Our I-171H has arrived....finally

Today we received our I-171H in the mail!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH!! So excited!!! When I opened the envelope my eyes were seraching it all to make sure it was the real thing. On June 5th we received a letter from them saying they needed the orginial letter from DCFS, not the copy that was sent to them in May. I thought it would say I-171H real big across the top, no- its teeny tiny down in the corner. After I realized that this was the paper we have been waiting for since we applied for it back in February, I started to cry. I felt like we were never going to get to this point in the process, so that we finally had all the papers we needed and we are able to send our Dossier in made it all real to me. I don't even know how to describe all the emotions I was feeling this afternoon. I was so overwhelmed with a wonderful feeling and felt like we were moving in the right direction-forward!!!! Something of ours will be in Ethiopia soon!!!!!

So I sat down to make sure all the papers were in order and ready to be mailed off. I realized that we needed a copy of the orginial notarized, so I rushed off to our church to get it notarized- thank you Wilda!! I was crying all the way there and thought I needed to get it together before I get to church, ha!

Here are all the papers we needed to submit our Dossier. We have been collecting these and waiting for different pieces to be approved and come in since the begining of January. We are happy to let them leave our house!!

Brad has come home everyday for the last month checking the mailbox for an envelope from USCIS, but today Brad was coaching volleyball this afternoon, so I checked the mail. I sent him a text message that said , "Hurry home...I have an important job for you to do." He thought I wanted him to clean up a mess from our cat or dog or something...lol. He said once he pulled into the driveway he thought it might be about our I-171H. He came in was so excited that it was here and that he didn't have a mess from an animal to clean up!!! He made the last copies we needed then took the box to UPS while I had to go coach tennis. We sent the Dossier to AWAA overnight for $48.84...wasn't expecting that. Oh well its been submitted and it feels great!!

Finally tonight we celebrated with pizza and a walk and we keep talking about how excited we are to finally get our Dossier all turned in and that we are that much closer to our child!!!

So now we wait to hear from AWAA if it was all approved and then it will be translated and sent to Ethiopia within 1-3 weeks. Then we will get our DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia) date and be on the waiting list to be matched with our child(ren). Our request is an infant 0-6 months either gender, or siblings-one an infant 0-6 months and one under 4years old, or infant twins 0-6 months. We will just wait to see who God has planned to be a part of our family!!

Happy 4th Anniversary Babe!

Ok, this is operation surprise Tara! If you don't know, Tara is someone who can find out anything and it is VERY hard to surprise her. So as you are sleeping tonight Tara, I have logged into our blog to surprise you with an anniversary blog. We are not doing anything "big" for our anniversary because we are trying to save money for our adoption, so this is my gift to you this year.
I can't believe it has already been 4 years since we have been married! It seems like yesterday we were getting on the plane for our honeymoon. What a great time we have had together. I could not ask for anything better than the last four years we have spent together as a family. I am excited to see what God has planned for the next 50....if it were up to you, I know that it would include a huge house packed full of at least 10 kids...I say we see what God has planned for us :).
The last 4 years, God has spent building a foundation for our marriage that is unbreakable. He has been preparing us so that we can be the most incredible parents that our children could possibly dream of. Babe, if you are only half the mother than you are a wife, our children are going to be the luckiest kids in the world. I am excited to see you be a mother (even if it is to 10) because I know how good of a wife you have been to me! Thanks for all you do and even yet to do for our family. I thank God for you everyday!
God,
Thank you for putting Tara in my life. Thank you for watching over her and keeping her safe. Thank you for making her beautiful, caring, thoughtful, loving, intelligent, and confident. God, continue to bless her life. Continue to have her grow closer to you and be a woman of Faith. Continue to bless our marriage and family. God you tell us this in 1st John 4:18-19 "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because He first loved us." God I give you thanks because your love endures forever!

If you are reading this, will you say a quick prayer for continued blessings over our marriage? We know that a solid marriage is the foundation for the rest of our lives and are always thankful for people praying for us.

-Brad

Waiting with a Purpose

I knew starting this process that we were going to eventually become parents and bring a precious baby into our family. I had no idea that this would be such a faith building, heart changing, and eye opening experience. I read on someone elses blog (sorry I don't remember who) that they said, the greatest treasure in this journey is drawing closer to our God. How true!!

I am so glad that God chose us to experience the adoption process. There is this whole other world of support and friendships connected through adoption. God has designed each of our families in the way that HE sees fit. I'm so thankful that HE saw it fit for Brad and I to experience this. Now don't get me wrong, the waiting is driving us CRAZY, but we know it will be worth it in the end!

