Affordable Adoption

Alright- here is one of the biggest concerns for adoption- Can we afford it?
Well, there are many ways to help make adoptions affordable.
Here are just a few tips that I have found from myself or others thinking of adopting.

1. I think that if you decide to adopt that many times the sources will just appear to help you with your decision. Why would God (or the Universe) not want to help you out if you decide to help out with a child. For me personally I have found that God has been with me all along the way helping our family come up with the necessary funds for this adoption. If you have read the book "the secret" that is another way that you can get help. If you put it out into the Universe, the Universe will send it back to you.

2. Service or Charitable Contributions. There are many things that you can personally do to earn money. Below are just some ideas.
* Neighborhood Garage Sale: This is something that I did. I sent out fliers around my neighborhood explaining that we were collecting all unused items to sell in our garage sale. Many items were donated for this sale. We were able to raise a bunch of money to go towards the adoption and the orphanage.
* Bake Sale: I know of many people who have made cinnamon rolls or pizzas or other type of food items. You can either set up a stand in a place with lots of traffic and try to sell your items (we actually sold a ton of cookies, cupcakes and cinnamon rolls at our garage sale) or you can actually go around your neighborhood and take orders for food items. I know of another family adopting that raised over $3,000 taking orders and making cinnamon rolls.
* Selling t-shirts: There is a great website called annifororphans.com. This company allows you to create a design for a shirt, or they can help you create one. After you have a shirt created you are able to sell and it keep all the profit. This is awesome. I am actually in the process of designing a shirt right now and will hopefully have it up and running soon.

3. Adoption Tax Credit: When you adopt you are able to have a tax credit. Although the amount might be changing you will still be able to have an adoption tax credit for that year. Right now the credit is $12,150.

4. Adoption Financial Aid: There are many different places who will help you financially afford the adoption. If you google international adoption financial assistance- you will be shown many different sites that you can assist you.

5. Employment: Many larger companies actually have plans that can assist with your adoption costs. The other option is to ask your employer if there is anything the company can do to assist with your costs.

6. Donations: Some people are not in the position to have another child, however financially they may be able to assist in helping you have your child. If you have a blog or myspace or anything like that you can actually set it up to receive donations. Sometimes just getting the knowledge out there that you are interested in adopting but need help, you will find that someone may volunteer to help you.

I am sure there are many other ways to pay for adoption. If anyone else has any tips please post them.
Adoption is a huge investment, but I know that it is all worth it in the end, especially when you are able to hold that child in your arms for the first time.

I Saw What I Saw

15 years ago a plane went down in Rwanda carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana. The Hutu people immediately claimed that the RPF shot the plane down. This began the most devestating 100 days on earth as neighbors killed neighbors and family killed family. 1,000,000 million dead in 100 days.

I saw this video a while ago when the anniversary of the genocide happened (in April), however for some reason I found it again. I feel very touched as my daughter is in Rwanda right now. Her birth mother very well could have witnessed this destruction. It might be this past destruction that caused her to give up her child that will soon be in our family. I am so grateful and feel such sadness for this strong birth mother. I am so grateful for these strong Rwandan people. I am so grateful for my daughter who has no idea that she will soon be with her family. Tonight our family will say an extra special prayer to bless all of those in Rwanda. I ask that you all do the same.

Please watch this amazing video of the people of Rwanda. Maybe you can understand how beautiful the people are and why we can't wait to bring one of these children home.

Two Year Log in Date- There is always a plan!

When you do an adoption from China the moment your paperwork is in China you receive a log in date. Well, my log in date was September 12, 2007. This means that for 2 years my paperwork has been waiting in China. I must say that up until last May this had been very difficult for me becuase I felt like I had a daughter out there that was never coming to our family. However, last May that all changed.

The reason why I am bringing this up is because Heavenly Father always has a plan. When we were filling out our paperwork for China it took us a long time as were always out of country with my company. So basically it took us over a year to get it all finished. If we were able to finish it earlier we would not be waiting so long. But the wait is actually good.

There are so many people who are adopting from China and that is awesome. But it is also causing a huge waiting time as China only allows so many kids out of the country each month. However, for me that is good.

