Officially "Paper Pregnant?"- I think?

So, adoption is a lot of hurry up. and wait. Hurry up. And wait. We have done this a lot over the last several months.  But we are officially on our way to almost meeting Little Man ! We had a successful Shoe Drive through an organization called Angel Bins. We collected 10958 pounds of shoes which will get recycled or reused. In total we raised  $4,931.10 towards our adoption ! This is HUGE because it completely paid for our dossier to be submitted !  We have been entered into a contest through them this month, and if we get the most "likes" on our photo we will win an extra $100 towards our adoption ! So please take a few moments to visit them and like our photo ! We had so much help collecting these shoes, from complete and total strangers to dear friends. It is amazing what can happen when a community gathers together to help one person. Here is our family on top of "Shoe Mountain" , which was really only about half of them :)

We sent off our dossier this week, which is what will officially start the adoption process in his country. We expect to be asked to travel in 3-4 months to meet him. More waiting. We will spend one week in his country before coming home, to more waiting. We expect this to be the home stretch, We think he should be home in about 9 months- maybe a few weeks less or more.

Our next two fees that are due are the hosting fee, and the referral fee, as well as the plane tickets there and back. This will all equal about $9,000 or so. We are still about $4,000 short but we have a few fundraisers in the works, and we still have most of these fundraisers going on too ! We just started a Tag The Bag fundraiser: We have a suitcase that we will bring on our trips and the goal is to have it covered in the names of everyone that helped us ! Here is how it works: you make a donation of any amount to our FSP and we will add your name to his suitcase ! We will fill this suitcase with toys for all of Owens little friends ! We hope to give each friend a toy of their own. Because all doantions are anonymous, I will need you to email or private message me to let me know you gave a donation.

We are so excited to be at this point in our process ! Of all the points in the adoption process I kind of feel like this is the biggest one, its like Hey We Are Coming Sweet Boy ! :)

Oh and completely not related to the adoption itself, we are mega excited to be going to a Spina Bifida Association Education Day in August ! We will get to hear from medical professionals and meet other families.  And we have a friend who has a child with Spina Bifida that has invited us to tag along to her child's Spina Bifida clinic. This will be a great opportunity for us to kind of get a better idea of what to expect from the doctor visits when Owen comes home ! We are so thankful to have met so many amazing friends along this journey.

All in all I think we are moving along pretty well in our process, but any adoptive mama can relate that some days just feel like its never going to happen. I know that we are so close in meeting him. And for that day, I seriously cant wait ! <3