T-Shirt Fundraiser

Hello all! We have set up a store through Adoption Bug to do a t-shirt fundraiser.

The direct URL is www.adoptionbug.com/grubaughadoption. But the quickest way to get there is simply to click on the box on the right hand side of the blog.

We receive a certain percentage of the proceeds from the sale of each t-shirt  to go towards adoption expenses.

With the way the fundraiser program is setup, we only receive a commission on the products we chose to sell on our fundraiser page, so make sure you go directly to our page. You can add additional items to your order from Adoption Bug's regular store, but only those items purchased from our page will credit our fundraiser.

Thank you for your support!

Christmas Party Tomorrow

This blog post has nothing to do with adoption (other things do happen in our lives).  :)

A  couple of weeks ago Tony and I went to Jefferson, Texas for the weekend to see the Candlelight Tour of Homes.  We also enjoy shopping in the antique and junk shops out there.  We found some good items to sell in our booth here ... a Wonder bread advertising sign in Spanish being one of my favorites, even if we will have to wait a while before it becomes a collector's piece.

We also enjoy shopping the antique malls in town. In one of the shops here in town, I found a Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library (in yellow box) in pristine never used condition.  I had to have it as it brought back so many memories from my childhood.

So tomorrow is a Christmas Party at our house.  And I am very ambitious about the appetizers I plan to serve.  I have decided to make most of the food using the recipes from the card library.  (A quick shout of appreciation to my husband here who made the extra trip out to Central Market, because his work was closer to it, to get some unique items not in the everyday grocery store).  Oh, and it you are reading this thinking to yourself, Central Market IS your everyday grocery store, then I am very happy for you and wish I had that kind of paycheck to cover it! Wow, is that place expensive.  But I digress ...

So with a trip to Central Market by Tony, and to Walmart by both of us, I have the ingredients in hand to make these delectables:

Bambinos (Card 25 - Come for Coffee Category)

and from the Crowd-Size Entertaining Category:

Card 13 - Party Sandwich Loaf (this one looks unique and complex ... interesting to see if it turns out)
Card 20 - Lemon - Strawberry Punch
Card 23 - Swedish Meatballs
Card 25 - Crab Dip in Pepper Shells
Card 27 - Cornucopias and Triple Treat Kabobs

Just wish I could have figured out where to find mini-skewers or party toothpicks at Walmart.  That is one of my fairly many complaints about Walmart is that their placement system for items often doesn't make logical sense to me (but that is a whole other blog post someday).

Well anyway, I'm hoping I have time to get it all done, plus get the house ready for the party.  I'll let you know how everything turns out and I'll try to remember to post pictures too.

Until next time ...

Merry Christmas everyone!

USCIS Approval of I-800A Application

"You have been approved." My four favorite words today.

We received in the mail our approval from the US Citizenship and Immigration Service to take the next step in the adoption process. This piece of paper, in official government terms called the I-797, Notice of Action, was the last document we were waiting for to complete our dossier. Now we just have to send it down to the Texas Secretary of State for apostille, wait for its return, make a bunch of photocopies of everything, and ship out our dossier.

For people who might read our blog and are wondering about turnaround time for the USCIS I-800A approval. We submitted our I-800A application on October 23rd. Had our biometrics appointment on November 28th, and received our approval notice in the mail today, December 8th. So from submission date, to approval date, it took six weeks and 4 days. Or if you are counting just in days - 46 days instead of the 90 days projected on the USCIS website. So when the website says within 90 days, that is just a wide range to allow them time to get the job done, not a minimum. So don't give up hope if you are running against a deadline, just keep pressing on!

Our adoption agency said we need to have the dossier shipped out by the 17th to them for forwarding on to the country, or otherwise, there was no point in doing anything until January 2nd as everyone pretty much shuts down things for the holidays. We want to be able to bring our girl home as soon as possible, so I am very, very excited to have the possibility to meet that deadline of the 17th. (I apologize to my elementary grammar teacher for the double adjective in the preceding sentence, but sometimes only a "very, very" will do.)

Praying for godspeed to our FedEx package I will be sending out to the Texas Secretary of State on Monday, and that we will get the apostilled document back by Friday. If so, I can make a quick turnaround of the dossier to our adoption agency on Friday the 14th by FedEx and just beat the December 17th deadline. Not for sure the timeline will work out, but God is good, and I just keep praying.

Until next time ...

