Family Fundraising for Eli

We had a BIG garage sale a couple weekends ago.  It was truly a family effort!  The kids helped tag items, collect money and chat up the customers, Sam ran the sale on Saturday while I was at work and Sam's parents helped with watching Ben and manning the sale so I could get a break once in a while and everyone pitched in to bring all the stuff in and out of the garage numerous times!  The girls made the sweetest signs to hang up to let everyone know why we were having the garage sale.  We really enjoyed sharing our adoption story with the people who stopped by.  We were so fortunate to have so many friends that donated items for us to sell.  We made just over $1000 in 2 days!

Farm Day with Friends!

Recently had a visit to our favorite farm!  Usually we are here for strawberry picking but it's also fun to go see the animals, take a hay ride and play on the awesome old fashioned playground.  Always more fun with friends!

Didn't want to announce until I was completely sure but.... We have a completely potty trained little boy at our house!  Yay for a few months without diapers!

Big boy's first night sleeping in his big bed!

What a great Easter we had this year!  Busy but wonderful!  Hannah has been practicing hard for her role as a flower blossom in Alice in Wonderland and finally she had her performances Friday and Saturday of Easter weekend.  She was an amazing little blossom! 

 

Grandma and Papa at the show opening night

 

Last weekend we had our annual neighborhood Easter egg hunt.  Hannah missed it because she was at dance practice but Reagan and Ben had a great time!  They both found golden tickets and were able to trade them in for extra special Easter basket prizes. 

 

Ben and his neighborhood buddies

Easter day was spent with breakfast at church.  Yum!  Easter worship and then home to make a yummy dinner and take a little nap while it was cooking.  A perfect relaxing day to celebrate our Risen King! 

Sending Our Love....

Oh, how I want to hold my precious little one in China...the wait is so hard. 

Yesterday was his 1/2 birthday, 1-1/2 years old.  Since we can't shower him with hugs and kisses we can at least send him some treats and pray he gets them.  We sent his first care package today.  Just a few little things that hopefully will let him know that there is a family out there who loves him and is waiting to bring him home. 

Here is what we sent:
A letter provided by our agency (in English and Chinese) that says how happy we are to be adopting and that we would love for our child to get what is in the box and that we would kindly like his things back when we pick him up.
Our copy of the pre-approval letter so they know which child is ours. 
Gerber banana cookies
A disposable camera (we hope they will use to take pictures and return to us when we get Eli)
A Zip drive that they hopefully will load with pictures
Lip gloss and chocolates for his caretakers
A board book of 100 first words
A photo album filled with our family pictures with little labels, mother, father, etc. in Chinese and English
A soft puppy lovey that I hand stitched his name onto (and that I may have slept with for a few weeks before sending)

The whole trip to the Post Office to ship was quite the ordeal....I have never shipped anything internationally before, had 3 children with me and a not very pleasant postal worker who had to assist me way more than she wanted to.  Nevertheless, the 2 pound 11 ounce package was on its way after I paid the $34 bill to ship.

We are hoping it makes its way to Eli but are a little uncertain now that he has been moved to foster care if he will actually get it.

My heart would be so happy if our next update contained a picture of him holding his puppy lovey.....

In other news, all of our dossier documents are currently at the Houston Chinese Consulate getting authenticated and our immigration forms have been received by USCIS and we are now waiting for an appointment to get fingerprinted and then hopefully in a few more weeks we will be able to send our dossier to China!  Little steps but I can start to see the end getting closer!

Two weekends in a row of celebrating our sweet Reagan's birthday!  Last weekend was her actual birthday and we had cake and celebrated her special day with the family and then this weekend was her party with her friends.  She wanted a gymnastics party and so we had one with her little friends.  They had a super fun time running, jumping, climbing and playing and ended with snacks, cupcakes and an awards ceremony.  She is growing up to be such a kind-hearted young lady and getting so big!

Happy 6th birthday to this sweet, sassy, funny, big-hearted, fashionable little girl. We love you Reagan!

Teaming Up With The Apparent Project!

We are teaming up with a great cause called The Apparent Project for our first fundraiser to bring little Eli home!

Ever heard of the The Apparent Project?   This is an organization that helps women in Haiti by providing them work opportunities which in turn allows them to make money to live off of and provide for their families.  The goal is to prevent child abandonment and decrease orphans in Haiti by providing families with the means to get income to cover their expenses associated with having children.

Sounds great, right?  The women and men are provided with supplies to make jewelry and are paid for their time and efforts to make them, which is where we come in.  We are selling these beautiful bracelets made by the women in Haiti as a fundraiser!  These specific bracelets are made by wrapping strips of cereal boxes round and round and then sealing the beads up.  It is really amazing work!  We will keep some of the profits to help us bring Eli home and then for each bracelet sold we send back some money to the Apparent Project as payment to the women who made the bracelets.  It's a win-win for us both!

So here's the details.....We are selling the bracelets for $10 each.  We have lots!  For our in-town friends just text, email or FB message me and let me know if you would like to help us out.  Out-of-town friends and family we would be happy to ship bracelets to you for a flat fee of $2 for as many bracelets as you would like.  Money can be sent through Paypal www.paypal.me/bringingelihome, cash or a check.


Won't you help us out??  They are truly beautiful and would make great gifts!

For more information on The Apparent Project visit www.apparentproject.org

We are continuing to wait as patiently as possible as the adoption process continues on.  Our social worker finished our home study this week and it is being reviewed by our agency.  Hopefully within about a week and a half we will have that all finished up and finalized.  Then we will be waiting for USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) to approve our I800A form before we can send the whole big package to China for a letter of approval to go get our boy.  Still a long ways to go, but I can begin to see some steps in the right direction being completed! 

We hope to get started on our first fundraiser soon and once our home study is done it will be time to start the grant applications! 

In the meantime I started working on a care package to send to our little guy and the nannies that are taking care of him.  I spent nap time today putting together this sweet little photo book for Eli so he can get used to the faces of all of us waiting here to love on him!