WOW...

So it's been a couple days and I've been away from our blog. I have good reasons. On Tuesday morning I got an e-mail from our "local" (as in, in the US) organization that the lawyer in Africa wanted the Dossier. NOW. So I pulled together about 90% of it and the last two documents went a few minutes ago.  Our Dossier is sent! It was so incredibly stressful, I can't even explain it. To pull it all together from nothing to complete in two days is not how a dossier normally comes together, but we did it. Thankfully, by international standards, it's a small dossier. We had some of the documents on hand from our other adoptions so for those it was just a matter of scanning them in. Other things weren't even written in English so they required a bit more work with translating and back and forth and then translating our answers, and hopefully it all came out so it makes sense!  I'm SO grateful for the organization we're working with here in the US. I know there are people getting this done on their own, and I just can't imagine taking this road completely independently. I'll take a hand to hold once in a while, you know?

So now it looks like our process might be moving along a little faster than we thought. We have to hit the fundraising HARD now. We're planning Mike's century ride (100 miles!). He is such an inspiration. Three years ago he almost died of congestive heart failure. They thought he would need a transplant. They thought he might never work again. He is such a fighter. Now he'll ride 100 miles in a single day to help bring Lily home. In my mind, there isn't a better Dad around :)

We're also planning T-shirts! Hopefully those will be a long term fundraiser even after Lily is home. Lily is just one of 5 MILLION orphans in her country. Five Million. We want to do all we can once she's home to continue supporting the country with humanitarian aid.

So our next step is our Home Study. This should be finished up in the next two weeks, and we'll submit our I-600A right after that. Then we'll wait to be called for fingerprinting. Once fingerprints are done, I think we get approval to file our I-600, but honestly, I'm not sure. I'm taking it a few slow steps at a time. I'm super proud we got our Dossier pulled together this quick and just knowing we're one small step closer to hugging our little princess is so amazing!

Thanks for reading!

Snowed In!

Today we're getting about 2 feet of snow. That's what Mike says is out there anyway.  I cracked the front door and said, "It's deep, have fun."

We spoke briefly with Lily's foster father by e-mail over the last few days. He speaks French and we definitely don't. I'm sure his English is better than my Google translated French. We are getting through it though. He keeps calling Lily a him, which I'm sure is something that's lost in translation. He also spells Lily with an I.  Lili. That's cute. He has said that she is doing well, and is happy. That they love her, and he hopes we can come over and meet him and his wife. He has assured me that she is in good hands.

Through various efforts our fund raising meter is slowly rising. I've been completing surveys on-line from Opinion Outpost (the best on-line surveys for pay out there I think!) that pay out in cash and made a few bucks that I'm socking away. We've had a couple purchases from our fund raiser links on the right, and some amazing donations by Paypal. It's all adding up!  Purchases from Amazon (link on the right) give us 4%, we get 20% from Thirty-One Gifts, and 25% from Scentsy. We get a whooping $5 per bag of coffee you buy through Just Love Coffee. Who doesn't need coffee?? We'll have a Barefoot Books link soon, and if anyone else has fund raising ideas, we'd love to hear them!