Adoption Meeting and Fundraiser Updates

We had our first meeting with the adoption agency April 7th. Overall it went really well. She went over the process with us, allowed us to ask questions and we got all the initial paperwork. We had to get fingerprints, background checks, child abuse checks, health checks, immunization records for our fur babies, birth certificates, marriage license, employers letter verifying position and salary, insurance letter verifying coverage, residency history, preference questionnaire, religious background and beliefs, financial information, autobiographical sketches, three reference letters, family information form, fee agreement and agreement for adoption form....that's just the start to this whole process. We just have a couple more papers to fill out and then we will be ready to turn it in. Hopefully it will be mailed sometime this week!

On our way to our first adoption meeting!

There are four phases to be completed for the adoption. The first two phases are paid together; phase 1: Application $300.00 phase 2: Consultation, Recruitment and Home Study $3,500.00
total= $3,800.00

Once the first two phases are complete we will be put on a waiting list for a birth mother/family to pick us. She said the estimated time is one to two years.

As of May 4th we have $6,906.00 in our adoption savings account. That is enough to cover the first two phases. Phase 3 is due when we are matched with a birth mother/family $7,000.00. So we are just shy about $4,000.00 to complete the first three phases. The last phase will be due when the child is born $10,275.00. Phase 4 does not include lawyer fees, if the birth mother requests help, flight fees if the child is not close to us and we have to fly to pick them up, any extra medical fees that may come or any extra fees that may come up that is not planned for...

We are working on some different fundraisers right now.

Puzzle fundraiser:
We started January 1st and have sold 352 pieces, bringing in $3,520.00!

Week 14-24 pieces!
Week 15-13 pieces!
Week 16-7 pieces!
Week 17-62 pieces!

352 pieces later!

I got this at Women Walking With God Conference! 

We have 648 pieces left to be purchased! If you would like to help out with our puzzle fundraiser, each piece is $10.We will write your name on the back and once all pieces are bought we will frame the puzzle in a double sided glass frame and hang in the nursery. You can pay by cash, check, credit card, our gofundme account, or securely through the paypal link listed below or on the right hand side of the blog. Please be sure to include your name so that we can add it to the puzzle piece! This puzzle will show our child all the people who helped to bring them home to us! Thank you for buying puzzle pieces!!!!

Mary Kay Mascarathon Fundraiser by my friend Neely Turner:
We started this May 1st and it will run to May 31st. For every mascara Neely sells she will donate her profits. So far we have sold 5 mascaras. If you'd like to order a mascara you can order at her site www.marykay.com/nfortner1. Our goal is to sell 100 mascaras! If we sell 100 Neely will donated her profits of $750.00!

Painting Canvas Party Fundraiser:
Our next fundraiser we are working on is a painting party. These are very popular where we live. A local girl will supply the canvas, paint and instructions. We are hoping to do this June 6th. We are waiting to hear back from a local place to see if they have the date available for us to hold the event. This will be our theme.

Adoption Garage Sale Fundraiser:
We are in the process of collecting stuff for our garage sale. We are planning a garage sale for the first weekend in June. So far we have items from 8 families! We are going to have a ton of stuff. We plan to hold a garage at our old house and then have another one a couple months later at our new home.


I do have some friends that are consultants that have contacted me about doing some fundraisers. I feel very blessed for the people that GOD has put into our lives that are willing to help us any way they can. We are very thankful for each one of you. God has been so good to us over the past 4 months. He has helped us raise almost $7,000.00 in four months. There is no way we could have done that alone! Praises to him! I will continue to keep you updated along the way.

From my secret pal at work, love it!

Updates Updates Updates!!

Let me start by saying we have our first meeting with an adoption agency April 7th! We are so excited!! But also very nervous and scared at the same time!! This will be our time to ask any questions we have, go over the adoption process and possibly fill out the application. Please keep us in your prayers!

One of my favorite photos that Jayme did!

