Book Review and more!

I was recently given the opportunity to read "Adopt Without Debt" by Julie Gumm. What a read! It was super encouraging and gave me a "bright light at the end of the tunnel" feeling! It also gave me an idea, but I'll get to that in a minute.

"Adopt Without Debt" was the most complete compilation of adoption fundraising ideas I've seen yet. She also has a list of grants and other ways to cut your spending to save for your child! Overall a great book! Her story is encouraging and really gave me hope that we too can adopt debt free! It made me feel, actually, that anyone can adopt debt free. But my favorite part of this book was when she addressed the issue of people assuming because you can't afford the adoption that you can't afford the child after he's home. We've been getting alot of that recently as we've made some fundraisers public and it is a stigma that is completely unrealistic and is part of the reason there are 147 million orphans in this world.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is even just considering adoption. It is a great encouragement and gives a realistic yet optimistic look at funding an adoption. So, because of that I am giving it away! All you have to do is comment on this post with where you are at in the adoption process (contemplating, application, homestudy, referral wait, travel etc...)! Also if you want to leave encouragement for those of us in the process preceding you that would be awesome! So comment away (well once, only one entry per person)!!! I will pick the winner randomly on November 10th at 5pm Eastern!

Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Soap?

The kids like to bring me presents while I grate soap hence the shoe and dog toys.... LOL

I've been selling hand made laundry soap as a fundraiser for our adoption for a few months now. It's been a HUGE success and is really helping me get my frustrations out via grater. You have to grate the Fels Naptha soap before you can mix all the ingredients together. So today as I was grating away praying and thinking about my baby I did it. I lost control of the Fels Naptha and next thing I know my secret ingredient to any good soap (blood) was starting to show it's awful presence. So, I go over to the sink and start trying to wash the soap off (soap+scrape=OWWWWWWW) and the tears started streaming. Not because I was in pain. Not because the soap stung in my torn skin. But because this whole process is so overwhelming, from the very beginning "can we really do this" to the "we've got a homestudy scheduled?!?!!!!" moments. It finally all burst out in one big ball of bawling adult.

Then I thought about how our baby is going to have lots of emotional "Fels Naptha accidents." He'll have gone through lots of hurt in his little life and God has entrusted us with putting a band-aid of love over his scars. So, subsequently, I went from bawling like a baby to smiling at the thought of loving over the hurts that sweet baby is going to have.

Of course the daycare kids were looking at me like I had lost my mind completely finally. So that was interesting. The minute I stopped crying they both starting bawling, that meant ONE THING!!! NAP TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just thought I would share :)

Smile from ear to ear

I got a smile from ear to ear when I saw the UPS guy. Because he was holding these: 

That is all I had to share! Just had to share it!!!

Emotional emotions emoting

Should not be like this this early on in our journey. I feel like I have a cloud looming over me. We have our home study SCHEDULED and now I am freaking out. We don't have a bath tub (I KNOW) and I am pretty certain our windows are not up to fire code. If we need to remedy those two situations we will be spending THOUSANDS of dollars... Oh did I mention our neighbor tore down part of his fence that was around his pond, for no reason, and has no plans of putting it back up? That mean we'll need to put up a fence more than likely.

I think that my biggest fear is our social worker coming to our house and seeing the fence missing and looking at the pond and saying "oh, you'll need a fence." My heart will sink. We can't afford a fence, a bathroom renovation, and bigger windows!

I guess I was due a vent post and I feel much better now that my problems are put into words. I know God has his plans and maybe this will all work out. Maybe we'll meet a fencing guy who will do all the work and supplies for cheap/free, maybe we won't need a bathtub to pass the homestudy (I still think I am gonna want one when we bring home a toddler), perhaps our windows are just fine.

But it is all up in the air and I don't work well when things are up in the air. I am a list person. I am a consistency driven individual and am living in a journey where there is no consistency. So bear with me the next few years as we traverse this rocky road. Cause if the last few weeks are any indication I will be capital C CRAZY. (also keep Kevin in your prayers cause he has to live with me! LOL)

Here's a couple of the other reason I am worried about our homestudy:

Kimby who is the 80 pound lap dog/curious hound

Hank is still adjusting to life in a home with 2 brothers

Dingo is a licker. He especially likes baby mouths

I dunno, I spose we'll find out soon. In the mean time things might get interesting around here...

As always be praying for our child's birth family. Where they are may be safe and that they may be able to emotionally handle the gift they are about to give us!

<3

I guess this post needs a title... THANK YOU!!!!

So thankful to everyone who has helped us to reach our goal of $9,015! Unfortunately and fortunately we came short but have some savings we will use to cover the rest. We raised way more than I thought we would! Without God none of this would have been possible! It is so neat to see him working through all this.

We'll be scheduling our homestudy very soon and can't wait to write a post about our first waiting list number!!!!

If I could go back and do it all over again I would suggest you sit down and time out all of your fundraisers and set scheduled times of when you will be doing what fundraiser. It would have been so much easier if everything was planned out. As is, I am a flustered mess but we made it! Praise God! Our next financial goal is $5,500 and will be due when we submit our dossier paperwork. So continue praying for us and consider supporting us in our journey!

The work is never done, the fields are always ripe for harvest. So get out there and have a great day!

2nd Trimester of HOPE

                           So for today's blogpost you all get to see us start our "2nd Trimester"! 

Here's me writing down the address for AGCI

Here's me walking out the door

Here it is safe in my purse

The post office!!! (and Laurinaitis the Liberty)

The post office guy who gave me a hard time about taking pictures... 

There it is! All ready to go!

