Tag Archives: adoption

Why help?

Posted on by
1
TODAY IS DAY 3 OF 5 OF OUR GIVEAWAY! 
CLICK HERE FOR THE GIVEAWAY POST OR CLICK THE 50 PRIZES TAB ABOVE!
You can also read this post to find out more about why we are raising money!


______
We heard from our agency last night that they think we will be travelling on June 17th. That’s 11 days. 11 days to organize PTO from work, request a visa to enter her country, book plane tickets, organize transportation, fill out hours of paperwork, pack, prepare gifts for the orphanage workers and Sweet Girl. Not to mention, prepare our house to leave for a week, catch up on laundry, prepare to leave Cranky and Happy and spend time with them so we can continue to be engaged and present parents before we rock their world by bringing home a sibling. Rather than do all those things, I’m worrying about where the money will come from.
So, you’ve been seeing my millions of updates on our giveaway, you’ve been clicking through to read about it and you’ve read some of the rest of the blog. Of the 1000 of you that have clicked, we have about a 2% entry rate. We’ve raised $725. That figure is pretty awesome, but if you add up everything we’re putting out for some of the larger prizes, we are barely over our break even point. $15 over actually. And then when you consider that we’re shipping prizes, we’re kinda in the red. Someone asked me today why their $5 mattered.  No, 1 donation of $5 won’t make much of a difference, but if the 1000 of you that have read about our giveaway would have donated $5 we’d have had $5000 to help us bring Sweet Girl home.
There is a story that has dozens and dozens of variations floating around out there called The Starfish Story. I think it’s premise applies here.

While walking along a beach, an elderly gentleman saw someone in the distance leaning down, picking something up and throwing it into the ocean.

 

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, picking up starfish one by one and tossing each one gently back into the water.

 

He came closer still and called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

 

The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”

 

The old man smiled, and said, “I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”

 

To this, the young man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”

 

Upon hearing this, the elderly observer commented, “But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!”

 

The young man listened politely. Then he bent down, picked up another starfish, threw it into the back into the ocean past the breaking waves and said, “It made a difference for that one.

 

I can’t save them all, but I’m trying to save one. One sweet little girl who without us will grow up in an orphanage. She will never be adopted in her country because of her special needs. She will be cast into the street and forgotten. She will become a statistic.
We learned that orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they’re not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes. -David Platt
I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
– Edward Everett Hale

 

Is this you today? Did you feel like your $5 wouldn’t matter? Will you help us? All I am asking for is $5. But, I won’t complain if you can give more than that 🙂

The Aftermath

Posted on by
2

Oh Sweet Girl! You would be so excited to know how many people are so happy you are coming home soon! I know it’ll be very overwhelming to have to meet everyone and personally thank them for their prayers and support so I’ll try to get it done before you get home for you!

___

The most common statement I’ve gotten in the last 18 hours is, “I’d love to adopt one day!” If you are interested in international special needs adoption of a waiting child, Reece’s Rainbow (reecesrainbow.org) is a fantastic resource. It’s where I found sweet girl and they are the driving force being allowing us to offer you a tax deductible way to contribute to us financially.

The next most common question is, “How can I help?” Honestly, the thing we need the most in this is for you to spread our story and our journey far and wide. Email your co-workers, share the blog on facebook, etc. The thing we need 2nd most is money. It’s a sad reality and one we don’t want to talk about much. We weren’t planning on adding to our family so soon after the girls were born but we’re on the path of following God now. In the last 24 months we’ve gone through a high risk and very expensive pregnancy, a high risk and very expensive birth, a 3 and 5 week stay in the NICU (that costed my insurance more than my house and us personally enough to buy a cheap new car) and to add the icing to the cake, I changed jobs. Yes, this was my choice, but I took a small pay cut to take a job that would require 5-15 fewer hours a week so I could spend that time with my young family. When we made all those financial decisions it was not looking forward that the very next year (or month as the case turned out) we would need to find $50,000 in cash to ransom a Sweet Girl from an orphanage. And $50k in cash, pronto. We are using every available resource to make this process go as fast as possible so she doesn’t spend one single NEEDLESS hour without a family. That costs a little more. Could I have sent some things standard fex-ex and not overnight? Sure, it would have added 2 weeks to our journey just so far though. 14 days of going to sleep without a mommy and daddy, 14 days of not knowing what true love feels like, 14 days of being one of many, 14 days of subpar health care, 14 days without a family.

