Funds: Our fundraisers have been huge successes and kept me very busy last month. At one point I had four fundraisers active at the same time and seriously did not even realize so many were over-lapping. We raised $400 with flipflop2adopt, $538 (minus $20 for a counterfeit bill) from a garage sale, $1100 from the iPad give-away, and $1200 from our crawfish boil! To everyone who donated, helped out, showed up, offered any kind of prayer or support...thank you so much!! The high cost of adoption was one of our biggest fears. I realized early on that I would have to give all of my fears up and turn them into trust in the Lord and that, my friends, was the best decision I've made.
We are about $10,000 away from having all of the ransom money needed to bring our Gracie home. We have covered all of the adoption costs and fees and are now down to the travel expenses. We have a couple of local fundraisers going on so I have faith that we will get there. To help out please click here to donate to our FSP.
Paperwork: You would not believe the paperwork. It's a good thing I'm pretty organized and don't mind paperwork because I know some people who would probably be thrown over the edge by all of this. It's definitely a different kind of pregnancy...one full of ink pens, signatures, paper cuts and government involvement rather than...Well, you know I'm also experiencing heartburn, nausea, doctors and weight changes. The symptoms of pregnancy are different, but the same. So, back to the update...
A lot of important things have happened over the past week. We received our FBI clearances in the mail. I had to send those to Washington DC to have them apostilled by the US Dept of State (they were sent to a courier and should be back to us on Wednesday). On Monday, we received our biometric fingerprint appointment from USCIS. Our appointment was scheduled for May 21st but I was told we could walk in at any time so we went on Tuesday. It was the most efficient government office I've ever been to. We were done in less than 10 minutes and I was a happy mommy!
Now we are waiting on approval from USCIS to adopt. Once we get that approval we can submit our dossier to the country that Gracie lives in and wait for them to tell us we can come to meet her!!! Really??? Are we that close to holding our daughter??? I am anxiously awaiting...and constantly checking the mail!! I just found out from another family that they did their fingerprints on Monday and received approval in the mail on Friday!! If my head is on straight (and we have as good of luck as they did), we could receive our approval in the mail TODAY!!! Any ideas who will be looking out the window and meeting the mailman at the mailbox before he can do his wonderful job the way he is supposed to do it?
I have a few more items to take care of that need to be added to our dossier. This includes taking photos of our house (inside and outside) which means...well, I need to clean house! Speaking of the house...it's not still and quiet anymore. I've got to go make the little one breakfast and start cleaning now...while I check out the window for the mailman, of course!
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