Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Tastefully Simple

My friend, Lesley, is a Tastefully Simple Consultant. She is willing to host a fundraiser for us through this week until next Tuesday and will donate ALL proceeds, which will be 30% of ALL sales towards our adoption!!! When you shop don't order online. Simply send the order to her at lesleymilot@gmail.com and she will either call you or email you which ever you prefer. She is reducing the shipping to flat $5.00!!!! To go to the website simply click on the blog title above or go to www.tastefullysimple.com

Thank you!!!

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Waiting on Isaiah

We're waiting on Isaiah. He was due last Thursday. It seems he's quite satisfied where he's at. He's obviously in no hurry to get here. Thankfully Sarah is content to let him come when he's ready. No intervention to start labor. We've been hanging out playing Farkle and Dutch Blitz, watching movies, and surfing the internet. Enjoying our time together but we're ready for Isaiah to make his big arrival. Come on little dude! Grandma is waiting!!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Today is Isaiah's due date!

Today is Sarah's due date for her first little one. Things are happening in the labor dept. so I'm heading over them hoping that Isaiah wants to meet his grandma badly enough that he'll make an entrance. ASAP. :-)

Please pray for her that everything goes quickly and smoothly.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Where we are

So I did some figuring and for our application fee to AWAA and our First Program fee we have been covered by donations and coffe sales! God is covering us as we take each step. He's not covering the big picture, but He is asking us to take a step and then He will provide.

So our next step is that we need $2500 for our homestudy. We've all ready had $300 in donations but we need the other $2200. If twenty-two people each donate $100 we can get started on the interview process and get that finished.

Our next step would be to come up with $1500 for our post-adoption reports, but that isnt' due yet so we won't look at that. Right now we have to believe that there is $2200 out there that God is waiting to provide. Is He working through you to give?

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Donations!!!

Hi all!

I put a plea for donations on facebook and I had three responses! Thank you so much! We had an offer for free notary services from an old high school friend, and if any of you have adopted then you know this is a huge gift!

Do you want be part of the 300??  Hit the Paypal button on the right and help us bring our kids home and out of the orphanage. Thanks!

Adoption Update

Hi All,

We spent last week at Sarah's and when we got home my Letter of Good Conduct (Police Clearance Letter) was here and notarized. Yeah! On a different note, due to finances we're not sure if we're continuing our adoption journey. Would you please pray with us that the finances wouldn't seem so overwhelming and a huge burden? We know God is able. We know God will provide. We need to see that NOW though. To have the faith to step forward when the future in unclear. If three hundred people/couples/families gave $100 towards our adoption we would have the funds needed. That doesn't sound so daunting. When you have thousands of dollars needed to send in a homestudy, documents, dossier, travel fees, and such well, it is just overwhelming. If you can't adopt but would love to help in some way please consider donating towards our adoption fees. Thank you!

Monday, November 8, 2010

Adoption Video with 'One Less'

Visiting Sarah

Sarah at 38 weeks
My girls
Vikki, Sarah & Steve
Daddy loves his girl
The crew minus James
Our "current at home" family
                                      Mom, Sarah, Anna & Adah
Isaiahs' dresser
                                                   Love it!!

Thursday, November 4, 2010

50 Necklaces!!!

With your help we were able to sell fifty necklaces from Sarah's Treasure Chest. If you didn't get in on this incredible fundraiser you can still purchase from her. I believe she donates some funds to orphanages on a regular basis. So your money still goes towards a wonderful cause as well as helping a mom stay home with her wonderful family.

Thank you all!!!

Visiting Sarah

Hi all,

This week we're in the sunny area of Phoenix, Arizona, visiting our oldest daughter Sarah. Her husband is based at Luke AFB which is actually where we are staying while we're here. He's able to get us on base and we rent a three bedroom house in the temporary living quarters area. Sarah is due in a few weeks and we wanted to see her before she has baby Isaiah. Please pray for a safe delivery for baby and mommy.

The kids spend their time playing Guitar Hero at Sarah's and swimming in the pool at her condo. In the morning before we head over we spend about twenty minutes reading in A Beka readers. I watched Joe's Bob Jones University DVD's to get a feel for the long-distance learning program. Joe is coming back to full-time home education and we're using the BJU DVD's to actually teach the lessons.

I talked to Jesse yesterday and he's doing well. Lots of math in school. He's having oral surgery sometime in the near future. Pray for him that his surgery and the healing goes well.

We head home tomorrow and back to the soccer grind on Saturday.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Weekly Adoption Update

Hi all!

Let's see what's happened through the last week for our adoption. On Monday we had our fundraiser with Sarah's Treasure Shop. Thank you, Sarah! We were able to sell 50 necklaces and we couldn't have done it without you! Thank you!

I took James to the dr. to have his TB skin test read on Monday. On Thursday I took John for his physical, TB skin test, and his vaccines were all updated as well. Just to make things clear, Ethiopia does not require your children at home to be vaccinated, it is just a personal preference to vaccinate our children at this time. There was a time many years ago when we held back due to autistic issues, but they have resolved themselves to the point where we feel the benefit of the vaccination is more beneficial than not receiving them.

John went back to the dr. today to have his TB test read and we were able to get his physical signed off. Last one!!! We're done with all the medical stuff unless we decide to do Malaria meds to go further south into Awassa.

Thursday we sold a coffee that I had bought ahead of time and figured I would have on hand. I still have two whole bean Ethiopian Harrar bags of coffee if anyone local would like one or both. They're $15.70 for each bag.

On Friday I went to our local Sheriff's dept to order a police clearance letter. The sheriff's dept called it a Letter of Good Conduct. That was $49.00 which includes a notarized letter that goes into our dossier. We had to go to the Licensing Desk instead of Records. I found that out after waiting for awhile. The clerk wasn't at the desk when I came in and never bothered to check the sign-in sheet when she came back. After she waited on someone who walked up and got waited on I thought I had better check and see what was going on.

We passed out three envelopes with the directions for writing our Reference letters for our dossier. Each of our friends will write one and they will have to be notarized as well. We're just about ready to contact our agency and set up the homestudy interview appts. we need to comlete our homestudy. Then we can send in our I600A and get a fingerprint appt.

All the tedious little steps but they are all a piece of the puzzle.