Like I've said in earlier post, it's getting harder to write updates since, well.. we really don't have much to update you on as often as we did during all our training and paperwork stage. We're officially 4 months into our adoption journey now, but do have some exciting news to share today:
The most important one of this post... Our financial goal to be able to complete our adoption and bring Baby Powell home is officially COMPLETE! As you'll recall, our fees will total about $28,000.00 in total. We're ecstatic to be able to announce that in just 4 short months, ALL THANKS TO YOU AMAZING FOLKS, we've raised ALL our fundraising goals. When our agency suggested to start a Pure Charity site for crowd-fundraising, and to do yard sales, bake sales (you know I've got that one covered!), group events and whatever other creative fundraising methods.. we kind of brushed it off. Neither of us wanted to "ask" for others help, especially financially. However, after talking with many close friends and family, they all told us that if we didn't start a page, they would. They were all pretty stern with saying that they KNEW so many would want to help us reach our dreams of having a family, and that we needed to just suck up the pride and/or guilt for asking for help, and do it. That being said, we thought "Ok, we'll do it. And we'll be SO blessed if we're able to reach maybe $3,000". We NEVER in a million years thought we'd reach all $28,000. Much less, in such a short span of time. We need to say a VERY special Thank You to a dear couple who we've gotten to know over the past several years. We'll forever be thankful for them, because thanks to a large donation from them, this is what closed up the remaining amount we needed for our goal. They have no idea what a blessing that was to us, and we'll always be so very thankful. We cannot wait for Baby Powell to be able to go meet them, and give them lots of snuggles.
It's such a relief knowing that we've been able to pay all our fees the moment they were due, and that we have the remaining amout for our final payment just sitting, waiting to be sent to the agency, the moment we get to bring our baby home! Talk about MAJOR weight off our shoulders. We're thankful to all of you for being able to give us that.
Also, We got to travel up to our agency this week to turn in our portfolio books. I created one back in early March to give our social worker during our home study, but when it came in it had some pages that were not printed correctly. After battling with that company the past two months, I finally threw in the towel and switched over to Shutterfly and re-created our book. I had to change the layout some, but overall it has the same pictures. Below are some sneak peeks from our book:
This page is at the end of our book... We were told to put some of our favorite hobbies, and things that are important to us. As many of you know, travel is a passion of ours. We're always up for a long weekend adventure, a trip to visit family, or a beautiful beach getaway! It was hard to narrow down to just a couple pictures, so we picked our favorite trips and added them to our portfolio.
It was recommended to have a picture of your home in the book. So we picked a snowy picture.. especially since we love snow! Also, We had to have a special page just for our furbabies, Mario and Princess.
The book has to start with a letter to the expectant parents. This is hard to write, especially since you don't know them or their sitation, and you're requesting them to trust you with their sweet child. But we are hopeful that our letter will touch the hearts of an expectant family.
This is the cover. We loved this picture from our Adoption shoot with Jaden Reese Photography, and felt it was the perfect one to put on the cover.
Last, but not least, my favorite page. This is at the very end of our book. From the very beginning, we've refereed to this process as "You're Our Greatest Adventure". Shutterfly had these super cute embellishments and it fit with this "Pick Us" picture perfectly. I felt like it was the perfect ending to our portfolio.
I think that's about it for this post. I'll officially be doing my last post over at our Pure Charity site, and directing all our followers to the blog from here on out. I hope it doesn't cause confusion.. but It's easier to do this transition now, than later.
Sending lots of thanks & love,
B & D