The Give1Save1 Grand Finale!

Even after I posted the grand total on Facebook, we got a couple more donations. So, the latest total is $2684!!  We are grateful for every dollar that came in through this one week fundraiser. That's right. We raised that amount in on week. I encourage you to stay in touch with Give1Save1.com and consider giving $1 to the families who are featured each week. Taking our place today in the "Asia family" slot is a family adopting an older child from the Philippines. There's also an "Africa family" featured right now and they're adopting a girl from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Thank you for all the love you're showing to families and the children who will be blessed with adoptive parents through this process.

Celebrating Freedom and Those Who Secure It

Our total got bumped up a little overnight. We've now raised $2261!! Given that today is meant to focus on the men and women who have served our country, I'm not heavily promoting our fundraiser on Facebook or any social media venues. I'll just say this: I'm grateful for their sacrifice so that I can live in a country where people of different backgrounds, religions, and beliefs can live together, work together, and play together. We are all richer for embracing this diversity.

UPDATE! We've raised $2136 for Baby Zeb!!!!

We're saying goodnight with a grand total of $2136 in donations. Simply amazing!! Our family video will be featured here til Thursday. We'd love it if you would watch our video and then share the link to this site on your Facebook/Twitter/blog/etc: http://give1save1.com/2012/05/24/new-asia-family-of-the-week/

Someone had asked us our goal. It would be awesome if we could raise $15,000. If you look at the overall cost of paperwork, travel, more paperwork, in country legal and visa fees, that's how much we need. That is not the total cost of an adoption, but it's the part we feel we're going to be challenged to cover ourselves, even with Missy doing freelance work and adjustments we've made to our family's monthly expenses. That's why every single donation matters. We've been blessed with many $1 donations all the way up to $200. Combining all the donations together, we will get there.

I said on Facebook yesterday that it's like the Bible story of the loaves and fishes. Everyone shows up to the party with what they can bring, God blesses it, and multiples it in miraculous ways. Thank you for considering a donation and for spreading the word about our adoption story. I've already been in touch with a couple of families who are interested in adoption. We love being able to encourage others who are deciding whether to adopt.

OUR BIG NEWS!!

We are being featured on this website. It has a video telling the story of our family. We are honored to be on this site and would love it if you watched the video and SHARED it on Facebook, Twitter, and any other social media site you use. THANK YOU!!!

Sweet Dreams!

The kids enjoyed a sweet treat tonight!

Something BIG is coming tomorrow!

Ok...What started as a "fluke" has turned into something pretty special. A little more than a month ago, I stumbled onto a website that's dedicated to raising money for adoptive families. At that time, they focused only on families adopting from Africa. Still, I emailed the woman who runs the site and told her our story--How we adopted Zeke from Vietnam and Quilla from Ethiopia, and now are stepping out in total faith to adopt from China. She wrote me back quickly to say she had been wanting to expand the site to feature families adopting from Asian countries. Wow...amazing!

So, we are going to be featured on this website tomorrow and the goal is pretty simple: To encourage as many people as possible (friends and strangers alike!) to give $1 to the Zeb Adoption Fund. Seriously, $1. When I think about $1, even though I'm in fundraising mode, I can still spare $1. You probably have $1 in change jangling around the bottom of your purse or in your car's glove compartment. But here's the coolest part...This website will feature a video about our family. We produced it and it features the kiddos. I'm so excited for you to see it!! As Brad said, even if we don't raise a single dollar, it's priceless to have this video that tells our family story.

First, I ask that you share the video on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, wherever you can because we hope that the more people see it, the more people will decide that YES, they can donate just $1 to our adoption. Second, if you can donate $1, that would be great. I'll post the video here and on my Facebook page tomorrow morning. In the meantime, thank you for all your love and prayers. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a village to adopt one too!

We want your junk!!

To all our friends who are local...We are participating in a citywide garage sale June 8 and 9. We have a lot of stuff to sell, but would appreciate donations of stuff you want to get rid of. Whatever we don't sell, we're going to donate to Goodwill. It's a win-win-win: You get rid of the stuff you no longer need, we raise extra money to bring Zeb home, and your stuff finds a new home, one way or another. If you would like to donate stuff, we will even come pick it up. Please email me for details: zekeandlilysmom (at) gmail (dot) com. If you are not local, you can help with our effort to bring Zeb home with a donation using the button on the right. We've been honored and blessed by donations from friends and family around the world. No gift is too small because the beautiful part is seeing how people are giving what they can, and putting it all together, it starts to add up! Thank you!!

Donation Sent to Half the Sky!!

Thank you to everyone who participated in our Mother's Day fundraiser!! We had more than enough money to do a shared sponsorship of a child through Half the Sky! We've asked that the money go toward childcare at our son's orphanage in Lianyangang (click here for a map of orphanages in Jiangsu province...Lianyangang is on the coast in the north). We have been blessed by amazing support from friends and family both near and far. THANK YOU!! We continue to raise money and look for specific ways to generate donations. We were pleased that our first fundraiser included an opportunity to help bring home Zeb and support the wonderful work of Half the Sky.

On the paperwork side of things...We got some WONDERFUL news yesterday. Our police letters took only one day to get done!! We are so thankful! There is a new person handling them for the sheriff's office and she was so happy to hear about our adoption. I thought it might take her a couple of days to get our letters done, but she called my cell after 5 last night to say I could pick them up today. That's amazing! Everything else appears to be falling into place too. We continue to hope, pray and BELIEVE that we will bring him home this calendar year!!

Wow...We've raised over $660!!!

I had not added up the donations until tonight for the Mother's Day fundraiser. I was really surprised and so excited!! So far, we have $665 in donations. We are splitting it 50-50 between Half the Sky and Zeb's Adoption fund. The Mother's Day Fundraiser ends tomorrow at 4PM--that's when I'll need to put the cards in the mail to make sure they arrive before next Sunday. It would be great to end with a total of $1000 so we can send $500 to Half the Sky and have $500 in the Baby Zeb Fund. THANK YOU so much to everyone who has donated. I'm really not able to talk about it because I just get so choked up.

Happy Referralversary to Quilla B!

This is the photo we saw two years ago today:

This is Quilla now!

This was August, 2010:

This was last week:

We look forward to celebrating Zeb's referralversary next April...and marveling at how far he will have come in one short year. Thank you for helping us bring our baby boy home!!

Cone Boy

 

Zeb has no idea what kind of silliness is waiting for him!

Introducing...BABY ZEB!

Here's our sweet baby boy! He has unrepaired cleft lip/palate. Otherwise, he's healthy and doing very well. Apparently, he's eating well because his weight and height are on a much higher percentile than Zeke and Quilla were at the same age. He's 9 months old and is living in an orphanage where Half the Sky works. We would be honored to have you be a special part of bringing Zeb home either by making an outright donation to our adoption fund (EVERY dollar helps--the donate button is over on the right!), or by participating in our Mother's Day Fundraiser. We can't WAIT to get our little man HOME!!!

Stand By for Zeb's Photo! PLUS a sneak peak!!

We're expecting to have the official referral letter from China tomorrow in our hands! Our agency's had it since yesterday, but they're sending it to us and it will arrive tomorrow. How exciting! We will unveil his photo Thursday morning on the blog and on Facebook. We can't wait for you to see his darling face!! Until then, enjoy his cutie hand! And don't forget that YOU can be a special part of bringing Zeb home with the Mother's Day fundraiser. It ends Sunday so we have time to get the cards in the mail! Or, if you prefer, you can always just donate to the Zeb adoption fund, even if you don't want to participate in the Mother's Day fundraiser. THANK YOU!!!