Flapjack fundraiser - save the date!

Adoption can be expensive, and for some families the cost deters them from ever moving forward with the process. Lucky for Mark and I, we love a challenge. I have to admit that the cost scared us at first too, we wondered how we could ever save enough money to fund our adoption. But as time went on, and we felt more and more that adoption was God's plan for us, we knew that there had to be a way. We have faith that God will provide, although we also know that money will not fall from the sky, so we have planned a few fundraisers.

Last weekend we held our first ever yard sale (and probably last ever yard sale). Boy was it hard work! We are reminded time and time again how amazing our friends and family are. We had so many people donate stuff for us to sell and come to help us out on the big day. The yard sale itself deserves a whole post and I'll be working on that soon!

In the meantime, we are gearing up for our next big fundraiser - our Flapjack Fundraiser on November 3rd. Those of you who live locally we would love for you to come out and join us, it's from 8am-10am at the Applebee's on Hillsborough St. We will be selling tickets ahead of time and will need to give the restaurant a head count a few days before. So if you are interested in coming make sure you get your tickets. Shoot me an email or text to let me know if you want one and I'll get up with you. We also need a few people to volunteer to help us seat guests and serve pancakes that morning so let us know if you want to do that too!

Feel free to share the flyer with anyone you know who might want to come (coworkers, friends, small groups, family, etc) - the more the merrier!

Adoption Baby Shower Part 2

We are so blessed by great friends and family who came to celebrate adoption (and the future baby Harrill) with us! We had a couple's shower and close to 50 people came (and tons of adorable babies). Everyone was so generous and we got some awesome gifts to help us get ready. We feel so very loved and so lucky to know that we are supported by so many people.  I wish we would have gotten pictures with all of our guests, but unfortunately we didn't.  There were so many friends/family there, that we didn't even get to spend time talking with everyone, but we absolutely appreciated everyone excitement and support! How did we get so lucky?!?   Baby Harrill is going to be one loved and spoiled baby! I can't wait to tell him/her about all of the wonderful people who were a part of this celebration.   

Here are just a few many pictures of the fun gifts that we received for baby Harrill

 Clothes

 Animals on baby's butt...so darn cute! 

I LOVE owls

 "Worth the Wait" and "Loved" onesies - perfect 

 Blankets (they are all so soft)

 Lots of books :)

 Do you think our baby will be clean?  

We are excited for lots of fun bath times!

 Storage (even baby storage is cute)

 Diaper bag and cart/highchair cover (for germa-phobes like me:)) 

 How fun are all these toys

  Ready to eat 

Yay, our video monitor 

(which I may or may not have already used to spy on the dogs) 

 Umbrella stroller (not the best picture)

 A rocking turtle!  Is this not adorable?

We missed everyone who wasn't able to make it, but we plan to continue celebrating adoption from now till forever, so I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to celebrate together :)

This past weekend we hosted our first fundraiser...the yard sale!  Again, we were so blessed by donations and help from friends and family!  I'll try to post about it later this week, so stay tuned!

Adoption Baby Shower Part 1

This past Saturday our amazing friends threw us the best baby shower ever. Karen, Nicole, Shannon and Stacey spent the past two months planning this day to be perfect for us, and it absolutely was. I know they put tons of time and energy into this shower and I hope they know much we appreciate their generosity.

  Cheese/crackers, Delicious salsas/dips, and  Bacon wrapped hot dogs   

                           

           Cookies and Cream and Lemon Strawberry cupcakes - amazingly good

   (Our friend Jen is an amazing baker!) 

  Candy table with all my favorites - jolly ranchers, jelly beans, lollipops,  

 twizzlers, sour patch kids, mini chocolates, and m&ms 

     Pin wheel sandwiches, chicken and beef skewers, buffalo chicken dip, 

caprese tomato skewers and fruit skewers 

                               Me with my "second family" - Gabriela and her mom Karen

                                                              Me and Nicole

                                                             Me and Shannon

                                                               Me and Stacey

Thanks again ladies, this shower was better than either of us could ever have imagined!!!!  Thanks for celebrating adoption with us and showing us so much love and support!

I'll be posting more about the shower later this week.  Stay tuned...

Timeline so far

* Warning another long post, without pictures* (I promise if you can hang with me, my next post will have pictures)

Adoption can be an incredibly long process and we've been lucky so far that the application/home study process has moved so quickly for us. We went to our first information session for our agency on February 11, 2012. After that session we both felt good about adoption and felt sure that God was leading us in that direction, but we took some time to really pray about it before moving forward. At the end of March we mailed off our preliminary application and it was accepted a few weeks later. We attended a mandatory day long conference on April 21st and got to meet several other families also going through this process. It was such an eye opening experience and it was great to get support from other women going through the same experiences. It was also during that session that We really opened our hearts to the idea of open adoption (more about that in another post).

The next step was to complete the formal application. This application included long autobiographies, criminal background checks, and lots of other paperwork. They asked so many personal questions, and although at times it was frustraing to have to disclose so much about ourselves, it also brought up good conversation between Mark and I that we probably would not have otherwise had.

Once that was done, we had three "home study" visits with our social worker, only one of which was actually at our home. Mark and I were interviewed together, then separately, then together again and on the last visit she toured our home. After that we just waited for her to type up the home study and for the board to approve us as adoptive applicants. We received our official acceptance on July 22nd. Then met with the director for our final meeting on August 1st and were officially waiting that day!