Have I ever talked about what life is like for an orphan in Eastern Europe? At age 4 with special needs, Sweet Girl is very very very unlikely to ever be adopted by someone in her country. Without the advocacy of Reece’s Rainbow and other sites like it, no one would have even known she existed. She would have turned 18, and been cast out into the street with no support system, no housing, and a small piddly sum of money that would last her less than a few weeks. For Sweet Girl, being female there is a 50% chance she would turn to prostitution. A 40% chance she would be forced to other crime to survive. A more than 50% liklihood she would be homeless and a 10% chance she would commit suicide within one year. Is adoption always the answer at fixing the system? Never. Even if everyone I know adopted one of these children, it wouldn’t fix the system. The change needs to happen at the family level. Prevent teen pregnancy, educate the youth, and support mothers who want to keep their children with special needs. The change hasn’t come fast enough for Sweet Girl though so we are opening our family to her. It will be a huge adjustment for her. I’m ripping her away from her home, her culture, her language, her food, her friends and the only caretakers she’s ever known. But “caretakers” aren’t enough for a child – she needs access to better medical care and a family. This wasn’t a decision we took lightly. If I thought there was a way that she could have a family in her own country, that would have been better for her. The sad reality is that she won’t ever have a family in her own country. So with that, we’re bring her here.

But really, I’m not doing this for her, I’m doing this for me. She doesn’t know I exist, but I’m the one that can’t live without her now.

Anyway, back to how to help. The big things coming up are the Giveaway next week (Prizes include iPad, Kindle Fire, a dozen gift cards, pay it forward chances, homeade goods!) and if you are local to us, we’re having a yard sale in July that we are accepting donations for (we’ve got a truck! we’ll come get them! even if you are embarassed to be giving it away, someone might want it!). Also running constantly are our resale of gently used baby clothes gear (sorry, mostly twin girls since that’s what I’ve got) and soon our Sweet Girl Shop. Something very easy also is donating us your Hilton Honors points. It takes less than 5 minutes and we can use them while in eastern europe or redeem them for airline miles.

You got through the words, here are some pictures to reward you 🙂 These are the many faces of Cranky in cell phone pics. I’ll work on some of just Happy tomorrow, but that child moves so fast it’s hard to catch her. Praying the day comes quickly for me to share photos of Sweet Girl’s many faces too 🙂

5 days old
She is so excited to be a little sister and very excited for her pigtails!

I’m Sorry Sweet Girl & Facebook Official

Posted on by
Reply

I’m so sorry Sweet Girl. I got so caught up that I didn’t remember. I have spend the last week doing things I felt were important. I have been so busy doing things I felt were so urgent, that I forgot to remember you. Oh, I think about you all day. You are on my phone background so everytime I look at my phone I see your face. It still makes me catch my breath when I see you on there too! You are the reason that I spend my night when we get home from work blogging, fundraising (well, preparing for fundraisers), researching, facebooking, filling out paperwork, researching flights and on and on. These “things” have started to consume me and they made me forget that you are what is more important. I stopped talking to you, I stopped praying as much for you, I stopped wishing you a good night when we all go to sleep. I got so caught up in bringing you home, that I forgot that you are living a world away from me right now. I promise Sweet Girl, I will remember that the focus here is you and not all this other stuff.

And with that, I want to introduce you to some people. Mama and Daddy made you “facebook official” today. That means that right now, lots of people from our lives, and soon to be your life, are reading this right now. They might be a little confused by what’s going on too. So with that said, facebook, meet Sweet Girl:

Sweet Girl is 4 years old and lives in Eastern Europe. She is soon to be our daughter as we are in the process of adopting her. If you’d like to follow us in this journey, we’d love to have you along. We would also love your support and your prayers. On the right sidebar, you can follow this blog. I will also start sharing new posts on facebook. There are several posts in here already about where we are in the process and some about what led us to Sweet Girl so go back and read if you like. If you have any questions about why adoption, why Sweet Girl, why we aren’t sharing her country or real name, the adoption process, etc, let us know – we’d love to share more – we just aren’t sure what people want to know!
And STAY TUNED, we are launching a HUGE giveaway on Monday 6/4. There will be tons and tons of great prizes and it should be very exciting!

REGISTRATION!

Posted on by
4

I wish I could post a picture of myself right now. I’m a ball of nerves. 


