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!!

DCFS Cleared

Today we were finally cleared from DCFS. We had been waiting on this background check for about 5 weeks. It took that long to say that we are absolutely fine and clear to proceed...geez. Oh well, I guess its better to be thorough. Our homestudy will be approved from AWAA by March 2nd. Then it needs to be approved by DCFS, which could take another month. And we are still waiting on our Homestudy to be sent in to USCIS, then our I-600A to come back to us as an approved I71H.
Several people have suggested to subscribe to a Ethiopia Adoption yahoo group. So a couple of days ago I joined one and there over 50 emails a day. After reading through all of these, I learned 2 new things, 1 encouraging and 1 discouraging. I found out that we can send a cover sheet and power of attorney (so someone can stand in our place at court in Ethiopia before we travel) to be state certified before we have all the documents. We thought we would have to drive this to Springfield once we had all the papers for our Dossier together. So this will save us one trip to Springfield, one day off of work, and maybe a week or so of time!!! So that was exciting. I also found out that about 1/2 of the court dates in Ethiopia don't go through. Usually some piece of paper is missing or the birth family doesn't show up. Some families were waiting for their 3rd court date. This court date happens after you have accepted your referral of a child and you are waiting to travel to meet him/her. That would be so hard. We have to continually rely on God's timing!
Also we are able to start applying for some grants now that our Homestudy is done. One friend told me that applying for grants was like getting another masters degree. There are a lot of forms to fill out and a lot of papers to write about our faith and testimony. Thank you to our friends who are continually filling out reference forms and letters too!!!

Still waiting, but a few more things done

We have had several people asking us whats going on with our adoption process. The answer is- not much. We are just waiting.... although today we completed our 8 hour Hague Adoption Training. It's nice to have that out of the way. We don't have the Internet at home so we had to leave our comfy couch for the day and get it done.

We also received a letter this week telling us that our FBI fingerprints are finally scheduled. We will be going to Chicago area to the FBI headquarters in a couple weeks. Then we will be waiting on getting those back.

We have also had several friends email us and ask if we decided on adopting one or two children yet. We have been going back and forth on this issue for some time now. We keep praying and talking to each other and other family, friends, other adoptive parents, and our social worker. For now we have decided to request a sibling pair under 4, or just one infant under 12 months. We don't care about gender. Ultimately we know that God has the perfect child or children picked out for our family. He trust in Him to work out all the details!!!

Wonderful Family and Friends

We have wonderful family and friends!!!

One fundraiser we have started is selling Handmade Greeting Cards. Since I'm a Stampin' Up! demonstrator, this was something I was excited about doing. I've been stamping cards and selling a few packs here and there for several years. It has been easy to keep up with in my free time. But since we decided to make these cards a fundraiser for our adoption expenses, I haven't been able to keep up with all the orders. So far we have only put them in our teachers lounges at our schools and a couple friends have taken them to their work too. (Thank you Jill, Kelly, Angie, Joe and Mom). I have had a few other people offer to take them to work with them too, but I haven't gotten enough made to send there yet.
Last weekend I had some family and friends come and help me stamp some cards. It was wonderful to have so much help and to hang out with some stampin friends and family.

My sister Amy and my niece Kylie

My sister-in-law Deidra, my sister Amy, me, and my mom Kim

Our cat MaggieFriends-Julie, Laura, Kristen

Sorry Mary, Katie, and Marie-I didn't get your picture yet...

Brad is 27!!

Today is Brad's 27th birthday. We had a fun filled weekend with lots of family at our house for the weekend. We are exhausted, but it was fun to have a full house. Last night we had almost as many kids as we did adults. It was so fun to play with all the nieces and nephews. I am hoping I can get some pictures uploaded maybe tomorrow. Most of Brad's birthday cards said something about maybe having our child with us next year for his birthday, we are hoping that is true!!!

