Christmas Blessings!

I won't lie. This Christmas season has been such a huge mess of emotions for me. It's been a hard season of missing our son, and also now of missing our two across the oceans. We have gotten word though that Sabrina had a sweet Christmas celebration and then got some gifts and such along with all of the rest of the kids in her orphanage. I am hoping that Kurt also has had something special and that he is doing well also.

Today we got our provisional approval on our i800. So we are just waiting for one more thing before our dossier gets resubmitted to the government in their country and then we will get a judge assigned to us and a court date! Some of the assignments and court dates have been VERY fast lately so we are hopeful that this wait will be not too long before we can bring them home. Getting the approval letter today, precisely the day I had hoped it would arrive, was a wonderful gift.

Also wonderful and quite a surprise was that our FSP on Reece's Rainbow has grown quite a bit in the last few days! I am SO thankful for every donation, no matter how big or small, but the fact that it grew so quickly just about has me on the edge of tears. Thank you. We are only about $3300 away from being fully funded.

God Bless you!

Beautiful

We were blessed to be able to spend a week with each of our new children recently and oh are they precious. How good God is to bless us. Sabrina is spunky and opinionated but so sweet and beautiful. She is very smart and learned how to play with several of the new toys we brought for her. She has trouble with some of her fine motor skills as far as grabbing things, but she was able to grab and hold onto the Oball we brought. It will be great to get her home and started with some OT stuff and let her explore her world at last! She is very strong and fast at moving. She's not quite crawling on hands and knees yet but is so close. She will crawl on her elbows and knees and then get up on hands and knees when she stops. She is such a joy. She's in good physical condition and wears a 3t (at nearly 3 yrs old).

Our little guy is just a few months younger but quite a bit smaller. He only wears an 18 months, and was pretty thin. He's a happy guy and you can tell that the nannies love him, but he has had such a rough start to life that he just cannot thrive in an orphanage setting. He is absolutely beautiful and has a quiet but mischievous personality. His giggle is infectious.

We can't share the super precious photos we have from our trip, but they are darling. Thank you to everyone that has helped get us this far. We have just $4550 left to raise which means I'll be back to work here shortly in my studio so we can knock that out!

Tis the season to be busy!

Holiday preparations are nearly upon us, and I am working on some fun craft ideas that would make great gifts! I hope to open our Christmas Shop the second week of December. Stay tuned! I may be able to post a little preview soon.

Quilts!

I have started my fall/winter sewing fest out with making quilts and blankets to sell (and a couple to keep). Here are just a few of them. If you'd like to see what is currently available: Click Here

31"x36" flannel safari quilt

27x36 flannel and minky 

18"x25" Taggy lovey blankets

Super soft pink minky & flannel quilted blanket

More in progress! (lots more coming including pinks)

We have also been chosen as one of this month's 5/5/5 families! For those that don't know, the 5/5/5 for Families program works like this: They pick 5 families for the month. Everyone encourages others to donate just $5 to the fund and the money is split between. So one donation helps 5 adopting families. BONUS you can set it up to automatically donate to this fund each month. Set it and forget it and by the end of one year you will have helped *60* families! It may not be a big amount but many hands make light work, as they say, and it all adds up. The last several months have totaled over $3,000 to split between the 5 families! You can donate a larger amount than $5 if you wish as well, or do a one time donation. Each family that is chosen then tries to send in a $5 per month donation for the next 6 months. We have been donating to the fund for almost a year now I think and it's great! The month ends for us on December 5th. http://reecesrainbow.org/555families

Auction totals!

Our handmade item auction did very well and brought in over $1550 in bids and additional donations! The last few payments should arrive Monday  as people get back to their computers. The Vanchura family will get $775 towards their adoption of "Nugget" and we get the same twoards our adoption of Kurt & Sabrina.

Thank you everyone that helped by donating, bidding, and sharing!

Last day to bid! Travel update!!

Today is the last day for our handmade online auction! I cannot wait to get the totals and send the Vanchura family their half towards their matching grant when everything is paid for.

Now for some other exciting news... The normal timeline between being submitted to the country's government and travel for trip #1 has been about 2 months. Recently this has been shortened by quite a bit. The latest several families have been given verbal approval, written 2 weeks later, and travel dates for TWO WEEKS later! ACK! It's wonderful and makes me nervous all at once. smile emoticon It's possible we could still travel in MID-NOVEMBER if our dossier is accepted next week!

Also we have applied for a grant and they meet at the end of the month to decide who gets grants and how much. If our travel happens in November, our big chunk of agency fees ($6500) will be due in December and that is a hard month to fundraise/sell artwork. So if you could please pray that we would get a grant, that would be great. Thank you!

Fundraiser wrap-ups & Submission!

This week our yard sale will likely finish up due to the increasing wind and the ever increasing likelihood of our tent turning into a very large kite. I may most some of the items into the porch and try to sell them online. We will see what is left after it ends on Saturday. I am praying it's all gone and there is nothing left to do!

Our online handmade item auction also ends this week! We have some items still without bids, but I think things will pick up towards the closing date. At least that is what I am hoping. The auction proceeds are being split 50/50 with the Vanchura family!

All of our dossier is in country now and should be submitted this week! That means we should have written referral  & travel dates in about 3 weeks and updated medicals and such shortly after that. We should travel in roughly 2 months. Two months from now will be mid-December, which is a hard time to travel. Flight costs are higher so we had to raise our travel estimates as well. And we found out that we owe a little more on our agency fees than we thought, so our total estimate has gone up about $1250. That's not really the direction you hope it will go! But we will make it work. God has his plan and we are trusting his timing in all of it.

Since we have 2 fundraisers wrapping up at the end of the week, I am hoping to get back to my studio work next week and then have some art pieces to auction off shortly after that. We have around $7500 left to raise (not counting the new fees I had to add to our estimate, we will deal with that if need be). Most of that is agency fees that are due as soon as we get home from trip #1. I have set up a YouCaring page for anyone that would like to help us raise the money for those fees.

I am hopeful that by the end of October we will be a bit closer to having this all raised! Thank you for your help!!