Tuesday Timecard

Ooooookay. Okay, Life. You can settle down now.

I've traveled to Waco and back to get our updated homestudy. I've sent it and the other necessary update documents to Immigration Services (USCIS). I've tried not to freak out as I realized later that night that our address was not updated on the front page of our homestudy, so we need to somehow send back in the correct one to USCIS and hope it doesn't majorly delay their processing time.

I haven't finished processing how I feel about it (i.e. I haven't had a good cry about it). It feels like the last nail in the coffin of being able to eek by on our current USCIS approval, which expires in late October. If you have the faith for it, I'm up for traveling in 3 weeks, but I don't see how that's possible.

All things are possible for the Almighty, so I can't totally shut out hope. Or maybe there's some something I don't know that may mean we don't have to stay back and wait for a new I-600A to be processed. The extra $1,000 stinks, but the time is really what hurts. Two months of waiting for one document to be re-approved is way harsh for my heart. I'm really, really wanting our girls home for Christmas.

On the funding front, we only have $1,136.50 left to finish out our $10,000 matching gift! That's amazing! We're going to try to send out a letter to a few people who aren't probably following our story online, but it's difficult to do at this time, as Stephen's been doing the extra beginning-of-semester craziness AND support-raising for his job.

Adoption Update (fundraising and process)

Sorry for no posts last week: we had our beginning-of-the-year leadership retreat, at which time most of the goals and plans for how we fill our time as campus staff are prayed over and made. Not too much got done adoption-wise, but it's basically our New Year's Eve for the whole church. We're pretty tired, tbh, but I'm so looking forward to all the changes coming this year family- and ministry-wise.

Some have asked how fundraising's going so far. Here's a thermometer to show you!

I know this is the coolest thing you've ever seen and you're so impressed with my skillz. I know.

I'm doing this according to the matching principle: every gift we've received has been doubled. I also know there are a couple of gifts missing because of the lag time as they process gifts. Still, just from this: we are 30% of the way there! That is awesome.

Our homestudy update home visit is set for August 26th. Our social worker and her bosses will be working very quickly to get us the copy we can send to the US Center for Immigration Services (USCIS). We have to update our approval (they've approved us for one child, and now we're adopting two). PLEASE be praying everything goes smoothly with our update and for a very quick turn-around with USCIS. More on that in a couple of days!

Tuesday Timecard

Filling out as I go! #adulting
[I say that because I've been doing a monthly timecard for my job for four years and I basically always do it all in one go. Usually late. Someday I'll #adult regularly.]

So, this week, we:
- called our city again to try and get our 5k approval
- finished our homestudy update documents and mailed it in!
- talked to some people about the Chosen Marathon
- started talking about a t-shirt fundraiser design
- started figuring out how to get a couple documents (our background checks) for our dossier
- got Judah's birth certificates back in the mail
- called the post office where our homestudy documents got sent instead of where they're supposed to have gone
- I tried to take deep breaths knowing that there are originals we can't get back in that packet that was supposed to arrive on Friday morning and STILL ISN'T AT OUR AGENCY YET WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
- got a good lesson in fundraising from my father in law [support raising for staff is really different. It's weird.]
- emailed some more questions about our dossier to our agency
- and probably other things because I didn't do a good job updating through the week. Oh well.

Tuesday Timecard

I need to start writing these as I go, not all at the end. Maybe I'll remember it all?

This week, we:
- gave our doctor's office our paperwork AGAIN bc they lost it. #smh
- scheduled an appointment with an international doctor
- sent a few months' worth ($600) of orphanage care fees to the girls' home.
- Stephen finished reading the chapters of The Connected Child required by our homestudy update
- I finished reading the other articles required for our homestudy update
- made copies of our last two years' W2s (homestudy)
- printed out our pay stubs for the last 3 months (homestudy)
- bought yarn to begin the girls' blankets (separate post)

Okay, not TOO bad. I slowed myself down a little bit bc I've been having a lot of trouble falling asleep. I can't be running around doing things right until we get ready for bed.

All we're waiting on to schedule our homestudy update is our doctor's documents and our adoptive family questionnaire. Yay!

I've got to start some fundraisers, because we've officially run out of our non-allocated funds (as in our emergency fund and the money we're saving for buying a car that will fit four carseats. Sorry, lil Focus). More on that on Friday!

Tuesday Timecard

Okay, Tuesday Timecards are for relaying information to you about what is happening on the ground (and by "on the ground," I mean in the car with my two small children being crazy and me being like we're going to the post office anyway just don't fall apart for 15 more minutes please).
It may also be for either accountability or encouragement, depending on if I'm putting things off or if there's so much to do that it seems like I'm not making progress (*coughcough* see below).

So, this past week, we:
-finished our adoption training courses (10 hours!) through Adoption Learning Partners (separate post on that)
-I finished the chapters of The Connected Child that are required for our homestudy (separate post singing glorious praises for Drs Purvis & Cross later)
-sent $4,000 to our adoption agency and had our adoption grant send another $4,000 because money is no longer a tangible thing to me
-made a list of everything we need for our homestudy and dossier
-ordered Stephen's new passport
-gave the medical forms to our doc to fill out & return to us
-called 4 different local government offices to try and get our 5k permit approved (it's not yet)
-absolutely badgered our agency for photos of the girls (and got them, athankyouverymuch)
-ordered birth certificates for Judah
-wrote out every grant we can apply for
-wrote out every fundraiser we've talked about
-taken deep, calming breaths and forced myself to relax

On a not-totally-adoption-centered-but-still-related note, we kicked our old couch to the curb and bought a gloriously inexpensive, perfectly small, slightly uncomfortable, used pleather couch / "futon" (no one will ever sleep on this futon give me a break manufacturers) that makes for much more space in our living area. We'll be getting rid of the other one and replacing it with either an ottoman or a bench bc no we don't care about comfort for guests, we care about floor space for the thousand four small children we'll have playing together soon.

Soon.