cash money

Thank you so much to everyone who supported our booth at the Affordable Art Show today!

A lot of work went into it and we are so thankful to be blessed by amazing community family who donated their time, money and skills to help bring home our little man from Ethiopia. We raised over $950 today! Woot woot!

It was great to hug old friends, put faces to names, and meet new folks interested in orphan care.

If you know of any other art shows that would be a good fit for our fundraising stuff please let me know! We've still got about $21,000 more to go :-)

Meadow says...

"Where's your shirt?"

Adoption Update September 2011

Time for an adoption update!

On August 2nd we had the Third Annual Wallace Home Study. Like I said in the August Martini, it's never comfortable when someone you barely know comes into your home, asks you a bunch of questions and evaluates your ability to parent, especially when you have two living breathing specimens on display. However, by the third time you're almost use to it. Almost. Also, we love our case worker and she's super easy to talk to. That helps. Our house was not nearly as clean as it was the first or second time that she came. It was clean enough.

On the 12th I picked up the final report and delivered it to the USCIS. They received it with 108 hours to spare! The "average" (a term that is really obsolete in the world of adoption) turn around time is 75 days. We have been praying that we would receive approval much quicker than that - AND WE DID. 20 days - booyah! Smooth and quick. Smooth and quick has been our prayer.

The Ethiopia program, which was once one of the most appealing international adoption programs because of the short time frame, relative affordability and ease of the process, has now become one of the more tumultuous international programs still open. Last month, a couple seeking to adopt from Ethiopia was denied by the government because the husband is a cancer survivor. Ethiopia has talked about enforcing stricter guidelines for the adoption of their children but they have made no policy before or after this ruling to do so. They. Just. Did. It.

This is obviously concerning to us.

We don't know any other details about this couple or what other factors regarding their case may have been influential in this decision. Our agency suggested that we take a proactive approach and mail a copy of our home study (which states that William is healthy enough to parent), and additional notarized letters from his doctors stating the same thing, to the government to be pre-approved, which we are doing and this new packet of paper should go to Ethiopia on Tuesday. Our agency is estimating that it will take three weeks for "pre-approval".

In the meantime, with our CIS approval, our dossier is now complete. Funny thing is we don't have the money! We spent it on t-shirts. Ha! We didn't expect CIS approval to come in so quickly. We are expecting our t-shirts any day and then we should be all good on the cash flow. Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered!

We are forging ahead with fundraising. In addition to the t-shirts, we are also selling some beautiful rolled paper jewelry hand made by women in Uganda. We will be at the Sojourn Affordable Art Show so stop by and buy a t-shirt and some jewelry!

If you'd like to host a jewelry party please let me know that too - we're gonna tap out our inner circle at some point and would love to tap out yours too:-)

We have two big prayer requests this time: (I use to be a bit shy about always being the family with prayer requests but God has healed me of that. Clearly.)

1. The government official would read all of the positive things William's doctors stated, have mercy on us and grant us pre-approval. Quickly.

2. We plan to submit our dossier if we do not hear from the government by the time we have the necessary funds. Some may say this is unwise or risky - if we receive a referral and travel to Ethiopia and are denied... well let's just say that will be a whole lotta money and even more heartbreak. BUT, here's the thing, God keeps leading us down this path. Every time we pray for smooth and quick, He delivers.

I feel like getting our CIS approval in the mail on Friday, in the midst of collecting all of this extra paperwork from William's doctors, is His way of saying "Lindsy trust me. I got this. I brought you here, keep walking down this path."

So please pray that we are listening for His voice and that we would remember we are not stepping into uncertainty, we are stepping into God's plan. And that is the best path to be on.

August Martini

Here's the August martini. If you're wondering why the heck this post is called a martini see here.

Of course we started the month with a trip to Riley Children's Hospital and an MRI for Meadow. She looked pretty stickin' cute in her baby hospital gown but I didn't take any pictures. Here's one from the original trip to the ER that started all this craziness.

