Matching Grant from Lifesong!

I mentioned in our last post that we have received a matching grant through Lifesong for Orphans for $2000!  This is super exciting, and I am happy to announce that we now also have a donate button on our page.  Over on the Side Bar directly under "About Me"  -------> You can donate to our adoption through Lifesong.  100% of your donation will go directly to us.  Please note though that Paypal charges and administrative fee (2.9%+ $.30 USD) and your donation will be decreased by this amount.

Big News, Big News, and Even Bigger News!!!!

First of all, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who participated in our raffle fundraiser, either by buying tickets or making meals!  Your gift means so much to us.

All in all we raised...drum roll please....

$1920!!!!

That's amazing!  

What is also amazing is that we have been approved for a $2000 matching grant through Lifesong for Orphans!  This means that when we raise $2000 by December 31 they will match it! (this does not include the money we have already raised through the raffle) We have also been approved for the Both Hands project!  We will be getting you more information next week on how you can donate to our matching grant or be involved with our Both Hands project.  Such an exciting time for us!!

Also....

In a very short amount of time we have gotten our 797, which is an important piece of paper, and submitted it for all it's things it has to do.  Next step?  DOSSIER TO CHINA!

I'm not sure if that means anything to you, probably not - but it does to us!  Your dossier is your final stack of paperwork that goes to China, from that - they can approve us.

That happened today!!  Today our dossier was sent to China and will probably be logged in by the CCCWA (Chinese welfare system) in 3-4 weeks!  After that we wait 2-4 months (insert sad impatient waiting face here) for our LOA our Letter of Acceptance from the Chinese government, the final piece of paper that officially approves our match -  Why a Letter of Acceptance?  Does it sound like we missed a step???

It does because:

THE MOST EXCITING PART IS.....

We've been matched with a child!  We have a little boy waiting for us in China!  He has a name and an age and we have a picture and everything!  Now that our dossier has been sent to China he will be notified that he has a family, although he's little so he won't know for sure what this means - but we can send him a photo album and cards and even a CD for him to listen to at bedtime and naptime!!

oh be still my heart and make this time fly.

Now, I'm sure you have a lot of questions (most of which I can't answer over the internet), so I'm going to do my best to give you the answers you need to know.

How long now?  Well, we still don't really know.  Most likely between 6-8 months.

Why so long?  There are still a lot of paperwork processes to work with.  Lots of children are waiting to join their families, and we've just jumped in line.

Anything you can tell us about your little boy?  Not much online :)  I won't be sharing pictures of him on here, releasing his name, or anything else personal about him during this time and our post placement period.

Thank you so much for all of your understanding and excitement!  Thank you also for partnering with us in our adoption!  Many of you have expressed your desire to partner with us in this financially, we are so so grateful for you.  For all of you who are praying for us, thank you thank you thank you!  We need so many prayers right now as we navigate paperwork, time, finances, and preparing to bring home our little boy.

Lifesong for Orphans Advocate Blogger and Orphan Sunday

If there is one thing that has changed over this past year and going through this incredible journey to bring home our son, is that my heart for the orphan is only growing.

Out there, in this great big world is a little boy, sleeping alone in a crib tonight, in a room full of cribs he sleeps.  Who will rock him to sleep?  Who will soothe his tears?

I think of my little one often when I hear this song by JJ Heller -

This world is unfortunately full of orphans.  Full of little ones, like mine, that are alone tonight.

I'm going to be honest, I'm a terrible blogger.  You already know that.  I can hardly remember to write, but I've made the decision to partner with Lifesong for Orphans to be an advocate blogger.  One more way I can reach more people to bring awareness to orphans,

You'll notice I've added a new button to the side bar -------->

And every so often you'll get a new blog post from me, sending you to Lifesong's page.

Please, get involved - hear the cry of the fatherless.  Not everyone can adopt, but everyone can do something. (quoted from Orphan Justice)

My first Lifesong advocate blogger post is about Orphan Sunday!  Coming up on November 2, check out this post to see 4 way that you can get involved!

4 Way to Engage in Orphan Sunday

Screen Free Time

Screen Free Time is something most people are familiar with.  (and I know I should not end that sentence with a preposition.)  Here in our house SFT usually comes when I just can't take the screens anymore.

Many of you know that we homeschool - if you didn't, now you know - we homeschool.  (Which by the way is one word even though spell check is constantly trying to correct me. click here)  There are so many reasons a family chooses to homeschool, and ours, like many families is a combination of reasons.  I won't go into them right now, but I just wanted to throw that out there.  This post is actually about Screen Free Time.

