YEAH!!!!!

I have never been so excited to see a Fedex truck!!!

Seriously!

Yesterday my home study confirmation came back with the apostille enclosed!

YEAH!

Thank you for your prayers....our papers are now on their way to *B

Home study confirmation ~update~

Well, it did not show up :( 

Oh well, I am believing that it will be here tomorrow...I feel confident about it! :-)

Thank you for keeping us in your prayers!

Home Study Confirmation

Our paperwork should have been in *B weeks ago.....but to my dismay, it is still right here in Colorado.  We had not realised our home study confirmation form had to be apostilled.  So it did not get apostilled with the rest of the forms.

When we found out it needed to be, we sent it off right away...and waited.

WAITED

WAITED

WAITED

They received it and signed for it at the Secretary of States office on the 14th of September....and we

WAITED

WAITED

WAITED

I prayed for patience...and waited some more (they are usually returned from the Secretary of state within 3-5 days)!

Then finally on the 23rd, I called!

"Where was my paperwork?"..they would not even begin to start tracking it until it had been in their office for 15 days. REALLY!!!!!!!!!! VERY IMPORTANT PAPERWORK, AND YOU WON'T EVEN LOOK INTO IT FOR 15 DAYS!!!!!!! I said to her "do you realise how important this is, I included an overnight envelope to expedite the process!"  She says "Mam,  all paperwork that comes through our office is important."
She kinda burst my bubble, and truly had a point.....but still (I think God giggled to her response,  I know my husband did when I repeated the story.)  Jim reminded me that God will work it out, He is in Control!

So I thought I would wait some more....but to be quite honest, I was out of patience.  So I called back on Monday morning when the office opened.  And to my surprise they said they would look and see where it was at.  Praise God!

BUT, it was nowhere to be found!

We had sent it overnight there, and  it was suppose to come overnight back....and it was no where in their office.  They could not find it anywhere.
So ...

Praise God I called again to check on it.  I hung up with the Sec. Of State and immediately called my social worker.   She sent another form to the Secretary of State right then....they should have received it yesterday, and put it back in the mail to come here today.

Please join me in prayer that my home study confirmation shows up, apostilled, and back in my hands today!  I need Satan to stop interfering in this paperwork, in the name of Jesus! My God is MIGHTY TO SAVE.... and He is on a mission to save GraceLynn...we don't need any more time consuming hangups! Thank you for your prayers!

Busy bees~

We have been fundraising like crazy!  Every weekend might I add.  We have our largest fundraiser yet, October 1st.  The poker run got taken out of the fundraiser, as it is just getting too cold here to do it...but the Pig Shoot Out, BBQ, Bounce house, food and fun are all happening!  God is moving mountains for us to get to our little girl, and we are watching with amazement. 

How this fundraiser came to be:

We got a knock on our door from a complete stranger, wanting to know who owned the silver truck across the street.  My husband said "it is mine" the man says, "well, I feel like I am suppose to offer to buy it."

Note:  The truck is not for sale, but we had been talking about selling it for GraceLynn.

Jim and the man started talking....we found out he was a christian, and he was actually loosing sleep over this silly silver truck. 

Amidst their conversation, Jim mentioned GraceLynn, and that we are trying to raise money to get her home, and the biggest smile came over his face.  He said he knew God was telling him to stop, and now he knew it was about more than just a truck.

He happened to be a member of the Harley Davidson Club, and put together fundraisers all the time for the club...and he wanted to put together a fundraiser for GraceLynn.

WOW!!!!!

And the flier above, is what he created..he has rallied over a dozen sponsors, stirred up our community and I can not wait to see what God does with this event!

Please be praying that provisions, and blessings come from the event, and that we are able to continue to raise awareness of special needs adoptions in our area. 

River Run Fun, 2011

Wow, was this a fun day!  River Run For Orphans was pulled together by Jerry Garrity and now has runs happening all over the nation.  How cool is that.  We are so blessed to of had an opportunity to participate. 

