We have an official H2K Day!

So I have already mentioned we are leaving for Kenya.  I wrote this a while ago ... so here's our 'formal' announcement lol

We have booked our plane tickets and we are: Herrings to Kenya on June 4!

We are so excited to FINALLY be going.  This would not be possible if we did not have a house.
We found a house to live in .... it's AMAZING and are thrilled to have such a beautiful home to live in while we are in Kenya.  We are thankful to the family that agreed to rent to us!
Here's our house:

We are living just outside of Nairobi.

There is much to be done before June 4. We need to pack up our home here and hopefully find someone to rent it. The realtor is coming today.  And just general packing of items that we are going to bring to Kenya. We are bringing the stuff in our luggage, we are not shipping anything, so we are very limited.

We will not have our referral (information about the children that we are going to adopt) by the time we go.  Since we have had this 2 month delay with the FBI background check. So we will go to Kenya and get settled in with our family of 4 ..... and wait to become a family of 6 :)

Documents part 2 of 2 ... Done and already IN Kenya!

Our FBI documents were retrieved from the Kenya Embassy in Washington DC last Friday by our courier. We used Caring Hands Services for our courier for these documents.  They were really great.  They communicated well with us.  Let us know when our documents were authenticated at the State Department,  that they were dropped of at the Kenya Embassy and let us know when they would be ready for pick, they agreed to Fedex our documents directly to Kenya and sent copies of our documents to us. So I highly recommend them :)! I filled out the Fedex air bill online and faxed it to them.
We received our copies via the air bill I enclosed with our account number on Monday.  I checked in on how our delivery to Kenya was doing on Fedex.com .... our FBI documents arrived at our Kenyan adoption agency on Monday evening!  That was amazing, super fast service ... it was due to arrive today (Wednesday)!!
Yesterday was May 1, a holiday in most places including Kenya,  but not here.  They were off from work so hopefully today we will have some news.
Our US adoption agency faxed a cover letter for our documents and they needed to submit  another document on our behalf as well.  Those were both faxed on Monday and the originals were sent DHL.
SO now we are hoping all our documents are in order and acceptable to be submitted to the NAC (National Adoption Committee). We have already been approved by them pending the arrival of these documents.  The NAC only meets once a month, we never know when,  usually the 3rd week ... but not always.  Documents need to be submitted to them by the 5th of the month to be seen at that months meeting.  That is our hope that everything is in order and can be submitted to the NAC by Friday May 4th for the May NAC meeting!
Prayers PLEASE :)

After the NAC gives us the final approval to adopt 2 children,  then our Kenya adoption agency will work our our referral (of our 2 children). This can take up to a couple months we are told. We will be already living in Kenya by that time :)

After we accept our referral (of our 2 children) then we need to finalize our US immigration approval for these specific 2 children > our 1-800! we are told this can take up to 90 days to get approval!

I will write more on that when the time comes :)

Documents part 1 of 2 Authenticated in Washington DC

We Fedex'd our FBI background check to our Washington DC courier on Thursday. They got it Friday and took our 2 documents to the US State Department to be authenticated today (Monday), they kindly authenticate up to 15 documents while you wait, same day. So part 1 of 2 in the authentication process is done! Yay! Now did I mention that this should have been done 9 months ago when our 28 other documents required for our dossier were authenticated? Why is this one being done so late? After we have been approved by the Kenyan government .... When now we should we waiting for our official referral but instead we are doing more paperwork ... Our agency in the US did not realize it was a new addition to the dossier list for Kenya.
The Kenyan government is waiting for this document before they will begin processing our referral so this has delayed our referral by 2 months (at least).
After the Authentication was complete at the US State Department our courier took our 2 documents to the Kenya Embassy, this is part 2 of 2 of the authentication process.  They do not do same day service, so the documents were dropped off for pick up on Friday.
On Friday the courier will kindly pick them up form the Kenya Embassy, photocopy them for us and send us the photocopies.  Then they will send the originals to Kenya via Fedex. AWESOME!   Let's pray it really works out that way ....
Praying our documents will make it to the National Adoption Committee (Government body that approves International adoption applications/dossiers/FAMILIES!) office in Kenya by Friday, May 4th ..... we may just miss it, but we are going to try! We have been approved by the National Adoption Committee ... In February,  but they needed these last documents to make it official.
The National Adoption Committee only meets once a month.
If we miss the May 4th cut off we will need to wait until the next meeting mid-June,  by then we will be living in Kenya.

We are moving forward ....YAY!

Our FBI background checks arrived yesterday,  I nearly hugged the Fedex man!  LOL We are thrilled, it only took 36 days from the time we Fedex'd it to the FBI.

So today I am Fedexing these to Washington DC to be authenticated.  I am sending them to a courier that will hand carry my 2 documents to be authenticated at the State Department.  This will be done same day on Monday. Then it will go to the Kenya Embassy in DC,  I'm not sure how long that will take.  With 25 documents it took a week,  with 2 documents I am hoping it will take less time.

So perhaps by the end of next week I will have these documents returned to us ..... maybe.  I will keep you posted :)  

Moving forward .. Yahoo!!!

Catching up - Friday Photo: Something I found

From the April Photo Challenge, Something I found,  well nothing came to mind immediately ... but I was packing coats away and looking in the pockets I found:

YES,  that's right in all the jackets and coats I put away I found $.12 cents! I would have preferred a wad of cash,  but then it would not have been mine since I don't have wads of cash LOL 

I love this book and in this book Lucy finds something ..... 

A brain named "Fred"

 from Amazon:

A Walk in the Rain with a Brain is the illustrated version of that story. In it, a little girl named Lucy is making her way down a rainy sidewalk when she spies, of all things, a brain -- Manfred, called Fred -- sitting forlornly in a puddle. The courtly cerebrum asks Lucy for help getting home, and as they walk along she worries that she's not smart enough. "Everyone's smart!" explains Fred. "You just need to find out at what!" Fred reassures her that each child learns and thinks differently -- and that every child has special talents.

It's a GREAT BOOK! 

Catching up: Thursday photo: Stairs

From the April Photo Challenge, I didn't get very creative ... here are the stairs in my house ..... soon the icky carpet will be gone and it will be lovely wood:

What's with the banners you ask?  I love the color and fun they add to the house ... we have them up all the time ... sometimes we change them .... I have some for Kenya as well .... Kenya flags, plain white for decorating ....

Catching up ...Wednesday Photo: Where I ate breakfast

From the April Photo Challenge, Now let me explain ... we are putting/resanding wood floors in our house, so on this day the wood floor guy was packing and moving stuff. SO I ended up having breakfast in the family room .... looking into my sunny yellow kitchen: