little by little

i had forgotten that jamie and i had a little bit of money laid away in an adoption account. we made a budget for the summer, and we agreed that the surplus from anything we bought under budget would go towards our adoption. for example, we budgeted that my textbook for greek would cost $120 (you know how expensive textbooks are these days); luckily, i found the book on amazon for $20. anyway, with the surplus money plus a financial award jamie won at school plus the few donations we have already received, we'll be able to to pay our fee to the USCIS! we will post when we officially write the check and send off the paperwork, but we are thankful to those who have helped us make this small goal.

we are still, however, a long way from our big goal. to make things more manageable, however, we're going to start posting our progress towards one small goal. instead of saying we want to raise $5000 towards 3 or 4 different costs, we'll give the amount of money we need for one specific (smaller) goal. so, for the next while, we're going to be raising money towards our first fee to the adoption agency. we need $2500. that's $50 from 50 people. we'll blog occasionally about our progress towards this goal. if you want to help us, email me at browle6@wfu.edu or leave a comment.

i did want to say a little about how we are trying our best to be wise with the money we have. i want to assure everyone that we are trying to live as modestly as we can. we haven't bought new clothes in months, we aren't buying any new furniture for our house for awhile (except for a kitchen table, which we found on an awesome sale), and we try to eat cheaply, though eating healthy and eating cheaply is almost impossible. all i'm trying to say is that we are being so careful, and, in some ways, i see this blog as a way for us to be accountable for what we're spending. we can't ask for help if we're not being responsible in the first place.

this weekend, we're going to maryland for the wedding of a friend of jamie's. we found a bed and breakfast that cost the same as hotels in the area, so we decided to consider this a belated first anniversary trip. we'll post pictures when we get back. in other updates, i'm rapidly approaching the end of my first session of greek. i must brag on myself a little and say that i made a 100 on my mid-term exam. this was a big deal to me since many people told me greek was a language for people who do well in math. and, well, if you know me you know that i'm horrible in math. let's just say that exam is hanging on our refrigerator. jamie is going to a bar exam class every morning and then studying all afternoon. when he comes home, he relaxes by playing a video game he found online. he's a little obsessed with it now, but the demo will run out soon. we also received the audio version of there's no me without you in the mail a couple of days ago, so we listen to that for about an hour every night before bed. i'm pleading with all of you: please, please, please read this book.