As you know we received the news the following morning that the MRI report showed no calcifications on her brain! You can read all about that and how I became the crazy adopting urine mom here. Man, this has been a LONG month.

On August 2nd we had the Third Annual Wallace Home Study. It's never comfortable when someone you barely know comes into your home, asks you a bunch of questions and evaluates your ability to parent, especially when you have two living breathing specimens on display. However, by the third time you're almost use to it. Almost. Also, we love our case worker and she's super easy to talk to. That helps.

We went to the zoo three times this past month. I'm not a big fan of summer, but for some reason I felt the need to take advantage of the last few weeks of it. Not sure why, the first day of September is supposed to be 99 degrees...

Of all the choices, Moses choose the bench. Poor kid. He got mama's scared-of-fast-moving-things gene.

 Some nice woman offered to take a picture of all four of us - it's a rare one!

William went with us one day, can you guess what his favorite part of the trip was??

Last day at the splash park:-(

 I started homeschooling Moses earlier this month. We are doing the Sonlight 3/4 Core, an alphabet add on I found that focuses on service, a "worksheet" book I got at Costco for $8 and some of Lisa K's Raising Kids with a Heart for Orphans stuff. It sounds like a lot but it's really not. It helps that we're only doing 2-3 days a week. He loves it so far.

This day we read a book about Noah's Ark. Here's our ark - what do ya think?

Yes she's eating a raw squash. She's a freak of nature.

Meadow is 100% girl and has a new infatuation with shoes. We keep all three pairs of her shoes in a basket in the closet and she opens the door, carries the basket over and then hands me each shoe and grunts. It's ridiculously cute.

The last week of the month our Family Group (community group, small group, etc.) has a meal together. Here are Moses and Meadow with their favorite older cool kid buddies. (hence Meadow not looking at the camera but staring at Judah instead.)

A few (half?) of the kids in our date night co-op. If you do not go on regular dates with your man you need to start. The co-op idea is awesome! There are four families that participate in ours so we get three dates a month then, one Friday night it's our turn to watch all the kids. Brilliant. (And FREE!)

And we exposed all the kids in the last two pictures to hand, foot and mouth disease. Whoops. 

Another month is over. Adoption update coming soon.

Rebuked By A Teenager

This is from the newsletter of Lisa Kjeldgaard. I shared her amazing ideas for raising kiddos with a heart for orphans a while back and this story, from her 14 year old daughter Kate, is the fruit of Lisa's hard work.

Be prepared to get rebuked by a teenager.

(And then pray that your kids would have this girls heart. At least that's what I'll be doing)

"I look around. I catch myself complaining, again. Whining because a brother used MY bathroom. Upset that I have to get out of my bed to go to work at 9 a.m. when I'd rather sleep. Bummed I didn't make it to the movies last night with my friends because I can't drive. This is normal American life: Be upset about what you don't have, and forget about what you do.

We don't seem to care about what we have. All we seem to care about is what we don't have.

But. We. Are. So. Blessed.

Running water? Blessed. House? Blessed. A job? Blessed. Three meals a day? Blessed. We seem to notice our idiotic mundane problems but forget the little boy half way across the world on the streets: abused, addicted, starving, and homeless. Let's face it—our "problems" are wimpy.

God put you where you are for a reason, and he put that little boy on the streets of Kenya for a reason too. You could be that homeless Kenyan boy, but you're not. You're a rich middle-class American with EVERYTHING you could ever need.

EVERYTHING.

God wants you and me to do something with it.

Here's what this 14-year-old learned in Kenya:

"Life isn't about what you don't have, life's about what you do have, and what you can give."

If those Agape Kenyan boys pretended to be us whiners and just focused on what they didn't have: how they don't have toilets, don't have soda and might not see their parents ever again, they would never get anywhere. Yet, they don't.

They wake up and say: "I'm off the streets and know I'll eat, I'll live."

We deserve a slap in the face from those boys, because they, they know what they have. And they're doing everything they can to change the world with it. More than anything, I want to go back to Kenya to learn from those boys. Don't worry, I'll be back to tell you about it. ~Kate