A HUGE thanks!! Excitement building...

First of all, we want to extend a deep, heartfelt thank you to some very gracious people who have donated to our adoption fund: Belinda Sullivan, Chris Hood, Dennis Board, Kimberly Mullin, Mary Fox and Steven Maldonado. Words cannot express our gratitude for your kindness. Anyone interested in donating, we've embedded a donation link on the left side of the page on this blog. :)


A few quick updates on how things are going:

• Going "public" with our adoption news has connected us with some amazing people who have firsthand experience with international adoption. I had no idea so many friends, colleagues and acquaintances of ours have either adopted or know people who have. We've been introduced to several new friends who have been really kind and helpful. Having a strong support group and resource for information has already paid off: we learned of a different agency than the one we'd initially planned on using, and this agency actually has a faster turnaround time and is less expensive!! Ashley's contacted them and had a great conversation with our point person there, and we just received all the application paperwork yesterday. This is a great thing, but faster turnaround time means less time to raise the funds due. So we're hustling to figure out ways to come up with the first $5,000. Lots of prayers, lots of brainstorming going on...

• Had a great time hanging out last night with our friends Brian ("Yogi") and Shannon Christian, who adopted their son Aidan from South Korea six years ago. I have no idea where Aidan gets all of his energy (wish I had a fraction of his seemingly endless supply); he's definitely a happy, playful kid. We were riveted hearing them discuss all the details of their journey, the ups and downs and the adjustments they went through, while sitting in the room with this beautiful child and seeing with our own eyes what God has done for all three of them. We left feeling even closer to the goal, though it still yet seems so far away. Yogi came up with a pretty fantastic idea to help raise funds for us -- we were already planning on holding another fundraiser yard sale in October. Yogi decided he and Shannon are going to have one as well on the same date and donate the funds to our adoption account, and he insisted on relaying the idea to everyone he knows all across the country, suggesting we hold multiple yard sales simultaneously for the cause! We're so grateful that they're planning on doing this. If any of you reading this blog are interested in participating, that would be amazing. Stay tuned, we'll be choosing the date sometime today (it will be a Saturday in October).
  

I guess that's about it for now. If you have any other ideas or input, we'd love to hear it! More soon. Much love to all of you.

- JJ