Homestudy Approved!

I have been quiet on here, pondering life ;) Some know what's up, some don't. Sorry, not telling yet.

But...in the mean time, we received 2 pieces of the puzzle in the mail this week! Kelly got his employment letter, yay!

AND we have our notarized homestudy tucked away into the adoption folder with all the other paperwork! Hurray!!!! That combined with some donations that blessed our socks off, it's been a great couple of weeks.

Next comes an appointment on Friday and we will see where we head from there!

We are seriously trying not to melt in the sweltering heat. Our air conditioner is set on 78 and can barely keep the house at a unbearable 82 degrees! What can you expect when we are over 100 outside? YUK!

You can be the answer!

Would you PLEASE go look at this blog and see if you might be this little boy's family? Spread the word, this sweet child needs a home...fast!

T-shirt Giveaway!

Super great t-shirt giveaway at this blog for one week! Especially for those of you who have a heart for Africa, these are great shirts!!!!

Go check it out!

a surprise blessing

Aren't those the best kind?

I have felt a little discouraged/worried lately about the adoption costs, since we haven't had a huge fundraiser (like the multiple yard sales) and because we have received so few responses to our support letters.

My surprise came when a sweet mom from our swim team unexpectedly handed me a check. The only reason that she knew we were adopting was because a couple weeks ago I had asked about her children, she has 2 older boys that were both adopted years ago. I was so surprised when she handed it to me as we left practice that I automatically reached out and took what she handed me and then had to back up and say, what...what...oh...is this for the adoption...oh thank you so much! You know when your headed in one direction and it takes your brain a few seconds to catch up....(okay, so maybe I'm the slow one!)

I got a chance to see her then again last night and give her a hug and properly thank her. She said the thing that sent my mind into thinking mode. She said that she was so excited and that she wished that it could be a million dollars, but she was happy to help.

I know that the Lord could pay for this adoption all at once if He wanted to, but...

what would I learn in that process?

How would that grow my faith in Him?

How many more people's lives can be touched this way?

I was reminded again that God's ways are higher than mine.

That He is going to pay for this adoption.

Even if that means He's going to pay for it $50 at a time....$15 at a time....

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if wedo not give up.

Galatians 6:9

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In adoption news, our homestudy was emailed to AWAA for the final OKAY, and then hopefully in a week it will be certified and we will be homestudy approved! (That means it will be time to start filling out all of those adoption grant applications....papers, papers, and more papers!) I am putting the final touches on the I-600A form which will get us a fingerprint appointment and a paper from immigration stating that we can bring a child into the US.

From there will start getting our paperwork notarized and waiting for these final documents. Once we have all of them, we can put them together for the dossier (the official, huge packet of papers that will actually go to Ethiopia). In order to submit the dossier, we will have our next large payment to our agency....$7,750

It's big,

it's a little scary,

but God says He will provide.

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To my sweet Caleb, I am wishing you were already with us so that we could show just how much fun summer can be. Hot, sandy beach days, playing in the pool, yummy summer food, watermelon, hamburgers, and watching daddy light fireworks in front of the house. Next summer, baby, next summer....

Secrets of a Stay-at-home-mom

NO adoption news, I still need to fill out the I-600 (the paper requesting out $800 fingerprints, geez!), but I was blissfully busy washing, folding, and putting away laundry since I stayed home for more than an hour at a time during daylight hours that I just didn't want to do paperwork.

So instead of adoption news, I wanted to have a transparent post on secrets of a SAHM. I know a lot of you will be able to relate, the question will be, are you willing to come out of the closet and admit your "SAHM secret"?

Here's a couple of mine......

*sometimes, I vacuum around the mess (including the pile of clothes me DH leaves by his side of the bed).....I know your hubby is perfect, he never does that ;0)

*now that I don't have crawling babies, or little people that spill stuff all over the kitchen floor....I mop a whole lot less.....still sweep or vacuum the kitchen...but mop a whole lot less (gasp!)

*I never dust sometimes.........

*after several long days of school at the kitchen table, we just shove the school stuff over to eat dinner eat on the picnic table outside

So, what is your SAHM secret? Come on! I know you have at least one!!!!

Crazy Paperchasin!!!!

Oh yeah....I feel like I am up to my eye balls in papers! I was doing so good because I was messing with "adoption stuff" just about ever day or every other day. Well, I took a break and now I feel like I am losing grip on stuff.

Like our homestudy is almost completely finished and ready to be reviewed by who knows how many people and then certified. And then the other day I noticed a little paragraph that I am sure I read before, that said we needed to also have out employment letter, non-employment letter, medical forms (whoo, done!), financial statement, and Ethiopia application letters all finished before our homestudy would be reviewed and finalized. Yikes! Now, I am not a total slacker, I have started these letters, and then you, sat on them a bit to marinade...you know, to see if I wanted to change or add anything.

One GREAT thing about our international agency is that they have given us our dossier list before we started on the homestudy. The reason this has been so great, is that a lot of the same info is needed for both the homestudy and the international side of things.

I'll go into what all we need for the international side of things later, but for now, here is an idea of what all we needed for the homestudy.

• We had to both fill out an autobiography questionnaire that was 6 pages long.
• Both of us had blood drawn (yuk!) and had a medical check-up to say that we are healthy.
• Financial Statement -Tells us just how much we are worth ;)
• References - For this, we had 3 wonderful friends write glowing recommendations telling of how we met them, how they think we are as a married couple and as parents.
• Medical Insurance Info
• Birth Certificates of all the family members
• Marriage License
• Military Discharge papers
• Verification of income

Wow, all that, plus 3 visits with the social worker that lasted a total of 7 hours, and $1800 later, we will have a 15 page report of our life. Aaahh, how sweet! It was completely less stressful that I thought it would be, but from what I hear of others, our homestudy was a piece of cake.

On my "paper break" we have been having some fun as a family! We went to the lake with some friends on Friday and then the pool with more friends on the 4th....finished it off with some fireworks in front of the house (we had our closest almost injury to date and needless to say, this mamma will be laying down the fireworks law until these children are legal and can buy their own fireworks!)

Fireworks!!

Yes, that's 4 kids on that jet ski...Mr. Jim is such a patient guy!

Giveaway!

Check out the great giveaway over at the Mom-tage!