our adoption we haven't really indulged ourselves in anything the past year, shoot I haven't had a haircut in almost a year and half, because I just think, I could put that $30 in our adoption fund!! Insane, I know.

Peanut Brittle sales are awesome, we are staying very busy and are on our second 30 lb. box of Spanish Raw Peanuts, so we have made about 140 bags of peanut brittle. We are taking orders up until Christmas!!

Blessing, we got an amazing donation in the mail the other day, blessings to the people who gave it to us, they know that they just made a major difference in our lives and our beautiful daughter's life.

Also, thank you to all who gave me recipe ideas. I ended up making Russian Tea Cakes, thanks Masha for the recipe, they were a great hit. I was going to try the tea, but couldn't figure out how to get it to the church and still be hot, we don't have a carafe or anything. Many compliments!