It's been a while since I blogged last and quite a bit has happened.
We had our homestudy visit in May and it went so well. Our social worker, Kristen, is one of the nicest people I've ever met. It was nerve wracking, but wonderful. Wonderful because we got to finally meet Kristen (and she's an angel)... and nerve wracking because we worked and waited for SO long to get to that point in our adoption process!
We passed our homestudy and we've been approved to adopt up to two children. (yay) Our official homestudy reports should be arriving in the mail on Monday. As soon as they arrive, I'll be able to send off our I800 application to USCIS. For those who don't know... the I800 is our formal request to the US government to be allowed to adopt a child overseas. (Because she's not a US citizen... our adoption must be approved by immigration officials). Once that's done (it usually takes about a month), we'll be ready to submit our dossier to Christiana's home country and formally begin our adoption process there!
I'm pretty excited by all of this. But I'm also a bit anxious. As it stands, we still need to raise at least $15,000-$20,000 in order to pay all of our adoption expenses. Right now, we've raised about $600 (see the number to your right).
Now it's crunch time. We need to raise some serious money in a hurry! Before we can submit our dossier to her country... we still need to pay about $9500 in adoption fees.
So with that in mind, we're going to be launching an online auction and having a jewelry fundraiser. In the next few days I'll be posting information about both of them here. In the meantime, we are still running our tshirt fundraiser ( http://www.adoptionbug.com/threelittlebirds/ ) and our puzzle fundraiser. For every $5 you donate to our adoption fund, please leave us a comment on the blog so that we can put your name on a puzzle piece. That way, Christiana will be able to know how many people who cared enough to help us bring her home! We plan to frame the puzzle so that she can see the front and back with all the signatures.
It's very easy to donate. Just follow this link (http://reecesrainbow.org/36029/sponsormatthews) to donate using Paypal or by check by sending it to:
Reece's Rainbow
PO Box 4024
Gaithersburg, MD 20885
(Please include a note saying your donation is for the Jason/Lisa Matthews family.)
Congrats on passing your homestudy! Are you going to try finding a second child to adopt? There is a sweet little girl just listed on RR today who is also in the same area as your daughter :)
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