Six Batches of Burritos!!

Our weekday evenings are very busy.  We both work full-time and Nikolas is at school all day.  He has therapy sessions two evenings each week that leaves us getting home very late.  We're all tired at the end of the day, and when little brother comes home, we'll have even less time to prepare meals during the week.  We don't like having to turn to fast food on those busy nights, so I've started exploring freezer meals a bit.

I made four different freezer meals a couple of weeks ago and three of them were very successful. Nikolas enjoyed them so much that he ate three servings of the chicken, broccoli and rice casserole! We also really liked a burrito dish that I made using shredded beef and green enchilada sauce. I made another batch of them this evening and they turned out great.  In about 90 minutes I was able to make five freezer meals plus one batch for dinner tonight.

I started off by putting a 2.5 pound pot roast in the crock pot this morning and letting it cook on low all day. Bonus was that the house smelled great all afternoon.  Once it was done I pulled it out and shredded the beef. It was really tender and moist, and it had a nice flavor!

I mixed some of the beef, some shredded cheddar cheese, some green enchilada sauce and some Tastefully Simple Fiesta Seasoning together for the filling.  For a couple of batches I also added some refried beans to give us some more variety.  I also cooked up some ground beef and made two pans of ground beef, bean and cheese burritos.  

I stuffed them and rolled them in large burrito shells with the ends tucked in so the filling doesn't spill out when they are cooked.  I placed them in a pan with a thin layer of the green enchilada sauce on the bottom and covered them with a little more enchilada sauce and shredded cheddar.  I also used a little bit of mozzarella cheese on a couple of the dishes. 

When I was finished I had five pans of burritos plus a pan for tonight's dinner.  I labeled the lids and Jason hauled them all out to the freezer.  

I'm planning to try some of the freezer meal ideas that are in my Tastefully Simple catalog next.  I'll be sure to share our family's favorite recipes in case anyone else wants to prepare them for their family!   

Making Progress!

We've been working hard to collect the final documents that we need for court.  Everything is apostilled and ready to go except for two documents from our home study agency that should be arriving this week.  Once we receive the last two documents (our home study update and a letter from our social worker stating that she will complete our post-placement reports), I'll make another trip downtown to have them apostilled.  Then everything will be sent to our lawyer in Bulgaria via our agency in Washington.  

Things are moving along in Bulgaria, too.  We were informed that we received our Article 5 letter on April 6th.  For those who are not familiar with the adoption process, a visa application to a Consular Officer at the U.S. Embassy was filed for little brother.  The Consular Officer reviewed his information and evaluated him for possible visa ineligibilities.  Once the Consular Office determined that he appears to be eligible to immigrate to the United States, he/she notified Bulgaria's adoption authority and issued the Article 5 letter.  Once we receive a final signature from the MOJ, our case will be sent to court and we will be assigned a judge and a court date.  (For Nikolas' adoption, our case was sent to court 6 weeks after we received our Article 5 and our court date was scheduled for two weeks later.)

We also met our Brittany's Hope fundraising goal and will be awarded a $4000 grant to help with our final adoption and travel expenses.  Thank you so much to everyone who helped us by donating to Brittany's Hope.  We have estimated that just the airfare for our family will cost approximately $6500-$7000, so this grant will help so much!   
We're hoping to be able to bring him home in July but we'll have a better idea of our time frame once we receive our court date.  For now we're just getting things around the house prepared for his arrival!

Coincidence?

In the adoption process, everything happens when it's supposed to, no matter how much we want things to move along more quickly.  We are not in control.  Looking back at the past eight years, we have found it very interesting how things have lined up.   

We received Nikolas' referral on January 17th.  Little Brother's referral came on January 13th.

For both adoptions we arrived in Bulgaria on Super Bowl Sunday for trip #1.

It was four years from the time we started the adoption process until the time we brought Nikolas home.  Based on our previous timeline, we should bring Little Brother home exactly four years later.

Our dossier was registered with the MOJ one week before Nikolas was born.  We signed the paperwork to re-register our dossier with the MOJ one week before Little Brother was born.

Some may say it's just a coincidence, but to us it's a confirmation that we're on the right path. 

