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."

what made me cry today.

I simply cannot comprehend this. I can't wrap my mind around the 5 million that live in Ethiopia alone, much less 147 million?!  That's 147 million people that will never hear their birth story. Never see a picture of themselves as a newborn baby wrapped up against their mother's chest. Never be playfully thrown into the air and land safely in the arms of their father. Nobody cares if it's their birthday. Or if they get enough to eat. Or if they've outgrown their shoes. These children are out there literally on their own.

My heart hurts.

"how many kids do you have?"

Someone asked me this question the other day.

And I actually hesitated.

Then I slowly answered, "Well…we have two here with us right now, but our third one is in Ethiopia. Soon we'll get to find out who he or she is."

It was an amazing feeling. I have no idea who our next child is, but he or she is already taking up residence in my heart. Simply wonderful.

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!

timeline.

Here's the short version of what we're shooting for:

We should have our first $8,000 (aka, our agency fee) turned in by the end of 2011. This ensures that our application doesn't expire and we won't have to re-pay our application fee.  Unfortunately, we can't apply for any kind of assistance with this first chunk of cash.  We have to come up with all of it.

After this we will have to wait about 3 months for the U.S. paperwork to clear, our home study to conclude, a few other things to happen, and then we'll be all set to go from the U.S. side of things.

Once this is done, we've got another 6+ months of waiting for the Ministry of Women's Affairs in Ethiopia to take care of the Ethiopian side.  Apparently there's no real way of knowing how long this will take, but we've been told to expect 6-9 months.

After the MOWA has decided to let us have one of their precious babies, we'll be matched with a baby living in Hannah's Hope, an orphanage located in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa.  We'll finally get to see pictures of our baby, we'll receive their medical information, and we will take over their orphanage expenses.

Six months later, we'll board the plane to Ethiopia!  We won't get to bring our baby home at this point - this will just be a 10-day-long trip to begin the bonding process, make final decisions, and take care of a few legal things.

Six weeks after that, we'll return to Ethiopia, finalize the adoption, receive our baby's U.S. Citizenship, and return home to begin our new, wonderful life.

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'!