Brad is also getting anxious that we aren't going to have any money left after paying all the adoption fees to buy stuff for the baby, so when his mom asked what he wanted for this birthday, he said he wanted a crib. We spent a couple different days looking for cribs in different cities. We couldn't find anything we really liked that was reasonably priced. So we looked on craigslist and found a matching set. So we got a crib, changing table, and dresser for an awesome price. The furniture is in great condition. Of course we had to set it all up when we got it. My sister Amy, Pete, niece Kylie, and my Mom came and stayed for the weekend. So my niece got to test the crib out already. That was fun to have something for Kylie, and Amy didn't have to bring everything this trip!! I hope I can take some pictures of the crib soon too. Thank you Mary and Randy!!

Meeting other families

We have had fun the last couple of weeks meeting other families around Galesburg that have adopted or will be adopting from Ethiopia too. We are excited our child will get to grow up with other children from Ethiopia close by. It was wonderful getting to know them and we look forward to getting to know them better in the future.
Not much has been happening with the adoption process, this week we finished the rest of our physical. We weren't able to get into our regular doctor quickly, so we went to the Health Dept and the walk in clinic and it ended up being over $1000 cheaper than we orginially were quoted. We were so happy walking out of there. That was a huge praise this week!!! God is good!!! We also got to see the rough draft of our homestudy. We have our last training session with our social worker on Monday, then we will just be waiting for one set of fingerprints to be cleared for our foster license. We are anxious to keep this process moving!

So Confused...

We are so confused...we are trying to decide if we are going to request one or two children from Ethiopia. We started out wanting two children for sure, then we didn't know, then we did, and now we are back to being unsure. We know that God has called us to adopt, and its on our hearts to adopt more than one child. But we don't know if that means right now, or later in life. Talking to most people that have adopted, they want to do it again. So that is encouraging to hear, and I'm sure if God will provide, we will adopt again. I guess we just need to continue to pray and talk to each other and other people, before we make a final decision. Good thing (yeah right) it takes so long to get all the paperwork back, so we have time to keep thinking!
As far as the paper work goes, we met again with our Social Worker for another training session and we have one more to go. We are waiting for our foster license to come in so the homestudy can be completed. We are also waiting for our FBI fingerprints to be scheduled. Once we get those taken and the I600A form is accepted, we should have the rest of our documents ready to send in our dossier documents. Then we will finally be on the waiting list!!!!!!!! We are really hoping we can have all of this done by the end of April or beginning of May. We'll see how fast we get everything back.

I600A sent in

We sent in our I600A application on Thursday. For those of you that don't know, this is an application to get pre-approval for a visa for our children. After they receive our application, they will schedule fingerprints with the FBI. Then after we get all the results back, we can send in our dossier documents and get on the waiting list!!!! Yesterday we also went the local police station and got our background clearance letters. This week we also got some shots and a couple tests done for our physical. We will finish our physical next week.
Last night Brad grabbed my hand and said "I can't wait until our children get here!" It melted me!! We both are so excited and anxious to meet our children and be the family that God has created for us!
Thank you so much to all the people that have been and will continue to pray for us. It really means alot to us that we aren't doing this alone. God is good!!!

Being Faithful

This process has already begun to show us how God will provide for our needs. There have been many new opportunities arise that will allow us to make a little extra money. We are so thankful that we have God looking out for us and meeting our needs. Last week we found out that we need to have a pretty detailed physical done with a lot of blood work. Since we both work in the school district we have the same insurance that doesn't cover any wellness or checkups, so it's going to be over $1200 each. This was not something we were expecting. But then last night Brad and a friend got the opportunity to start to help fix up a house for a little extra money. When we left our friends house, I told Brad, "isn't it amazing how God is opening all these doors for us?" He told me, "I have no problem trusting in God to provide for us. I know He will open all kinds of doors." I am so thankful to be married to such a faithful man and have such a faithful Lord!!
We have another meeting with the social worker tonight. We need to complete some more of the training. Hopefully she can make sure our I-600A looks good and we can send that off tomorrow. Then we can just wait to get that back and get all the papers ready for our dossier and send it to Ethiopia. We are hoping to have that all done by the beginning of May. We will see!! Yesterday we got an email from AWAA and the wait times have moved up a little, so there is a small chance that we could have our child or children by next winter!!! We are getting more and more excited with everything that is completed and can't wait to meet our children!!