Since then we have submitted pictures to be placed on the agency's website which is where the birth mothers/families will first see us, and we have completed our photo book, which will help interested birth mothers/families learn more about us.

What we do know is that the wait can be long, the average is 9 months, but other families have waited more than 18 months. Although there have certainly been times during this process that we have found ourselves frustrated and overwhelmed, I can look back and see the purpose behind what we have done. I can also look back and see that our path through the application process could have been much longer and much more trying. We have absolutely been very blessed. Here's hoping our waiting process goes as smoothly (and quickly) as the application process has!

Now for those of you who managed to get through the whole post, you get to see what happens at my house while I'm hard at work typing a blog post...

Fundraisers

Since we started the adoption process, we have known that we would need to do some fundraisers to help us prepare for this addition to our family. After much thought and deliberation we have finally have details for two of our fundraisers and are excited to share them with everyone.

The first one will be a yard sale on September 15th. Our neighborhood has encouraged everyone to host a yard sale on the same day, to maximize success. They do all the advertising for us, and we just have to set up in the front yard and hope that some people come. We have never held a yard sale and didn't intend to participate in this one, because we have given pretty much everything we don't want to Goodwill. But one of our friends suggested that we do it and offered some stuff she found while moving, and that provided just the encouragement we needed (Thanks Morgan). We've managed to find some odds and ends of our own that we can sell at the yard sale, but we are still in need of more stuff. This is where we are hoping people might be able to help us out. If you have any items that you might want to donate to us, so that we can sell them in the yard sale and use that money for adoption costs, we would greatly appreciate it. We are collecting pretty much anything (as long as its in good enough condition to be sold); clothes, household items, etc. Shoot me an email or leave a comment on here if you are interested or want to help out!

The second fundraiser is still in the planning stages, but we are asking everyone to "save the date". November 3, 2012 we are planning to have a Flapjack Fundraiser at a local Applebees. The way it works is that we sell tickets for a pancake breakfast and identify a few volunteers to help us work the event. Then on the morning of November 3rd, everyone who bought a ticket comes to eat pancakes with us and it helps to support our adoption. We are excited about this fundraiser, and hope that everyone else will be as well. Because really...who doesn't love a pancake breakfast! As we figure out all of the details I'll be sure to post them on here.

We have also had some friends and family who don't live locally ask about fundraisers where they can participate. We are working on some ideas and will hopefully have some details ironed out soon.

We are so appreciative of all of the support we have gotten from friends and family. It's been great to have everyone share in our excitement with us :)

While waiting...

Since adoption is unpredictable and it may take months to get a referral, we've been encouraged to keep ourselves busy. This summer we certainly have done that. We've taken several trips out of town and stayed busy with friends while in town. We've been to the beach, Maryland, Philadelphia, NC mountains, and this past week we went to NJ.

While in NJ we had the opportunity to see my cousins, aunt, and uncle. This end of summer visit has become a tradition for us, and we look forward to it all year. We stayed with my cousin Kristin and her family. She has two adorable children who believed that Mark's sole purpose was to play with them, and he loved every minute of it :) It's so fun to see him play with them and reminds me how awesome of a father he is going to be. We had a great time just hanging out, shopping, and going to the water park. Kristin and I even did some shopping and got some really cute outfits for baby Harrill. The one below is so fitting for the whole process of adoption. It really puts in perspective, that no matter how long we have to wait (which i hope isn't long), that once we have our baby it will be completely worth it.

Now we are back home, with no trips planned for the next month or so, so we can get some stuff done around here. We need to start clearing out the office in order to turn it into a nursery. Then we need to pick paint colors and furniture, which everyone knows could take us the next couple of years to agree on :) I have lots of visions in my head for the nursery and I'm excited to see how it will actually turn out!

We will also be working on setting up some fundraisers in the near future, I'll be posting about them here on the blog as soon as I get it all figured out!

Another big step

Last Wednesday (8/1/12) we had our meeting with the agency director, which was the final step toward getting "listed". The meeting went really well, she asked us a few questions but mostly told us stories about adoption and situations to watch out for. I'm not sure that I left knowing anymore than I did when I got there, but at least I felt like she could again put our faces with our names (and hopefully remember us when trying to place a baby). The good news from the meeting was that we are now "active" meaning that we could get a call at anytime**. However, our profile won't actually be shown to anyone until I finish and turn in our photo book and "birth-mom letter". This past weekend we spent at least 10 hours working on the book, on top of all of the time I had spent previously and since then. However, I'm happy to say that the book is DONE, and we are waiting on final approval from the agency, before we can order it.

*it is possible to get a placement, even if no one ever reads our profile or our book, but its not as likely*

Although the process has felt long at times, when I sit down and think about it, I realize how quickly it really has flown by. Its tough to wrap our heads around the fact that any day now we could have a baby in our arms! Its a crazy thought actually! I try not to get to excited because the wait could be long (some people wait 18 months-2 years), but at the same time I want to maintain the level of excitement that I have felt throughout the process. This is something that we had been working toward for the past six months; something we have put a lot of thought, prayer, time, dedication, passion, perseverance and preparation into. This is an incredibly exciting time for us, and I'm going to soak it all in while I can. Regardless of how long we wait for a baby, I know that everything we have gone through will have been worth it!