One two skip a few three four skip some more one ninety nine two hundred.

So, now that you have some background on why we are adopting again,  I want to give an update of where we are in the process and our goals and fundraising plans to meet the goals.  Right now we have sent in our formal application, which was accepted, and now we are waiting for our social worker to come back from maternity leave to start our home study.  We have been filling out lots of paperwork and getting ready to get fingerprinted soon.

Now if everything as far as expenses goes, it will be close to the same as the last time we went through this process.  We will probably look at close to $33,000, so we came up with three ways to try and accomplish this.  Our first one is that we have been socking money away in our adoption fund since Judah came home, so we have a little start on it.  Our second one came up recently as Sarah took on being an entrepreneur.  She started selling Noonday jewelry/accessories.  You can find her website here.  http://sarahhartson.noondaycollection.com/  I think you can schedule something called a trunk show and have a  party at your house.  I'm sure if you ladies on Sarah's adoption group want to throw a party, she would do it, just to go see all of you again.  You can also order at anytime through the website (just  make sure to choose her name as Ambassador at the checkout).  Our third one is done through this blog, and I will need to enlist the help of one friend.  She is one world class photographer and she just so happened to marry one of my best friends from high school who came as a horse for our Kentucky Derby card party last weekend.

   You can find her here:  https://www.facebook.com/meganrochellephotography?fref=ts . I haven't asked her yet, so don't tell anything. :)

Over to the right of this blog you will see the numbers 1 - 200.  Sarah got the idea of the numbers from another family that was doing an adoption fundraiser.  Every number to the right has it's dollar value (i.e. 1=$1, 2=$2,.....199=$199, 200=$200).  If all numbers are bought then we would have raised $20,100 minus the paypal fees.  With our estimation that would be about what we need with our savings and with Sarah making some from selling Noonday.  Now with this we really wanted to give everyone something in return for donating.  So we came up with an idea, and this is where our friend Megan will need to help.  What would probably take me forever to figure out, she could do it in minutes.  With every donation we would like you to send us a picture of  yourself, kids, grandkids, whoever you want to donate in their name.  We would then put all the photos of the people that donated around a larger photo of the child we adopt, like a collage.  It would be like an 8x10 photo and then everybody who donated would have their photo really tiny surrounding the child.  Make sense?  We would then email everyone the photo.  

So, tell everyone know about the blog.  You can pick more than one number if you would like.  If you have three kids ages 4,6,10, then you can buy those three numbers and donate $20.  If bigger numbers are left and you didn't want to spend that much, go in with another family to take a bigger number.  Everything is done through paypal, so when you donate you can send a message telling what number you want, and we will delete the number from the right.  We will try and keep the numbers updated everyday as frequently as we can.  If you wish not to donate that is quite all right, we understand.  We just ask for your prayers for our family through this process and beyond.

If you have any questions or don't understand, leave a question in the comment section or email us and we'll try and answer it.  We know God is with us and through Him this will be a success.  Thanks for following along with us on this journey.  

Rock on

J