 Kieser hung out in the stroller much of the day..Annika played there for a short amount of time.

We sold attempted to sell chili as a fundraiser.  It started off on the wrong foot from the get-go!  We had contacted Wendy's to donate chili...and the lady said she would donate approximately 5 gal. of it.  We were thrilled.  But the day we went to go get it...there was enough there to feed two large families...Thank you Wendy's for the donation, but we had to add our own to it to make it go further. HA!

Our Reeces Rainbow booth turned out very nice don't you think...do you recognise this lady below?

 How about this sweet girl?

Sweet Madalyn

The Westbrooks are such an intricate part of us learning of Reeces Rainbow, and we were so blessed to be able to do the River Run / Reeces Rainbow booth together.

A bunch of teenagers sewed together a bunch of fabric...and made a yellow "river running for orphans"...I giggled as I passed..that was so funny to me!

Sweet Annika Girl

They had our booth set up in Orphans around the world!

Kirsten and sweet Toria girl~

We had a loss of a worm at the end of the day....boys and their bugs...this was a devastating moment for my Jacob : "I loved you half broken wormy, I will miss you."

I cracked up....he loved that once, one big worm, now cut in half and dead...lol

Jacob and Justin are only about 2 months apart and Justin is older...but look who is bigger..

We are raising a football player I think :-)

Walking in the River Run!

I am so blessed to have a friend who has Chromosome kids too...I love her kids and she loves mine!  We had such a great day!

Anna Girl

Toria Girl

Kirsten and I at our booth

Thank you River Run for being so supportive of our adoptions and for allowing Reeces Rainbow to be apart of your day!  Let's do it again next year!

River Run For Orphans

Well we are just about 48 hours away from our local version of "Buddy Walk".  Our area host something called River Run For Orphans .  It is a huge gathering of locals who have been diligently raising money, for over a month, for orphans around the world.  They bring in their pledges and walk a family mile, or run a 5k.  This is our first year to participate in the run, and the sponsorships that we raised gets to go towards our adoption and is generously being matched up to $4300.00....I am so excited about this...What a huge blessing! There is a chip in button on my family blog where you can "chip in to river run" if you would like your funds matched to help GraceLynn get home.   Mark And Kirsten Westbrook's extended family participated in this fundraiser last year while they were in  *U picking up their two RR angels.  If you go to her blog she has some pretty cute pictures of the occasion. 

So Saturday 9-17-11 we (us and the Westbrooks) are setting up a booth with all kinds of Reeces Rainbow Promotional stuff.   Wendy's has donated 5 gal. of Chili for us to sell and we are praying that God brings light to Downs Syndrome adoptions and Special needs adoptions through this Reeces Rainbow booth!  We are so blessed to have an opportunity to hand out Christmas Warrior fliers and Reeces Rainbow fliers at this event.  I will post pictures of this fun day after the as soon as I can :-) Thank you for your prayers!
Another day closer to our Girl! 

Beast #1

I have heard people refer to their Dossier as "A BEAST"

Well, this is my beast right now....this is all the paperwork we have filled out for our home study.

It is well over an inch thick and probably over 100 pages.

The last of it is going into the mail today, and our homestudy is expected to be complete by the end of the month...YEAH~

Praise God that GraceLynn's country's Dossier is easy!  This paperwork is way harder to pull together than all her Dossier papers.

One Step closer to our daughter~

Humbled & I need your help~

I have to start off this post by sending a HUGE thank you to Jodi.  We have never met you and yet you gave so generously to our adoption!  Thank you, we are so humbled that you would give to help us get GraceLynn home!  From the bottoms of our hearts, Thank You!!!

Now, I said I would post pictures of the "after" of GraceLynn's and Annika's bedroom...well, that was before I decided to really redo it.  So here is where I have gotten. (Thank goodness for Gift cards, or we would have had to wait to re-decorate until after Gracie got home :-) )

I purchased matching bedding from Diapers.com I just love the butterflies :-)

I plan on doing more painting on the walls, and maybe custom paint the border....

the butterfly below still needs new eyes, her first ones were not right....made her look like a crazy butterfly :-)

I hand painted them onto the walls. 

