Home Study...piece of cake!

We had our first home study a week ago! I've had many people ask how it went.  I had planned to get a blog written sooner but the day after the home study we went camping with family. So you're getting an update a week later! ;-)

Going into the home study I was not as nervous as I thought I would be once the day finally arrived. That's probably because I've been able to talk with others who have or are going through the adoption process and have researched about home studies.  A friend sent me a list of general things to have prepared.... list of emergency contact numbers  on fridge, fire extinguisher under kitchen sink, outlet plug covers, all cleaning supplies and medicine to be put on a high shelf.  The only thing the lady from the agency commented on was "do you have fire extinguisher". She didn't check the rest of the stuff that we worked hard on lol....like me scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees! lol but at least my friend Beth noticed! :-)

Our home study only lasted an hour. We had to answer a lot of questions when we filled out our adoption papers that we mailed to the agency.  She asked a lot of the same questions that we had already answered on paper. She asked about our jobs, how we met, if our families supported our adoption, what Daniel and I like to do, how we resolve fights and who we hang out with. She confirmed what we are willing to accept... gender, race, age, health, how or if we wanted to communicate with the birth family.  I'm sure there were more questions but I don't remember. All the questions were pretty easy, especially since we had already answered them on paper.

After we answered questions she asked for a tour of our home, which was very quick! She was looking to make sure we had plenty of space in our home. Good thing we moved from our one bedroom house or we would not have passed the test! lol  

After the tour we scheduled our next visit with her. It will be July 3rd. We will travel to the agency to be interviewed separately. This will be where they will ask about our childhood and possibly about each other. Again, we've already given the answers to those questions so hopefully it will be painless. Once the interviews are over she will write up her report for the approval process.   

 

Puzzle Fundraiser:

Normally I only update on the puzzle fundraiser once a month in my blog but since I'm updating you on the adoption process I figured I would update you on the puzzle while I'm here ;-)

 

Week 23- 13 pieces sold!

Week 24- 2 pieces sold!

Week 25- still in progress but have already sold 10 pieces!! :-)

 

That brings the total to 494!! Only 6 pieces away from being at the half way mark with this fundraiser! My uncle Jamiel is still doing his challenge. Every payday he and his wife are going to buy two puzzle pieces. He challenged his family and anyone else who wants to participate to do the same.  I cannot wait to get the puzzle finished and hang in the nursery. We already have a spot picked out for it. I post weekly puzzle updates on our gofundme account.

 

We cannot say thank you enough for everyone who is helping us! We are beyond blessed and are not taking it for granted! Please continue to pray for us and share our story! Thank you thank you!!!

Daniel and Tanner hanging out by the camp fire

Watching the Lego movie

Tanner playing games

Love him!

Love of my life!

Still learning to cook on grill...I burnt the hamburgers!

 

Our view for the weekend!

 

 

 

 

One Step Closer...

The month of May and beginning of June was very busy for us. I spent most of May testing all my kiddos, packing my room to move to a larger room and preparing for the end of the school year. We had the mascarathon fundraiser going on during May. We were gathering items for the garage sale. Organizing details for the Canvas Party Fundraiser. We also went to Nebraska for a family wedding. We turned in our adoption papers to the agency and waited exactly three weeks before we heard back from them. They called last week to schedule our first home study. It is scheduled for next Tuesday, so please say a prayer for us!

This cutie has been my pre-k hubby this year!
Everyday he would tell me I was beautiful and was going to marry me.
He sure brought a smile to my face everyday!

This is baby Jacob. He liked visiting our classroom to see big brother.

Nebraska Family wedding

Finally found out who my secret pal was at work.
These were my two favorite pieces!

Mailing all our hopes and dreams!

 

Paige delivering our diaper bag! She can't wait for us to have a baby!

 

Puzzle Fundraiser update:

Total pieces sold 469!!! Bringing in $4,690.00!!

Week 18- 61 pieces!

Week 19- 4 pieces!

