um, whoa.

An anonymous donor knew that we were $3,500 short from being able 

to write our first check to the adoption agency.

(Don't worry. From my experience, your jaw dropping and your eyes watering are a normal reaction).

Father, I'm overwhelmed by your goodness and so thankful that you work through
good people to accomplish your good works. 

Thank you for allowing so many people to be a part of YOUR story of hope and redemption. 
It's so wonderful to be reminded often that this isn't some harebrained idea that we dreamt up but that this is actually your plan for this child and for our family. I love you immensely.

Fundraiser #1 - complete!

Our first fundraiser is officially behind us, and as you can see, 

it put us a lot closer to our first goal!

After it was all done and everything was counted, 

we had made just about $1,900 which made our total $4,442. 

Only $3,558 to go!

People started showing up an hour early - as soon as the sun came up!

We had a little of everything…including the kitchen sink.

Yard sales are incredibly annoying. 

They're stressful, tiring, and way more work than they're usually worth. 

But, this one was wonderful and was worth every single second of work that went into it. 

We're a little over half way to our first goal! 

(We are incredibly grateful to all of you that donated "treasures" 

and your time to make this happen. 

We could never thank you enough, and we love you all.)


The yard sale's "closing ceremonies."

yard sale!

It's time for our first adoption fundraiser - a yard sale!  We'll be setting up shop on Saturday, October 22nd.

Now don't get me wrong, our family has plenty of junk sitting in the attic, but we don't have anywhere near enough to make a dent in that big, scary number (aka, our first payment).  We're gladly taking donations in the form of "treasures/junk" that can be sold in our yard sale.  OR you can just come by and buy it all up.  :)

If you'd like to donate anything please let me know!

moving right along.

I'm so thankful that God has been so blatantly obvious about this whole thing.  Sometimes I need to be slapped with the obvious (figuratively) in order to really understand His will, and He's been, well, faithful.

When I filled out the pre-approval there was a space where we had to list our top three "country choices." I tried to put "Ethiopia" in all three blanks, but it wouldn't let me.  I finally clicked Taiwan and China as our 2nd and 3rd and turned that bad boy in.  When our coordinator, Erin, called the next day she said, "I think Ethiopia is your best bet. For the other countries you have to be at least 30, so those won't work."  My heart fluttered a little when she said that.  "I knew those other countries wouldn't work," I thought, "our baby is in Ethiopia!"

After receiving our pre-approval, we filled out the actual application and sent that in immediately. We received a call not even 3 days later and were told that we had successfully made it through that phase of the process also.

Next came our first phone interview!  We received a HUGE packet of information and were told that we needed to be very familiar with all of the information before the phone interview. We spent hours going over every detail - agency contract, adoption process, timeline, fee schedule           (…oooohh, that fee schedule) - and, finally, we were ready.  On September 7th, we had our first interview and it went perfectly. 

We were pumped up and ready to go.  The next step?  Write a check.  A big check.

Oy.

Erin had given us a list of fundraising ideas (and they were great ideas), but still…yikes.  I started doing a little research to find out what kinds of things other families had done to fund their international adoptions.  There are lots of awesome blogs out there - it's like a little community of families who are all in the business of helping each other bring home their babies.  I'm excited to join in on it and get this ball a-rollin'!