Adoption Fundraising Update

**Note...this is not the highly anticipated "News" I alluded to in earlier posts...that is still to come...but this is an update none-the-less.

As you can see from my sidebar, we have been actively raising funds to pay our adoption fees through support letters. We first sent out a round of letters to personal friends and family that we thought would be okay with sending us money directly. That has accounted for over $1500 so far, which we are SO excited about. But as you can see, our deficit is great at close to $18,000. We then applied with Lifesong for Orphans for a matching grant and they have awarded us $4,000 IF we can raise that much in return. That will hopefully account for $8,000 total. So we have asked supporters to send checks directly to Lifesong to hopefully meet our goal by August 19th (my 32nd birthday!). Over the past month, we have had some really surprising donations...several friends gifting us with hundreds of dollars each! And my wonderful elderly Grandmother was so generous in her donation as well. We have family members who have offered to make several payments towards our fees, some very large... which is a blessing beyond words. But most surprising of all is that a couple who has read our blogs for about a year emailed me saying that they felt led to contribute to our adoption! They sent their check to Lifesong and it was so much more than I could ever have expected from people who don't even know us in real life! God has been so, so good to us during this process. That being said, you can see we are still so very far from our goal. We actually owe the agency money right now that we can't pay. I have finally posted a paypal donation button on the sidebar for my dear friend who lives out of the country and others who may feel led to help us out.

As far as the process goes, we are approved and waiting to be matched with a birthmother. There is noone on the radar right now that we know of...so we will continue to wait. We have been setting up the nursery and have had a friend donate us a bunch of great baby boy clothes...so if that is God's will for our baby's gender...we are ALL set! Thank you to each of you readers...and especially to all of my new followers (what a fun surprise to have ya'll commenting!) for following along with us as we wait upon the Lord to see who our baby will be! I have enjoyed following along with many of your blogs as well. Seems like several of us are in the waiting process and it is a balm to my soul to know we are not alone in our anxiousness!

Waiting...*UPDATED...MANY!**

Doesn't life just feel like a perpetual WAIT.

Our home study visit went well this morning. We are waiting on my medical clearances and for our director to type it up to be able to approve us. **Update...my medical work came back all excellent and they are in the process of faxing everything to the agency. What a relief!

You can follow our ticker at the bottom of this blog...I moved it because it was creating some confusion. To clarify, it is showing how long we have been waiting since we officially starting tracking it June 1st. We now have only about 2 weeks to raise $5,000 to pay our approval fees, and we have only received $50 so far. BUT...I will not despair! My mother in law has been helping me think of some fundraisers and we may be on to something that we can roll out early July. **Update-just heard that we are approved for a $4,000 matching grant, more about that later!

The nursery is coming along. I still need many things like curtains, wall decor...and of course the ever needed car seat...which plagues me a bit because i will be ordering it and you never know once approved if we could get a call that says "baby has been born...come on to the hospital!" Take a look at the one we chose, it is called Lively Dots. I am planning on doing site to store off W.almart for it. Isn't it adorable?!! :)

We have drained our accounts as of late paying the agency and purchasing things needed for the homestudy and profiles, so the car seat will have to wait for awhile. I am still looking into getting some additional income, so far that has not gone anywhere. **Update, within an hour after writing this I got a call from a single dad who is going to court tomorrow to get visitation orders and needs nighttime childcare of his son because he works at a hospital. Can you believe how quickly God works sometimes? We will see if it pans out, but the call itself was encouraging!

OH! I changed the tulle on our profile book and put pretty ribbon there instead.

I like it so much better.

This went with the agency today. Once approved, we will be all set. Please pray for income, fundraising, and my medical stuff to come back fine and get faxed to the agency in a timely manner!

Our Book

Our book came in from Shutterfly that I made for the agency.

I chose a blue satin cover and then I tied brown tulle over the front.
The book consist of 20 pages; here are some of the layouts...

I love this last page.

It turned out so nice, I am thankful to have that checked off my list!

We also had printed up 10 copies of our Profile.

The profile is a one page "dear birthmom" letter and on the back is a collage of photos of us.

This is what the agency gives to potential birthmothers, then they choose a family they would like to meet among the profile letters they view. I have found that some people think the agency chooses us and matches us with a birthmother, but that is not the way domestic infant adoption works anymore. In almost every case, the birthmother is the one who makes the full decision on which family will be best for her child. At the time where we meet the birthmother, we present her with this scrapbook that she can use to get to know us better, and keep once she has chosen us.

In the event of an out of state birthmother, or a baby that has already been born-I assume the agency will just mail this book to her after she chooses us from the profiles she is given.

Either way, when our agency director comes next Thursday to do our home study, we will give her our book and profiles. That way when she approves us, she will have everything ready to go to show when the need arises.

What are we working on?

In the coming week, I will be scheduling medical exams for Billy and I for the adoption and we will be sending out our first round of support letters. Our second round will go out when we are approved for a grant. We had some money saved up, but yesterday the A/C went out and had to be replaced in my van. That ended up costing us $1,400 at Christian Brothers. Yesterday was a pretty devestating day and I am trying to recover from that loss. Billy is out of town all week, so that doesn't help either. But, life must go on.

Most of our time in the coming days will be preparing for a garage sale next Saturday, the 12th. I have already cleaned out our bedroom of all the things we just do not need anymore. Our room and closet need to have lots of additional space because our entire study (except the desk) will be moving in there to get the nursery ready for the furniture to go in. As much as I really do not like doing garage sales, it will feel like such a load off to get half of our garage space back, and to hopefully earn enough money to buy Isaac a dresser (his current one will be the baby's changing table), a mattress for the crib, and hopefully the nursery glider and/or car seat. Those are my goals for the garage sale profit. We have something fun for the kids to do that day for a little additional adoption earnings. All of this in the month of June; and I still have Isaac's class party to put together and host, his teacher gifts to buy, VBS to start up, our home study, 2 friend's birthday parties, a church fellowship, and Isaac will be going off to his grandparents for a week. And it is already 100 degrees out there! I am hoping to fit a water park in somewhere.

We are hoping to be approved by July 1st, if it takes our agency 2 weeks to prepare our home study report. At the time of approval, our profile will be available to a total of 9 agencies that are members of the National Christian Adoption Fellowship. That means that the chances are high that our baby will not be born in Texas this time around. This has me nervous about travel, additional expense, finalization proceedings, etc...but I trust the Lord knows who are baby is and will provide a way.

Our BIG NEWS!!

That's right...

We have begun the process to adopt again!!

Beginning a couple weeks ago we got all of our paperwork together, corresponded with the agency (same one we used for Vivi) through numerous emails, filled out the majorly big application, made our dozens of copies of documents, wrote our floor plan, printed our photos, had the children's medical exams, Billy had his fingerprints done, and yesterday we had our fire inspection.

Here we are mailing off the application to the agency.

This morning was my phone orientation...

and our homestudy

is scheduled for June 17th! Woohoo!!! Next is our medical exams, the home study, and the huge, huge task at hand of beginning our fundraising! We will be sending out support letters by this weekend we hope.

And so the journey begins, once again!