Adopt Together site

Hello everyone! We have set up a profile on a fundraising site called Adopt Together.  Please check it out and consider whether you would like to donate to the adoption cause.

Our profile link is here: The Grubaughs

Just Checking In

Hello Everyone!  Just checking in to say thanks to everyone who is praying for us on our adoption journey.  God's hand has been evident every step of the way, and we appreciate everyone who intercedes on our behalf.  Please pray that we will not get impatient as we wait for responses on paperwork submissions from various entities.  This is the time where we need to just send documents off with a prayer and leave the rest in God's hands as it is out of our control.  But we need to get everything done really by the end of the year, so we are a bit nervous about the timing.  I know God can handle anything, but moving that notion from my head to my heart can sometimes be a difficult thing.

While we are waiting on paperwork, we are also doing various things preparing for when our little girl is home, such as:
1. I need to take a CPR class - infant and child.
2. We get to read different books about adoption.
3. We study the culture and customs of the country.
4. We do things that any other parent would do, like try to decide where our girl will go to school.  That has been the hardest one so far, because my gut instinct is that no school could be good enough for her!  Funny because never having had to think about this before, it was an unexpected emotion I felt.
5. Etc., etc., etc.

So busy!  And during the holiday season.  Yes, we do very much appreciate your prayers and encouragement, thanks!

Today's Fundraiser

Howdy ya'll.  Just letting you know our sale went okay today, but we still have a lot of stuff left, so we may do a garage sale a little later this year (if I can find a free weekend!).  We made $145 toward the adoption fund today.  Every little bit helps.  Please keep praying as we move through the adoption process.  A lot of paperwork, educational items, and general preparations to be done.  Thanks!

Adoption Progress Update

Hey everyone.  We are almost done with the home study stage, we have been approved to adopt one child age 5 to 13.  So that is good since the girl we are hoping to adopt is 11 years old.  We are just waiting for final edits of the home study report and once we have that in hand we can send in the next stage of paperwork to the US government.

This weekend we have a space at a flea-market / community garage sale type event in Hurst, Texas outside the Mid-Cities Antique Mall.  It is on Saturday, October 13 from 7:00 a.m. until about 2:30 p.m. (people can stay as long as they want, but that is usually when things start winding down).  So if you live in the area, please come by and help, or just come buy!  :)

The address is:
809 W. Pipeline
Hurst, TX 76053

Home Visit and October Fundraiser

The social worker came to our home on Monday for the adoption home visit.  We were nervous and somewhat stressed about how it would go, but we had our home looking nice, and the social worker was friendly.  So overall I think it went pretty well.  We have some parenting education stuff to finish up, and then we meet the social worker at her office again on the 25th to go over some of that.  After that she writes up her home study report, we review it, our adoption agency reviews it, it goes back to the social worker to finalize, and finally a finished, signed, notarized home study report is delivered to us and our adoption agency.  I hope that doesn't take too long after the 25th as we are waiting to get that home study report to send in our USCIS I-800 application.  I am too tired to go into what that is right now except to say it is the part where you get the US government to approve you to adopt internationally.

And there are a lot of bits and pieces in between we still have to do like I need to take a CPR class, and we have to get a report from Fort Worth saying we've never been arrested here, etc.

So please be praying that we have patience and strength through this process.  

On another note, we do still need to raise quite a bit of funds as we are going through this process ($29,000!).  To that end we have signed up for a spot at a parking lot sale (think flea market) at the antique mall where we have our booth.  The sale is on Saturday, October 13th.  If you have anything you would like to donate for us to sell, please let me know.  

Also, some people have mentioned us putting a link here for direct donations, unfortunately all donation widgets take 3 to 5% in fees.  I'm not sure people would be inclined to give if they knew it wasn't all going to the cause, so I haven't added a donation link here, but if you want to donate, just get a message to me (you can post a comment below or otherwise get in touch with me), and we will figure a way to get the funds to us.

Thanks for your prayers and support.

Adoption Update 08/28/12

Over the last month we gathered a lot of required paperwork and information to submit to our local home study agency.  This was necessary prior to the home visit done by the social worker.  We got that mailed out to the home study agency on Friday (by certified mail of course).  Once they receive the paperwork, they will assign a caseworker to our file, and hopefully sometime this week we will get a call about scheduling the home visit.

While working on the home study portion, there are also a lot of education requirements we are working through on the subject of being adoptive parents.  This involves reading books, watching some online video courses,  and so forth.  I also need to take a CPR class.  Tony already has his CPR training through his job.

