Our 1st trip !

We have been back for a couple weeks now and I am ready to share about our experience. I will be breaking up our trip into a few blog posts so stay tuned :)

We got our travel invite on Oct 17. It was a Saturday. I wasn't planning to hear from Little Mans country. In fact I had just stopped obsessively checking my email a few days prior. My agency had said it would probably be November before we heard anything. It wasn't a super eventful day or anything, we woke up turned on some praise and worship music and started cleaning our house. My husband was at work so it was just me and the littles. Around 2pm I decided to check my email, and I am being completely honest it was because I get entirely way too many emails and my notifications on my phone was driving me a little bonkers ;) So when I opened the email and saw one from our agency with the subject line that said "travel time." my heart stopped. Could it be? In the middle of the month? No way. Shes probably just giving me another when to expect travel dates email LOL.

So after freaking out for several minutes I called my husband, mom and mother in law and told them the great news ! We were leaving Oct 30, so they needed to prepare for our arrival in NJ. Since we had decided the littles would not be coming along with us, my mother in law said she wanted to keep them with her. We booked our flight which was actually a total miracle ! They were less than half of what we thought they would be ! Miracles !

On Oct 29 (a wednesday.) Ethan went to school and I finished the last minute packing for the trip. Tony got off work a little early and we started the 10 hour drive to NJ. We arrived there around 4am on Thursday. We passed the littles off to their overly excited grandma and went to bed. When we woke up our bear had arrived and we put him in our carry on.

About the bear. I wanted so badly to leave Owen a bear with our picture on it so that he would at least have that with him until we come back for him. A friend of mine made the shirt with our picture and asked her husband to mail it to us, but something was wrong with our address and it never left the post office. We didnt realize the error until Wednesday afternoon so there was no way to get it. I was absolutely devastated. I knew that meeting him was so big, and in the grand scheme of things this bear wasnt huge. But my heart was breaking. Well Brook worked some social media magic and a a ton of amazing angels helped make that bear possible. She had some friends with USPS who held the truck for a few extra minutes until she could get there and my friend Carol covered the fee for flying it to NJ in time for us to bring it. Miracles. I am so thankful for them ! And by the way, he loved that bear. He snuggled it so hard and asked if he could put it in his bed when we left <3

On Thursday night my MIL drove us to the airport and we waited 5 hours for our plane to leave at 1:45am on Friday. We flew for nearly 20 hours and arrived in little mans country at 12:30am. And then went to sleep :)

We met another adopting family for breakfast along with our translator. When we were finished with that we toured the city a little and visited the cascades. The time difference was kind of sorta kicking our butts but we were so excited to finally be in little mans country. The place of his birth, his culture and heritage, the place he has spent the last 4.5 years in waiting for his family to come. It was an absolutely beautiful City and I can not wait to go back!

More later :)

Something big happened !!! :)

We are still waiting to hear from the Prime Minister that we have travel dates. In the meantime we are working hard to come up with the airfare needed to get to Little Man. We are estimating that we need $4500 to cover airfare and in country expenses. We have a few fundraisers going on and I am waitressing on the weekends to help raise some of the funds . We have $1600 in our FSP (woo hoo) , $371 at our agency, and a little over $4000 in our personal adoption fund. Which put us at really having no funds towards airfare......

until today.

Today ! Today we got an email from a grant organization (Rollstone) and they are blessing us with a $2,000 grant !!!!!! A $2,000 GRANT!!! I am so so so happy right now. Literally, me and the littles ran around the house screaming "woo hoo, yay yay " for about 20 minutes haha. Tony called in the middle of it to join in the shenanigans :)


 So now that we have the grant going to our agency, it means we have $2,393 towards airfare, so a little more than halfway to what we need !!! Will you help us get there??  We have an auction going on and a VISA gift card fundraiser going on too !!! Here is the link to our fundraiser !!!


