Just Stuff

The kids started their achievement tests today and will be testing tomorrow and Friday also. Then we will be officially finished with school for the year! We are all very excited about that. We are planning to have a family fun night on Friday to celebrate. Soon I will have a 6th grader and a 3rd grader! Wow! I must be getting old. Well, I am planning to attend our 20 year class reunion this summer, so I guess it's true. I am old! ;-)

We are still making progress on our adoption paperwork, but not as quickly as I would like. We thought we sent all our documents to the Indiana Secretary of State, but found out that each document needs to go to the state it originated in to be certified. So, we had to send stuff to 4 states. We have done that and received everything back from 3 states but we are still waiting on Georgia. The problem with Georgia is that they would not certify the state-issued birth certificate that I ordered because it did not have a pen-in-hand signature on it. So, I had to return it to Vital Records and have them ship the new one to the Secretary of State. Hopefully I'll get that back sometime soon. I also started looking into where to send the stuff for the Chinese Consulate to certify (which is our next step). There are several consulates across the US and since we have stuff from 4 states, we have to send the documents to 3 different consulate offices. I know all this work will be worth it one day, but it sure is a pain now!

A new list of adoptable children was published this week, but we didn't find any matches. We are confident that God will lead us to our daughter, and we can't wait to find her!
We had another yard sale on Saturday and raised another $579.66! We took almost everything that was left to Goodwill after the sale but kept a few things to try to sell on Craigslist. So, hopefully we'll make a little more money from that stuff.
Last week Todd took some documents to the county clerk to be certified and it cost him $45. The next day I mailed them to the Kentucky Secretary of State along with a $45 check. The shipping via UPS cost me $10 and some change. That day when I got home we had a $100 anonymous donation come in the mail. It completely covered our expenses for those 2 days. We know that God is working things out and confirming our call to adopt, and we are so thankful!
To date our expenses have been $4,195.36 and we have raised $2,896.53!

Unavailable

The child that we were hoping to get a picture of is no longer available. It's a great thing that all these children are finding homes, but I am so ready to be matched with our daughter! We know it will happen in God's time and are praying for patience while we wait!

Adoption Update

Well, we've had a lot going on since my last update on here! We finished our home study and were recommended for adoption by our agency! Our social worker had to type up the report, send it to her boss to review, send it to us to review and send it to our placing agency for review. Then we received the official report in the mail last week. I took one copy and sent it in with our application to the US Department of Homeland Security - Citizenship and Immigration Services and the other copy will go with our dossier to China. We also finished up all our documents that need to to to China with our dossier. Todd scanned them in the computer and emailed them to our placing agency for review before we begin the next step of getting them certified by the secretary of state. She suggested a couple of changes so we are working on those things, and then we'll be ready to get them certified in Indianapolis. Then the next step is to send them to the Chinese Consulate to have them authenticated. Then they will be ready to send to China.

In the meantime we finished up all our special needs paperwork and education so we now have the ability to look at available children. We have tried to "lock in" 2 girls but both were unavailable by the time we requested them. There is a big pool of orphans and many different agencies around the US are looking at the children. So, when our agency went to request a hold on a child, they found out that another agency had already done that. So, we are looking at another child's file, but there is no picture with it. We have requested that our agency see if they can find a picture before we decide if we want to pursue that child. Pictures are very helpful because sometimes you can see needs that are not written up in the child's file. We have been informed that the child's needs will not always match with what is written about them in their file. They do not have the best medical care and sometimes they are diagnosed incorrectly. Their needs can be easier or harder to deal with than you expect, and we are prepared for that. So,we are still waiting to see if this child is still available or would be a match for us.

We have received our passports in the mail so that is very exciting and one more thing marked off our list.

We are also working on fundraisers for the adoption. Todd has been making lots of paracord bracelets! We also held a yard sale yesterday. We have some great friends and family that donated lots of stuff to us and some friends who let us use their basement to store it all and then use their yard for the sale. They live in a much more visible location with more traffic than we have at our house. Also, the BBQologist cooked BBQ to sell sandwiches during the yard sale and another family baked some muffins and brownies to sell. (Have I mentioned we have awesome friends?!?!?) On Friday when I sent in our application to Citizenship and Immigration Services I had to mail them a check for $890. Then on Saturday between the yard sale and the BBQ we raised $891.87!! How cool is that?! God is meeting all our needs! And we are so thankful!

To date we have raised $2,026.87! We are so very blessed and so thankful for everyone who has contributed!

And I will end with a "funny" story from our yard sale....

We had lots of donations from different people for our sale. On Friday night before the sale me and a couple of friends were getting everything unpacked and sorted and I came across 3 sets of handcuffs. Some of the kids who were there saw them and wanted to play with them that evening. I assumed they were toys (who would have real handcuffs and who would donate real ones to a yard sale anyway?) so I let them play with them. At some point that night the handcuffs got put into the kids toy pile of yard sale stuff, and I never noticed them again. Well, during the sale, a boy found the handcuffs and promptly put them on his sister. After a while they went to take them off and could not get them removed. So, Todd and some other guys tried to help out and get them off. All kids toy handcuffs can be removed even without the key, right? Well, Todd quickly realized that these were not toy handcuffs and they were not coming off. After trying some tools, the only thing anyone could figure out to do was to call the police to come and let her out. So, yes, the police arrived at our yard sale to remove the cuffs. There were 3 pairs of handcuffs and the cop's key would open 2 of the pairs but not the particular pair that was stuck on this little girl. So, the cop called for the ambulance to come and help out! So, the EMT showed up next to cut the cuffs off this girl! It took them some work and a couple of tools, but they finally got them off of her. She was probably stuck in them for about an hour. She was such a good sport the whole time and didn't seem to get upset. Her wrists were scraped up and red because they were on pretty tight, but she seemed okay. Todd made her a pink bracelet and we told the family they could have BBQ or whatever they wanted from the sale! The cop took the extra 2 pairs of handcuffs to use at the jail! We definitely had our excitement that day!