Links Fixed

Thanks to my wonderful friend Maren, I was able to figure out what I was doing wrong and fix my tabs at the top of the page. So if you would like to see more pictures of O, read our story, learn about our fundraising efforts, or learn what it's like for Ukrainian orphans like O,  please check out the other links above, cause they are fixed :) Thanks Maren

We Are All Beautiful

We got all our documents notarized with only one mistake that has to be corrected. I am so glad that there wasn't anymore. The Mr and I also received our notice for fingerprints today. This is great news because we were told that we don't have to wait for our appointment. We can go in early, which will hurry things along a little. Then we will only have to wait for the acceptance letter before we can fedex stuff off! Keep praying for us please!

So, while I crochet my fingers to the bone I usually sit and watch things on Netflix or Hulu. I recently came a cross a show that I remember hearing about before it aired but never got a chance to see it. And I have to say it is amazing!! It is called Smash and is about a new musical that they are trying to get ready to be on Broadway. The musical is about Marilyn Monroe and the songs are fantastic. I was watching today and on came this song that made me cry. I had to share! It is called Secondhand white baby grand.

 http://youtu.be/dyQs-mQgyC8 (copy this link to hear it)

My mother bought it secondhand from a silent movie star
It was out of tune but still I learned to play
And with each note we both would smile forgetting who we are
And all the pain would simply fly away

Something secondhand and broken still can make a pretty sound
Even if it doesn't have a place to live
Oh, the words were left unspoken when my momma came around
But that Secondhand White Baby Grand still had something beautiful to give

Through missing keys and broken strings the music was our own
Until the day we said our last goodbyes
The baby grand was sent away, a child all alone, to pray somebody else would realize
That something secondhand and broken still can make a pretty sound
Even if it doesn't have a place to live
Oh. the words are still unspoken now that momma's not around
But that Secondhand White Baby Grand still has something beautiful to give

For many years the music had to roam

Until we found a way to find a home.

So now I wake up every day and see her standing there.

Just waiting for a partner to compose

And I wish my mother still could hear

That sound beyond compare

I'll play her song till everybody knows.

That something secondhand and broken still can make a pretty sound
Don't we all deserve a family room to live
Oh. the words can't stay unspoken until everyone has found
That Secondhand White Baby Grand that still has something beautiful to give.

I still have something beautiful to give.




Just like the lyrics to this beautiful song, we each have something beautiful to give. We are each one of us broken in some way, but we still have all kinds of gifts to share with the world. We all deserve a home and  a family that loves us and can see the good in us. I am so grateful to be able to give a loving family and home to someone, that for all kinds of reasons will probably feel secondhand and broken.  But no matter how broken she will feel, to us, she will always have something beautiful to give.

Busy Day

I haven't posted anything lately, because, well, nothing has been happening. We have been in a holding pattern for a while and it has been a little frustrating. I have been working my fingers to the bone crocheting things to sell. Thank you to everyone that has ordered stuff. I really appreciate your support of our family and my work!
I finally got my passport in the mail and now things can move forward a little. Plus it is just cool to own a US passport!
Today I am compiling the remaining 15 or so documents that need to be notarized and then apostatized. I will hopefully be able to complete that today so that I can make my way to the capital building to get the apostatizing done before the end of the week. Then all we have to do then is wait some more for the immigration paper to come back, so I can have that one notarized and apostatized. After that is done we can Fedex all the papers to the Ukraine, so they can be translated by Sasha, our awesome hard working Ukrainian advocate. He will then send all of our paperwork into the Ukrainian State Department. This all needs to hopefully happen before the end of October. If we can get it done, then we should be able to get our appointment with the State Department before they shut down for the holidays. If not, which unfortunately is a big possibility, it will push our appointments back until February of next year at least!!
This is because the Department shuts down over the holidays, including most of January, and wont take or make appointments during that time. When I think that we have until the end of the October to get this done, I am not concerned, but really we have only until the middle of October to get our part done. I know I can do the things I need to do, it is the waiting for immigration that is concerning me. They seem to take FOREVER to get anything done.

