Tales From Boyland : May 2008

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Green Belt??

Thursday afternoon, our little Tang Soo Do artist powered through a 2-hour martial arts testing to try for his green belt. Tang Soo Do testing is among the most stringent martial arts testing in the world. These guys and gals earn their ranks. We'll find out Tuesday if he earned the new rank, but whatever the result, we are SO proud of our big-little guy. He practiced hard and he performed his best. Best of all, he has a blast with this training. Check out that grin as he holds up his broken board!

Memorial Day Weekend....

Some friends generously invited us to go camping with them last weekend. We took their boat ten minutes or so up the river to a beautiful, peaceful sandbar. This is the first time we'd taken the boys camping, and we had a blast! It was cold though...Saturday you could see your breath, the wind was whippin' and the RAIN was pouring. Those 8 hours were not the highlight of the weekend, but we were amazed by the toughness of our boys, who did not complain even though I'm sure they were fairly miserable (as we all were). It was worth sticking it out though...just when we thought we couldn't take any more, the rain stopped, a gentle breeze came in and we were graced with an incredible double rainbow! It was so gorgeous, one guy even caught his foot on fire as he took in the majesty of it all. Enter the quote of the day: "Um, excuse me sir!! Um, your foot is on fire!" After quickly thanking our Wise Bobcat for being so polite, Matthew extinguished his boot.

Thanks for Supporting Us!

Just wanted to give an overdue "Thanks a milli0n" to those of you who so graciously supported the boys and I and HPC for the Walk for Life. Asking for financial support is definitely out of my comfort zone...but God used this to build our confidence and faith in Him. We were able to take in $295 to help new babies and their families in our Valley...just $5 shy of our goal of $300! The sun was shining and fun was had by all. The Center brought in over $23,000 that day. Awesome.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Coming Soon.....January 17, 2009!

Sooooo....the mystery of the last post is solved! Those are the roses (accompanied by Dove chocolates) my husband brought home to me the day we suspected our newest little blessing. Just wanted to have that confirmed before we shouted it out. So, that said, WE'RE HAVING A BABY! WE'RE HAVING A BABY!!

Saturday, May 10, 2008

News to Come....

Birthday Party on The Butte

Today we spent a gloriously sunny, spring day with friends in the Alaska outdoors. Our friend Andrew turned the big 0-9. We celebrated with ice cream cones on top of The Butte!

Thursday, May 08, 2008

We're Walking for Life!

The boys and I will be walking around a local track on Saturday, May 17 in order to raise money for HeartReach Pregnancy Center. This place is an incredibly positive attribute to our community. They do so much, but in a nutshell, they provide help and support to families and individuals facing unplanned pregnancies. I have volunteered for this organization in different capacities for about 3 years. The boys are very excited to join in helping this time! When I asked Bobcat what he liked about planning to walk for HeartReach, he stated, "Well, it will help the babies...and it would help a lady who is (thoughtful pause) pregnant." 'Nuf said. If any of you readers are interested in sponsoring us, we would surely appreciate it. Our goal is to raise $300. So far, we have $40. It's a stretch but we know it's possible! If you feel led to help in this way, please drop a post and I'll contact you...or you can just call us if you know our number. Thank you!

Care to join a spinning class?

Look Who's Taking Over...

Now that Spunky has joined the big boys in their bedroom downstairs, looks who has taken over the "baby room" and toddler bed!

We're Officially On Our Way!
Boyland is on the adoption train. We've had some twists and turns (including welcoming precious son #5!) and a whole lot of waiting before the official waiting for this child began...but...our application has been approved with Children's Hope International! We are considering that day, February 21, our official "begin date". We're gonna need a LOT of support and prayer along this journey...so please...hop on the train with us (and maybe, just maybe, even consider jumping on board a train of your own?!)

The Timeline:
Summer 2010: Heard God's call for adoption. Began researching in earnest

October 2010: Decided to go for it! Held fundraiser #1. Began paperwork for home study

November 2010: Discovered we were (!) pregnant. Paperwork went on-hold in order to grow and welcome our sweet baby!

May 2011: Held adoption fund raiser #2

June 2011: Welcomed our beautiful 5th son!

