Keeping Positive..... and Fundraising like crazy!

*** I started writing this post a few weeks ago and just didn't know how to end it. I've had a few weeks to think (and got some new information) and hopefully I am making more sense as I complete this blog update!

I know my resolution this year was to not stress about our adoption and the things I can't control but it's been a hard week. I guess I didn't have a good grasp on what actually happens once you send in your dossier. I thought there was some sort of number system that helps you keep track of where you are in the referral process. I guess it is not that simple. Because the referral process is based on dossier submission and everyone submitting a dossier has a little bit different requirement they keep an internal list but its not something that would make sense to us. With that said we can still contact our agency and ask how things are going and if referrals are coming in. This is going to be a long waiting process. With that said after many questions to our agency we were given a number as a guide. We are #18 on the list. That means that there are 17 families ahead of us looking for the same age range of child. Some months there may be no change in our number and some months we may move multiple spots up.

I'm not discouraged with our adoption or upset about anything in particular I think I just came to the realization that these 6-12 months (or possibly more) of waiting are going to be hard. I'm not sure what questions to ask our agency during this time of waiting, but I know that I have lots of fundraising to do while we wait.

In order to accept any referral we have to have the money raised and sent in within 7-10 days. This guarantees that we have accepted a referral and gets us moving on the next steps of bringing our child(ren) home. The cost of the referral fee is going to be $8,000 or $14,000. If we accept a sibling group it will be the larger number. We know this is a lot of money and we have been working hard to save for this fee. With me working part-time and Aaron coaching soccer we hope to be able to come up with half the money on our own. The rest we are going to fundraise like crazy to get.

Our first fundraiser of the year is going to be a Garage Sale.  We have already been accepting donations for this sale and plan to hold it as soon as the weather gets nice (yes, today is March 22 and there is snow everywhere in the Pacific NW!) So it may not happen as soon as we would like, but as soon as the weather turns spring like we are going to be ready!

***** We are still gladly taking Donations for our Garage Sale. So as your doing your spring cleaning think of us. We will come pick them up anytime. We will be holding a second garage sale in the summer, so if you aren't ready to clean things out yet just think of us when you do. We would love to store your unwanted treasures until our next sale.

Thanks for checking out our update. This one's all over the place, but sometimes it's nice to let others know just how your really feeling!

~April

Our Dossier is finally sent in!!!

This week has been very exciting on the adoption front. We have sent in our dossier to our agency to be reviewed and translated. We still have one form were waiting on from the US Government, but once that comes we can get it notarized and then send it off to the agency to be translated with all the others. We are so excited to get through this next step. Our information will soon be in DRC and we will be waiting again.

The timeline from this point on is very fuzzy. We will get a referral number (saying where we are in the line of people from our same agency) but it will most likely take 6-12 months before we get a referral. We're anticipating it being on the longer end since we are hoping for a child as young as possible. We know this will be a trying time because waiting is never easy. But God has a plan for our lives and we are going to trust in him and his timing.

Another reason this week was so great is a family from our agency came home with their little girl. She is adorable and we are so happy for them! While in DRC they took the time to take 100's of pictures for other families to give them a small glimpse into their children's lives. It was so wonderful to see our online group light up with such joy. Even people who don't have referrals yet have been in tears looking at the pictures and videos (yes, including me!). We also got to see a glimpse of the orphanage and hear a lot about the guest hose location. We are so excited m for the families that will be traveling soon and can't wait to see more pictures of where we will be traveling in the future.

And now here's his best cheese smile for the camera this morning to make you smile!

Love, April

Happy New Year

We had such a wonderful Christmas with family. I'm pretty sure Carson got everything he could have ever wanted from his grandparents, aunts, and uncles. We then had a relaxing family night on New Years getting our master shower finished (we had some floor issues and we had to tear it out and redo it). It looks awesome and I love the pebble floor look we have now.

As we begin this new year we were thinking about all those failed resolutions of years past. We decided that we need to have a goal that we could do together. We have decided our resolution will be "Not stressing out about the adoption process". Hopefully this is a resolution we can finally keep!

We know this year will be trying with a lot of "waiting" waiting for us. But, we know we need to just remember that this will all happen in Gods timing. We are so excited to finally get our referral number (although it doesn't really mean a whole lot in regards to a time line) it will give us something to keep track of.

