Raise HOPE!

Quick post today letting you know about a really neat opportunity for you to help us with our fundraising!!

A friend of mine is a Premier Jewelry Consultant and she has approached me with a very thoughtful and generous idea!!!

There is this gorgeous necklace in their catalog called "Hopeful."

From now until we are fully funded, every time someone buys this necklace from her, Brittani will donate 30% of her profits to our adoption fund!!!  

How generous of her!!!

So, if you were looking for a way to help, here's another option!

To order from her, contact her via her Facebook page by clicking this link.

"Like" her page, and then message her or comment on her page to get more info!

Very excited about this one, and will be purchasing one myself!
I'll update this with a picture of me wearing it soon. :)

There were a few necklaces to choose from for this fundraiser and there was a reason we chose "Hopeful."

We chose it because regardless of the cost, the time, the distance between us, and the hard times that WILL come once Tobi's home....Christ has given us our hope.
Not only hope that Tobias will be in our arms soon, but hope that He has conquered ALL for us! 


"I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” 
John 16:33

False Alarm

So, yesterday I blogged about how we are only a whopping $300 shy of being fully funded for our adoption!

(Read it here if you haven't yet).

Well, this morning I receive a text saying that a friend has offered up an additional $500 donation!!!

So, as of 11:00 this morning, we were fully funded!

Then, I talked with A Love Beyond Borders.

I've been wanting to have a conversation with them in regards to finances because as I mentioned in this post, we are the first family from Compassion for Congo to complete our adoption through A Love Beyond Borders in Kinshasa.

So we had a wonderful, very informative conversation that helped us understand much better what our trip will look like.  

And she walked us through the cost!

Aaaannndd we realized how drastically different the circumstances will be in Kinshasa vs. going to the guest house in Lubumbashi (where the orphanage is).  

In Lubumbashi, you pay a few hundred dollars for staying in the guest house, you pay for whatever food you purchase, souvenirs, and a few other things I'm sure.

HOWEVER....

In Kinshasa, you pay for the work that the ALBB (A Love Beyond Borders) representative goes through to pick us and our luggage up at the airport, transport us to our hotel, bring Tobias to us, provide us with other required legal transportation and translators, get our exit letter for us, as well as transportation back to the airport for departure.

THEN, there's the $150/day we pay for our hotel, the money for food, the money for any leisurely transportation, the money for exit taxis, and the money for any souvenirs.  PLUS, we want to have extra on hand for any other unexpected emergency. 

All that to say....that fully funded post was just a false alarm. 

:)

We are looking at another $3,700 or so.

And that was really cool to think we were funded for a couple hours, but it was actually kinda weird!

I was just telling Chris that it felt so wrong to be done fundraising already!  I felt like we couldn't be done yet!  Well...we aren't!  haha!

It's good timing though.  Our adoption yard sale is this weekend and we are hoping for another few hundred from that.

We also have a very expensive Italian inlay curio cabinet from Italy we are selling as well as several Thomas Kinkade paintings! (so let me know if you're interested!)

So even though it was a little disappointing, we are not sorrowful.  We know He'll provide.  I mean we received $2,200 since SATURDAY!!!!  Ya never know what The Lord will do or when He'll do it or WHO He will choose to work through!

We'll let ya know when we find out though!

We're Under $1,000!!

So, I am very excited to type this.

We officially, have LESS than $1,000 to raise to be FULLY funded for our adoption!!!!!!!

Oh. My. Goodness.

How we've seen The Lord provide!

I really need to sit down and tally all that we've raised and spent so far.  I haven't done that yet.

I HAVE been keeping track of what we have NOT paid for yet.

And although I KNOW that things can, and probably WILL change, we are only $300 short of being fully funded.

$300.

In the past 8 months alone, The Lord has provided us with well over $8,000!

We are still amazed.

This past Saturday, we held a car wash at our local KFC parking lot.

That car wash brought in $820!  It was so evident that people were not coming just to get their car clean...I'd say maybe a few were there just for the wash.

But the rest were there to give to Tobias.

And our hearts are overwhelmed yet again.  We had family and friends there helping us and working HARD!

Then I received some REALLY exciting news from a good friend of ours.  This special friend wanted to give us $800!!!!

