Tshirts!

Just a quick update today- the Tshirts are arriving!!!! You can see the funds are in from our Tshirt fundraiser and have been added to our thermometor on the right! God is so good!

Ok, so if you ordered a shirt and want to be featured on the blog, please email me a pic or post a pic to my facebook page of you wearing your shirts and I will put a giant blog post together of all our wonderful supporters!

THANK YOU! You all ROCK and God is using you to do BIG things in Sheppard's life!

WE LOVE YOU!

first snow and paperwork madness

We have a snow delay! Our first snow of the season (finally) has brought with it a delayed work schedule, which of course equals time for MORE ADOPTION PAPERWORK. Which at this point seems NEVER ENDING. But we know there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and all the paperwork is of course worth it!

I did make some time to take a few pictures of our dog in the snow though!

Yep, we have a husky! Her name is Tehya and she is loving this weather. I'm pretty sure she sniffed every single snowflake in our yard this morning.

Then she stood guard over her domain. This is her favorite perch outside- she can survey the entire yard this way.

Tehya loves loves loves babies and kiddos. We can't wait for Sheppard to meet her! 

We have cats too, but they were grumpy this morning so they didn't get a photo shoot ;) 

and now for what the rest of my morning has consisted of...

The infamous "paper baby" that I had heard so much about... the never ending piles of forms that must be filled out perfectly, notarized perfectly, apostilled perfectly....not to mention the fees for it all as well...All of my dreams are about paperwork these days. Thankfully, my sweet friend Chrystal who is also adopting a son from the same country we are came over one day to help me organize my binder! SO helpful! Now I have everything in order and I know where it all is...and anytime I start to find it difficult to breathe from all the stress I just close the binder and look at my sweet son's pictures. Perspective- Sheppard, you are so worth it! Before we know it, this paperwork is going to be done, our training will be completed, the fundraising wil be finished, and we will be waiting for our travel dates so we can finally be with you in person instead of an ocean away...

Well, now Alden is awake and we are making bacon (mmmmmm). Which reminds me- my friend Chrystal is having an amazing fundraiser this Saturday!!!

 

If you live locally, come on out and support their son's adoption and get some awesome smoked meat in the process! 

Here is a link to their blog as well: http://daffodilsandearthworms.blogspot.com/

 

and their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=7816850&ref=br_rs#!/bringtavinhome

fundraiser updates

I have 'adoption brain' right now so I apologize for how scatterbrained this post is going to be :) Wow we are blown away by your generosity and kindness! Our T-shirt fundraiser was a whopping success with $1400 pledged! Yep you read that right! Amazing! We haven't added that total to our fundraiser thermometer on the blog yet since all the pledges haven't come in. But I'm sure you can see that the amount on our thermometer has jumped considerably as well. We have had wonderful friends and family and people we don't even know continue to send us donations! Also my coworkers had a fundraiser for us this week- my lovely friend sold plates of cheesy nachos and jars of salsa for Sheppard! Sorry I forgot to take pictures. Things have been moving so quickly- which is good!

We have just been blown away by everyone's kindness and generosity. If you are reading this blog and are afraid of taking that leap of faith into adoption because of finances, just know that it's all God's money. He does provide. He loves orphans and he loves placing them in families!

We meant to post something on here over the holidays. It was going to be a wonderful post about how we wish Sheppard was here with us this year and how we can't wait for next Christmas...We were driving home from my mom's on Christmas day and Alden and I were just...sad. Sheppard was that very moment an ocean away from us on Christmas day and that reality hit us hard. Yet another holiday without a family. We had so many mixed emotions. We were super excited and thankful that we had a son (!) and that this would be his last Christmas without us (!) but also grieving the fact that he is not with us just yet. We couldn't love on him and let him know how cherished he is...I wasn't expecting this part to be so hard. The waiting....the holidays honestly flew by in a blur and we felt somewhat numb. But overall we were so thankful that God has us on this journey- it doesn't matter how hard it is for us- it's been much, much harder for Sheppard to be an orphan for 15 years. He is more than worth all the waiting, all the fundraising and all the paperwork.

Speaking of paperwork...I'll update about that next time! Things are moving very quickly and I barely have time to catch my breath before the next thing needs to be done! Thankfully God has provided all the funds we need every step of the way- no forms have had to be delayed because we didn't have the fees ready! God is teaching us what it really means to trust him for our daily needs, and he provides each and every time!