This past Friday night was the big event! We hosted our Adoption Dinner/Silent Auction to raise money for our adoption. Our color scheme was yellow and blue. The colors went along with the adoption photos we had done the week before. Decorations- I bought discounted blue table cloth from the party store for the tables. My friend had some left over burlap from a bridal shower that we used for the center of the tables. I collected jars for three months and then spray painted them yellow and added baby breath to them to use as center pieces. I also spray painted old puzzle pieces to spread out in the middle to go along with our puzzle fundraiser theme. We also used our photo props from the week before for some decorations. We had some balloon displays donated by Kristy's Balloon Utopia. So grateful to my friends that helped us setup decorations and auction items the night before.

The jars for the tables.

The puzzle pieces and jars for the center pieces.

A couple props for our photos.

Dinner- Daniel's sister and brother in law donated the dinner. We had pulled pork sandwiches, potato salad and baked beans. For dessert we had brownie sheet cake, peanut butter sheet cake and cupcakes that were also donated. There was a suggested $10 dinner donation but not mandatory. We had a sign and a jar setup by the food line for people to put their donation in. We raised $623.00 from the dinner!

Puzzle-We had a table setup with our puzzle fundraiser. My AWESOME friends helped manage this table. They kept a list of people who purchased puzzle pieces throughout the event. We sold 97 puzzle pieces during the event!! This event by far helped us sell the most pieces, $970.00 from the puzzle!

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Silent Auction- For three months we collected donations from friends, family and the community. We had 80 items that were auctioned off! When we first started this fundraiser I never imagined we'd ever have that many items for the auction. My thoughts were maybe 20. God truly blessed us with some great generous people who donated items. We had a wide range of items that were donated; dinner certificates, purses, jewelry, photography, paintings, hair certificates, quilts, kid items and so much more! (I will get a list together and post it for anyone interested in hosting your own event to give you some ideas). We ran the auction from 6-7:30. A timer was set when there was 5 minutes left. Once the timer went off we collected all the papers and announced the winning bids. My friend and aunt got the items as we announced them. Then dad and my uncle helped to collect money. When all was said and done the auction items brought in $2,203.00!

With all three parts of our dinner/silent auction we raised a total of $3,796.00!! We are truly thankful for the way things turned out for this fundraiser. We cannot express how much we appreciate everyone that came out to support us Friday night. It brings tears to my eyes every time I think about how lucky we are to have amazing people in our lives that are just as excited as we are about trying to adopt a child. We cannot wait to share the experience with everyone. Thank you!!


Puzzle update:
Week 9- 6 pieces!
Week 10- 0 pieces
Week 11- 16 pieces!
Week 12- 4 pieces!
Week 13 (including selling pieces during the auction)- 118 pieces!!
That brings our total puzzle pieces sold so far to ...... 248 pieces!!

If you would like to help out with our puzzle fundraiser, each piece is $10.We will write your name on the back and once all pieces are bought we will frame the puzzle in a double sided glass frame and hang in the nursery. You can pay by cash, check, credit card, our gofundme account, or securely through the paypal link listed below or on the right hand side of the blog. Please be sure to include your name so that we can add it to the puzzle piece! This puzzle will show our child all the people who helped to bring them home to us! Thank you for buying puzzle pieces!!!! I will try to get an updated picture of the puzzle soon.


Adoption photos:
Last week a teacher friend took photos for us. Instead of doing pregnancy photos, we did adoption photos! The night before my friend and I spent hours shopping for and creating props for our photos. We found almost everything we needed at Hobby Lobby. I had pinned a bunch of photos on pinterest that I had wanted to do. Jayme did a fabulous job capturing each one. We were very excited with the results. We used a couple of the photos to display at our dinner Friday night. Hope you enjoy some of our favorites! :-)

So far we have a total of $5,844.00! We are 19.48% of the way to our estimated goal!!! It has only been three months since we started doing fundraisers!! I'm pretty sure we cannot say thank you enough for everyone who has helped us, rather you have helped with a fundraiser or have been praying for our journey. I really cannot wait to tell our future child how blessed we are with amazing people. I'm so thankful God has placed each of you into our lives.

