An Update and a Giveaway

So, I haven't been doing such a great job of keeping up with this blog. I didn't have a whole lot to report, and, every time I got an idea for a blog it never really came together. But, now I have three different posts I want to share!

First, we're slowly making progress in the adoption process. We have out commitment paperwork all signed and notarized, but, we're waiting on commitment letter from our social worker. We have our intake interview scheduled for Wednesday the 13th so I'm hoping to have the letter today or tomorrow. We will scan every thing and email it to our domestic placement agency AAC who will forward it to our in country agency where it will be translated and submitted. This will 'officially' put our son on hold for us in his country. We will also be mailing off all of our hardcopies to be apostilled and then sending them over either by FedEx or with a travelling family to our in country agency.

Our application with our homestudy agency was accepted and once we have our intake interview our homestudy will be officially started and we'll begin the process of getting our house ready for the home visit (making sure we meet safety regulations for foster care guidelines in our state), writing our auto biographies, filling out paperwork for background checks, getting fingerprints done, medical, etc. The process will most likely take about 12 weeks, they've said it can be done in as little as 8 if we get every thing done and our background checks come back.

Our fundraising efforts have been going really well! In January when we announced we were adopting we had about $300 come in through Paypal. Our facebook auction which ended on February 2nd brought in $2,208 which is beyond amazing (and part of that will be included on my next blogpost). We've had $100 in donations come in this month. Our Krispy Kreme fundraiser that we're doing with the Rhodes family has gone really well, we had over 80 preorders come in. We decided to take a little leap of faith and order 150 boxes to pick up Saturday, so pray that we sell the 60+ extra boxes when we set up, and, if you're in the Collinsville area come have a box!

We also have a spaghetti lunch that our Ladies Fellowship at church is helping us with this Sunday, followed by a dessert auction that the Rhodes family wanted to put together for us. Just like every thing else we've done since deciding to adopt, the outpouring of love and support have blown us away and left us humbled. I feel like I can't say thank you enough! Our family and extended family, our friends, even total strangers have stepped up to help us during this process and we're overwhelmed at times with the love being poured out on us.

Ok, well this got long and I want the giveaway to be easy to find so I'm going to do make another post now about the Giveaway!

Thank you to everyone that has been praying for us, who has offered us support and encouragement, and to those who have given so generously to help see our boy home. We can never repay your kindness but know that God will use your gifts.

~Brooke~