Things Are Starting to Come Together

OK! The ball has finally begun to roll.

Last Tuesday, September 23rd, we were informed that our dossier was accepted and that we were given a verbal referral by the governmental adoption committee. This is very exciting news. But, what does it mean?

Well, now that we have our verbal referral we should receive our written referral, our legal document allowing us to come meet our littlest, within about three weeks time. Once we receive the written referral, we will be given travel dates. These travel dates are a little flexible - but hopefully they will work fine.

Brian and I are trying to decide who will go to Europe and who will stay behind. The funny thing is neither of us really wants to go. But, we have very different reasons. For me, it is because of the plane. I am horrified of flying. I will fly when I have to. I have flown to London, Germany, Ukraine, and California in the past three years; I just don't enjoy it one bit. Even medicated, it's not something I like (or that I am particularly 'good' at.) I am a ridiculously anxious flyer. Brian, on the other hand, doesn't hate flying. His desire to stay has more to do with the day to day logistics of our family life. He takes the Peanut Butter to school and picks him up because their schools are close to each other. He also takes him to swim lessons because those are on the same side of town. That is all on the East side. I, inconveniently enough, work on the West side. And we live in the middle. This means if I stay and Brian goes, we have to figure out how to get PB to school the entire time he's gone. We can skip swim for a few weeks. There are so many other factors that will impact the decision, including FMLA time, hours of paid vs. unpaid leave, etc. But for now, who is travelling is up in the air. I don't mean to sound so negative. We would both love to see a new part of Europe. It's just very scary for me to get on a plane and Brian loves analyzing what is best for all involved. I would be very excited to see our littlest's home. So, right now we are just trying to work out what is best for our little family and how to make it happen.

Another thing Brian and I have been trying to narrow down is this little guy's name. We know his first name. His name is Laird-Michael. With a hyphen. I keep getting asked, "What will you call him?" We will call him by his name. Laird-Michael is what we will call him. His whole first name has significance. We cannot say that we won't ever call him Laird by itself. However, that is not currently the plan. The middle name, however, has been the toss up. I think we've finally decided that we are going to keep his current middle name for a couple of reasons. First, it sounds great with his first name. And second, we really want to keep that tie to his home country. We were going to keep PB's name as his middle name; but, we decided to name him in honor of someone before we left for Ukraine. This time, we feel pretty strongly about keeping LM's culture intact. So, this little guy's name will be Laird-Michael Dimitrov Hinz. Pretty cool name!

So, here we sit waiting for a written referral. Hopefully it will come towards the end of next week. We could be travelling as early as the last week in October. It might be the first week in November. But, we expect it to be somewhere in there. This means that if I go, I will get to meet our little man before his and my birthday. When we received his old medical file, we found out that Laird-Michael shares my birthday. That was a pretty awesome sign. :)

We have started to look at pricing for airfare and hotel/food/travel in country. Let me tell you, it is not pretty. Brian and I are trying to problem solve through that one. A lot of our larger donations have been through Reece's Rainbow and we are so blessed to have had that number go up. Thanks to all of you who have made it happen. The catch is, we won't have access to that money until AFTER the first trip. So, now we are on a hunt and a brainstorming session to pay for first trip travel expenses. If you'd like to help with immediate travel expenses you can donate to our Go Fund Me page here: http://www.gofundme.com/8127c8

That is a Hinz57 Ketchup post. I know there is a lot of random information in there but that is exactly what the adoption process is like right now! Hope you stick around to meet our littlest love.

(On a side note, comments for the blog are turned off. It is here for your reading pleasure only.)