The Last of Summer and Some Exciting News!

First the exciting news - our dossier has been submitted! If you want to know more about what that means, read My Blog Post about that!Our summer officially ended over 2 weeks ago.  We began homeschooling early this year since we know that we will be taking extra time off for our two trips to meet and bring Priscilla home, plus I will need to take a week off to prepare for Jeremy's wedding - just a little over 5 weeks away now!

Speaking of the wedding, I have a lot to do and I need to get going on it - color coordinating clothes for Daryl, myself and all the children Rebekah on down.  That is a lot of shopping.  I also need to get shower and wedding gifts and workout the last details of catering the rehearsal dinner.  On top of all that I need to begin to think about our trip to meet Priscilla, which could happen in very close proximity to the wedding!  I just keep reminding myself when I begin to get flustered that everything is still under the control of God's sovereign hand, and that if I look to Him for wisdom and strength I will have all I need to accomplish His will for me each and every day!

We ended our first week of school by spending the afternoon at the beach.   We had a great time, especially Esther who just can't get enough water time!  Carese has not quite developed a love of the water, but she loves playing in the sand and getting a little wet!

The Shirt Says it All!

Carese has found that she love fruit.  Even if her little teeth aren't quite up the challenge of eating an apple quite yet, she does try for all she's worth!  She's also a great subject for Rachel's photography!

In other news, Daniel turned 12 years old this past week, and Rachel will be turning 16 this weekend!  How time flies!  Esther will also have a birthday this month - she will be turning 5 years old!  She is suddenly growing like crazy!  She getting bigger and she's learning news words and new things to do!  Read my Blog Post about her recent advancements for more on that!

Carese is growing and learning too.  She is saying new words, and she is learning sign language very quickly.  So far she has signed without prompting "more", "please", "milk", "cookie", "all done" and others.  If she's all fussy about something, and you suggest the thing that she needs, like a bottle, she'll stop crying and sign!  It's amazing!  She loves pointing at things too.

Esther and Carese are quickly becoming buddies.  They love to play together and in general, Esther is really good with Carese.  We do have to keep an eye on them though, as Carese is a little dare devil and has no fear, and Esther can get a little pushy at times.  Esther is about twice the size of Carese, and she knows it.  But she loves Carese and the two of them often have little hugging and kissing parties.  Sometimes these parties even take place on my lap as they vie for my attention - too much fun!

This week another big event is happening - Jonathan is moving out.  Since Jeremy is getting married, Jason is moving out of Jeremy's house.  Jonathan is going to share an apartment with Jason and another friend.  Jonathan is still driving truck and loving it.  We will miss having him at home, but I think this will be good for him.  The three younger boys will have such a spacious bedroom!  I'll get a photo of that once Jonathan is moved out and we've re-arranged. 

Speaking of re-arranging bedrooms, I did that this week for the little girls and I really like the new arrangement.  We removed all toys from the bedroom in order to simplify things both in general as well as to prepare for Priscilla's coming home as she might be overwhelmed if the bedroom is too exciting.  I was just realizing this week that we will be in the market for another crib in the next few months as Carese will be outgrowing her little crib - I think it' a one year crib, but I really have no idea.  She has learned that she can climb out if anything it near the crib, so I had to change that right away!

Looking over this post I realize that I have too many photos of Carese, sorry about that.  I will work harder to get photos of all the children and be more fair about that! She's just so stinking cute!

Fir

Spaghetti Feed Report, plus Matching Grant Update!

This is a copy post from my adoption blog, but the news is so big, I just had to share it here too!

Yesterday was our BIG fundraising event!  We hosted a Spaghetti Feed Date Night that included a silent auction and raffles as well as a movie too!


While we didn't have as many people attend as I had hoped, the evening was a smashing success!  Those attended had a great time, the food was delicious, all the planning made for a smooth evening and best of all, we brought in more that I had hoped for!

So here are the numbers:
$2100 in donations before the event - food, money for food, items for the silent auction
$2800 in cash donations at the event (including winning bids on auction items)
$4900 will be matched in with our matching grant!

So we now have $7700 to use for our adoption that we didn't have yesterday morning!

I worked feverishly all week making posters for the event as well as all the papers needed for the event (bidding sheets, directional sheets, thank you notices etc).

Here'a photos of the events as well as some of the images I used to create the posters.  If you are interested in using my posters at an adoption awareness or adoption fundraising event, please contact me and I'll tell you how you can get access to the larger files!

So here is where we stand as far as getting the most out of our matching grants after last night's huge success!

We still need to raise a total of over $8,000 yet in order to have all the funds to pay for all future events for our adoption, including projected travel costs.

We also need $3000 in readily available cash in order to submit our dossier around the end of May.  Our Reece's Rainbow Grant funds will not be available for our use until after our dossier has been submitted and approved.
So if we raise around $4,000 before the end of April, we will no longer need to do any fundraising as all our future expenses will be covered!  If $3,000 of that is money donated outside our RR account, then everything is all set for the dossier as well.

So there it is - $4,000 in donations in 2 weeks.  That will make the most of our matching grant!  If we bring in more than that, it's OK as the traveling expenses are just approximate.  If we raise more than we need, then we will consider helping out another adoptive family with the fund once we are home with Priscilla!



That could be 80 people giving $50, or or 100 people giving $40, or 200 people giving $20, or 800 people giving $5!  Every dollar counts double with our matching grant>

Here are a few of the posters I made for the event - I'll post the rest on my next blog post as they are on my external hard drive...and I have no idea where that is right now (we had to use it to get the HUGE poster files to my husband's workplace to get the HUGE posters printed - the biggest one was 4 ft by 5 feet!