 I have not painted in years, mostly because I just don't have time.  I typically liked to paint landscapes, but this was so much fun and so whimsical!  I might have to break out the paint brushes more often. 

All of our kids have a sock-monkey, I think they are so cute.  GraceLynn got a red, brown and green one...I hope she likes it.

Now here is where I need your help, what should I do with the window coverings?

The Short valence that came with the set, was not long enough for the window...so I looked at Wal-mart and found the long pink one...so you vote

Should we order another short valence that goes with the set, or do another long pink one from Wal-mart?  Whatever you vote for, We will get.  Thank you for being apart of decorating GraceLynn and Annika's room.

Progress and pictures!

Ok, I must be a blog dork...I can not figure out how to reply to the sweet comments on my page.  But thank you for them.  I am thrilled to know that other people were praying for GraceLynn.  Warms my heart. 

So, where are we in the process.

We are fundraising to offset costs,  finishing our home study, and waiting on apostilles (UGH)

We live in a rural part of Colorado where we have to mail everything to be apostilled, and it takes 3 days to get there and 3 days back unless we pay for overnight (which so far we have had to overnight everything).  We are blessed that our apostilles are only $5 a piece, but overnighting them runs about $13..so it adds up quickly. Oh well...praise God we have a local post office, it could be worse :-)

Report of Gods blessings:
(I should probably take a day every week to report this stuff since I know with my previous adoptions that I can get into an adoption slump and become a Debbie downer...maybe I should try to keep things positive..HA!)

YEAH FOR BLESSINGS!

1.  Yard sale #1 brought in $80
2.  Yard sale #2 brought in $160
3.  Craiglist of item that didn't sell at the Yard sale $1200

Ok, this is just the beginning, and the stories to go with each praise report (there are really 9 praise reports) is almost too long to post on, but over the next few days I am going to try to tell you of the rest of the miracles. God is moving mountains, the money is coming in!  And when God told us to that GraceLynn was ours, and we needed to go get her...we had a little meeting with our maker......We were blunt we told him in Jerry McGuire fashion.   "SHOW US THE MONEY!?!"  Really the big green back was our only hang-up.  She would be baby #6 for us, and while it would be no big deal once she was here to provide for her, coming up with $18,000 + dollars was a huge undertaking. God's response was, you go, I will provide...look at what he is providing!  OUR GOD IS AMAZING! Your jaw will drop when I finish telling you the rest of his blessings! YEAH GOD!
He loves her more than we do!  To the world she was just an orphan, but to Him she was the world!  He is clearing the way..look out baby girl WE ARE COMING!

Before picture of GraceLynn and Annika's bedroom:

After pictures tomorrow :-) 

Night All!

From Orphaned to Chosen

In January of 2009 we heard of a wonderful international program that helps children with special needs be adopted (Reece's Rainbow).  Some family friends were traveling to *U to adopt 2 little girls with Down Syndrome through their program, and we were still doing foster care.  At that time, a child with special needs was something we were always willing to help with (as foster parents), but never did we think God would ask us to raise any of these kids. 

In November of that same year we got a call around 11:30 pm, during an ice storm, asking us if we were willing to foster a little boy with cerebral palsy, a g-tube, non-Mobile, non-verbal, who had been abused and was needing foster placement while they figured things out.  We said that we would give it a try, and 9 months later...we were making him our son!   Over the course of that time, our God moved on our hearts to gravitate to the least of these.  Our little boy with "special needs" taught about the depth of His love, the simplicity of life and how to love unconditionally...he brought us back to the basics, just by being who he is!  He is a magnet that makes your heart melt and we are so blessed to call him our son!