We need your prayers to help us. We would love to be able to have our daughter home with us for Christmas. We understand that this might not be the case, but it would be a huge blessing. Please pray that immigration will hurry things along for us. It can't hurt, right :)

I am planning another fundraiser soon. Not sure of exact dates yet, but if you or anyone you know might like some family pictures taken for Christmas cards or just because, we are planning to offer 20 min outdoor sessions with a wonderful photographer for $25. You get all images on a disk to do with as you like. You can do family poses or individuals or whatever combination you like in the time you have. If you are interested please let me know so I can start planning for numbers. I will let you know dates soon.

Thank you

Wow what a day. I feel overwhelmed with gratitude today for such wonderful friends. I have been trying to figure out a way to advertise my crochet items, so that I can hopefully sell them as a way to help us pay for this adoption. I have screwed around adding people to pages and then deleting those pages and adding more pages. But even with all that, people are still willing to help me out and advertise the things that I am trying to sell. I really appreciate everyones willingness to help me and be patient with me. 

I have already received a few orders for things. I am hoping I can keep up with them. It is just me making stuff, So i hope that people will understand if it takes me a little while to get them done, while I am trying to also do a ton of paper work and take care of my family :) But please know we really appreciate you being willing to order things. Thank you to every one of my fabulous friends that have already shown my stuff to their friends! You are all amazing and will be very blessed!

Frustration

I never thought I would have to fill out so many stupid applications. Don't get me wrong, if we even qualify for one of these grants it will be worth it. But I am surprised at the hoops they make you jump through to even get looked at. It is even possible that they wont even look at my application. It is just frustrating and my brain hurts!
Let me give you an example of what they have asked me today:
They have asked repeatedly for a statement of faith. Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? Who is the Holy Spirit? How do you use Gods words (the Bible) in your life? Describe your daily walk with God.
What is eternal salvation, how do you become saved? We also need to provide our salvation testimonies, along with a letter of referral from our pastor (bishop), tax returns, letters of reference from 3 close friends or relatives, and notarized statement of fees. These applications are about 8-10 pages long. We have to itemize everything!
SIGH! Oh how much easier this would be if we were rich! I know I just have to write my testimony (something I definitely have) down a few hundred times, and I shouldn't be so frustrated by that. In fact I should be please because I GET to share my testimony with others. I am just worried that even though we are believing Christians, which is all we are required to be to qualify, they wont look at us because some people don't consider the LDS faith to be a Christian faith.

I guess I need to not be so pessimistic. I will work on these applications and hope and pray for the best. If you don't see me for a while, its because I am stuck at the computer filling out forms :)

My Joy Is Full

Big day today. Yesterday our home study came in the mail! Yay. This means I can now mail off the immigration paperwork and fee and can also start applying for grants. No guarantee that we will be accepted for any of them, but I have to try.

After I mail off the forms today, next comes the waiting game. We will be scheduled for government fingerprinting, hopefully in about 10 days and then we have to wait for about another 3-4 weeks for approval of our application to adopt from overseas. This will be hard for me. I am really trying hard to be on top of all the paperwork. I am sure that I am annoying our agency worker, David, with all my questions. I keep asking him to send me more paperwork to fill out so it can all be ready to go as soon as it's time. He is doing a great job keeping up with me and I really appreciate his willingness to hurry things a long. But now comes the first of many waiting periods. We do have a lot of documents (22 all together) to prepare before our immigration approval comes back, but most of them need my passport information on them and I am waiting for that to arrive! So until I get that, I am kind of on hold! Which sucks. I hate the idea of not doing anything. I hate sitting around waiting for someone else to do the work. But unfortunately that is where we are at.

This morning the kids and I were reading scriptures together, (The Mr had to leave for work before we started this morning) and I came across a few verses that touched me. We were reading in Alma about Ammon glorifying the Lord. In verse 30 in says "And we have suffered all manner of afflictions, and all this, that perhaps we might be the means of saving some soul; and we supposed that our joy would be full if perhaps we could be the means of saving some."
We, our family and all of you that have helped and will help us along our journey, are the means in which to save someone! Our joy will be full when we can bring her home and know she is safe and loved. I feel grateful to know that my Heavenly Father knows me and my struggles. It is evident when I read things like this! I know that there are many that have worse afflictions then I do and I know that this struggle we are having to find the money to pay for the adoption, isn't the worst thing that can happen. But, it is a struggle and I know he knows about it and understands and hears my prayers. We already feel so blessed. I know we will find a way. I know, because I know this is what we are meant to be doing. It will work out in the end. My joy is full.

