Imagine

Imagine a sweet little boy abandoned at birth because he has Down syndrome.

Imagine his life without a mommy and daddy.



Imagine his life without stimulation. A life where he is so bored he hits himself to feel.

Imagine the chance he finally had when he was listed on Reece's Rainbow. But then, was passed over for more than a year.

Imagine a day in Spring when a mommy saw him and fell head over heels in love.

Imagine the day a family said, "yes" to God, witnessed miracles, and took a huge leap of faith by sending in their paperwork.

Imagine the day this sweet little boy was put on the "My Family Found Me" page.

Now, imagine a day when WE get to announce that WE are his family!!

http://reecesrainbow.org/46526/sponsormcintee

Imagine no more! We love him. We will do anything to rescue him. We aren't doing this for us. We're doing this for him. We are casting fear aside and following where we are led. We know there will be nay-sayers and people that don't understand. That's fine. We answer to God, not anyone else.

Please pray for us as we embark upon this journey. And imagine him home in our arms!

7 Quick Takes

--- 1 ---

This has been a whirlwind of a week. Between school drop offs and pick ups for the girls, organizing the house, and other day-to-day stuff, I've been a little stressed... But it's for good reason... Our home study is SUNDAY! Please pray for us, that His will be done and that our sweetie is provided for as he waits. I also have an interview at Micky D's Friday. I'm one busy momma lately.

--- 2 ---

Be on the lookout for our sweetie on the New Commitments page on Reece's Rainbow MONDAY! I can't wait to scream that I am his momma!

--- 3 ---

Please vote and share this for Reece's Rainbow. You can vote daily, and they will win $50,000 if they get the most votes! This would help the orphans so much!!

Clicky click click

--- 4 ---

Anyone else want to jump up and down and SQUEE because this movie is coming out soon?!!! What sucks, is I probably won't even be able to see it in the theatres. But yayyyyy!!


*bounce bounce bounce bounce*

--- 5 ---

I will not be online much next week because my grandparents from Cali are coming to visit! We haven't seen them in over a year, and they haven't met my sweet Charlotte yet, so we're really excited! Please pray for their safe travel to get here. They are 2 of 3 people that know about our adoption and they are so supportive and wonderful. It will be amazing to have them here when we go public. :) God's timing.

--- 6 ---

Our entire back yard is torn up because they are changing out the water mains... It has made it very difficult to get to our house. So, to make it harder, they are going to tear up our road, too. I'm not sure exactly how we'll be able to get home or leave, but it should be interesting.

--- 7 ---

One of our sweet Reece's Rainbow babies passed away.

RIP sweet baby Margaret

If you have never shared an orphan on your Facebook or blog before, now is the time. There is a little sweetie named Giselle that worries us so much. Please consider sharing or donating, so that she can find a momma soon!

http://reecesrainbow.org/12884/giselle901

Happy weekend!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Blog Blitz for Keegan!

Remember Keegan? The little boy we yelled about a few months ago because his babyhouse is closing and is set to be transferred to an ADULT mental institution? Well, a family stepped up and they are in desperate need of funding.

He is only 20 months old. Most kids are not transferred until age 5. This is not good. No one belongs in a mental institution, but babies especially don't belong there!!

The Gardners are currently $8,000 short and will travel in 3 weeks.

But here's where you can help! They have a matching grant until next Tuesday!! If they receive $4,000 in donations, they will receive the grant, which will make them fully funded!

Please consider donating, and please pray for this sweet little guy and his family!

Here is their FSP to donate http://reecesrainbow.org/38047/sponsorgardner

and their family blog to read more about them http://www.heygardners.blogspot.com/

Thank you!

No Quick Takes Today

This week has been insane. Here is some news:

At the beginning of this week we were still a little short of funds for our home study. Yesterday, an amazing online community raised us almost all of what we needed. We are good to go and our homestudy is SEPTEMBER 23RD!!! God is so good. We will walk through each door as it opens and hopefully that will lead us through the entire journey.

We are still not officially on Reece's Rainbow yet, but we're working on the paperwork and should be soon.

I had to delete a few prior posts, so here is the info on the stores my wonderful friend Cammie is offering 10% of her sales from. I will be adding these widgets to my side bar, also:




Also, if you have any shopping to do through Amazon, please consider using my banner at the bottom right. It's easy to do, just click and then order your goodies and I'll get a certain % of that sale!

Thank you so much to all who have donated so far. I have some ideas in the works and this will hopefully be an amazing journey.

And I especially thank all of those who have been praying for us and dealing with my meltdowns. It has really helped in this time of uncertainty.

Mush. Mush. My Brain is Mush. *Update*

I consider myself fairly intelligent. Not super smart or anything, I'm under-educated, under-read, and under-traveled, but still, I think I have pretty good brain power most of the time...

Until I unofficially started the adoption process.

Let me tell you something... if you think "mommy brain" or "pregnancy brain" is bad, just wait. Start an adoption. I swear to you, I can't think, AT ALL. I feel paralyzed.

What is getting to me so much is that I have spoken with 2 social workers and they say completely opposite things. One of them says move before we start the homestudy. One says start the homestudy now and she'll update our homestudy for free. One of them says as long as we have enough beds for the kids, it's fine. The other says it's inappropriate for baby boys to be in the same room as baby girls... One of them costs $1700. The other costs $975.

Then, it's trying to figure out how I get the little love we want to adopt on MFFM. Is it after payment to the homestudy agency? Before? I can't seem to get an answer out of anyone.

Oh, then it's figuring out the money aspect of it all. Once we're on RR's site, we'll be fine to hold fundraisers and I'll work my fingers to the bone to bring him home once it's official. But I am kind of stuck right now with what to do. I don't want to announce to family what our plans are until it's official, but then it's also hard to do anything feeling like I'm sneaking around.

BUT, there is good news. On a whim, I wrote an email to the Sharing Down Syndrome Arizona organization asking them if they had any ideas on how to raise these beginning costs. I made sure to tell them I was NOT asking THEM to donate, just that I thought they would be good at this type of thing, since they were used to advocating.

Well, she wrote me back and said that she'd love to post a picture of our family with a little story and that she just knew that the local supporters would love to help me out. This also means that now I will have a way for people to donate towards adoption start up costs (they run about $12k before we'd have access to the RR grant) that is tax deductible! This is HUGE, you guys. HUGE. She also emailed my email out to a bunch of local advocates and we already had a donation! From a complete stranger!! Now, I have NO clue how much it's for, but that doesn't matter. I am so taken aback by these wonderful people.

So, there it is. We are officially unofficial. Nothing has happened other than I've made a bazillion phone calls, printed out a bazillion papers, written a bazillion emails, and cried. A lot. I will update more as this unfolds.

Mother Teresa, pray for us!!

*Update*

We have decided to stay here, go with the cheaper social worker, and bring this boy home! Bring on the paperwork! (After the holiday weekend, that is. lol)