DTE Month 2: Rollercoaster Emotions

Sometimes, in adoption, you just need a good cry. It seems lately all I have been doing that frequently occasionally. As we hit our DTE Month 2 I find my anxiety level rising. I don't know how many times I have read, adoption is not for the faint of heart, and let me just tell you, they are right! (Then because I am a woman I get into this bad cycle of feeling sad but then feeling guilty because we already have three amazing children and we are only in the official two months of waiting where some families have been waiting 18 months or even tried for years and now adopting so I yell at my brain - Put on your big girl panties and suck it up!)

I think one of the coolest and yet most stressful part of this journey is our variety in age range and child. Because we are open to one or two and up to 10 it could be Monday that we get our referral call or it could be a day 18 months from now.....anyone noticed I am kinda a control freak dedicated planner, if not please refer to my vacation itinerary for disney where I had us scheduled down to the hour for an entire week. So yes, this is hard for me. I know that God has called us to open up to this large of a range I know we are doing the right thing, but it it is still hard and we may have a long road ahead of us. What I do know is that God is there to hold my hand through this I we have many a good friend and family to support us as well.  

What has by far been one of the most amazing things to watch is the last groups of missionaries for Visiting Orphans work in Ethiopia (which I have the awesome pleasure of calling some of the team members my friends). To hear the testimonies of what happened and witness the pictures- Oh my! And now in our agency, this month has been really active with all kinds of different referrals. So exciting for these forever families. I am so thankful that my eyes were opened back up and so was my heart to missions and the world outside of America.

So in this journey, please be patient with us, as you wonder why I may be really somewhat moody or wiping away tears in my eyes,

          Remember somewhere in my heart a child is growing....

Sometimes people with the least love the most...

  This past week several of my adoption girlfriends went on a mission trip with Visiting Orphans to Ethiopia for about a week and a half and volunteered with various non profit groups. I was so thankful that they were able to document their trip with pictures. I can not express in words how impactful these pictures were to me. It brought back many memories of my own mission trip to El Salvador and to Malawi and how people with so little seem to have so much love....the faces of the Ethiopian people were just as amazing, such love and thankfulness. Not only did it remind me how important mission work is but it also gave me more hope in our adoption and a better connection to the country. I was reminded how big the world is and how I am responsible for how I spend my money and my time and that it is NOT all about me....

  I would love to share with you some of the organizations that they partnered with:

    Visiting Orphans

non-profit organization to be the hand and feet of Jesus to the 163 million Orphans by visiting them, loving them and sharing the gospel with them.      http://www.visitingorphans.org/
   




Children's HopeChest

 An organization that connects communities in the US to impoverished communities overseas. http://www.hopechest.org



Project 61


Hamlin Fistula Hospital

   A relief organization assisting with community development in Ethiopia. Specifically, P61 focuses on orphan care, equipping communities and empowering local leaders.
http://p61.org/

A treatment center for Women with the most devastating childbirth injury, a fistula,  which in Ethiopia creates a woman unsanitary and an outcast from her community. http://www.hamlinfistula.org/index.html

I am so thankful these past few years that the spark for mission work is lit again. Missions is such an integral part of  who I am and I know helped keep me going through some dark days of my teen years. I seem to have forgotten as I got older just how life changing these events can be for both the volunteer missionary as well as those receiving. I urge you to find somewhere, weather it be across the ocean or across the street that you can volunteer and give your time. You will not regret it!

Opened Heart 5K and Family Fun Walk

We want to start out by saying Thank You to everyone that supported us in this adventure! We appreciate Riverwood Resort (http://www.riverwoodresortmo.com/) for hosting the 5K, our parents for volunteering to work the 5K with us, all our friends and family that came out to support us, new friends we made from the race and those that were not able to come but sent us donations, bought t-shirts and prayed for us. Your outpouring of love has not gone un-noticed!

Our total donation amount (drum roll please) was right at $1,620 and we still have people sending in donations for t-shirts! That means after paying for t-shirts and supplies we raised over $1100 for our adoption, how awesome is that!!!

We had 15 people run the race and three people speed walk it.
Our winners were....

   1st Place Male: Bryson Crowell (age 10!) with a time of 23 :55
            2nd Place Male: Nick Grunwaldt with a time of 24:06

 

    1st Place Female: Kim Fowler with a time of 34:19

              2nd Place Female: Emily Johnson with a time of 41:51

In case anyone is interested, here are the times for the rest of the team!

Brent Callahan 25:36

Shane Strubbe 29:06

Brent Snyder 29:53

Ben Hobbs 30:24

Tim Pezzetti 35:11

Marco Valente 37:01

Jennifer Johnson 42:06

Evi Culter 42:05

Gib Adkins 59:44

Amber Sing 59:50

Trish Nail 59:50

 Click on the link below to watch an awesome short movie Robin made for us over the race. 
                       Openedheart 5K and Family Fun Walk Video

We had over 20 walkers on the Family Fun Walk as well! Way to go everyone!