 

Also, we're still working to raise the funds needed for our matching grant.  Once we raise another $1750, Brittany's Hope will match the donations and present us with a $4000 grant to help us with our final adoption and travel expenses.  Go to www.brittanyshope.org, click on donate, choose "Special Needs Adoption Grants", and then enter "VanRoekel"  in Recipient Family blank.  Thank you!!  



Paperwork Update and Fundrasing Info

Just a quick update about what's going on with us.  We've filed our I800 form and were notified that it has been received by USCIS.  We are hoping for approval sometime in March.  We're also working on our documents for court.  Bulgaria requires up to have updated medical forms and current FBI background checks for court, so we plan on getting those taken care of this week.  We are due for a home study update in March, and that also requires updated medical forms and local background checks, so thankfully we'll be able to take care of everything at once.

We've been able to schedule Saturday morning Skype sessions with Little Brother for the past few weeks and have enjoyed them very much.  He definitely recognizes us and seems interested in us.  He loves our cats and meows into the computer whenever he sees one of them.  We think his foster family is amazing and are so grateful that they are allowing us to have so much contact in between visits.

We are doing a little fundraising to help with our travel expenses.  We'll most likely be travelling to Bulgaria this summer when flights are more expensive.  We'll be taking Nikolas with us, so we'll need to purchase three round-trip tickets and a single one-way ticket.  We left Nikolas at home with my parents when we visited Little Brother, and he hasn't stopped talking about how much he missed us while we were gone.  We think it will be best for everyone to take him along with us on the pick up trip.

Our family has been awarded a matching grant from Brittany's Hope Foundation to help us bring our little guy home from Bulgaria.   After we raise $2,000, Brittany's Hope will match that amount and award us a $4,000 grant.    This grant will help with our final adoption fees and travel expenses.  To donate online, please visit www.brittanyshope.org/donate, choose "Special Needs Adoption Grants", and then enter our last name in Recipient Family blank. 

I'm also still an Independent Consultant for Tastefully Simple, and everything I earn from that also goes towards our adoption travel fund.  The brand new Spring/Summer catalog just came out, and there are lots of great products available.  Visit my website at www.tastefullysimple.com/web/kvanroekel to order.  If you're interested in hosting either a taste testing party or catalog/Facebook party to help out, just let me know. 

We are so thankful to everyone who has supported us and prayed for us during this journey to complete our family.  We appreciate you more than you will ever know.  Thank you!!

Day 8 - The Journey Home

After about 3.5 hours of sleep our alarm went off and it was time to wake up.  We quickly got our things together and headed downstairs at 4:45am to wait for our taxi.  It was plenty wet and snowy out there.  The driver picked us up about five minutes later and we were on our way to the airport.  There was a bit of confusion because we didn't know which terminal we needed to go to and the driver didn't speak much English, but we figured it out.

 

We checked in and got through security with no problems at all.  We bought some more chocolate in the duty free area because we were able to find the large Oreo Milka bars that we liked so much.  Our flight out of Sofia was a few minutes late, but we were still able to make it to Paris on time. 

 

So on Saturday we saw the Eiffel Tower and had lunch in Paris.  That sounds so much better than it really was.  We had flown through Paris a couple of times before, but this was the first time that we were able to catch a good glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.  If you have ever been through the Paris airport before, you know what an annoying airport it is to visit.   We rode the bus around the airport and rushed to our gate only to find out that our flight had been delayed... by at least four hours.  We stood in a very long line to get new connecting flights, because there was no way that we would make our connection in Detroit. 

 

They finally set us up on a new flight to Atlanta that left late that afternoon and would get us home at 11:30pm instead of 4:50pm like we were originally scheduled to arrive.  It was the best choice, because all other options required us to spend the night in a hotel and fly home on Sunday.  They gave us each a 16 euro food voucher for our trouble, so at least we were able to grab something to eat in the airport.  

 

Our flight to Atlanta was uneventful.  We passed through customs without any issues and rechecked our luggage.  One of those bags would travel to Indianapolis with us, but the other would take a journey around the eastern part of the country and arrive home the following evening.  Our friend Mark picked us up at the airport since it was decided that 11:30pm was too late for my mom to have Nikolas out.  After a quick trip to Taco Bell, we arrived home safely from our long journey.