When I saw Sweet Girl move to my family found me, it felt like when you get a positive pregnancy test. It was very surreal and exciting, but there was still a great deal of doubt and hesitation. You knew there was this life growing inside you, but you weren’t sure you’d get to keep it. 


This morning at 7:43am I got an email from our adoption agency. Keep in mind that I’ve only gotten a handful of unsolicited emails from her (meaning I asked a question and she was answering). The last email I got from her stated that Vita (our eastern europe coordinator) would be unable to register us until 6/12. It made my goal of June travel very unlikely. She said we’d ask Vita to ask the officials for a June travel date. Anyway, so when I saw the email this morning I first assumed it would be word from Vita that we could request a June travel date, but that there were no guarantees, blah, blah. What I call a no promises email. Adoption agencies like those. 


Anyway, I was rushing out the door so I wouldn’t be late for work like I was yesterday and quickly glanced at the email. I had to read it twice, I was so confused. It said “Your registration documents were accepted today! ” I was so surprised that I couldn’t process what she meant. I thought, they weren’t supposed to be registered until 6/12? But, it’s true! We are officially registered! They accepted our documents on the spot! They have 10 days to issue us the official referral and we’ll get a travel date then. June is looking likely!


The first thing I did was call him and tell him to turn down the radio. I expected a “Great news!” from him. Instead I think he was just as shocked as I was. The thought of all that has to be done in the next few weeks added on to the fact that this is becoming more and more of a reality is sinking in.


Back to my analogy… It feels like I just heard my baby’s heartbeat for the first time. Such a sweet happy thing, but oh so overwhelming at the mountain we still have to climb.

The Ultimate Teaser Post

Posted on by
1

What do 50 prizes worth over $2000 and Sweet Girl’s 50 month birthday have in common? They are cause for a GIVEAWAY! 

 
The giveaway starts Monday, June 4 at 8am Eastern and runs for 5 days only! Did you catch that? 5 days only – put it on your calendar because if you blink it’ll be over and your chances to win will be gone!
 
Stay tuned for a preview of the prizes you can win! We have some awesome things by some very generous donors! It was hard not to keep them all, but I’ve managed to remember the bigger picture!

Registration Update and Nighttime

Posted on by
1

I wanted to write a happy post today, something uplifting for this holiday weekend, but the fact of the matter is that life isn’t happy for millions of orphans. As I drifted off to sleep last night, I couldn’t help but think about how sweet girl’s nights might go.


For my own girls, it’s pretty simple. We get in pj’s, read a couple of books (or just throw them), get some snuggles in, sing Jesus Loves Me and then it’s off to dream land with their seahorses. Sometimes, after bath, we read without PJ’s too. They love it. 



 And, well, sometimes it’s off to sleep before we make it upstairs too.


But then I think about sweet girl. How does her nighttime routine go? Does she get any individual attention? My heart hopes so, but my brain knows better. Does she cry herself to sleep or rock to sleep? Does she suck her thumb? Then, what if she has a bad dream, or can’t sleep, or doesn’t feel well? Do the staff care enough to go sit with her or rub her back so she can get back to sleep? Does she get yelled at or punished for waking up or getting out of bed?  Almost certainly the staff is minimal overnight; and it seems that most of the orphanages are under-staffed as is. I don’t know what they can do, if there are only one or two adults and several children happen to wake up at the same time. (And in one big room, probably when one kid cries they all wake up). She been there 4 years now, it’s all she knows, but does that make it okay? What if she has an accident at night? Do they go change her & her bedding — if so, are they rough about it & angry with her? Is she lucky enough to get a hug, to be told it’s ok, no big deal, we’ll get cleaned up and tell a story while you go back to sleep? (The last, I suppose, is unlikely.) What if she’s hungry, or thirsty? Can she get a snack or a drink of water? 


She deserves so much more than this. We are racing to get her because every night I spare her from that place is worth it.


We got an update from our agency, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear, you’ve been submitted. Or, at the very least, you’re being submitted next week. Instead, it was you won’t be submitted until June 12. That’s more than 2 more weeks. The probability of June travel is pretty much out, although I will still pray for it because who am I to keep my God from performing a miracle. 

Very belated status update!

