Puzzle pieces all in place!

We leave very soon! YAY 

We have a date!!!

It's coming up on us quickly and in the next few weeks we will finally be meeting our new son. AHHHH So exciting! So much to do before we leave! I was TOTALLY calm before that call. Now we are all crazy. HA

Please pray that we can get what we need to get done actually finished or taken care of. Lots of accommodations for critters and such.

It's bizarre how real everything becomes even when you thought it was 'real' before.

If you see me running in circles, just let me burn off the energy. lol

Fully Funded!!!

It is with great excitement and happy tear filled eyes that we announce that we are FULLY FUNDED! This experience has been so humbling. You can make all the plans you want about how you think things will unfold, and where the money will come from, but in the end only God knows. He provides, and rarely in the ways you expect. We had donations of items to sell, cans to return, anonymous donations to our RR grant, people gave above what they need to at our sales and bought things for far more than they were probably worth. We received the gift of a working vehicle from some friends, so that we could continue to use our funds for getting our boy home, instead of trying to resurrect our dead car or buying something else. This last bump to meet our goal came from some very WONDERFUL young ladies that asked for donations for us on their Birthday invitations and raised $400! This gets us to our goal for bringing home Jacob. At this time we believe that we will be bringing home just him. We do plan to donate diapers (which we will purchase while in country) to the orphanage. Any funds raised beyond our fully funded number will go towards that or helping other families in their journeys to bring home their kids. Thank you all SO much for all of your support!! Please continue to pray for our little guy and for us. We should be travelling in August.

PS I still plan to try to sell more of the stuff from the garage sale this week to raise money for the orphanage. The rest of what is left after this weekend will be donated to the local homeless shelter/rehab center for their thrift store.

We have been submitted!!!!!

OK so for those that don't know what that means, it means that our dossier (packet of priceless paperwork) has been submitted to the government of Jacob's country. Now we wait while they process it and get our appointment date! Travel has slowed down a bit this Spring though so we are anticipating August now instead of July like we had hoped. All in God's timing though. I am sure it will all work out fine but it does make the start of the kids' school year a bit more tricky. School supply shopping is such a chore, and I hate to leave that up to whoever is watching them, so we will need to get started on that soon.

That's all the news for now I guess. We do still have several fundraisers going to help us get finished up on our funding. Puzzle Pieces ($5 sponsorship per piece, donate to Reece's Rainbow through our link), Owl prints through my Etsy shop, Equine sculptures (also in my Etsy shop), and I plan to open the garage sale one last time as soon as the weather cooperates.

Thx a bunch!!!

Fundraising updates

It has been so busy here lately. We will have the last piece of our dossier in country this week, and should be submitted next week. The travel wait after that has been running approx 10 weeks. So we could be travelling in 11 weeks (probably the 3rd-4th week of July)!! I meet this thought with a mix of "AHHHHHHHHHH!" excitement and nerves. It's getting more and more real. We have some packing to do, things to buy for the trip, we still have not painted his room, and we need to figure out our travel timeline a little bit, along with care for the kids and critters at home. It also means I/we be most likely missing the first days of the kids being back at school, so that will need to be worked out as well.

I also realized this morning that we will be real close to the end of our trip at our 16th Anniversary and my 35th birthday. This could be interesting to see how it plays out. I hope they have cherry pie, otherwise my birthday celebration might have to wait till we get home!

We still have about $1000 to raise. It's hard to put a hard dollar amount since things are always changing, but that should be pretty close. There are around 170 puzzle pieces still to get names on, plus we have the gorgeous Compelled Designs jewelry available for purchase as well. And since we still have a bunch of stuff left from the garage sale, we will be reopening it Friday/Sat this weekend as long as the weather holds.

Almost hitting our goal!

You may have noticed that our goal has suddenly shrunk quite a bit. Since we are not sure if we will be going for two kiddos or not, we will be fundraising for just one. Any extra funds will come from my business. It's a hard decision to make and things may change when we get there. I am trying to just go with the flow.

So! This means that we are SUPER close to being fully funded to bring home Jacob! How exciting is that!? I think we should be able to knock out the rest with the garage sale in a week and a half. The garage sale on Saturday brought in about $600, which is just awesome.

WOOHOO!

Still kickin! Give-away winners and lots of fundraisers!

I am exhausted!! And for more than one reason apparently. I thought I was just getting worn out from all of the work, but it turns out my choice to 'eat healthier' wasn't so healthy and my iron was is pretty low. Whoops. Guess I will stop denying myself those cheese burgers and steaks afterall!  Anyway, we are still pushing through on fundraising!  Lots of stuff going on right now. Here is a recap.

Blog Give-Away - We finally hit $600 in our Reece's Rainbow Grant and I decided that we will end the give-away now and draw for all of the remaining prizes. Each winner will get their choice. I will start drawing those next week unless I get a chance before that. Keep an eye on the blog's original give-away post for the announcements!

Puzzle Pieces - we still have 196 puzzle pieces to get names on! With just a little over 2 months to go till we are likely to travel, we have a LOT to do!

We also have a Jamberry fundraiser party going on right now. The rep is donating all of her commission from sales to us! That is 30%. Check it out - https://www.facebook.com/events/198433816946974/?fref=ts

Garage Sales - I have our HUGE sale scheduled for May 16-18th, but since this weekend is the Rural Parkway M-15 sale, I thought I would open up the porch for that. Well it kept growing and now we have SO MUCH STUFF! WOO! Well that's great but I am beat from setting things up and I still have MORE stuff in the garage that we have not sorted. Please pray this stuff sells well for us as we still need a significant chunk if we are going to get 2 children. If you are local, please stop by!  I also printed up 100 flyers to hand out for the big sale as well. I will try to get a picture of some of the madness tomorrow.

Ok now I am going to go bed so I can get up in the morning early enough to get a bunch more stuff priced. HUGE thanks to my mom for coming out to help price things and to her and everyone else that has donated stuff for us to sell.  We really appreciate it!!