Fingerprints are DONE!

We drove four hours to the USCIS field office last Friday and they graciously agreed to do our fingerprints, even though our appointment wasn't until July 2nd. We received an email from USCIS yesterday saying they will note in our file that the fingerprints are done, but our file is not yet up for review. We're praying it comes up for review this week. We will keep you posted! We just continue to pray that the paperwork will move at amazingly fast speeds. We want to get Zeb home!!!

In the Wait

So, now that we are waiting and the process is moving forward again (as opposed to just waiting for the home study to get done), how do we pass the time? Well, we're planning a road trip to visit grandparents this summer. That will be a great chance to have fun and see the people we love. Also, there's more paperwork to get done. While we wait, we're doing paperwork for the next phase. The same day we get the approval for which we're waiting now, we will have a FedEx envelope on standby so we can overnight the next round of paperwork to the USCIS office. We don't want to waste even a single day! Thank you for all your support. It means so much on this long journey!

Home Study Done and I-800a Filed!

I feel like the clock is ticking again!! We got our home study yesterday and overnighted it and the other documents to the USCIS office. It arrived there this morning. We are really hopeful we will be able to have our fingerprints done in just a couple of weeks. And we are PRAYING that we get approval of our I-800a in a matter of days after the prints are done. Please keep praying for things to MOVE ALONG!! We continue to get donations and they are right on time. Various payments for paperwork, fingerprinting, and post-placement reports are coming due. Thank you to everyone who has helped us on our journey to Zeb!!

Cleft Feeding Resource List

Feeding a baby with unrepaired cleft lip/palate will be new for us. We're still learning. Missy is on a Yahoo group for families who have adopted or are waiting to adopt a child with cleft lip/palate. One of the mothers there posted a list of bottles and cups that work well for these babies/toddlers. So, you can check out the list here. We're trying to figure out how best to meet Zeb's needs before and after surgery. We're also making progress on finding a cleft team to treat him once he's home. We're learning toward the hospital where Quilla had surgery. We've heard lots of great things about the surgeons there.

Home Study Countdown

We received an email from our adoption agency today indicating that they had signed off on our home study! Hooray! This is great news, but the home study still has to get approval from the home study agency itself. (Really, you never knew how MANY hoops there were for an adoption, did you?) The home study agency approval is the last step before we get the final, notarized, signed, dipped-in-chocolate-and-covered-in-sprinkles home study. That same day (maybe later this week?), we will overnight it along with some other paperwork that's ready to go to the appropriate USCIS office. Now, a good friend of mine who just went through this part informs me that the wait for USCIS to respond and issue a fingerprinting appointment is fairly quick...about two weeks. So, please pray that all goes well as we move on to the next steps. We've been so pleased with how quickly everything has gone so far...here's hoping the next part moves along too!

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!!!

It's happening fast!!

Seriously, people! I'm pretty much blown away. We received word today that China has officially approved us to adopt Baby Zeb! Oh my!! We expect to be able to post his photos by Thursday. Brad and I had to renew our Hague Adoption Training tonight. After that, our agency will ship over the official paperwork, and then we can share his beautiful face with everyone!

In the meantime, with the pace moving so quickly, we are prayerfully and expectantly waiting and watching for the funds we need for each step of the way. Thank you SO MUCH to those who have contributed. You have such a special place in Zeb's life story. (The Mother's Day fundraiser continues through Sunday!)

Zeke is old enough to enjoy hearing stories about how so-and-so prayed for him to come home, and this person made a blanket for him while we waited, and this person bought him toys or clothes because they were so excited about his homecoming. We will be able to tell each of our kids these extraordinary stories. It helps them know how much they are loved, how intensely they are WANTED, and how hard we prayed for them to join our family and become part of an entire community of people who care deeply about them!

Why We're Doing This

I recall a time when we were waiting to adopt Zeke that we looked at families who had adopted more than two kids and we jokingly called them hoarders. Yes, we were joking and yes, we were envious. From where we stood (having no kids), we couldn't even imagine what it would be like to be blessed with two kids or more! So, now that we're in a totally different position, here's why we're adopting a third child:

First, we have more love to give.

Our hearts are overflowing with love for Zeke and Quilla, and then we imagine what it would be like to grow our hearts even more to encompass a third child, and it's pretty exciting.

Second, Missy lost a dear friend last year who left behind two precious children. That loss helped us reflect on what's truly important in life. We also thought about this: One way you can impact the world, even after you've left it, is by raising children who carry a part of you forward and become world-changers themselves.

Third, we didn't want to get to the end of our lives and say, "We went part of the way to adopt a child from China, as far as preparing a dossier and sending, and we had the love to give another child, but in the end, we didn't do it."

I don't know if any of those reasons resonate with you, or make sense. But after much prayer and discussion, they make complete sense to us. We can't wait to welcome Baby Zeb into our home and family!

And one final thought that struck me as being especially poignant in our journey of building a family...It's from "The Lucky One" by Nicholas Sparks:

“She was struck by the simple truth that sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people...” 

By the way, next Sunday is the deadline for participating in our Mother's Day fundraiser. It's a beautiful way to honor a special person in your life while showing love to orphans in China! Of course, whether you participate in this fundraiser or not, we appreciate all donations toward our adoption of Baby Zeb!