Here are a few verses that I like for this time in our lives!!

"He told them, 'You don't get to know the time. Timing is the Father's business.'" Acts 1:7 The Message

"Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails." Proverbs 19:21 NIV

I also like the same verse from The Message- "We humans keep brainstorming options and plans, but God's purpose prevails." Proverbs 19:21

"Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you." Deuteronomy 31:8 NLV

Just Love Coffee

Did you know that Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee? We have started another fundraisier to help us pay for our adoption expenses. If you like coffee, check out: http://www.justlovecoffee.com/mowen
I have heard that these are some of the most popular flavors: Ethiopian Harrar, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, and Goodnight Moon.
From this wesbsite you can purchase coffee and we will recieve a portion of each purchase.
A family started Just Love Coffee to help other famlies with their adoption expenses, help Ethiopian coffee farmers, and help Ethiopian orphanages.
Thank you to everyone that has helped us along the way! We apprecaite it more than you know!

Illinois Approval

After a 9+ week wait, Illinois and DCFS approved our homestudy. That means today our approved homestudy will be sent to USCIS (US Immigration) to join the other paperwork that was sent to them on Feb 1st. They are estimating a 30 day wait from USCIS to send our I71H to us, but since we have already been fingerprinted we are hoping its shorter. As soon as we get that we will send our Dossier to Ethiopia and get on the waiting list. We are so excited!! After 2 months of almost nothing happening, we finally feel like its moving forward a little bit more!!

Lucky Illinois and fundraising

From what I have heard, IL is one of the only states that requires your homestudy to be approved by DCFS before submitting it your agency. We have been waiting for over 2 months now for the approval. We were told it would take 6 weeks at the most. It is frustrating not being able to do anything to help along the process. But again we give it to God and know that its in HIS hands!

So we continue to wait.

In the meantime we have been able to get some more fundraising done. We had our 2nd yard sale at the church last weekend. Between the sale at our house and the one at the church we made a grand total of $2,926.37. This has been AMAZING. We are so blessed with wonderful people in our lives!! Thank you to everyone who has had a part in helping us!! We are sooooo thankful! We have also sold almost $3,000 in cards. We are getting close to having all $8,000 that we need to send in our Dossier.

It's amazing that we aren't going to have to take out a loan for this portion. Going into this we thought there was no way that we could save/raise all the money up to this point. God has been doing awesome things in our lives and putting amazing people who support us along this journey. We are definitely reminded not to put limits on our God!!

Yard Sale Pictures

We had our yard sale fundraiser on Saturday. Boy were were tired when it was done!! It was a lot of work to get ready for it, and luckily we had lots of help! Both of our moms and lots of our friends were around several days last week and even for the sale. We couldn't have done it without you guys-thanks SO much!! We were able to raise over $2,300! Praise God! This was such a blessing to us!!
Several people that came by said this was one of the largest yard sales they had ever seen. Thank you again to all the generous people who donated items to help us!! Here are some pictures....

Here are pictures right before we started taking things down, and actually we sold all the furniture you still see here, some people were coming back with a truck later.

After we put all the stuff that didn't sell, this is all we had left. Remember the last pictures had boxes all over the basement and also a full garage. Now we can park in the garage, we just can't use the couch downstairs yet. We will be having part 2 of our yard sale on May 1st at our church.

Yard Sale Fundraiser

We have been collecting items for a couple of weeks now for our yard sale this weekend. All proceeds from the yard sale will help support our adoption. Family and friends have been so supportive in donating items. Some friends have been over spending HOURS with us organizing and pricing the items too! Thanks Marie, Stu, Lindsey, Larcy, and Dan-we really appreciate all the hours you have put in this week so far and will put in later this week too!!

I thought I'd share a few pictures of what our house looks like now too....

this is the two parts of our basement

and here's the garage

Thank you again to all those who have donated and helped! We really appreciate all the support!!

God's perfect timing

I know its been awhile since I've posted anything and several people have asked me why...it's simply because nothing has happened in the last several weeks. We are still waiting. Someone else from IL said it took them several months to receive their I71H back. We've been waiting for about 5 weeks now. So hopefully we should get it soon.

The other day I was reading something about adoption and adoption advice. It said we are not waiting on man's timing, we are waiting on God's timing. There is such peace in that. God already has our child picked out. If we turned our Dossier in at the wrong time, we wouldn't have our child that God has planned for us. I am glad we serve a perfect God who always has a perfect plan for us! We can rest assured everything will happen in God's perfect timing!!!

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!!