We have our digital fingerprints this week and then will hopefully get all of our paperwork together and notarized by early next week. Then our dossier will be complete and ready to send off to the agency to be reviewed and then it's off to the DRC. Woohoo!

Thank you to all our family and friends. We love you all and can't wait to see what this New Year brings.

Just some updates....

Happy week(ish) before Christmas!

We are very excited for Christmas here at the Marvin house. Carson absolutely loves having the tree in the house and constantly takes ornaments on and off of it. Luckily we were smart and got a ton of soft ornaments on after Christmas clearances the past two years, so our entire lower half of the tree is kid proof! We've only had one glass ornament casualty so far; hopefully that's it for this year, although we still have a little over a week to go.

We have held two different fundraisers in the past few months and I got the final numbers in and wanted to share with everyone.

The "Getting Ready for Christmas" party was so much fun and hopefully very helpful for many people. We made about $250 just from the sales percentages from Scentsy and Mary Kay. Then we made about $150 from the stuff that my sister Amy and I made. Total we made just under $400. Woohoo!  Over all it was a great night, and it was so wonderful to share our journey with so many of you.

We then got a booth at the "Snowflakes Bazaar" in Sellwood. It was a long weekend, but we had a ton of fun. Aaron manned the booth with me on Saturday and my sister Amy manned it with me on Sunday. Between my sister, myself and Aaron's grandma we had a very full table with an array of items to sell. In the end we made about $75 after the cost of the booth (every penny counts!). We met so many wonderful people working their own booths and we were able to share our story with everyone who would listen during our two days there. Thanks to everyone who bought from us and to our wonderful family who helped make this weekend possible.

We are so thankful for all the opportunities we have had to make some extra money for our adoption fund. With me (April) tutoring two days a week and some other fundraisers planned for the spring we're hoping we can meet our next fundraising goal by summer. This is the big one! We will need to have all the money raised to accept a referral (meaning we will get to see a picture of our child and say we want to bring him/her home). We know this will be quite a challenge, but we feel so at-peace with our decision to adopt and we know we need to trust God and just take it one day at a time.


We want to give THANKS to everyone and to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Here's a quick picture of Carson at the Oregon Zoo that Aaron took on their Daddy Day, while I was at the bazaar.

With Love, The Marvin's

Snowflakes Bazaar

Here we are at the Snowflakes bazaar. It's been pretty slow today. Hopefully it will pick up since church services should be finished and lunch should be done. We have such a mod-podge of stuff available. Tons of Infinity Scarves, toddler hair clips, and quilted table runners/placemats. Thanks to Aaron's grandma Dorthy for all her quilting.

Time to check one thing off the list....

Our official home-study is complete!! Woohoo!!!

Today in mail came our official home-study! Which means we are ready to send our I600a paperwork off to the US government. I have no idea how long that will take to process (hopefully less time than the original fingerprints) but I do know that we are excited to be moving on to a next step in this adoption process. The funny thing is once this paperwork is processed we are given a date to get digital fingerprints done and then those have to be approved. I understand that the government wants to check us out, but come on were not criminals!

Anyhow, this is another expensive time in our process so we are so grateful to have had such a wonderful fundraiser this month. We continually want to thank all of our friends and family that have supported us in this journey. We appreciate all the money, prayers, and kind words everyday and know that we couldn't do this without you.

We love you all,
April

Getting Ready for Christmas Fundraiser

We had a wonderful fundraising event this weekend at my Moms (newly remodeled) house. One of my great friends Christina sells Mary Kay and offered to donate her proceeds from a party. So we came up with a plan to have a big "Getting Ready for Christmas Party" where we had Christina with Mary Kay and Denise with Scentsy. The plan was to help people start thinking about Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers while also helping out with our adoption fund. My sister has also made a ton of random gift items like stuffed animals, purses, scarfs, ornaments and flower pens. I'm pretty sure she pretty much sold out of her items and even has a few orders to fill!

We had a ton of food and just let everyone hang out and casually go over to the different tables where things were available. It was very low key and just felt right for a party like this. In the end the party was a huge success and we are so thankful for everyone that participated in making this fundraiser happen. Also, a thank you to everyone who came to support us and bought items towards our adoption fund.