This and that...

I wanted to share with you about a little girl named Samantha whose family is adopting a little boy from Ethiopia. They also sponsor a child through Children's Hope Chest. Samantha came up with the idea of making bottle cap necklaces and selling them for just $5 each to raise money for the care point center in Ethiopia. As of right now she is over $640!! How awesome is that! I ordered three necklaces for my kids and they are just so cute! Here is a link to her blog....Go check it out!And by the way....Check out the picture below......
We are # 6 on the overall list right now! Whooo Hooo!! We were number one for siblings and we prayed about it and decided to change our request in order to wait and see if Mikias' paperwork will be finished soon. We are still on the list though and number 4 for a baby boy! :)

Praying this will be a busy referral week coming up!!

VBS Donations

A few weeks ago the kids and I made this video to show at church and on Sunday and then the first night of Bible school

We asked for donations for Ethiopia as our VBS offering this past week. The kids did an amazing job filling up the chest full and overflowing with donations! We also had a man donate money to cover the extra baggage expense to get it to ET AND we have had money donated to buy more supplies too! What a blessing! We will ba able to take donations to the AWAA transition house and to Trees of Glory ! God is good!!

This is how much stuff we had collected by the last night!

A favor...PLEASE

Hi ya'll! My daughter Abby is in a contest that her orthodontist is sponsoring. She can win an Ipad ( Which would be AWESOME to take on that loooong plane ride to Ethiopia this fall!) If you wouldnt mind, would you please take a minute to go to the site and vote for her? You can actually vote once a day all week! Thanks SOOOO much!

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!!!!!

Our monthly celebrations

We had decided when we were close to being DTE, we would celebrate each month with ice cream. It has been a fun way to mark each passing month as we wait on our referral call. The day we found out we were DTE ( March 26) we went to Kernel Kustard with Amy....I Loooove the Kernel!!

On month number one (April 26) we had Root Beer floats at home...one month down..how many more to go??Month number two (May 26) Our friend Deana had her wisdom teeth out so we picked up some Zacks Yogurt to go and took it to her house and shared our month number 2 with her. Month #3...the kids were in Virginia with Nana and Gramps, so Greg and I had Bill and Leah's ice cream and Abby assured me they had ice cream in Va too. ;)Month number 4 ( Could this be our last month!!???) Greg had to have three teeth cut out and so it was Zack's again ( I am sensing a theme with Zacks and oral surgery!)

It has been fun to celebrate this way, but let me tell you I am hoping and praying not to make it to month number 5! Maybe we will celebrate our REFERRAL DAY (SOOOON PLEASE!!) with Kernel Kustard just like we started out back in March!

DTE Month number 4

Being DTE for month number 4 feels kinda like I imagine turning 40 will feel like..thankful we made it, but not real thrilled to be here either! I do expect we should be getting a phone call any day! Now, thats exciting!! We actually heard that the paperwork on the little boy Mikias is progressing and it is possible we might be able to adopt him as well as a baby. Thats exciting for us as we have been praying for Mikias for months now. If we are able to adopt Mikias, then we will change our baby request to either boy or girl.

I am beginning to feel a bit weary of the waiting and I realize it is only begun. We will now have to wait for a court date ( October will be the earliest) and then an Embassy date ( praying its November!) and then we finally will bring them home! I read this quote the other day an I am trying to cling to it.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength." - Corrie Ten Boom

Tee shirt give a way

My AWAA friend Debb and her hubby just created the coolest adoption shirts! You can win it before you buy it if you go HERE

Our official request

On the AWAA waiting list we went ahead this week and confirmed our request. Here is how it reads:

2 children, siblings or non related, male-male or male-female, one being between 0 and 10 months and the 2nd one being between 0 and 6 years.

I think this means we are first on the waiting list for 1 boy and 1 girl now! I know we are first for the age range we have chosen!! Now this could mean we get a phone call tomorrow or months! BUT, be sure my phone is with me all the time! I am so excited to see the faces of the children God has chosen for our family!

Yard Sale

Well, we had our adoption fund raiser Yard Sale this weekend. We had about 6 families donate stuff and we had a TON of stuff for sure! Friday was an awesome day and we ended up making about $340!

There were so many nice people that gave more than they bought and said to put it towards our adoption. Saturday started out nice, but around 10:30 the dark clouds began rolling in and soon we were scrambling to get everything picked up before the rain started.

I had thoughts of waiting it out and setting everything back up, but it was still raining by 2:00 that afternoon, I knew our day was up! We still ended up making around $500 and that was the amount I was praying for! Here are some pictures from Friday:


A BIG THANKS to all who donated and a HUGE thanks to Deana for bringing Bojangles each morning and coming to help at the crack of dawn on her summer break!

TEE SHIRT BLITZ!!

We are having our big adoption fund raising garage sale this weekend! I have had 6 families donate stuff, so we have a lot! At the same time we are doing a final push on tee shirts with a TEE SHIRT BLITZ! We are lowering the price of our adoption shirts to $12 and that includes shipping! We only have about 25 shirts left so ACT NOW! ( said in my best Billy Mays voice)

You can use the paypal button , but you may want to email me first to make sure I still have the size you need or email me about mailing a check. We will also have them for sale at our garage sale so if you are close by stop by and pick one up! Here are a few photos of them. (I only have XL and 2XL left in the navy, but all sizes in maroon)

The maroon shirts on the cutest models ever!The frontClose up of the frontThe backClose up of the back

Wow! Thanks for the quick response!! Here is what I have left:

4 navy XL's

2 Maroon XL's

10 Maroon L's

1 Maroon M

2 Maroon Youth M's

Isaac's elephant

Once we get our referral we will be able to send over a care package with a travelling family. I have not bought a lot to go in a care package yet because I am waiting to see what size he is before I buy clothes. I did buy this elephant.

Actually, I bought 2 elephants. Every morning when I get up and make my bed, I put one of the elephants under mine and Greg's pillows. There is stays all day and so hopefully when we send him to Ethiopia, he will smell like mommy and daddy! Once we have sent the first elephant in the care package, I will do the same thing with elephant number 2 . When we go to bring him home, it is not certain that we will get the elephant back, so we will have #2 ready with us. That way he will have a smell, sound ( you pull his tail and it makes music) and feel that is familiar to him with us.

We are kind of at that point of waiting to where there is not much to do but wait. I cant buy clothes because I don't know what size or what season I need, his crib is up, I have no pictures yet to start a scrapbook..all we are doing is waiting. Mr. Elephant is something small I can do to start the bonding process with my baby boy!

Hoping for that phone call SOON!

Ethiopia Donations

This is the video we made for Vacation Bible School at our church. We are collecting donations to take with us when we go to Ethiopia.

* If you click on the middle of the video screen TWICE , it will take you to Youtube and you can watch the full screen video.*

Cool giveaway

Here is a link to The Dixon family's blog. They have some pretty awesome adoption gear they are selling! I LOVE the pink and brown baseball shirt and hat! LOVE IT! They are also doing a give away sooo check them out!