We will spend much of this week getting caught up on writing our thank you cards. Then we will start working on our next fundraiser. Details coming soon...

 

 

 

 

Puzzle/Auction Update Week 5-8

Total pieces sold so far is 104!! WOW! We are feeling so blessed with our Puzzle fundraiser for our adoption! THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

Week 5- We sold 10 pieces!
Week 6- We sold 3 pieces!
Week 7- We sold 10 pieces!
Week 8- We sold 10 pieces!

We are doing a puzzle fundraiser to help with the cost of our adoption. If you wish to buy a puzzle piece they are $10 each. We will write your name on the back and once all pieces are bought we will frame the puzzle in a double sided glass frame and hang in the nursery. You can pay by cash, check, credit card, our gofundme account, or securely through the paypal link listed below or on the right hand side of the blog. Please be sure to include your name so that we can add it to the puzzle piece!

All the edge pieces except one, we haven't found it yet!





A sweet teacher that I work with. :-)



Dinner/Auction Update:                                                                                                                 

 

We are having a dinner/auction to help raise money for our adoption. So far we have close to 50 items that are being donated. I am beyond grateful for all the donations. I never expected to get this many donations. I was thinking we'd get around 20 but not 50! So so grateful!! Most of the donations are coming from friends, family, community and friends of friends. As much as I wanted to have the event at our home to create a more personal experience we have decided to move to a bigger location. Due to the amount of items being donated and RSVPs that we've had we feel that we need a bigger space. Plus we are not sure how the weather will be the first week of April and want to make sure people are comfortable and have space to move around. I will post pictures of the event and give updates! Hopefully it will inspire someone else who is looking to adopt! I've posted a few items we have so far! 

Some books donated by Betsy Reynolds

A necklace donated by Shoogieboog Boutique

 

An awesome quilt that a teacher friend donated!

 

 



I have looked up a few grants to help with adoption costs. I've read that before you can apply for some grants you need to have your adoption application turned in and have your home study completed first. We are hoping to turn our adoption application in soon after we have our dinner/auction!! I still have some more research to do and will keep you updated! We ask that you continue to pray for us, please pray for our future child and the birth mother! Thank you!!

 

 

 



One month into the process...

 Within our first month of opening our adoption savings account, starting our puzzle fundraiser and  gofundme account we have $1233.00 in our adoption savings account!

We've contacted four different adoption agencies and have received packets from each one. After some praying and talking with the people on the phone we have narrowed it down to one that we really like!! We plan to contact them soon to ask some questions and see what our next step will be. I will keep you updated.

Our Dinner/Auction that we are having this coming April just keeps growing with items to be auctioned off! As of today we have 37 items to be auctioned off!! I cannot wait to get everything setup. Once we have the dinner/auction I will post a blog of all the items and turn out.

In the upcoming weeks I plan to do some research on adoption grants. I don't know much about the topic but hoping to find some good news.

Family names from Nebraska and Washington

This week we sold 15 puzzle pieces! Only 929 to go! :-) Puzzle pieces are $10 each. We will write your name on the back and once it's complete we will frame it in double sided glass to hang in the nursery. If you'd like to buy a puzzle piece you can either click the "Donate" button that is on the right sidebar under Wilks Adoption Fund or at the end of this blog. It will send your donation securely through PayPal. Please be sure to include your name so that we can add it to the puzzle piece! You can also donate cash in person if you wish or through the mail.

Thank you for your continued support and prayers!!!

A few updates...

