Fundraising is hard work!

If you dont already know fundraising is very hard work, I have been working on garage sale stuff like crazy for what seems like forever! Going thru things, pricing it, cleaning it, putting it away until time to haul it all to Candy's house. And in between doing all that Im begging people for donations of things and arranging to go get them all while still trying to be a stay at home mom to three kiddos. Savannah and Kaeden dont let me get a whole lot done during the day between feeding them, diaper changes and general baby stuff so needless to say my house looks very unkept. I have about 4 loads of clean laundry that is not sorted or folded piled in our dining room and groceries from last week still sitting out on my counters! its a mess that is driving me crazy but its going to have to wait. We are absolutely jam packed as far as our schedule right now, the yard sale this weekend, next weekend we go for a visit with Savannah's birth family and the week after that is our home visit for our home study which I really need to start gathering paperwork for sometimes in between everything else! oh yeah and finish filling out the 5 million forms Ashlyn brought home from school....ooohh and I almost forgot im the matron of honor in one of my best friends wedding that is in 3 months so i have all that going on too. Can you say STRESS?!?! lol so anyway I am still in need of stuff for thr yard sale if you want to get rid of some stuff I will joyfully take it! I also am in need of bidders for my auction of facebook and entries into our fisging trip/cash giveaway!!! Thank you so very much to those who have been helping us and praying for us and this stressful process!

ransoms

Ok this is the last thing I translated as she was getting ready to board the airplane with the group of kids she came to America with to be hosted for the summer, it was my response to her typing " I made my decision, I want to live with you". You have no idea how how hard and stressful this whole process is and not having the money to make it go faster is even worse. I honestly did not think that we were meant to adopt her with the mix up on which child we were hosting, we were signed up for a 9 year old and got a 13 year old but God knew what he was doing. The first week I was in total denial, I was literally making up excuses why she was not ours. I mean really who wants to adopt a 13 year old girl from a country where you have to spend over a month in that country to adopt?!? and who wants to go through all the stress of begging people for money and support and working your butt off to save and make money to do it?!?! Jared kept dropping hints that we should adopt her and I was just like no I dont think so. Until the hosting program wanted her back with the group of kids in another state so she could be taken to meet other families...it hit me I didnt want her to go. I was up that whole night and cried when I told her she was needed back with the group, I cried even more when she kept telling me she didnt want to go. She wanted to be here with us, she just fits here. I cant even begin to describe how it felt to have to send her back to her counrty, to the orphanage...it was very hard. Imagine you have a baby and after 3 weeks they make you give it back but the place it goes is not a great place. They have lots of babies there and not enough adults to take care of them. They sleep in a dorm with a dozen or more others, they have no personal belongings or privacy. You can get your baby back but you have to do a ton of paperwork and subject yourself to interviews and background checks that take months to complete, oh yeah and the worst part...ready for it? You have to pay a lot of money to get them back around $30,000. Would you do it for your baby? Would you pay a ransom if someone kidnapped your child or spouse? Well thats how we feel, we need that money to ransom our girl. She deserves a family that wants her here and wants to love her. We are trying our hardest to get through this process fast but it takes time to do everything we are reqiured to do and save and raise the money. We have a budget we are sticking to so we can put as much of our money into the adoption fees as we can but its not enough. it would take over a year for us to just save the money. She is 13 and will be 14 by the time we get there. Time is literally running out for her. Please consider donating to our adoption fund and praying for us. Oh and by the way please dont even think of leaving rude comments about this here, they will be deleted and ignored:)

https://www.facebook.com/events/190787547720025/

CASH prizes!!!!

Ok, we have a giveaway going on for a guided fishing trip for 3 with Notorious Guide Service on Galveston Bay. Entries are $10 each so if you donate $10 you get one entry, if you donate $100 you get 10 entries!!! Since it is such a local area thing we decided to add a cash option prize as well how would you like to win $100 or $50 cold hard cash?!?! Hmmmm sounds pretty awesome huh?! Well here is how you can same as the fishing trip, make a donation of at least $10 to our chip in and get one entry. You can also get one free entry by sharing this blog post on your facebook page or your blog, to get the free entry you must leave a comment telling me where you shared. Same for donations leave a comment with the amount or you can email me and let me know but you have to tell me!!! Winners will be chosen September 15th by randow draw and notified. The first winner will have a choice of the trip or the cash and so on! So please consider entering our giveaway and helping us get a little closer to our goal for this adoption! Dont forget I also have an auction going on right now on facebook that has several items up for bidding, all money is being used for our start up costs like home study, getting background checks and fingerprinting. after our home study is complete we will have a family sponsorship account set up through a non profit that you can make tax deuctible donations to, but for right now everthing has to go into our personal account! Thanks so much!!!

What can YOU do????