Our eyes were opened.  There were many more children around the world, just like our son who needed homes, but what were we going to do about it.  We began diving into on-line resources, and researched Christian organizations around the world that are helping these children...and Reece's Rainbow became a big part of our hearts.  We signed up to be prayer warriors and raised money for Carley, a Russian orphan with Down Syndrome.  These funds helped ease the burden of cost of her international adoption, and she has an adoptive family coming to bring her home! Praise God!

We were moved.  We knew we needed to continue to help these precious children.  Did you know that around the world, most of the children that remain in foster care or in orphanages have special needs, and labeled disabilities. 

The Hebrews regarded children as a blessing from the Lord (see Gen. 13:16; Ruth 4:13-16; 1 Sam. 1:11). They are a reward and heritage, bringing joy to their parents. Rearing a child is a sacred responsibility, and parents must depend on the Lord to help them guide their children.

Children are our joy!  Knowing that kids with needs, in general, are not viewed as blessings, we signed up with Christian Homes and Special Kids, to help advicate for domestic children, that were in danger of falling into the foster care system.  Our goal was to support families before their burden became a crisis! We wanted to be apart of the christian community supporting kids and families. 

John 8:18 Let us not love with words or tongue, but in action and truth.

So we are called to action!

The end of 2010, we took in a  baby girl from that program... CHASK.  She was diagnosed with 1qdeletion syndrome, Lissencephaly, agenesis corpus colosum, calcanial valgus deformities of her feet, imperferated anus, blah, blah, blah...  We were humbled to think that God wanted us to be apart of anther special needs child's life, and we were excited to see how he used this situation to further his kingdom. She has developed far beyond anyones expectations, and is a testiment to the healing power of prayer! 

We are coming up on a year as a family of 7 and our eyes have been opened to what is going on globally.  Particularly in one area of the world that our little girl lives in.  Through Reeces Rainbow, we have learned of a the crisis that is effecting kids with special needs in 3rd world countries.  Many of these countries house these kids in cribs, in small rooms that have earned the name of "lie rooms".  Rooms where children are kept lieing, hour after hour, day after day because there are too many of them and not enough training or staff to get these kids the help they neeed.  Many of these children are growth restricted, non-mobile, manurished, and dieing.  A life of lonelyness. 

There is a global crisis of over 147 million orphans and counting.  We have come to realise, that by ourselves, we can not save them all...but we can help ONE!  So whether we are advicating for one orphan or one foster child; we are doing our part in changing the face of special needs adoptions, and adoption period.

In July of this year, we were reading about the mental institutions that children with special needs in Eastern Europe are sent to between the ages of 4 and 6, and we came accross a beautiful brown eyed, pouty lipped little girl.  We started to praying for her as a family.  We then took it one step further and wanted to make a difference in her life, and raise funds to go towards her adoption fund (just like we had done with Carley).  We sent out e-mails asking people to start saving their cans and we started our fundraiser "Kans for Kids"...recycling old alluminum to raise funds for orphans with special needs (specifically her, for now).   Two weeks into this fundraiser, our hearts were burdened for her life.  We knew, we were her family!  We proceeded with hesitation (only because I had had my heart set on a downs syndrome child if our family were to grow again, and God had different plans), and began to research what this would look like.  We prayed, we fasted, we sought council, we met with caseworkers, and we prayed....did I say we prayed yet!!! We did!  It was becoming an overwehlming burden.  She was our daughter!  Born in our hearts!!!  She is 3 almost 4 years old living in a baby home in Eastern Europe, she has remained there for so long because she isn't "perfect" in the eyes of the world.  She was born with Dandy Walkers Syndrome, which causes water to form on her brain.   She is only 18 lbs. as of July, and 32 inches tall.  We are believing that by Gods grace, proper medical care and the love of a family she is going to thrive when we get her home.  Grace will grow!  We love her because she was made in His perfect image, and to us she is perfect..Her story is amazing.  I can't wait to tell of all the miracles that have been happening, as we walk in obedience..answering the call of our Father for one of His very special children...an orphan who is now chosen!

Meet our Brown Eyed Girl

GraceLynn Faith