A week ago today, I typed and mailed a letter to local merchants telling them a little bit about our story and what our plans are for the dinner/auction this coming April. I prayed the whole time I was typing the letter, writing addresses on the envelopes and when I mailed them. I felt like I was putting myself on the line, exposing personal information to people that either I had met or not met but had never talked about our situation with. While I know some people will open the letters and toss them to the side or some might ask "why don't they just adopt through dhs"...these were hard realities that actually did happen this week. If you've read my previous blogs you know that at some point after we do private adoption we do plan to adopt through dhs. We believe that EVERY child deserves a loving stable home. I'm just not ready to take a chance of going through adoption when a few years down the road the parents decide to be parents and the child goes back to them. If that were to happen I'm not sure I'd be able to go through the adoption process again because of the pain and hurt. That is why we have chose to do private adoption first. Now that does not mean that we do not plan to try to adopt through dhs later down the road, because we do. On the bright side of some negativity, Daniel and I came home Friday evening to an envelope in the mail from a local merchant who received my letter. Inside the envelope was a hand written note and a check, plus they will be donating a gift box for our auction. Words cannot describe how grateful we were for this local merchant. It totally put a smile on my face, warmed my heart and had tears running down my face. God sure has perfect timing!


Dinner/Auction update

Within the last week we've had 10 items added to be auctioned off! Some of the items are from people whom we've never met! They heard about us through some of our friends and wanted to help. We talked with Daniel's sister and decided on the plans for the dinner. I'm so excited to start putting everything together for the event! Once we have the event I will post pictures and a list of items that were auctioned off for anyone who is interested in hosting a dinner/auction to help them with their needs. Again, I got this idea from pinterest, dinner/auction idea.

 

Puzzle update week 3

We sold 38 puzzle pieces this week!! That's more than we sold in week 1! Almost half of them came from the check we received from the local merchant. Only 944 to go! :-) If you'd like to buy a puzzle piece you can either click the "Donate" button that is on the right sidebar under Wilks Adoption Fund or at the end of this blog. It will send your donation securely through PayPal. Please be sure to include your name so that we can add it to the puzzle piece! You can also donate cash in person if you wish or through the mail. We've also created a page on gofundme.com. This site was suggested to us to help spread the word. Our link is here.

Just the left side and the bottom have been completed.
This puzzle is harder to put together than we thought so we
have been working on putting more together and ready
to add names to the pieces! Anyone wanting to help put
it together is welcome to come over!! ;-)

Being lazy while mom and dad work on the puzzle in the nursery.

 

Thank you for reading our story and helping us get closer to our dreams! Please continue to share our story and pray with us!!

New fundraiser/ Puzzle update

Over the last few weeks we have been working on ideas for our second fundraiser. I got the idea from Pinterest, gotta love that site! ;-) You can read about the idea here.

We will be hosting an Adoption Dinner/Auction at our house the first Friday in April. Daniel's sister and brother in law will be donating the dinner for us. My friend Rebecca will be making cupcakes. I've been contacting lots of local businesses, friends and family for donations. So far we have over 20 donations! Ranging from consultants, hair dressers, photographers to different restaurants. I'm still waiting to hear back from more people. I will keep you updated along the way. If you are interested in donating an item or coming to the event you can email me at senteldawn@yahoo.com or message me on facebook. Anyone is welcome to attend!

Puzzle update week 2

We didn't sell any puzzle pieces this week. If you don't know about our puzzle fundraiser you can read about it at puzzle fundraiser. So far we've sold 18 pieces. Please continue to share our story and pray with us. Only 982 to go! :-)


To Donate: You can click the "Donate" button that is on the right sidebar under Wilks Adoption Fund or at the end of this blog. It will send your donation securely through PayPal. Please be sure to include your name so that we can add it to the puzzle piece! You can also donate cash in person if you wish.

Praying and waiting



Andie, waiting to be a big sister ;-)

 

Puzzle Fundraiser Update- Week 1

It has been one week since we started our first fundraiser to help cover some of the cost of our adoption. We have put 18 pieces together over the last week! Thank you so much for your support and prayers! Please continue to pray for us and share our story. I will continue to keep you updated.

Starting with the edge pieces.

My mom requested to have a corner! :-)

Setup in the nursery.

If you don't know what our puzzle fundraiser is you can click here to read more.


To Donate: You can click the "Donate" button that is on the right sidebar under Wilks Adoption Fund. It will send your donation securely through PayPal. Please be sure to include your name so that we can add it to the puzzle piece! You can also donate cash in person if you wish.