At this point we really do not have a timeline. We can get an email next week, or 4 weeks from now. Our best estimate is sometime in October, maybe November.  But we need to be ready when they invite us. The last two families literally got 4 days notice. So we will have our bags packed and keep chugging away at the adoption fees until we get to meet little man, and what a glorious day that will be ! He has waited sooooo long , over 4 years to finally have a family of his very own ! I can not wait to see his face when he realizes that the family coming through the door is HIS. can you even imagine what it must be like to not have that, something every child deserves. Oh man, you guys. We are SOOO close. Over a year ago is when we found his sweet face, almost a year ago is when we switched agencies and sent in our first agency fee which placed this sweet boy on hold for us. I can not believe it. I know I am rambling but this is what happens when I want to share our news from the roof tops and I purposely wanted it to be in the blog :) Our thermometer is updated to reflect the new grant :)

 FIRST TRIP EXPENSES:
$1400 Hosting Fee (will be using FSP)
$4500 Referral Fee (will be using grant, escro at agency and some of our adoption savings account)
$4500 Airfare and in country expenses (We still need $2,393)

SECOND TRIP EXPENSES:
$3400 final agency fee
$4200 Hosting fee
$6000 Airfare and in country expenses (Hopefully a high Estimate!)

$15,993 = FULLY FUNDED




Thank you for all of the continued prayers and support as we love this sweet boy home !!!!!!!

Updates on where we are !

Last week I let you guys know about the Prime Minister having our file , and was asking for my updated passport. I was able to get it expedited (for a fee,of course.) And we received it on Wednesday ! I was so excited I practically tackled the Fedex guy in my drive way (okay...maybe not that crazy, but close enough) haha ! The next day I drove to Raleigh and got the document apostilled, and sent it over to the agency. Our agency is going to send it to his country so they can give us travel dates !!


Everyone wants to know what this means, right? This basically means at any point from here on out we could potentially get dates. Its possible that we could leave as early as THIS MONTH. Talk about crazy fast right !!! I am trying to prepare myself for that possibility because up to now we had anticipated an October invitation. We need to have everything in place and ready to go, in case we don't get a ton of heads up. Two other families in our group got FIVE days notice, talk about a panic attack. But we are so excited for them to finally meet their littles ! We will pack the kids and the dogs suitcases (no, the dog does not have clothes silly - but she is getting some new toys and bones for while we are away). They will all be going to stay with my mother in law who is an absolute wonderful grandma who is dying to spend quality time with her grand-babies ! She hardly ever gets to see them because she lives so far away.

We are just praying that when the time comes that we have exactly what we need to travel. At this point we only have a couple hundred towards airfare, because we had to spend some of what we had sat aside to get my passport quickly. I know its a big prayer , but please specifically pray that when we get the email that we have been invited over that we will magically have just enough to cover the airfare and expenses to go.

Someone else asked if this was our "Bringing Home" trip, sadly it is not. This trip we will go for one week, and visit with Owen each day. At the end of the week we will tell his country that we want him, and they will officially put him "on hold" for us. After that we will come home, and they will finish up some paper work on their side of things and invite us back for our Bring home trip. This should theoretically be about 3-4 months from when we get back home. But his country seems to be moving FAST. We just sent our dossier about 7 weeks ago and the Prime Minister wasnt supposed to get it for another 5-10 weeks...

For trip one we have both fees needed , what we do not have is the airfare. This could be as much as $4,000 for us to go over. We are confident that God has a plan for this. He knows exactly where the money is coming from, even if we may not.

Once we get home we will need to start preparing for our second trip which like I said could be 3-4 months later, unless his government decides to move things mega fast again ;)

And for that trip we will need --
Our final agency fee- $3400
Our Hosting fee-- $4200
Airfare & expenses in country-- $6000 (We are hoping and praying this is a HIGH estimate.

Please continue praying our family through this process. We have felt the love and excitement from so many people and we appreciate the love and support everyone has shown. We are in the final stages now, almost to the finish line. If I were a runner ( hahahahaha, this is funny to anyone that knows me in real life ) I might could insert some knowledge about being at the end of a marathon but alas I am not, so I wont.

<-- My passport arrived !!




Its authenticated  and sent off to Little Mans Country !!! -->

Full force GO MODE !!!

WOW. Words can not even describe the craziness happening right now. Our dossier arrived in Little Mans country around July 17. It has been there 6 weeks , and theroetically could have taken several months to get in the hands of the Prime Minister. We just got an email yesterday asking if my passport had arrived yet, which means the PM has our file and is reviewing it !! We will be leaving in a matter of weeks !!!! weeks !!