Starting to set up



Gene's Parents aka Nena and Papa



My Parents aka MiMi and Papa



On your mark...

Get Set

and Go !

Thru the Woods

Over a Creek (The up a massive mountain hill)

Down the Gravel Road

And Down Some More

Follow the tour guides back thru

Last little leg,

And head to the finish line!

Phew-- I am tired just watching that!



Good friends

New beginnings



And what it was all about....



1 Month DTE and Fundraiser

So in the controlled chaos whirlwind of a weekend with the 5K fundraiser and fun with family visits, I just realized we are one moth DTE today!



It seems to have gone by so quickly and yet I know that it will most likely soon feel as if it is dredging on at a snails pace for a while. Probably since we have been preoccupied with work and finishing out the academic year it has made this month go by fairly fast.

So how are our numbers looking now??? We have moved up two spots to #84 for an infant boy, up two to #36 for a toddler boy, Still #13 for an older sibling set and #20 for a child over 4
         To make a long and confusing story short...we still have no idea if our boy will be an infant or five and if he will have a brother or a sister as well. To some people this may sound crazy, stressful, crazy, scary or well did I say crazy? To us, we are letting God choose who or whom is best for our family by keeping the doors open for adoption. Numbers still say it will most likely be a sibling set, but still not sure on the ages. Since our request is fairly broad ( one child 0-5 or two 0-5 and 0-10) we may receive a sibling set before someone with a early DTE date but requesting a younger age. Clear as mud? Well, I could ramble discuss numbers and probabilities all day long but I'm sure you may be kinda tired of my number guessing.

Onto the Fundraiser.... 

The 5K  Runners starting to line up...
they had their work cut out for them!

The Openedheart 5K fundraiser was awesome and we raised close to $1,000 to help bring our little guy(s) home! Thank you so much for your love and support that you showed.  We were so blessed by everyone and my heart was filled with love and encouragement! My next post will have some good video and pics of the race and will show the winners as well. Here is a sneak peak pic until I have the video made...

Some of our walkers for the 5K. Way to go Trish, Gib and Amber!

Numbers....

So now that we are "officially waiting for our referral" I work numbers in my head all day long on occasion because I am no way obsessive... Numbers on the waiting list, numbers of children and ages, numbers of  court dates, number of maternity days, school days and the list goes on and on.

Here are a few numbers that I wanted to share with you...

     Our number in line for an infant boy

        Our number for one child 4 or older

  Our number in line for siblings (only 3 families in this line

                                          are open to a partial older age range like us so this one is
                                          kinda tricky to judge)


                   Now some numbers to remind us why we wait......


 

            

The number of total Orphans in Ethiopia.

  Of the children in Ethiopia will not attend any school.


  Children will die before the age of 5 in Ethiopia.

   of May
                                                              Our fundraiser to make that number above     
                                                                at least MINUS ONE !!!!

Random Thoughts and thankfullness

Since we will not have a baby book for our child we am going to use this blog as part of the "life book" for our child(ren). Feel free to leave comments after the posts as we always love getting your encouragement and feedback.

As we really start getting into our wait time and the nitty gritty part of the adoption process, I am going to try to be as candid as I can on our blog so I can see the true journey we are on. After looking at a few  a ton of blogs I have gotten some great topics and ways to blog on and I'm sure my little brain will ramble on contemplate out loud about things as well.

I can not express how delighted I am to see all the love from our family and friends on our adoption! We really are blessed, God has given us such a phenomenal support group both here in Lebanon and online with other adoptive families.

 I just want to put a shout out to everyone and tell you what an impact it has been on my heart each one of you have been. We are starting to get a few participants for the Openedheart 5K and are so grateful to you for supporting us.   Thank you for joining us on this crazy adventurous journey!

DTE Date- Woo hooo!!!!!

So I blogged a few weeks ago about our interesting weekend for our fingerprints and how we were waiting (seems like that is a common thread in the adoption world- hurry and wait, hurry and wait- Im going to have patience like a Saint come next summer!)

for this precious letter....

Took me another two days and an e-mail from our family coordinator to realize it had this on the bottom...

Which means we can complete our Dossier which looks like this ...

Then we took it to Page Printing and the sweet lady there made

 2 copies of the 60+ pages...

This is a family event so we took our homegrown three 

who looked like this ....

Then off to the post office to wait in line...

Before we all gave it a kiss and a high five...

And said Good bye Dossier...

Our official DTE date will be April 20th 2012!!! It has taken 5 and a half months to complete the paperwork from sending in out application to AWAA, getting all the documents, completing our homestudy and addending our request.

You ask what now???

Well, We work on our Openedheart 5K and Family Fun Walk (http://www.active.com/event_detail.cfm?event_id=2023988 ) to help fundraise for our adoption and

we wait for a referral....