Give1Save1

Just a quick reminder that our next fundraiser is coming up next week! We'll be the featured family on Give1Save1. If you have a few extra dollars, you can go check out the current family of the week, and throw a couple dollars their way! They're a family whose blog I already follow and will be traveling to bring their little Noah home next month and still have some last minute funds to raise.

Next week, on Memorial Day, our week starts. What I need from you is to BLOW UP Facebook, Twitter, Email, Pinterest... and any other anything you can think of to get the word out. Show your friends our video. Ask everyone for $1. THANK YOU sooooo soooo SOOOO much in advance! :)

Thank you!

A great big thank you to everyone who participated in some way in our adoption auction! We raised over $600. The final total for what the items were sold at is $607, but as I'm receiving checks, cash, paypal payments, etc. many of you are being generous and rounding up or adding an extra $5-10, so the total has gone up a little from that.
After most of the auction money comes in, we should be able to send off our I600 in the mail, which is a petition for "advance processing of orphan". You ship it, birth certificates, marriage license, the home study and  $890 of to the USCIS (United States Citizen & Immigration Services) and they'll set up an appointment for us to get fingerprinted (again.), and then once that is approved (and we get other paperwork together... and more money...), we'll be able to send our dossier to the Congolese government. The latest fundraisers have been enough for us to get that check in the mail (Thank you God!). The next big chunk of money is the dossier fee, which is $2,000 and the translation fee (for the dossier) of $300.

All this adoption stuff is so new to me, I'm learning as we go. I only sort of/kind of know what we're doing next. I went to our agency's website that keeps track of where we are in the process, just to confirm that I'm telling y'all the right information!

Tonight I updated our little thermometer over there ------> to be accurate to the cash/checks we have (or have had) in hand. It doesn't include auction money that we haven't received, so I'll keep updating as the cash/checks/paypal keep coming :)



So... what's next? I'm still knee deep in auction stuff. The auction ended 5 days ago, but I'm still delivering items, collecting money, shipping out packages, etc. Honestly, I'm only able to juggle a certain number of balls. Children, house, husband, church, friends, adoption paperwork, adoption fundraising.... so I don't want too many "adoption balls" in the air at the same time. So, we won't be doing any other fundraisers until all of the auction items are out of my house and delivered :) BUT, we do have one on the calendar for the end of May... so everything should be delivered by then! ;)

On May 28th (which happens to be Memorial Day) we'll start our week on Give1Save1 as the featured family! The website is a fabulous website, run by a woman who is in the middle of the adoption process herself (and still raising money for their adoption), but felt like God was calling her to help others. This website has grown a ton just in the past 6 months since I discovered it. They now have 3 featured families every week- 1 family adopting from Africa, 1 from Asia and 1 from Haiti. The whole idea of "give 1, save 1" is the thought that not everyone has a lot of money to give, but pretty much everyone of us can afford to give $1. Just one dollar. So every week she asks people to donate 1 dollar to the family of the week. If 20,000 people donated $1 to our adoption fund... we'd be covered! If 10,000 donated $2... we'd be covered! If 5,000... you get the idea! So, that week I'll be asking you to support us financially (every dollar counts!), and I'll also be asking you to help spread the word! The more people that hear our story, see our video and click on that link to donate $1, the closer we are to getting our baby girl home!


So, that's our fundraiser for May :) At the end of June we'll be hosting a benefit concert, and you'll be hearing more about that at the end of May (remember... one ball at a time!)

Upcoming Fundraisers

We have a lot of fundraisers coming up.

Our t-shirts will be here in a month or so, they are $20 and you can pre-order them right now. If you're local, you can go by Pal's Coffee + Company in the mall and pre-order there. If you aren't able to get to Pal's, you can mail me a check and I'll make sure the size/fit you want is saved for you! You can contact me through Facebook, or leave a message on this blog post with your email and I'll get in touch with you about how to buy a shirt.