It seems when we start out the school year I'm usually "super-mom".  I am on top of school.  I am on top of the house.  I am on top of everything.  We follow our schedules.  I prepare things the week before and then the night before, and I feel great!  And then about two weeks in I start to stumble, we let a couple of things slide.  Then three weeks in some more things slide, and by week six - we're in a bad spot.

Well, week six was last week for us and let me tell you, by the end of the week I was about to sign my daughter up for public school.  The problem was not my first grader.  No, she's great!  Doing her assignments, not complaining, enjoying school - the problem was ME!

Our schedule is gone.  My organization is gone.  My house is a mess and climbing back up the ladder of success seems like such a long hard climb.

So, we made a new rule for school days.  All school days are screen free from 8 am - 3 pm unless it is an educational website that has to do with our math, science, or some other assignment.  This eliminates two BIG problems we have - the constant whining and asking to watch a movie or play a computer game and then me losing track of time and letting them watch another movie and play another game... which can wrap into more time than we intended.

Today is our first day screen free.  (I also said that this rule does not apply to me, because much of my other home activities involve some sort of screen) Although, right now this blog writing is just therapy.

Can I be honest though, so far today has been awesome!  I feel like super mom again, even though the house is still a big mess.

Another thing I did today that I'm going to try and keep up with is keeping a bowl of healthy snack food out on the table.  This morning I cut up a melon and left it out with a plastic wrap over it.  Every time the girls whine that they're hungry I send them to the table for a bite of melon.  It has been awesome!  They just go and eat it - and they stop whining.

Today I also mandated that we spend time outside running around.  So we got out the soccer ball and set up some goals and played a rudimentary game of soccer.  And I officially lost.  We ran around and got hot and sweaty and tired for an hour!

After lunch we sat and Amariss read to me while I picked through her hair and then we switched and she picked through mine.  We were pretending we were monkeys looking for bugs.

I know that not all days (infact, most days) will not be like this, but today it feels pretty nice to have a good day and remember that its okay that we had a bad week last week.  It won't be our last one, but it wasn't our first - this is just a part of life.

I'll let you know how we feel at the end of the week.

Any other homeschooling parents have bad weeks?  How do you handle them?

Moving along, like a turtle. And other random thoughts...

I had every intention of being a great blogger - one of those awesome webpages that is graphically appealing and is updated every evening with beautiful photos and words depicting a wonderful life.  

In truth, our life is wonderful - for the most part.  I mean nobody has a perfect day every day.

But I want to formally offer my apologies for any broad claims I've made about "keeping my blog updated" or "posting often".  

It's just not gonna happen.

Also, my blog isn't going to look cool.  I'm not a photographer, and I spend more time cleaning up the mess of the moment and worrying about how my messy fingers, or someone else's, might ruin the camera.  I tried today, though.  We made moonsand together - me and the girls.  And I took a couple pictures of it too!  I even wanted to upload them, but our computer is running really slow tonight (which means I’m actually uploading this post 3 days after writing it).  So, it's going to be a boring picture-less blog.  And I got moonsand on the camera.  And the driveway has a lot on it too.

A lot of people have been asking how our adoption is coming along and get really excited when I say "It's coming along!"  or "We're in process!" or "We're waiting on our USCIS paperwork right now!"  They follow this up with "Does that mean you get to bring your little boy home soon?!"  or "So where is your son right now?"

I think I disappoint them a little with my answer.  So, for clarification -   

This isn't a speedy process.  

However, we are moving along and that is VERY exciting news for us!  One thing we have learned and are continuing to learn, and will continue to learn even more - is patience.  This is a waiting game.  

We completed our home study at the beginning of August (YAY!!!) and then mailed our I800-A to the USCIS a little over a week ago and today I received confirmation that they received it.  Lead times here can be up to 12 weeks.  The I800-A is the governments pre-approval for us to travel overseas to adopt a child.  Getting this pre-approval (the 797) will get us much closer to submitting our dossier (paperwork) to the Chinese Consulate in the U.S. and then it will go to China.  At any point we could be assigned our child, but this isn't likely to happen before our dossier is submitted to China.  There are a lot more documents to be filed and wait for before we get to travel and bring home our son.  But at this point each small step is a step in the right direction.  

Thank you for praying for us and with us!  Thank you for being excited with us!  

We are still selling raffle tickets for our fundraiser until September 25!  So if you'd like to purchase raffle tickets for our freezer full adoption fundraiser let me know!!  Tickets are $5/1 or $20/5   and if you'd like to help by selling raffle tickets to your friends/neighbors/coworkers let me know and I will mail you several!  I just need all money and tickets returned to me by September 25.  Again, this is limited to the QCA area.  

Summer Fun...