The reason why I am saying this is Heavenly Father knew that I needed to pick up a little girl from Rwanda. He knew that if I did not need to wait I would not be in tune to His plan. I would do China and who knows if I would do anything more. However, I was slow with the process and I got behind many others who were also adopting from China. And here I am sitting at my computer knowing that my paperwork is in Rwanda and in a few months I will have a daughter. My paperwork is also in China and I know in a couple of years I will have another daughter. I am glad that I had to wait for China. I know it will still happen and I am still very excited to get her but it is this waiting time that is allowing me to have two daughters instead of one.

Our Rwanda Adoption

Life has been very crazy lately and so unfortunately I have not visited my blog in such a long time. Finally I feel that it is time to begin posting again- especially since some exciting news is happening in our family.

We have been in the process of adopting from China (over 3 years if you include the time spent working on our dossier and waiting time). It has been such a trial waiting for this little girl to come home. However, although we are still waiting for China we are excited to begin adopting from Rwanda as well.

Here is our story.
Last April my husband and I were in Africa. While we were there I felt that we were supposed to adopt from Africa. I told my husband in Africa that I felt we were to adopt in Africa. However, our agency only works with China and I didn't want to switch agencies and also we thought we would get our little girl from China in the next year or so.

The day after we got home from Africa we got an email from our Adoption Agency Great Wall that they now will have another division called CAN (Children of All Nations) and they allow you to adopt from Rwanda. We then called Great Wall and asked for the most realistic timeline for China. It would be around another 2 1/2 years. Well, after some heavy praying (even though I already had received an answer in Africa) I knew that we were to get a little girl from Rwanda as well as our girl from China.

We put in our paperwork in April and got accepted. We then began putting together our dossier in May. Another life changing experience happened in May. My little sister (who was 30 years old) died. Although this has been a difficult year I am so happy that I can focus all of my energy on bringing this little girl to our family. We are going to give our little girl from Rwanda the middle name of Nicole (which is my sister's name).

Right now our paperwork is in Rwanda awaiting acceptance from the Rwandan Ministry. I will try to write up a timeline soon so anyone else interested in finding out information on Rwanda they can look at what our experiences have been. We know there are so many children outside of the children (and so many orphans in Africa) so we would love to answer any questions that anyone might have regarding adoptions.

We are hoping to get a refferal sometime in October or November. I will keep you all posted on what is happening. I also just finished her nursery. I hope to post pictures very soon.

Panama Canal

Here are the boys at our first stop on the Panama Canal cruise in the Dominican Republic.

We were gone for 17 days and had a blast. We began in San Juan and spent a couple of nights there before boarding our cruise ship. The stops we visited were Dominican Republic, Colombia, Costa Rica, Huatulco Mexico, Acapulco Mexico, Cabo San Lucas Mexico and ended in San Francisco. And of course we went through the Panama Canal. It was a beautiful cruise and the kids had a blast! Here are just a few of the pictures from the trip.

Here is a nice church in Dominican Republic. There was a wedding going on inside while we were there.

This is the one of the forts in Cartagena, Colombia. They built these forts to keep out mainly pirates. The spanish kept a lot of their gold on the land- so many people were trying to get it.

The streets were very clean. The balconies were covered in flowers and were beautiful. I was very impressed how nice it was in Cartagena. I really want to go back and see more!

The ship had a lot of fun things to do, especially for the kids. But they mainly liked to swim in the kid pool with the waterslide and play golf with daddy.

These are the locks that we were just going through for the canal. They are very impressive. I read a great book about the Panama Canal called The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough. I can not believe how many lives it took to build this waterway. It is amazing!

Here we are eating lunch up on the top deck as we are going through the Panama Canal.

Here we are at the dock for Costa Rica.

Cabi is so beautiful. It has been a couple of years since we were last here. Everytime I go there I forget how beautiful it is.

We saw lots of seals. Martin loves to immitate them.

The kids were able to pet lizards.

This was our last night on the cruise. The kids will miss the different animals each night made out of towels and the chocolate on their pillows (or actually on Calvin's face for this picture!) We are always so sad to go home!