Week 20- 11 pieces!
Week 21- 17 pieces!
Week 22- 22 pieces!!

We have 531 pieces left to be purchased!! My uncle Jamiel has just sent out a challenge to his family and anyone else who wants to participate. He is challenging you to donate $20.00 every payday to go towards our adoption puzzle fundraiser. He is starting this Friday. You can pay with check, cash, on our gofundme account or through our PayPal account. For each piece you buy we will write your name on the back of the piece. When the puzzle is complete we will hang in the nursery for the baby to see who all helped to bring them home. Who wants to accept his challenge?

The top pic is week one and the bottom is week 18, 415 pieces sold.
We've added 54 pieces since this picture.

 

Mascarathon update:

My good friend Neely Turner did a Mascarathon for the month of May. For every mascara she sold during the month of May she donated her profits. She ended up selling 17 mascaras and donating $127.00 to our adoption. She also had a high school friend who didn't wear mascara but he wanted to donate to our adoption so he mailed us check this week! God is blessing us with amazing people!

 

Painting Canvas Party Fundraiser:

We had our painting fundraiser this past weekend. Kayla Kohout did a Painting Frenzy fundraiser for us. She did an amazing job. I'm very grateful that she helped us raise some money for our adoption. We had 16 people come to the party. Most of them were our friends and family but we had 5 people we didn't know which is great! It was so much fun. We ended up raising $320.00 to go towards the adoption. Checkout her Facebook page, Kayla's Crafty Creations!

My mother in law, my mom, Carla, Carol, Kristi, Delinda, Alline, Melissa, and I.
Plus some other ladies that came.

Kelli, Beth and I

 

Garage Sale for Adoption:

We have been so busy the past two weeks getting everything ready for our adoption garage sale. We spent many nights at the old house till after 9pm working on pricing, tagging and sorting. We had donations from over 15 families!! We ended up having the sale inside the house because it was suppose to rain and did rain. So we were very fortunate to be able to have an empty house to store everything. We had a packed house! You could barely walk through we had so much stuff. We had the sale this past weekend. Both our moms, my aunt and friend helped with the garage sale.  People were very generous with donations. They would give more than what was marked for things or tell us to keep the change. One lady came back in after leaving, she handed Daniel a $20.00 and said "I didn't find anything I needed but wanted to give  this for your adoption".  We were totally blessed with the sale. Before the sale even started we had made $490.75 throughout the week! Day one of the garage sale we made $567 and day two we made $478! This fundraiser total brought in $1,535.75!!! That totally blows my mind!! We are hoping to have another sale this coming fall.

 

Paige and Tanner helping with garage sale stuff or should I say playing.
 Lol they are too cute!

A month ago in my last blog I updated you on the phases of our adoption with the agency. We have paid for phases one and two which totaled $3,900.00 that included our background checks as well. Phase three is due when we are matched with a birth mother/family $7,000.00. A month ago we were just shy about $4,000.00 to complete the phase three. As of today we only need $812 to complete phase three!!! WOW!!!! That is so awesome!! Then on to phase four, $10,275.00. We will get there :-)

 

 

Back in December I had started pinning adoption photo ideas on pinterest. I pinned a lady's photo that lives in Canada. She soon found me on Facebook and we have talked a few times about our journeys with adoption. She also teaches! ;-) It's neat to see other peoples journey with adoption and create a bond with them even though I've never met them. This week she mailed me a special gift with a letter that brought tears to my eyes.

Thank you Amy!! Love it!!

At this time the only fundraiser we have going is the Puzzle Fundraiser. We won't do another fundraiser till the end of July. We are taking a break from them to enjoy some time together and get things done around our new home to prepare for a baby. We have been going going since the beginning of the year with fundraisers and have been blessed with every one's generosity. Please continue to share our story and pray with us. Thank you all!

My first time cooking on the grill.

Daniel supervising lol

We love spending time outside with our fur baby.

 

 

 

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!

Add caption

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!!