August 2011: Found what would become our adoption agency

February 8, 2012: Application and $100 sent to Children's Hope International

February 21, 2012: Application approved; approval paperwork began.

March 1, 2012: Approval paperwork completed and sent in with $1000. Officially in CHI's Ethiopia program! Re-started home study paperwork.

March 24, 2012: After lots of paperwork, collecting documents, being fingerprinted, and having health exams, the home study paperwork and $725 were sent in.

April 21, 2012: First home study visit completed.

April 30, 2012: Second home study visit scheduled.

May 7, 2012: We're home-study-approved!

July 6, 2012: Home study and preliminary application sent to USCIS in Dallas, TX with $890. Balance of $1725 sent in to Catholic Social Services for completion of our home study. Compiling of documents for dossier is in full-force....WHEW....lots of papers...and they all seem to cost something. $25 here, $50 there... Lord, please keep replenishing our fund!

August 1, 2012: Reported to Homeland Security for USCIS fingerprinting appointments.

August 2, 2012: Applied for Jessica's passport $135

August 3, 2012: Applied for Tony's passport $135. Please pray these come quickly so we can send in our dossier. Also please pray for God to provide $5500 because that's what we need to send WITH our dossier.

August 17, 2012: Jessica to Homeland Security for fingerprints AGAIN. Scanned and sent over all dossier docs to our agency for proofs. Waiting on passports, USCIS pre-approval and about $4,000 to be provided.

September 10, 2012: Turns out my fingerprints are "unclassifiable" (whatever that means) so we needed to send in State Police clearance for USCIS. Waiting....waiting.... but the passports are here and our agency has gone over our dossier docs. Basically we've got some snail progress going on.

October 8, 2012: We've finally got it, Folks. Our I-171-H is in our little hands. We need to make a change on our Power of Attorney for our in-country assistant, and need a re-do on a notary on a document. Waiting for someone to return to Alaska in order to have the notary re-done.

October 23, 2012: Mercy, I'll be SO happy to have this dossier completed. The last two documents are re-done, and have been sent to be checked by our agency. As soon as we get the "OK", the whole shabang will be sent to Juneau for State Certification. Oh...also found out we need to send some docs to Minnesota and Wisconsin for State Certification. Does it ever end?

November 1, 2012: Faithful God sent a family to our doorstep with a check for $1500. We pray--He hears--He makes things happen. WHAT an encouragement, and just when it was sorely needed. All our documents are en route to Juneau, AK, Madison, WI, and St. Paul, MN, respectively. Praying they all get where they need to go, get the approval needed, and return to us safely. After working on papers for 6 months, it was practically like sending a child on an airplane to send those out of my hands!

December 2012: Documents have all been State-Certified, returned to us, sent on to our agency for bundling, sent on to Washinton D.C. for final certification and authentication, AND sent on to our representative in Addis Ababa! Faithful (always) God has provided every bit of the $ dossier fee. We're officially a waiting family (#104) and waiting to be matched with our child. In the meantime, we've got the other 1/2 of our adoption expenses to raise, which includes travel, in-country expenses (translator, lawyer, etc.) and other immigration expenses. It is such a relief to be to this point. Prayer needed and appreciated. Pray for our child(ren,) our birth mother & family (who knows what they may be going through?) Thank God for funds raised, and pray for remaining funds to be raised.

July 31, 2013: We have lots of "no news" at this point. Continuing to save and raise funds. We are #72 on the "waiting families list."

October 24, 2013: We are #63 on the list. There are some significant slow-downs in some regions of the country at present, and it affects paperwork completion for children to be referred for adoption. Prayer appreciated.

September 30, 2014: We are #54 on the list. Our agency has not received any referrals in months and months. Unless a major miracle takes place, we cannot adopt from Ethiopia for several more years, which means this is fast becoming the end of this path for our adoption. We still have hopes to bring a little one or two into our family somehow. Pray with us?

January 2015: We received official word that Ethiopia is essentially closed. We will be withdrawing from CHI. Uncertain as to whether we'll be pursuing another means to adopt or not...waiting on His Word. We will continue to earmark our adoption savings for adoption until He tell us otherwise.