What We've Been Up To: Part 1 - Counting our Blessings

Once again, my apologies for waiting so long between posts. I don't know how professional bloggers do it - both live life and blog about it - sometimes it seems like there aren't enough hours in the day for both! I started to write a post about what we've been up to, and it got so long, I decided to divide it into 3 posts. Here's part one.

Counting our blessings

Todd and I first talked about adopting even before we were married, so we always paid attention to adoption stories and know a lot of people who have adopted. One thing was always clear - no matter how you do it, adoption is expensive. In our case, with the adoption of siblings, it would cost at least $55,000 just to bring the children home. That doesn't include beds, clothes, toys, shoes, and post-adoption reports.

We started saving for the adoption and getting our finances in order before we began our home study paperwork. We knew it would be expensive, that we would have to make sacrifices, and that we would have to do fundraising because there was no way we could raise all the money ourselves. Todd started teaching online classes to raise money, and we put off vacations, big purchases, and house repairs to save for the adoption.

In the end of April, we were talking about some adoption finances at dinner and Todd asked me how much money we had left in our adoption account. 

"Fifty dollars," was my reply. 

"How much do we need?" he asked. 

"At least $25,000, probably closer to $30,000."

M and E were very concerned - how are we going to pay for the adoption? How are we going to bring R and S home? (Then they offered to give us some of their money. Very cute and appreciated, but we told them to save it.) We told them that we didn't know, but that God would provide a way and that when he did, it would be a really neat story to tell R and S someday. That God so wanted them to be with us, that he did some incredible work to raise the money we needed. And he did.

• Our Both Hands project raised $20,073.09
• We received grants from Show Hope, Gift of Adoption, A Child Waits, Brittany's Hope, and our church
• We raised money with a yard sale and jewelry sale
• People sent us money and gift cards

People have been so generous. And not just people we know. Strangers who said, "keep the change" at our yard sale. Friends of friends who have never even met us and live halfway across the country. Friends of our parents who we've never met and will likely never even meet our children. Donors who give to grant organizations so families like ours can bring home orphans. Just like all the adoption expenses added up to a huge expense, all the donations add up to a huge blessing, and we now have the money we need to pay the final adoption expenses and take our trip to bring R and S home!

Thank you.