At the end of April we're hosting our 2nd online Adoption Auction. Our 1st auction raised $900, so our goal with this auction is to break $1,000. We already have over 30 items donated and would LOVE to get some more donations in before the auction starts at the end of the month. If you're interested in donating something, let me know! The auction will take place on Facebook, and you can join the fun right here :)

This summer we'll be hosting a benefit concert. So far we have one act scheduled to play, but are looking for 2-4 more artists/musicians/singers/etc to play, so if you or anyone you know is good at those things, and has time to spare for one Saturday night in June, let me know. That night our t-shirts will be for sale, as well as some yummy baked goods and handcrafted Pinterest projects ;)

We're hoping to be featured on Give1Save1.com sometime this summer. A friend of our's is working on our video to submit with our application, which you'll be able to see if/when we're featured. The premise of the website is that everyone can afford to give $1 to help save 1 child. It's a fantastic website, run by a family who is currently in the process of adopting themselves, but started this website to help others adopt too. So awesome.

We're also looking into a few different local eateries who will host fundraising nights. We'll keep you updated on that!

Last thing- we are applying for a grant from Show Hope. We had a miscommunication with our agency that we thought might be a huge setback, but we got it figured out and should still have the application in by the deadline (April 30th). There is a 90 day minimum wait period after the deadline, so we won't know if we're awarded any grant money for a while.

So, that's it on the fundraising front. Lots going on! It's exciting that we're starting to see things come together a little bit. Please keep us and our little girl in your prayers, along with all of our fundraisers coming up.

Home study finalized!

We had a fun morning... the girls had their first Easter Egg hunt of the season, and when we got home I checked the mail.

junk mail, more junk mail.... some Similac coupons (no idea why we started getting these again, no one here has used formula in a year and 1/2!)... and what's that under there? Besides the dirty table... and even dirtier chair (these were a hand-me-down... note to self: NEVER buy dining room chairs with white seat cushions. It's just a terrible idea). I digress... it's our finalized home study!!!!! *happy dance*

Something I read...

I stumbled on this post while browsing through Pinterest for adoption fundraising ideas. It's a post about what happens "after the airport." After the adoption is final, and you're all home as a family... and it's "the end." (But as this post says, it's nowhere near the end)

Tonight my heart just breaks reading this post thinking about our little girl. Really for all of the orphans everywhere waiting for a family.

I keep trying to think of something more to say, but that's all I've got tonight.

So close I can taste it!

The home study is REALLY close to be DONE! *happy dance* We had our last meeting a couple weeks ago. We were waiting on the FBI to clear us, which takes FOREVER, but we finally got that back a couple days ago (yay! we're not felons!). Now we just need to fax those papers to the office, along with the certification from our online training (I forgot the website was down last month and I never got to print the certification for the last class). Those are the Last. Two. Things! Woohoo!!!

I've had several people ask me what's next, and a couple people thinking that we're done with the heavy lifting and just wait now. Unfortunately, no. We still have a LONG road ahead of us. After the home study is finalized we can move forward with our adoption agency. We still owe them a good chunk of money before that can happen too- $3200. So, after we pay that we'll start working on our dossier. Basically a boatload of paperwork that will be sent to the Congo on our behalf, along with our home study. After this is reviewed by them, we'll be put on a referral waitlist. When we get up to the top (which can take a year), we'll eventually be matched with a little girl.

After we accept a referral, our case will go to court in the Congo (this takes a month or longer). After the court approval there is a 30 day wait period to make sure there is no family that wants to contest the court's decision. Next we file a I600 (more paperwork), which takes a month or so to get approved. Next we request an appointment with the Embassy in the Congo. They'll issue a visa, and I believe this is when we will travel there. While we're there, we will receive a letter from emigration allowing the child to leave the country. We'll be there 1-2 weeks, assuming nothing goes wrong.

So, like I said... long way to go. At least another year, possibly longer. Some of these things don't take long, but you have to have the money to move forward before you can do the next thing on the list. Right now we haven't paid another other than the home study fees. We're still looking at around $17,000 which does not include travel expenses.

As far as fundraising goes, we have a couple things in the works. We just hosted a yard sale, which brought in $400. We are still working on t-shirts (they'll be $20 each if you're interested!), and we are eventually going to be a featured family on a fundraising website. Now that our home study is (almost) done, there are a few grants, matching grants, and low/no interest loans we can start applying for, which we will do. Any other suggestions? :)

Fundraiser next month

We're hosting a big garage sale next month (March 17th) to raise money for our garage sale. If you're interested in helping out, you can get all the details on the Facebook event-

http://www.facebook.com/events/144766038978013/

For those who aren't local, we'd really just appreciate your prayers as we attempt to raise some money. Thank you so much!