I cried on the way out to the car. So happy tears yet nervous tears too... We're all in now! No going back! So very excited to share these pics with you! Thanks to everyone who is following our journey! To make it easier you can follow our blog too! Just use one of the options off to the right!

Thanks!!!

So Tell Me, Why Did YOU Chose Adoption?

I was writing  this post when I realized that our vision has changed a little. This process will change anyone, but it has already worked on us. I felt I owed it to you all to share again why we chose adoption. Why we chose the kind of adoption we did, and what kind of adoption we want to do in the future!

I will start from the beginning I guess. Howie and I got married at 20 and started trying to have kids right away. We didn't tell a lot of people we were trying because I have Endometriosis and Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. I have had multiple surgeries for these two things that have left my reproductive system in a scar tissued mangled mess. I was told it is possible to conceive but learned I have sporadic ovulation as well so it would be a shot at luck. So we faithfully tried to conceive for 3 years. Nothing happened. So we went to a fertility doctor to find out why it wasn't working. Well turns out the problems don't just rest in my reproductive system, but Howie's too. When we got that news we were devastated. We started researching adoption (my dad was adopted and I always wanted to adopt because of him so I had a small file of info already).

We looked at Embryo adoption first, but with all my problems being pregnant just didn't sing with me. I felt uncomfortable with that option based on instinct. Next was domestic infant adoption, but what birth parent would choose a 23 year old couple who were still in college? So we felt that wasn't right for us. Then I found the US adoptable children photolisting and spent many hours on that website waiting for "the right face" to pop up. That's when we decided to try foster care. We went through all the classes but one. We missed one of the last classes and when we sat down the Saturday after the last class we talked. Being foster parents is hard. Adoption is general is hard but if the bio-family stepped up and met their goals and the kids went back our house would be empty. I especially thought the idea of going from active family with kids to just the two of us on a regular basis would wear me so thin I may break. So we decided we needed to adopt first. The International aspect jumped out at me when a woman came to speak at our church about orphan care. She and her husband had adopted internationally multiple times and her testimony rattled my bones. I knew we needed to adopt internationally.

I got home that night and looked up online every single one of the long list of good agencies that she gave us. All God's Children International stuck out the most. They provide excellent services to adopting families and are a great agency for a "beginner" at international adoption. The two programs we qualified for were Bulgaria and Ethiopia. We have some family ties to Ethiopia (my second cousin was a missionary in Ethiopia where he was matyred) so we chose that country. Now that we have settled with this (we flip flopped a while with foster parenting more on that in a sec) I feel confident it is what God wanted from us all along! Our homestudy will be scheduled soon and we'll start putting our Dossier together then too! Can't wait (we send our contract in tomorrow and we'll schedule our homestudy and dossier run through probably Friday)!!!!!!!!!!!

So what are our plans after we bring our first child home? Well we want to adopt from Honduras and have a missionary contact there who can help with that (Adoptions Honduras). We also desperately feel the need to foster. The kids in the foster system get bounced around from one mediocre house to the next and we want to be one of the few good homes for these hurting kids to find healing and rest. I cry whenever I think about being taken away from all you know so often and we want to stop the cycle. It's a passion God's given us and hopefully we will see it through!

We also someday may try the Embryo adoption. My belief is that these "snowflake babies" are humans, they are living things that will just be discarded if no one adopts them and helps them experience the joys of life outside the amniotic fluid. Someday. Maybe.

I feel like God gave us this burden of infertility to steer us to the family he had in mind for us all along. We were just too blind to see it for 3 years! I can't imagine bringing another child into this world when there are so many hurting children waiting for a family now. So I encourage you to consider adoption or foster care. It will NOT be easy but will be so well worth it when you see the effect you have had on a child's life!

*steps off soapbox*

When Life Calls And Wants It's Ball Back

Fundraising. Is. Hard.

Bottom line. It is emotional, time consuming, and really not so fun. Sometimes it is hard to see the silver lining in it all and lose your vision of the goal. It is hard on a marriage, it is hard on friendships, it is hard on families. So is it even worth it? Um, YES!

I was feeling kinda gloom about our fundraising efforts (the fact that the whole Just Love Coffee fundraiser STUNK) and then my phone rang. A friend I am going to be visiting soon called and wanted to check in and make some arrangements for my travel and stay there. It was like she was God saying "calm down, all will be well, just trust in me, I got this." She may not know she was used like that. She may never know. But it was a prime example of how God can speak to us in modern day!

When I hung up the phone I realized worrying about how the money is going to come in is NOT fundraising at all. It's just worry. Fundraising (from a Christian standpoint) is trusting that God will provide and using the gifts he gave you to spread the word and bring in His blessings!

Maybe that's part of the trust, knowing he gave me a gift for creativity and using it. I think that's the line where people may think you're coo coo or a smart talented person. If you just blanket say "I trust that God will provide" and just sit there in your easy chair and wait, well I doubt God will bless that...  But instead I see the gifts He gave me and my husband as how He will (and has) provide. He gave us these gifts for such a time as this. You know I always think of Veggie Tales when I say that phrase, no joke. When I read it in the Bible I read it in my head as Pa Grape... Anways... In reality the story of Esther is a prime example of how God created someone to show that he will provide. He created Esther to have a unique beauty and character so that she would someday be queen and save her people. I think that when I am feeling blue about the process of adoption I need to look deep into myself and see what God has stashed secretly in me. What kind of talent or idea can I come up with to help with our goal?

So stay saavy my friends, just because one thing didn't work try try again! (not including actual scripture verses but including a clip from veggie tales? How old am I again??? LOL)

The Veggie Tales Esther clip I was talking about...

While I was writing this I am feeling like I need to rewrite a post about WHY we chose adoption... So I think I will end this here and start that one...