Thank you to everyone who supported our giveaway! We have contacted the winner and we hope she will enjoy her vacation!
There will be a giveaway for sharing Salome that will start on Sunday. You can read more about Salome at the bottom of this post and at a post I wrote HERE. She is turning 16 in March and needs a family desperately. If you would like to donate anything to the giveaway PLEASE let me know! We need to have as many people as possible see her so that she can find her family. There is a family out there for her. I just know it! Help us find them!
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This is the longest blog post ever, and I am so sorry for that! I don't have the energy to shorten it or break it up into different posts. I am so burnt out right now. We have had so much good stuff in the last couple days, but also a little more of the "hard" creeping in. Is the good there to help us overcome the hard? I hope so, because it is taking a lot of intentional effort today.
So let's talk about the good. Life is good in so many ways! We were able to walk in and get our fingerprints done early. That was incredible by itself. It shaves more than a week off for us. We called those in and found out we already have an officer assigned to us. I've heard good things from other families about this officer, which is reassuring.
We are selling our SUPERMAN WAS ADOPTED shirts, and we have had a nice response so far. We are doing all the legwork on these ourselves, so we are getting a lot more personal interaction than we could with our previous shirt fundraiser. It has been so neat! We are talking to people who have adopted from or will be adopting from so many places. There are so many beautiful families and beautiful people in the world, and it has been such a positive experience for us to hear from so many people. That has lifted my spirits beyond measure.
Needing to raise some of our adoption money has been hard on my pride. It puts me outside my comfort zone in so many ways. It has been a miraculous experience too though. We have received so much unexpected support, both financial and emotional. Seeing friends and family and strangers share pictures of our boys and share our journey to adopt them has been so uplifting. I am very much a person who is happy to stay quiet about things, happy to do things on her own by herself. I can't do that with this! I have to move beyond myself to get these boys home. That's hard for me to say, but it's good for me to say too. In return, I have been given the chance to see so many people offer support. Each penny in our account, each time someone shares a fundraiser, that's a little miracle in my eyes. I am a recovering cynic, and this has been so good for my heart and my soul.
One of the nicest things about those shows of support is that they always seem to come when we need it most. We get home from struggling with a particular document to find someone telling their friends about these boys. We hit a setback, but make a connection with another family. Another adoption expense comes up, but a donation comes in. We've had a few more hard things over the last couple days, so it's really nice to see the support too.
Let's start in on our hard things. My 4 year old was kicked out of her ballet class yesterday. Yeah, that was embarrassing. With our bitterly cold temperatures, none of my children have gotten the outdoor playtime little kids need so badly. Everyone in the studio was on edge because of one family's medical crisis, and one of the instructors couldn't be there because of it. In retrospect, when I realized the other instructor wouldn't be there, I should have pulled my daughter out proactively. I feel a bit guilty for allowing her to remain in a situation where I knew she would fail. If things aren't better next week, we may need to pull her out of the class for the rest of the year. The combination of the classroom environment and the way misbehavior is handled in the class without the second instructor are just a recipe for disaster for my daughter. We have been working so hard to help her succeed, and she was making a lot of progress. It's not worth it if it starts causing setbacks.
We have one document we are in the process of re-doing. That isn't a big deal, mostly just an annoyance. Then we also just found out we won't be able to submit our dossier without a newly filed tax return. With the timing of everything, there is a chance we will have our immigration approval in hand and need to wait on tax documents. That was frustrating. We can e-file on January 30th IF we have all of our papers by then. In the grand scheme of things, it isn't that big of a deal. We thought we were just about at the finish line for this side of the ocean, so it is mentally tough to think we might need to delay things because of taxes. I hate taxes anyway. (Surprising, huh?)
I am also worn out from the fundraising. Our family needs a certain amount of money. I tried posting it as the header for the blog, before I remembered that we would be spending money out of pocket for the shirts and shipping. We won't know exactly how much more our FSP needs to read until the shirts are all ordered and shipped, but I'm going to leave the amount at the top for now. I'm trying to find a way for the local paper to do a story about us and a spaghetti dinner we will be organizing plus our shoe drive, but I have to coordinate so many schedules to set it up! I really want that to be a success because that is our local community who will see the difference in these boys once they are here. I want people to be able to be a part of that, and I can't let calendars get in my way!
There is so much need, and sometimes it feels like so little to go around. I thought that, until I looked at some math another family posted. I have 300 friends on Facebook. If every one of them donated $40, we would have enough money to complete our adoption including the third child at the same orphanage. If we adopted the child in a different region, another $40 from all of those people would cover those costs too. I have NO expectation for people to give us money. It was just eye-opening to see how quickly that money can be multiplied if it is given by so many people.
So, more on the need of so many families. If you would like to fundraise for your own family or a different family or a waiting child, you can read more about the SHOE DRIVE. It doesn't cost you anything, and everything you collect is credited to the Reece's Rainbow account you select.
Here are some families who need some support!
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So I said before I would love to see what would happen if a chunk of money was showered on Casey's family. That is still true! Want to know why? They are also going to be Iggy's family. Do you remember how he aged out over the summer and so many people were so devastated? This is a chance for redemption. Their FSP needs to say $10K and they travel in February.
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The Campbell family needs $14K more and they travel in February. They are having a really fun event on Saturday where you can donate a dollar for their daughter!
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The Jenks family needs 19K! They are adopting TWO older girls. It should be pretty clear by now that these older kids are close to my heart. I love seeing other families who are also taking older kids into their homes and their hearts. They travel in February, and I would love for them to be funded. They are selling an adorable unit for young kids on their feelings and emotions.
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The Claus family is not yet fully funded for Donald. They met their matching grant, but they aren't done fundraising yet! They have an auction here!
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The Novit family is adopting a sweet little boy, and they travel in the spring! Go look at this adorable little face! Colleen is a great advocate for so many children, and she deserves that same support! They are so close to $3000! Can anyone bump them over that?
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"Salome" is turning 16 in March. She is delayed, but she is very sweet and she loves attention. She has the best laugh ever. I would love to see her in a family! I have posted about her before HERE. You can see her Reece's Rainbow page HERE, and here is a video she stars in. Her grant has $6343 now!
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The New family is now fully funded! That is so awesome!
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