Hand Stamped Cards-Fundraiser

One of the fundraisers we have been doing is selling Hand Stamped Cards. I am a Stampin' Up! demonstrator and when we started thinking of ways to fundraise I first thought of making and selling cards. We have started out my putting them in our teachers lounges and a few friends and family have taken them to their work too. At this point we have sold over $1,500 worth of cards. Thank you to everyone that has either helped sell the cards or that has bought them!

I am going to try to put a link on the side too, not sure how to do this yet. We are selling a 10 pack of cards for $15, plus $2 shipping-if needed. If you are interested or have any questions please email me at tara_mowen@yahoo.com. You can pick All Ocassion (usually 4 birthdays, 3 thank yous, 1 wedding, 1 sympathy, and 1 thinking of you or baby), Birthday, Thank You, Sympathy, Baby, Anniversary, Praying for You, etc. Here is a picture of some of the cards I have been including in the packs.



If you live close by, just email or call me. If not I'll ship them to you! There is a paypal button on the side now. Just click on it and in the comments leave me your address to ship and your email if I have any questions! Thanks!!

Ethiopia Law Change

Unfortunatley the Ethiopia Adoption Program had some changes today. One of the several of reasons that we chose to adopt from Ethiopia was because you only had to travel once to get your child. Today those rules changed, now you must travel 2 times. Once for court and once to pick up your child. This makes the travel expense double, which means another $6000-7000 we weren't planning for. We have to try to look at the positive side and trust that God has His hand in all of this. We will get to meet our child within 1-2 months of accepting the referral. The heratbreaking part will be leaving them in Ethiopia while we come back here and wait 2-3 months to be able to go back and pick him/her up.

USCIS Fingerprints

After driving around Naperville for awhile, we found the place to be fingerprinted. It was the back of a building, which we had been warned about, but still hard to find. The GPS told us we arrived at our destination at an empty field. So we kept driving and driving another 2000 blocks and we found it. We got there a little early but they took our fingerprints anyways and we were out of there within 10 mins. So we drove about 3 hours to get there and only 10 mins to be fingerprinted. Oh well, at least it is done! Now still waiting for DCFS to approve the Homestudy and our I71IH to be sent to us!!

Grant Applications

This week we have been busy filling out grant applications to see if we quailify for any financial assistance or interest-free loans. The paperwork really never does end!!
We will be going up to the Chicago area on Monday for our FBI fingerprints. We are excited the end is really near. After our fingerprints, we will need to get our I71H in the mail (maybe as soon as 3 weeks) and we can submit our Dossier and get on the waitlist. It seems like this has been something that was so far away for awhile, but now I think we can see the end of the paperchasing!!