The Home Study

Our Monday sale didn't turn out quite as well as the rainy Saturday. But we did manage to sell a few things, and every little bit counts toward our goal. We are going to try it one more time this coming Saturday the 8th and see how much of our stuff we can sell this week. So once again tell your friends about it and come check it out. Sorry if you are getting sick of hearing that! :)

Tuesday was a very big day for me. I had planned to get our house clean over the weekend, but the weekend ended up being kind of consumed with the yard sale. So I woke up very stressed and very anxious and very emotional. Not a very good combination for the Mr!!! I tried to take his advice and just clean one room at a time. I literally work all day and with the help of my wonderful kids, after they got home from school, all but my bedroom got scrubbed! The stress was really unnecessary, because when the wonderful social worker came over all we did was sit in the living room and chat. We had a great conversation about my memories of childhood and  how being in my family has helped me to be a better parent. Also we talked about how the Mr and I met and what drew me to him and made me want to date him. She asked each of the children what loved to do most with their family and what they liked to do at school and what their hobbies are. She asked the Mr and I to describe our parents in a few words and other family related stuff. She also talked with us about the issues that might arise from adopting children out of the system. She related many stories of the 11 children she has adopted and the struggles she has had with many of them. She offered great insight into helping a child fit into our family and helping our own children adjust to a new family member. Over all it was not the scary experience I had imagined it would be. And I got a beautifully clean home, at least for a few hours! It's not so great today :( Suzanne, the social worker told us she would try and get it done quickly for us and she really did. Today I received a copy of the home study in my email to proof read. I am assuming that she now just needs to get it notarized and then she will mail it to us. Which means we passed and it was a success! I am so excited about this because now with a current home study we are eligible to apply for adoption grants! This is wonderful because we really need them now that things are properly underway.

The next step is to get our immigration documents sent out. Then comes about a 4 week wait while they process them. Lets hope they are feeling generous and rush them through!

A Rainy Saturday

Yesterday was our yard sale. We were all ready to get up at about 5am to start setting stuff up. We had been given SO many donations, ( a huge thank you to EVERYONE that so graciously donated their things to us) that I knew it would take a long time to get everything out of the garage. But when I woke up at 5 am, I heard and saw a huge thunder storm! Normally I would be excited to have a day in the house with my family, reading my book, but not yesterday. I was sure that we were not going to be able to have our yard sale at all. The weather was terrible. I prayed that it would clear up and that people would still come. By 7am, (the time I had posted on line that we were starting) it seemed to have cleared up, so we opened the garage and started pulling things out. Just as we started, people started arriving and we couldn't get the stuff our fast enough. It was such a great feeling to know that even though it had been raining that the Lord was blessing our efforts.
With the help of our fabulous neighbors Shandee, Joey and Jason and Joeys dad Larry, Maren, and our other friend Lillian we were able to get the sale underway. Thank you so much guys! You really helped us a lot.

The rain didn't stay away like we had hoped, in fact we, and all of our stuff, got pretty good and wet 3 times during the day. The rain chased away many potential customers, but we pushed on. Maren even made a window sale to an elderly couple that didn't want to get out of the car while it was raining! But, after each storm came some sun and each time people came back! We even had people tell us that they had already come once and because we had so much stuff, had to come back again. So despite the weather and my thoughts that it wasn't going to happen at all, we were able to make the best of a bad weather day! The yard sale was pretty successful! I really feel like the Lord answered our prayers and we feel very blessed.

But we do have tons of stuff left over and a few more things that have been donated today. So we decided that we would try again tomorrow and see what else we can sell. Come on by and see if there is anything you like, or just come on by and say hi to us as we hopefully sit in the sun!!!

We were also able to catch up with an old friend that stopped by on the last day of his vacation. J.M it was great to see you and see how you have grown and to hear how things are going in Australia. Thanks for making the effort to come by and see us. We always really appreciate it when people take time out to visit with us. Lets hope we can catch up again soon, maybe in Australia this time, but if not next year!