fundraising

we have had about $500 donated to us since we posted 100 people, 50 dollars. while we're still far from our goal, this is still incredible. the first $200 we will combine with money we had already saved plus money jamie won from an award at school to pay our $830 fee to the united states citizenship and immigration services (USCIS). we are waiting to make sure we definitely receive a student loan check we've been waiting for before we send that fee off. we've been planning to use $1900 of that check to pay all of our homestudy and post-adoption fees, but if the check doesn't come for some odd reason, we will have to use the $830 towards our homestudy. the other $300 from what we've raised so far will go towards our first agency fee. we still need to raise $2,200 more, but we are so thankful to have already raised a small portion of that fee.

i found out that donations can be made to our adoption fund online, which is so much easier than sending a check through snail mail. if you want to do that, go to https://www.cwa.org/DonationForm.aspx and select donate to general fund and type in our information. we still really want to fundraise the rest of our agency fee, but if possible, we'd also like to fundraise the $1900 for our homestudy and post-adoption fees so we don't owe that back down the road. thanks to everyone who has given so far.

i'm not sure we've ever mentioned on here that we have noted on our paperwork that we would be willing to accept twins or a young sibling group (with the older sibling not being more than 2 years old). originally, we did this because we knew it could come up down the line, and we wanted to be open to whatever might come up. but now, and especially after reading there's no me without you, i'm actually hoping and praying for siblings, namely because we'd be restoring 2 children back to a loving family. but the other reason is that we know we want more than one adopted child, so if we adopted siblings, we'd have 2 kids without having to endure the process again. the thing is, though, we feel so passionate about adoption that i know we'd endure this process as many times as we feel called to ensure we do all we can to alleviate the orphan crisis in this world.

lastly, a funny story. when i told my mom that i was praying for siblings, her only question was: "but how will you mow the lawn?" it wasn't "do you think you can handle 2 kids?" or "do you have the money for that?" or "how will that affect other plans like having a biological child or career, etc?" no, it was "but how will you mow the lawn?" now, i reminded my mom that mowing the lawn with 2 children would be no more difficult than with one because somebody has to be watching the child(ren) either way, whether there is one or 2. so i assured her i'd mow the lawn on saturdays when jamie is home from work. we're not sure if mom thought i'd be strapping the one baby on my back while i mowed the lawn, but i think it's safe to say that how i'll mow the lawn with one or 2 kids is really the least of our worries. (i hope my mom is reading this and laughing).