Finally the end of Antarctica

I am finally finishing my Antarctica trip. I am not going into much detail about the remaining places I saw, but I am just posting some of my favorite sites and pictures from the trip. This honestly is in my top 5 of places to visit. This trip has been a life changing trip for me. I am so thankful that I was able to see this beautiful part of the world. So, here are a few of my many pictures that I took.

We went to the Polish station and it was amazing. On the beach in front of us were 23 huge (longer than me) sea elephants. They just laid there the entire day while we were walking around. They would make loud snorting noises and every now and then shift positions but mainly they just hung out. I really enjoyed this stop.



We saw so many whale bones littered all throughout Antarctica. This is part of the Polish station.

We made a bunch more stops but here was another stop that I really loved. This used to be the base for Argentina. Now some people are here, but it is mainly the penguins who live here.

We climbed up this huge hill and then proceeded to slide down on our bum. It was very fast and fun. The worst part was when you would suddenly hit a jump, then land hard and keep going. I loved it!!!


Here are a few more pictures of penguins. I love penguins. It was such an experience I will never foget sitting among hundreds of penguins. They would waddle right by you. They are such beautiful animals.



Here is a cute little Adelie penguin.

Here are just some of my favorite scenery shots that I haven't posted yet. We saw hundreds of glaciers and thousands of iceburgs. I also have thousands of amazing pictures that were hard to pick but here are some of my favs!


Beautiful... Gorgeous... Wish you were here!!!!! Oh and no I didn't tint the pictures. The more blue in the iceburg the more compact it is.

A big shock for me were all of the many peaks, mountains and volcanoes that I saw in Antarctica it just isn't white!

Isn't this beautiful?! This is a huge tabular iceburg. They can sometimes be even longer than a mile. We saw quite a few of these. They are huge! They don't come from glaciers and they are long and flat. I loved these iceburgs!

Believe it or not but this picture was taken at about 11:30pm. The sun never completely set at night. It was very eerie and beautiful to walk out on deck in the middle of the night. It can actually be brighter but it had been snowing.

Well this is our final rough day at sea. This is the Cape Horn. We were about to get off the ship here but about 20 minutes before we began to unload a huge storm came up. I was just glad I wasn't on shore when the storm came and got stuck there. This was very beautiful with the waves and there were dozens of albatross birds flying in between the waves. It was an honor to sail around this area with a storm as more sailors have died here than any other place in the world. But I was also incredibly sad to leave. I will never forget the amazing sights I have seen.

Antarctica Part 4- Animal Life

Humback Whales are amazing! We saw over a hundred whales while we were on our ship.

It was very difficult to get any pictures of the whales jumping out of the water. They would go down for about 5 to 10 minutes before they jumped out of the water and they could come up anywhere. I was just lucky to see them breach (jump out of the water). The best one I saw was of a mother and a baby together but unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me at that time.

We saw the most beautiful iceburgs. They were all thousands of years old and huge. We had staff on board to lecture us about the wildlife, glaciers, etc. One of them compared an iceburg to a piece of ice floating in your drink. The tiny piece of ice that shows above the liquid that you are drinking is similar to an iceburg. The majority of the ice (about 5/6th) is below the surface. We had to be very careful cruising through the water.

This picture just shows you how close we would get to the whales. Our Captain was awesome! Because we were in a smaller boat he would follow some whales until we found more and then he would move on and follow them. We would spend hours following the different whales in between our stops on land.

Whenever you saw the tail come up you you knew that most likely they were going to dive down for a few minutes. I think I have about 500 different tail pictures. I am only posting a few.

I know the picture can not do the iceburgs justice. They were spectacular!

One of my favorite parts of the iceburgs were the colors. I thought they were just white but they can be light blue and bright turqoise as well.

This is a common site. We would often see iceburgs filled with seals or penguins. This is a baby leapord seal sitting on an iceburg.

Most whales travel together. This is a mommy and baby traveling together.

This is a whale coming down from breaching. The sun was so bright so it was a difficult picture to get.

Here is another seal sitting on the ice.

The whales also like to roll around. Here he is rolling around waving his fins at us saying hello.

Well here is the end for today. I will try to post some more penguins and the huge elephant seals that we saw on shore tomorrow!