First Post From Bulgaria

The last few days have been very busy. On Saturday/Sunday we flew from Indianapolis to Sofia with stops in Minneapolis and Paris. We arrived in Sofia at 2:00pm local time on Sunday afternoon. Violeta met us at the airport and introduced us to our translator, Sveta. We then had about a 6-7 hour drive through the Balkan Mountains to get to Dobrich. We checked in to our hotel just after 10:00pm.

We haven't done much sightseeing in Dobrich, but we plan on taking a walk through the park to the city center tomorrow afternoon. There are also a couple of museums that we plan to visit. We are staying at the Park Hotel Izida. It's a nice hotel with a great restaurant where we've had all of our meals so far. We had Bulgaria pizza for dinner this evening. The food is very inexpensive and tasty.

We met our little boy today and enjoyed two visits with him. He's quite the character and is always on the move. He likes to laugh and is a very curious little boy. We will be visiting the orphanage from 10:00am to noon and 4:00-6:00pm each day this week. We were able to feed him lunch today after our morning visit. The orphanage is only about a 5-10 minute taxi ride from our hotel. It is very clean and the staff members are all very nice. We can tell that they love our little boy and that he loves them in return.

We're enjoying our trip so far and are looking forward to the rest of the week. The weather has been great. Today it was fairly warm with lots of sunshine. There is a little snow on the ground, but it has mostly melted. We don't have any photos of Dobrich yet, but we'll certainly add some later.

Thanks to all of you who have been following our journey and praying for us along the way!!

Almost Time...

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments. We ended up pushing our trip back by a week and are now planning to leave for Bulgaria on Saturday the 5th. Our plane tickets have been purchased and our partner agency in Bulgaria has made our hotel reservations for us. We're working on gathering everything together this week and are very excited about our trip. It looks like we should have internet access while we are there, so we'll update when we can.

It's a Boy!!

We received a referral this week for a beautiful little boy, and we'll soon be travelling to Bulgaria to meet him. We will have our official travel dates tomorrow, but it looks like we will most likely be leaving on Saturday. We should have internet access while in Bulgaria and hope to update our blog while we're there. We can't post his picture here, but he is so adorable!! We have a lot to do this week to prepare for this leg of our journey and are very excited to meet our son.

Not much of an update...

I haven't posted an adoption update for a long time, mostly because I haven't had any positive updates to post. The past several months have been a little tough on the adoption front, but we're hoping that the new year will bring better news.

Back in August we were made aware of two siblings that were available for adoption. We submitted a formal referral request to the MOJ, but they were no longer available at the time of our request. Another family had already committed to adopting them. Although it wouldn't be with us, we were both happy that these beautiful children would be getting a new home soon.

We are currently working through some difficulties to get our home study updated and are hoping to have everything taken care of in a couple of months.

We received word a couple of weeks ago that the siblings from several months ago may be available again, but after doing a little research, I'm not sure that they are. We should hear back from our agency after the first of the year. Even if they are available, our home study update isn't. We are praying that our wonderful placement agency is able to work things out for us.

Our agency did receive it's first referral in December, so that seems to be positive news. We're hoping to see some more positive movement in Bulgaria and would love to have our children home with us by next Christmas.

Right now we're taking things one day at a time knowing that God has the perfect children picked out for us. Our pastor said this morning that God is with us every step of the way in our lives, and looking back, it's easy to see how He has been working in this process from the very beginning.

Adoption Tax Credit Extended and Increased

http://chrisitianallianceblog.org/

March 24, 2010

Amidst the intense controversy of the health care bill signed into law by President Obama yesterday, there’s at least one provision every orphan advocate can cheer. The adoption tax credit was preserved for another year…and increased in value!

To encourage and support adoption, the adoption tax credit was expanded by President Bush and Congress in 2001. This increased the value of the credit from $5,000 to $10,000, and indexed it for inflation (meaning the credit would increase each year to keep up with inflation.) For 2010, its value had risen to $12,170. However, the 2001 increase was scheduled to “sunset” at the end of 2010. This would mean that any adoptions finalized after December 31, 2010 would be eligible for—at most—a credit of only $5,000.

This sunset has now been extended one year. That means that it will need to be extended again before the end of 2011. For the present, however, this extension comes as very welcome news for families considering adoption or in the adoption process.

Specifically, the provisions contained in the health care bill include:

The current adoption tax credit has been extended until the end of 2011;
The value of the adoption tax credit has been increased from $12,170 to $13,170.
The increase is “retroactive,” meaning that any adoption occurring after January 1, 2010 is eligible for this higher credit.

The credit is now refundable. This means that even families that owe zero taxes can receive the full tax credit in the form of a tax refund to help with their adoption-related expenses.