The never ending fundraiser has an end!!

We have been collecting clothing and shoes since OCTOBER!!! Yes, you read that right October:) well we have scheduled the truck to come haul our stash away on Saturday Feb 8th. 

Most of the donations are in another family also participating in this fundraisers barn but there's still a lot in my garage! Today we picked up a pick up truck load FULL that was leftover from the Friendswood Community Church's youth ministry garage sale. Last week the Baptist Church in Damon closed down their clothing ministry and we were blessed with all the clothing and shoes. We took all the back seats out of my 12 passenger van and packed it. And I mean packed, from the roof to the floor there was no room! 

I'm ready to be done with this and anxious to see how we did. Remember we are splitting the proceeds with 3 other families so we are praying for a huge total number!! 3 families are going to be traveling in the next few months and one family already brought 2 boys home in Dec. this fundraiser took longer than we anticipated to get going and ALOT more work than we thought:) praying it's successful! We still would LOVE more clothing and shoes though if you can get then to us before the 8th and are in the Houston TX area please email me!!!!

Our family is still as of now in need of $14,000 to bring home a second child, she's in a different part of the country than Berkeley. We are REALLY, REALLY praying this fundraiser will help bring that number down by a few thousand dollars:) 

My garage!!!! This is half of it.

Loss....

Yesterday my Uncle Mike passed away. He was 59 years old. He is part of the reason we said yes to special needs adoption. My uncle was born with Hydrocephalus and had some other health issues. 11 years ago he had a stroke and wasn't found in his apartment until a few days later. Ever since then he's been living in a nursing home and has suffered many illnesses and setbacks. Yesterday he choked while eating his lunch which is something that happened pretty regularly but this time after performing the heimlich he lost his pulse and even at the hospital they were unable to stabilize him. I made it to the hospital in time to be there for my grandma and parents when my uncle passed. We'll be having the service later this week for him but he's finally healthy and pain free. He can walk again and talk since the stroke stole both of those things from him years ago. In heaven he whole and free.

Paperwork woes

We had a heck of a time getting a home study even started several months ago then we decided to move so our agency wanted to wait until then to to finish the home study so most of our paperwork either expired (it can only be a few months old when it gets to the girls country) or had to be redone because of having a new address and being in a different county. 

We finally are almost done with both the home study update and our dossier. Our agency is waiting on our background check results and one more reference. Hopefully all of that will be done in the next 2 weeks. The next step after that is sending it to USCIS for approval. We still have approval from them for one child so we just need an update from them which shouldn't take very long for them to do. I'm praying and hoping to submit our dossier mid Feb but that will all depend how fast USCIS works:( I'm afraid it will be more toward the end of Feb. That means I could get travel dates anywhere from the end of March to the beginning of May. It sounds like a long way away but really it's not, I'm just ready to get there and start that part of the process to get my kids home! 

I'll leave you with some cute pics of my other kids for now.

Kaeden and Ashlyn eating grapefruit from our tree

Callen and Pasha the first day of the new semester 

Savannah enjoying her breakfast!

First week of the new semester: DONE!!!

Well the first week of school is over and done thank The Lord!!! The boys are doing pretty good, both have some behavior issues but nothing serious. They  both like going and love riding the bus. 

Ashlyn on the other hand isn't thrilled, she's missing her old friends and the familiarity of being with the same people since kindergarten. She'll be fine though there's a boy at her new school she knows from a summer program she's attended for a few years and she's bringing a little girl from her class home today with her that lives a couple of streets over from us. One of Jared's friends also just bought a house in our neighborhood a few streets over and he has a son the same age as Ashlyn so hopefully they can be friends. 

Being a street over from the school definitely has it's perks!!! It's less than 10 minutes to walk there to pick her up and that pushing a quad stroller! I discovered yesterday though that having them walk and Pasha go in his wheel chair it took us 8 minutes just to get half way down our street! 

Welcome to 2014.....

What a crazy and busy holiday season we had. Right before Thanksgiving we moved and as if that isn't hard enough with 5 kids we all got the flu minus our 10 year old that week of Thanksgiving. We took forever getting well and trying to finish unpacking while feeling so bad was really tough. Our Christmas was pretty good, the boys really enjoyed opening gifts. The day after Christmas we had invited my parents, grandma and sister to come over and have dinner. I spent the whole day cooking I made 2 meatloaves, 2 corn casseroles, mashed potatoes and a big Greek salad. Around 4pm I was in the kitchen cooking and Jared was with the kids in the family room when I heard him yell. Kaeden one of the 3 year olds had reached up and poked him in the eye. By the time everyone got here and sat down to eat Jared was in a lot of pain and asked me to take him to the ER. So we left the kiddos here with everyone and headed to the hospital. They confirmed it was a cornea abrasion and gave us some meds. The next day we went to an opthomologist who gave more meds and scheduled a check up for a few days later. We ended up having to go back to him early because it was still hurting him so much, the abrasion was actually a tear and he had to cut a flap off his eye over the pupil. After another check up Jared's eye is healing but his vision is cloudy in that eye, the part of the cornea isn't attaching back to the rest of his eye like it should. So more medicine and more follow ups, we are praying his vision in that eye is restored since his job is inspecting things.....

Anyways on the adoption front since we moved we had to update our home study again and re do almost everything. We are almost done and hopefully will have everything ready for our dossier by mid Feb. As much as I hate these delays I know it's all in Gods timing. We are finishing up our shoe and clothing drive in the next few weeks! Yay!!! I'm so ready to not be digging through used clothes and shoes! Lol between that fundraiser, our tax return and the money left from selling our other home after remodeling our new one we hope to only need a few thousand to bring 2 children home!!! As of right now we need about $15,000 to do that.

I know I'm going to have critics about us moving and remodeling a home while fundraising but let me tell you we downsized. We bought a smaller home that's older. So yes of course moving costs money but we sold our previous home and are using those profits to remodel this one and make it handicap accessible (our old home wasn't handicap accessible either).  This home is in a much better area and zoned to really good schools. So far we love it, I'm close enough to walk to the elementary school.  Well I need to go  do some paperwork to bring my girls home so I'll leave you with a few Christmas photos.

Decorating cookies for Santa

Christmas Eve

The aftermath of opening gifts!!!