THEN a family member handed me a check for ANOTHER $100 the next day.

We are so humbled.
The Lord is guiding and leading others to give.  We can't look back at this past year of fundraising and think that we had much of anything to do with raising all this money.

I mean, we have definitely been "fundraising," but we can't force anyone to give.
The Lord has provided!
He has moved others and that's something that we don't have the power to do!

So we look forward to the day when we can explain to our son how much went in to bringing him home.  How many people love him and were moved by their love for The Lord and His people to assist us in rescuing him from such a dark place.

So, as we are in the "home stretch" of fundraising, we are also in the "home stretch" of waiting for Tobias!

Things keep changing on us, but right now we are looking at November or early December. Remember me talking about the "field investigation"? If you didn't read it, you can read it here.

Well, the Embassy WAS scheduled to send people out to Lubumbashi for investigations this month. But they have postponed that to October or November. (probably means November).

However, because Tobias was abandoned, I am told that the investigation is very brief for him. It is more involved for children with living biological parents.

Sooooo, prayerfully, soon after they go to Lumbumbashi they'll give us the "go-ahead" to travel to get him!!!

Tobi will be headed to the Love Beyond Borders transition home pretty soon here. Probably within a couple weeks.
(You can read about that in the same previous post here).

They'll get him started with applying for his passport and then once he has that, they'll apply for the Embassy visits and try to get him his visa.

Then we'll just be waiting on that investigation to be done in Lubumbashi!

(hope the timeline is understandable...I've gone through it about a billion times in my head!)

So, we're moving along!
Very excited!
Thank you again for praying.
Thank you again for giving.
Thank you again for loving our family and our son
even though none of us have met him yet.

We're so close!!  
 

Movie Night!

So, I am NOT one to typically break the rules.
As my best friend can attest to, I never have been!
That has rolled into parenthood for me. When we find what works for us, we stick with it for the most part.
Our kids thrive off routine, so I'm doing my best to keep a daily schedule for us.

Chris will frequently find me "Googling" toddler/baby related questions  to see if it's" OK."

Like...

"Is it OK to give a toddler molasses?"

Or

"Can you give a toddler Benadryl in combo with Zyrtec?"

Or

"What is safe to give a child with a tummy ache?"

Or

"Can you take Sudafed while breastfeeding?"

I like to know what the rules are!
And I rarely break them!

Chris and I greatly cherish our alone time once the kids are in bed and we also really prefer their well rested temperaments over their overtired ones.
So...
We have pretty strict bedtime routines that we don't really stray from often.

BUT we made an exception this week.

If you haven't done this with your kids yet, you need to!

I was tucking the girls in, we had already brushed teeth, read books, sang, prayed and were saying goodnight when Chris came in and we both surprised them with MOVIE NIGHT!

Instead of laying their heads down, they got to jump out of bed and come to the living room with us. Chris had already got a bed of blankets out on the floor for them and Peter Pan cued up.

He got them hot chocolate and a cookie to snack on and Joy was just beside herself! She couldn't stop talking about what a great surprise it was!
After their snack, they cuddled with daddy to finish the movie.

***I am 100% aware that the pictures on this blog, taken with my or my husband's smartphone do NOT meet current blogging photo quality standards :)***

As we've seen our girls start to mature so quickly into tiny little ladies (especially Joy), we've been trying to be more purposeful in having frequent "special" times with them. Something so small can seem so large to them!
Especially with Jackson around who can tend to steal all the attention with his cuteness....and the fact that I have to feed him every 3 1/2-4 hours!

Well this was a very special night for them. After I fed the baby and put him to bed, mom and dad's attention was all on them for their movie night. It was fun for us (I never tire of watching Disney movies) and because we're such sticklers with their schedule, the girls knew this was a big deal!

We did warn them that it was straight to bed when the movie ended, and Noelle was pretty tired anyway....so was Joy....but that child almost NEVER admits she's tired.  Even when she's falling asleep :)  (You can see a video of it on Facebook here.  You have to be my "friend" to watch it though)

So we made a memory this week with our movie night.

We'll do it again in a few months....Joy right away asked if we could do it again the following night! Haha

But we loved it so much, I just had to share and encourage other parents to schedule a surprise movie night with the kids sometime!

They won't forget it and neither will you!