Posted on by
Reply

So here’s where we are and why I haven’t been blogging. We’ve decided not to really tell our co-workers or extended friend group (that’d be Facebook) that we are adopting. Why? Well, because there are so many things that can go wrong, that we were scared of having to untell. And that’s why I haven’t been working on fundraising, etc either. But, soon enough that will change! We are planning a big raffle/giveaway on the blog and we’re planning a big yardsale (collecting donations and accepting volunteers!) in the next few months.

We will probably wait until we get a travel date and maybe until after our first trip to come out on facebook and start these things though. For so long it has just been his and my’s dream and she’s been this secret we’ve been keeping, but, I realized that this blog is just as much for sweet girl as it is for us. I want to be able to remember the process so I can put it into a book for her and tell her story.

So, since we were last here, we completed our homestudy. That was stressful and took longer than I expected, but it’s done. Our social worker is really nice, but it’s hard for me to remember that this is just a business to her and she’s not emotionally invested in sweet girl. We also compiled our registration dossier. Overall, I’m estimating that our registration dossier cost us about $2500 including the homestudy, medical exams, form filing fees, document copies, apostilles and shipping charges. Our agency says everything was great on that and as of Wednesday this week its on its way to EE (eastern europe – we aren’t really supposed to use sweet girl’s real name or country on our blog to protect the children). We also aren’t supposed to share pictures, but I’ve decided that if I’m not sharing her name or her country then I should be able to show the sweet girl we’re working towards! We sent electronic copies of all of the documents to Vita (who will be our in country facilitator) so she can start the translations. Hopefully by the time the documents get there, she will be done translating and can register us in our region. Once we are registered, they will give us a travel date of when we get to go meet Sweet Girl. We are hoping and praying that this will be in late June.

Also, we’re working on our court dossier. This is another set of documents that we will have to submit to the judge. We are almost done with that, but we are missing three things. First, our doctor’s medical license (which we have to submit a copy of) expires in June and since we don’t submit our court dossier until July, then it won’t be valid so we have to wait until he renews and get another copy of the license. Second, we filed our I-600a which is with the USCIS (Immigration). They review our application and our homestudy and then we have to go get fingerprinted with them and then they issue a ruling of whether we are allowed to adopt. We don’t think there will be any problems with this, but the process takes a couple of months. We are also waiting for the FBI to process fingerprints we took at our local Sheriff’s office and send us a letter stating that we have no criminal record. This takes several weeks as well.

Anyway, without further ado, let me introduce you to the piece of my heart I didn’t know was missing, Sweet Girl:

These were given to us by a new imaginary internet friend. I think they are the most recent ones that exist. Here’s another one:

Um.. I have two toddlers?

Posted on by
Reply

I have no excuses for it being 6 days since I last posted. Wait, actually, I do, their names are Cranky and Sweet and they demand a lot of attention. Add to it, that we’re in the middle of an adoption and took a mini-vacation last weekend and life is hectic. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

And since this blog is still private and I have exactly 3 readers (hi to all 3 of you!) I figure you’ll forgive me for not being so quick to update. Besides, you all get the updates through email or g-chat anyway.

We finally submitted our paperwork to RR to get sweet girl off the waiting list. As soon as our home study agency provides their part of the paperwork then we can make some of her information public. We also wrapped up our physicals and TB tests last week and this morning (to check for TB reaction) so I need to submit that. While we sat in the car this weekend, I did my autobiography for the home study. It’s hard to summarize your life and every defining moment of your life in just a couple pages, but hopefully I included enough to let her see who I am. He is working on his. He agrees it’s hard. Maybe he can find an hour to finish his tonight. Also to complete the home study we’ve got to take some classes.

Then it’s on to submitting our I-600A which is with US immigration (USCIS). They have to get copies of our home study and do background checks to approve us to adopt. At the same time I have a list of what seems like a million documents from our agency that needed filled out and signed in different ways by different people for our dossier. Things are starting to get really real and moving very fast.

If you didn’t know, I also start a new job tomorrow. I’m a little nervous because when I applied for this job we had no clue the adoption would move so fast. We thought it would be next year before she came home and now I have to break it to them that I will need to take 3 weeks off this year to travel to EE to bring a little girl home. I’m also hopeful they will let me take some time off once she’s home to help her bond and acclimate to her new life. I can only pray that they will be understanding about the timing and realize that this isn’t normally me and I don’t traditionally need this much time off! I hope they are willing to get past the next 8-10 months and see that I can be a wonderful employee – just give me a chance!