We are waiting for my passport still, it needed to be changed to my married name.Once it arrives I will get it authenticated and sent to our agency and they will send it off to his country. Once the PM has proof of my passport he will issue travel dates. I have been driving around and making a ton of phone calls today to see if I can expedite the passport at this point, and I am waiting on a few phone calls still.

Little Miss is not feeling well, and seems to have a really bad case of allergies. She had a doctors appointment this morning where they gave her a breathing treatment to help with her wheezing. So in between driving all over Gods creation, and making a ton of phone calls she puked in the car twice. Not fun, my friends. But we are finally home and she is resting so I figured now was as good a time as any to give everyone the updates. And plead for help. this is what we have left

Trip One Expenses--- Expected Travel Octoberish
$1400 hosting fee (paid)
$4500 airfare / in country expenses for trip 1
$4500 Referral Fee (due 14 days after we get back, and we have it !)

Trip Two Expenses
$3400 Final Agency fee
$4200 Hosting fee for trip 2, this also covers hotel/transportation/translator
$5000 airfare for trip 2 (for me, Tony, and Owen)
$1000 in country expenses trip 2

Total is about $18,000 that we still need. This is an estimate as about $9000 of that is for airfare and we are really hoping it doesnt cost that much !!!

BUT ! We have a fundraiser going on for a VISA gift card give away. How it works is you pick a number, and donate that amount to our FSP, (link on sidebar) , and send me a copy of your receipt either via email or private message me via Facebook if we are friends.

Operation: first trip is officially ON. Will you help us get there?

The Devil wont steal our JOY

The Devil sure does hate adoption, and he will use anything he can to discourage us during this process. Today the Devil used someone in the community to attack our family about the adoption. This person did not understand the adoption process and instead of asking us about it , decided to assume we must be making the whole thing up because we haven't brought Owen home yet. This person basically harassed me for the better part of the morning, until I was finally able to explain the process in a way I hope she could understand. While I try very hard to not let people like that get to me , it did.  Nobody wants this process to move faster than I do. I have a son waiting for me to get everything together to bring him home. He is waiting for us 6,112 miles away.  Let that sink in, 6,112 miles is separating me from my child. The child I have grown to love, and want to raise more than anything.

Let me explain how an international adoption works for people who may not be familiar. It is long. It is time consuming. And it is exhausting. But it also so WORTH IT. Most international adoptions can take between 1 and 4 years. Owens country happens to be on the shorter end I think of that spectrum, averaging 12-18 months. We are well on our way to having him home by February 2016. We are making great time in terms of getting our documents done as fast as we can. But there are some things we can not control. We can not control that it took our social worker over a month to come out and do the home study after it was paid for, we can not control that after it was done it took her another 7 weeks to write it up and send it. We could not control that it took almost a month to get an appointment with USCIS, and another month to get approval. Our dossier was finally sent a couple weeks ago, but to get there it took a lot of paper work. Most of that paper work required other people to do some work. It took us awhile to get some of the documents needed. So yes, it takes awhile.  But it is WORTH IT.

-We committed to Owen in November of 2014. ($8,225)
-We paid for our home study in December of 2014 ($1,400)
-Our homestudy was completed in January 2015
-But not submitted to us until March
-We sent off for USCIS in March ($890)
-But didnt have our appointment until April
-We finally got approval on May 5 2015
-We were waiting for the last needed documents until June
-Once we got them , we went to get our dossier authenticated ($280)- and waited another week for them to send it back to us.
-Then we finally sent it to our agency the last week of June. ($4,500)
-They took slightly over a week reviewing it.
-But it should arrive in Owens country THIS week.

As you can see there are a TON of things that have to happen before you can bring home a child.

Next we have to wait for our dossier to be translated, we have to wait for the Prime Minister to review it and invite us over to meet Owen. This whole part is going to take about 3-4 months. So we should be traveling by October / November.