Hmmm....ok so I know I don't have many readers but everyone has to start somewhere right?! I went to bed last night worrying and thinking, yeah I know we are not supposed to worry it does no good. I know God's got it but I still have issues with surrendering my worries to him and letting things happen in his way and his timing. I read everyday on my Facebook groups about families trying so hard to raise funds to adopt, children being neglected and abused both here in the US and overseas and my heart just aches. Of course the easy thing to do is just avoid or ignore these things and go blissfully on ignorant of the worlds suffering. Easier yes, right no. Everyone can do something...pray, donate your time or money to a good cause, tell others about what's happening in our world. I'm not even saying you have to support adoption just find a worthy cause you are passionate about and do something. We all can do little things and all those small things add up to something big and you never know who you are going to inspire or touch. If you know a family who is adopting pray for them and do something nice doesnt have to be expensive maybe just a card encouraging them, offer to watch their kids so the parents can have a date night. If you know a family with a sick child pray for them and again offer to help housecleaning, meal cooking, grocery shopping whatever you can do! When you are grocery shopping how about picking up a few extra canned goods or cans of pet food to donate, or personal hygiene products to donate to a homeless shelter. The ways to help are endless and I just get tired of people saying they can't do anything because they aren't rich. Prayer is free people and the most powerful tool of all!!! Ok so getting off my platform now!!! Today I am going to be working on the dreaded "B" word....BUDGET:( we need a list of all our monthly expenses for our home study and we also need to keep better track of our spending and see where cuts can be made so we can put back as much money as we can into our savings acct for this adoption. I hate the "B" word, I have gotten used to buying whatever I felt like at the grocery store and if I wanted Starbucks or mcdonalds just driving thru. Well all that has stopped. If we don't need it I won't be buying it, I'm not saying we won't ever have extras we will but they will be rareities not the norm! So anyway wish me luck I'm off to stress myself out when I realize how much we spend every month on bills:(

Sorry it's been crazy here!!!

Like the title says it has been crazy busy here since we got home a week ago today from taking Masha to NC to fly back to Eastern Europe. Not only are we trying to get all Ashlyn's stuff for back to school taken care of but Friday the 17th we had a court date to finalize Savannah's adoption!!! Yay!!!! Still waiting on the paperwork to be filed and recorded but hopefully it will be soon since I need a copy of her new birth certificate for a new home study. Yes you read that right, another home study so that means we are adopting again! Soooo on top of all the normal craziness going on here we are paper chasing and fundraising like mad! We will need about $30,000 for this adoption we are hoping to bring two children home and complete our family:) unfortunately we are starting from 0 in the financial aspect of things since we literally just completed Savannah's adoption and Kaeden's adoption was just over two years ago. We need to have the money as fast as possible, the country we are adopting from has a fast process. Thankfully we have already had several wonderful people donate to us to get us started. Right now until our home study is complete all donations are being made to us personally, after our home study is done we will have a family sponsorship account set up through a non profit that people can donate to and it will be tax deductible. As for fundraising we are going to have some garage sales, I've been selling stuff from around the house we no longer need and we also have a giveaway going on now for a guided bay fishing trip for 3 in Galveston Bay from Notorious Guide Service. For every $10 donation you get one entry ex. $100=10 entries, you can also get one free entry by sharing this post on your Facebook page you have to let me know you shared by leaving me a comment and in case you win you may want to message me your email address so I can get in touch with you! The giveaway ends Sept 15th and the winner will be chosen by random draw of numbers. I also have an auction going in now on Facebook with several great things up to bid on !!! Please email me or ask me on Facebook how to donate or bid on an item. We are very excited about this new journey we are on and it's scary at the same time but we are trusting that GOD will provide!!!

:( sadness and exhaustion

Well we put Masha on a plane back to Eastern Europe yesterday:( we are all sad to see her go. There is more to this story but that going to have to wait for another day today we are driving home still from NC. We left Raleigh yesterday at almost 3 pm and drove to Mobile AL and arrived around 12:30am. It's now 9:35am and we are somewhere in western louisiana! I'm tired and soooo ready to be home I miss the babies and my king size bed! All this driving has given me lots of time to think and plan though so I'm happy about that, details to follow hopefully in about a week:) in the meantime going to be very busy, we finalize Savannah's adoption Friday and need to get all Ashlyn's school supplies and clothes this week!!!

Update on our last week of hosting

I've been trying to write for almost a week now but blogger has had a different idea than me! It either wouldn't publish and save or let me log in period! So anyways, this is our last week of hosting Masha. In fact as I type hubby is driving down I-10 east headed out of FL on our way to NC. I can't even begin to describe the feelings we have now, let's just say they are mixed and jumbled! We know we are not looking forward to Sunday at the airport and having to send her back. We have truly enjoyed having her be with us for the past 3 weeks. It has been an adventure and a huge learning experience! I'm going to apologize now it's hard to put my thoughts together stuck in the car trying to type a blog post on my phone!!! We have met a lot of Russian speakers living here in America during this experience also it's been wild! Night before last as we were checking into our hotel in D'iberville MS I recognized the desk clerks accent so started taking to her and she later came by to visit with Masha while we ate dinner. We also visited with one of Jareds friends last week after church who is married to a native Russian and she invited one of her friends over who us a native Ukrainian so luckily Masha has had several opportunities to converse in her native language. She has picked up lots of new English words and understands a few phrases now. Ashlyn has enjoyed having someone to play with and giggle with too, every night I have to tell them multiple times to be quiet they are going to wake up the babies! Speaking of which we left them at home with my parents since it is such a long drive to NC. I am missing them like crazy but glad they aren't here stuck in the car all day! Well we are almost to GA I think anyway so pray for us and that hopefully there is a break in the rain we've been driving in since LA so the girls can go to the beach!