Thursday, July 29, 2010

Things in the Works

I thought that getting all our paperwork finished and entering the 2nd trimester of our adoption - the waiting stage - would be quiet. Not so true. We have all sorts of things in motion.

We had to file our I600A which is our immigration paperwork so they will let our child into the country. I got our FBI fingerprinting dates in the mail today. We have to be in Nashville on August 20th at 9am. I had hoped that the date would be before school started so we aren't having to work around school. That is the glory of home school though. School can go anywhere. I guess school that day will be in the immigration office in Nashville. Excited to be in Nashville and get to eat at some yummy Ethiopian restaurant - don't have that luxury here in Knoxville.

We are also starting to get into some fund raising activities. I am working on gathering donations for a yard sale, working with some artist to do a design for a fund raising t-shirt, and we will be starting a support raising letter soon which means compiling a list of addressed which will probably put my wedding list to shame!

In the midst of that, we are working on applying for grants in hopes of raising some funds that way.

It is a lot.

Am I complaining - NO WAY! I know the Lord will take care of all this, even if I don't take a single one of these steps to raise funds. He has chosen a child for us and he will get her home, no doubt in my mind. All these steps are just steps, just things on my list and they will get done, eventually.

For now, I have a 2 year old tugging on my arm saying, "More raisins please."

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Keep on Moving!!

Wow, this journey is amazing! Our Dossier got approved on June 24th and we were able to get our official numbers on June 25th. Our initial numbers were #75 on the girl list and #45 for siblings. Which really almost blew my head off. When I went to mail our Dossier, I just had the number 75 stuck in my head. I just knew that we were going to be number 75. Crazy...

We will get a call or email every month letting us know our new numbers. I got the call yesterday for July and we have already moved :-) We are now officially #70 for girls and #40 for siblings. Crazy how those numbers can get you so excited but also anxious thinking about how long this wait is going to feel like before we are able to bring our little one/s home.

Yes, I am still, for some reason, really hoping that we get two. I know that the reality is that it will probably be just one as sibling groups that young are very rare. I suppose this just means that we are going to do this again. I just keep feeling like there are 5 kids in this family, so we shall see what the Lord does with that.

In "normal" family life, we are all doing really well. I have had mono and am trying to still recover and gain strength back from that. I am trying to keep our summer slow and relaxing, with not much success. The kids and I are hanging at the pool, playing with friends and eating lots of ice cream :-) I am super excited (especially since I whined on my blog about not getting to go on a 10 year anniversary trip) that next week M and I are going away for 5 days ALL BY OURSELVES! Thanks to some WONDERFUL family who are taking on our three, we are going to get a chance to get away and invest some time in us. I am so excited!

My heart has been in a bit of a funk as we have spent a couple of months now feeling overwhelmed by paperwork and the process of adoption so I am thankful that is past. The Lord has been really sweet to bring back around the real emotions of why we are doing what we are doing. The sweetness of the journey, the longing to bring our baby home, the excitement for my kids to have a new sibling, what it will mean to our family to be trans-racial. God has blessed me so much already and I am thankful. Anxious and impatient :-) but thankful!