We are also working on fundraising for both of us to take the two required trips overseas: the first time to meet the child, and the next time to adopt her and bring her home.  In connection with that, we are going to get a couple spaces at our antique mall's upcoming parking lot sale on October 13th. It is a bit like a flea market or community garage sale.  We would like to have as much help as possible in running our booth at the parking lot sale, so if you live in the area and would like to help out, please let us know.

Initial Country Application - Approved!

We are so excited! We just found out that our initial application to adopt a child from Eastern Europe has been approved.  :)

This is just the initial approval.  Now we have six months to get our home study completed and our dossier together and sent over.  Next the country approves that, and issues the official referral.

When we receive the referral, we go to the country for a trip to meet the child.  After that we officially accept the referral.

Then a guesstimated 4 to 6 months after that, we go to the country again to adopt the child.  So all in all, about a year long process.

Who is the child? you ask ... well, we have to be very vague for the protection of privacy and the confidentiality of the process, but we are allowed to say she is a 10 year old girl, and that she has cystic fibrosis.

We appreciate you coming along with us on this journey through your prayers and support.

Home Study

Well, as we wait for our match to be considered next Tuesday, we move forward with another important phase of the adoption process. The home study!  We have begun working with a Texas agency to handle that part of the process for us (the main adoption agency we are working with is in North Carolina).  There is a truckload of documentation to complete and also things to read and other educational requirements on the adoption process.  A bit intimidating, but to be honest I always loved school, so it really feels like taking a summer course in college.  Gotta get the work done ... but fun to learn.

Agency Application Approved

We received official notice today that our application to work with our selected adoption agency has been approved.  Our paperwork for the waiting child from Eastern Europe has been sent to the connected agency in the country to translate.  We are not sure if it will be translated in time and put on the list for review by the governmental officials tomorrow or not.  We are praying that all documentation moves swiftly and our preliminary application can be reviewed tomorrow.  If the preliminary application is reviewed and accepted tomorrow, then we have six months to submit the completed full dossier back to the country.  Hopeful that in a couple days we will have a happy update to bring you ...

Initial Application

Checking in with an adoption update.  We have now found an agency to work with us as we move forward in our adoption plans.  We are working on the initial application to adopt a girl from Eastern Europe that is on a waiting child list.   If we can get it done and back to the agency by Friday, our application will be before the foreign governmental officials on Tuesday! Wow, this is moving fast.  This first step is an expense of about $2,500, so if anyone feels like contributing to this awesome cause ... please do so. :)

Also, if you would rather donate items or crafts for sale on our Ebay or Etsy pages, please contact us or leave a comment with your e-mail address and we will get back to you discuss how that might work.  

If any of you have experience with adoption internationally, please feel free to comment with other fundraiser ideas.

And last, but absolutely not least, we appreciate everyone's prayers as we move forward in this process.

Fundraising for Adoption

Okay, so I've set up a fundraising thermometer.  We are looking to adopt a child internationally.  We are in the initial stages of the process and will be sending in an application to a potential agency to work with this week.  Therefore, we understand if our friends, family, blog readers, etc. want to wait until later when we have been signed up with an agency and are further down the road before donating to our cause.  Our goal is to give parents (us!) to a child in need.  The estimated cost to adopt a child for the region we are investigating (Eastern Europe) is approximately $32,000.  For those who would like to donate, e-mail me for the address or leave a comment on this post with your e-mail and I will get back to you.  I know people raise funds for a lot of different things in life, so don't feel obligated, but any help would be GREATLY appreciated.  Thank you in advance for your prayers as we begin this journey.

We are also selling items on Ebay and Etsy.  See the links in the right hand column.  And if you live in the D/FW area of Texas, we have a booth at the Mid-Cities Antique Mall, we are Dealer #303.  Look for the fourth shelf on the right hand side as you are heading down the aisle with the big restroom sign overhead (with arrow pointing toward back of store). The mall is at 809 W. Pipeline Rd., Hurst, TX 76053.

Agency search update

Not all adoption agencies have the same rules, and not all countries have the same rules.  Right now we are focusing on adopting a child from Eastern Europe (once we find an agency to work with).  We have not ruled out adopting a child from Texas, but are looking internationally right now.

Adoption - a beginning

Tony and I would like to adopt a child.  However, we are finding that in some cases there are health restrictions which might prevent our being chosen as adoptive parents.  So we are trying to find an agency that is willing to work with people with asthma or diabetes.