It has been an absolutely crazy busy summer for us.  I can't believe that it is already August and some kids in our area will be starting school again next week.  We started home schooling Am again, beginning in July.  We have a busy school year ahead of us so we decided to get a jump start!

This summer we also have been working on our home study for our adoption.  We have finished our home visits and are waiting now on the finalization of our home study!!  This is so incredibly exciting for us and means we can start finishing our dossier for all of the necessary things it needs.

So far this summer we have experienced an unexpected gall bladder surgery, a trip to Arkansas for two weeks, 4 home study visits, A weekend visit with Aaron's Dad and his wife, and we began school in July!  It has been so busy and summer isn't over yet!  We still plan to hit the pool a few more times despite it being much more chilly than we expected it to be for summer and have a couple of more weekend vacations planned.

We are in the midst of our Freezer Full Adoption Fundraiser and are excited about the interest!  You guys are helping us bring home our little boy!  Thank you so very very much from the bottom of our hearts!

Here are a few pictures from our summer:

Amariss rode a horse like she'd been doing it her whole life!
Truly, this is her first time riding horse by herself and she loved it!

This little girl takes after big sister and absolutely loves water!

Her roller blades are her absolute favorite! (even though it doesn't look like it in this picture)

I couldn't resist!  She looked so cute on the 4th of July!

These two sisters are always making me laugh with their silly ways.

In true Amariss fashion, she was able to find a baby blue jay and show him much love.
I was able to coax her into putting him back although she insisted we needed to raise him.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!  We will keep you updated as our adoption plans continue to unfold!  We cannot wait to meet our little boy!  Thank you for all of your prayers and support!!!

Remembering

July is when Aaron and I remember four anniversaries of miscarriages from the past 8 years.  Half of our miscarriages have occurred in July, it has no longer become dates for us, but throughout the whole month it rests in the back of our minds.  Our first miscarriage occurred on July 20, 2006.

I know I've written often about our miscarriages and our anniversaries.  We are now 8 months from our last miscarriage, so for us it feels strange.  8 months doesn't seem like long, but when you are back to back miscarriage to pregnancy - infertility to miscarriage - pregnancy to miscarriage - adoption to pregnancy - miscarriage to adoption, you feel like you're on a roller coaster.

Right now we are in the early stages of our adoption.  It feels a lot like being at the end of your first trimester, you are finally ready to accept this pregnancy and believe this baby is really going to come home.  You still have a long way to go, your ultrasound is still months away, but you are excited.  Meeting your baby someday seems real.

So to be remembering these anniversaries while being in a strange state of "pregnancy" leaves me feeling surreal about them all.  Like I can look back and say, "Wow, God - look what you did and look where you are taking us!"

I love this song by Matt Redman:

Never Once

Standing on this mountaintop
Looking just how far we’ve come
Knowing that for every step
You were with us

Kneeling on this battle ground
Seeing just how much You’ve done
Knowing every victory
Was Your power in us

Scars and struggles on the way
But with joy our hearts can say
Yes, our hearts can say

Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did You leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

Scars and struggles on the way
But with joy our hearts can say
Never once did we ever walk alone
Carried by Your constant grace
Held within Your perfect peace
Never once, no, we never walk alone

Never once did we ever walk alone
Never once did You leave us on our own
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

Every step we are breathing in Your grace
Evermore we’ll be breathing out Your praise
You are faithful, God, You are faithful
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

You are faithful, God, You are faithful
You are faithful, God, You are faithful

The words echo exactly what my heart feels, like we are standing on a mountaintop, looking back on all that we went through or that we're kneeling on the battleground, remembering the war that was fought and all that our hearts experienced.  I feel like we can look at our hearts and see our own scars and our muscles bear the strength of the struggle. But through it all - and I've always said this - never once did we not feel God's love, his faithfulness, his strength carrying us through it all.

I remember pregnant with Zemirah, just weeks after our 6th miscarriage, reading and owning 

2 Timothy 2:13 "If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself."  

I felt so faithless, I had no confidence that that pregnancy would bring me a baby in my arms.  I knew God was good, I knew he was faithful and I knew that when I went through another miscarriage I would survive.  I am thankful that God had different plans for the little life growing inside of me.  

This July we remember the lives of our little ones in heaven.  Amariss speaks often and openly about her brothers and sisters in heaven.  Their lives hold value to her and to us.  They are a part of our family and someday we will meet them, hold them, and pour on them all the love we have missed.  

I am so thankful that this July we celebrate all of our children;

Baby K, Tiny, Itty Bitty, Amariss, Cinco, Woven, Bunnin, Zemirah, Isaiah, Little One, and our soon to be Baby Boy.  

Amariss found and loved on a baby blue jay yesterday.

Zemirah danced and praised Jesus with me this morning.