The next set of fees break down something like this:
$1,400 which is the hosting fee. This will pay for our apartment, our translator and our transportation.
$4,000 for plane tickets. This is just an estimate. It could be more or less. Because we will not have much notice (most families get about 1-2 weeks notice to be in country) we are having a hard time guessing.
$200-$250 for food expenses in country (again just a guesstimate)

With in 14 days of arriving home from our meeting with Owen we will owe the Agency a $4,500 fee accepting his referral.

As it stands now this is where we sit with funding:
We have about $4500 in our savings (our adoption fund)
We have $471 in our FSP
and we have about $471 sitting in escroe at our agency.

We thought we had the hosting and accepting fees completely covered and that all we needed to wrory about was the plane tickets. But some of the money we thought we had covered fell through because the friend giving it to us had some unexpected expenses come up. We can not use the money in the savings because it will be due to the agency within 14 days of arriving home and that is not enough time to raise that much money.

So we are working on some fundraising ideas, and working on  ways to bring in a little extra income during the next 3-4 months, by working overtime and such. I am starting to get really worried that we might not be able to come up with the necessary finances in time. But God has provided each step of the way and I am keeping faith that he will continue to see Owen home. I know in my heart that this little boy is worth every single thing we need to do to get him home. I can not wait to meet his sweet little self and love on him !

While we may not have a huge circle of supportive friends and family, the ones that make up that circle are amazing. Family is what you make it and I am so thankful for the family we have <3 Some of them people Ive not even met ! But they have been such an  amazing support system it would be a shame to exclude them from being family. Thank you all so very much !

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

Home study DONE, USCIS sent ! Just waiting for approval :)

Holy Moly you guys. I need to get better at updating this thing more often ! So as far as the adoption goes it is moving right along.

In January we had our home study. So the social worker came to our home and interviewed us and our family. We passed and she approved us to bring our sweet little guy home ! It was supposed to take her about 2 weeks to complete the paper work but then we had snow days (which by the way never happen in NC ! ) Then her littles were sick, then she was sick. So it actuality it took 5.5 weeks to get our home study back. Which I know doesn't sound like a long time , but for a mamas heart it feels like an eternity.

We finally got our home study in the mail at the beginning of March. We sent our application to USCIS (which is basically our government) on March 6. The same day we were offered a matching grant of $900 ! Which is huge because we need $1,800 more to send off our dossier. The dossier is what essentially starts the adoption process in Little Mans country. Once this is submitted it will give us the best guess as to the remaining timeline to forever <3

Today we got confirmation that USCIS has received our application so it will be processed and we will need to have our biometrics appointment (fingerprinting done). It could still be several weeks before we have approval but in the meantime we have a grant to meet !

Really BIG NEWS : Our family finally has an FSP . Which is a family sponsorship program through Reeces Rainbow which happens to be the site that we found our little guy on. The benefit of this FSP is that all donations made to it are tax deductible. These funds will help with travel and adoption expenses ( not including dossier submission).  We are so excited to have finally set one up !

We have SEVERAL fundraisers going on to help meet this grant:

Do-Terra essential oils. This is a Facebook party and anyone is able to join the event. She is generously giving us her entire commission ! This party will run through March 31.

https://www.facebook.com/events/794749957256878/

The "Lets Get Our Dossier Sent" Auction. This is a Facebook auction that ends March 30, if you see anything you like you can bid on it. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1547073152234604.1073741836.1445711035704150&type=3

Haitian Bracelets: These bracelets are crafted in Haiti. The families use the funds for things like sending their kids to school, building a home, and providing food to their children. It is the goal of APPARENT Project to help keep families together and less children going to orphanages due to poverty. Each bracelet is $10, The families receive $5 and $5 goes to our adoption. Each bracelet comes with a bio of the family you are helping. I truly love this fundraiser because while it is helping us get one step closer to our little guy who we plan to name Owen, I feel like it is also so wonderful that in this way Owen finding a family and coming home to forever also gives the same rewards to those family in Haiti.

Last but certainly not least, We have Teething Necklaces ! These necklaces are great distractions for the nursing babies or toddlers. It keeps babies attention focused on the task at hand , and not the distractions going on around while its lunch time. or snack time. or dinner time. or any time :) They are Mommy-Made and Baby approved ;) Necklaces are $16 plus $3 for shipping. I will have more color choices soon !