200 Red Envelopes for Ella

Gong Xi Fa Cai! 

Today is Chinese New Year, and marks the beginning of the Year of the Horse!  It also marks the beginning of my next and biggest fundraiser, 200 Red Envelopes for Ella.

Red is a color that symbolizes luck in China.  On Chinese New Year, gifts of money are given in a red envelope to signify wishes of wealth and good fortune for the coming year.

While this fundraiser will involve more virtual red envelopes than real ones, I do hope that it comes with wishes of good fortune and prayers for sweet Ella as she is preparing to come home in 2014!

How it works:

Step 1: Go to the Facebook Page “200 Red Envelopes for Ella” and join the page.  Please feel free to invite your friends! (The way it is set up, I will have to approve people.  I will stay on top of this as much as is possible!)

Step 2: Choose the envelope you want.  There are 200 envelopes, numbered 1-200.  There are three ways to participate:

1. You can choose the number of an envelope and donate that amount.  If you choose 47, for example, you would donate $47 dollars.
2. You can ask me to choose an envelope for you (by giving me a range or knowing that the range is 1-200).  If you give me a range of 25-35, you would be given an envelope in that range.  If you were given envelope 33, you would donate $33. 
3. You can get together with a group of friends (from work, school, church, etc.) and choose an envelope that way.  Some of the “higher” amount envelopes would be great candidates for this method of donation.  So if you and your friends commit to envelope 153, you would collect and donate $153. 

Step 3:  Go to my Fundly page and donate the amount that corresponds to the envelope you chose!  (If you would prefer not to donate online but want to participate, please do not let that deter you.  Email me or contact me on Facebook and I will share my mailing address with you.)

Step 4:  Celebrate!  You just helped in an awesome way! 

NOTE:  I will try to keep up with the envelopes being taken on the Facebook page.  Please feel free to post on the page “I’m taking envelope 24!” or I will post later “Envelope 24 is taken!”  It is important to do this so we don’t have duplicates of each envelope.  If you choose to do multiple envelopes (which is a blessing but not a request!), please indicate that to me as well.  

Thank you SO much for your continued support as I go throughout this process.  I appreciate everyone continuing to ask about Ella even though I don’t have any updates.  J  I am very blessed to be surrounded by such a caring community that is so excited to welcome Ella home.  

The HOME VISIT...

I had my first home visit.

It went quickly, and well.

The end.

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In all seriousness, my first home visit was yesterday.  Despite being warned that I did not have to clean for this visit, I cleaned and cleaned.  I even cleaned the baseboards in my bathroom (they needed it badly).  I rushed home from a very unpleasant day and scrambled to do some last minute cleaning.  My house is quite clean.  Most of this is thanks to my wonderful roommate.

So naturally, we basically stayed in two rooms.  :)

We discussed some more questions that have to be answered (the home study is like a big interview where they ask you about your life and beliefs about stuff and your family and so on).  We looked around the house for all the safety things we had to check off (note to future adoptive parents:  you have to have a fire extinguisher and a first-aid kit).  Then we discussed the timeline for the future and said goodbye!  I am of course still very thankful my house is clean and I can enjoy it!  We have one more visit next week (so I have to keep it clean until then), and then it's all over except for paperwork.  And more paperwork.  But luckily things are going well and so far very smoothly.

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Don't forget the fundraisers outlined in this post!  My sister-in-law has added some CUTE knitted headbands to the mix so if you are interested check them out.

I will be posting information about my biggest fundraiser later this week, and it will begin on Friday!

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Thanks, as always, for all the love and support!  Yesterday was the 27th, which means it's been two months since I received preapproval and is four months until my dossier has to be in China!  Things are moving right along!  In those two months I have:

• completed my puzzle fundraiser!
• compiled most of my dossier documents and had them notarized
• completed 2/3 of my home study
• met many "China moms"
• worked (weather permitting, ha ha!)

I am ready for the next four months to get moving.  I am definitely ready to get this girl home.  I obviously don't want to wish time away, but I am looking forward to being home with her, and am really hoping it is this year!

Crossing Things Off the List

Yesterday was my first meeting with the homestudy social worker.

I thought about titling this post "Five things not to say to your social worker," but I figured in case anyone actually came across this post and didn't realize I was joking, it could be disastrous.  But my social worker is incredibly nice, very motivated to get stuff done (as am I!), and super helpful.  She answered all of my questions, we talked a lot about adoption in general and my adoption specifically, and it was actually just a really nice appointment!  She also commended my paperwork organization and liked my fancy file folder.  (It's the little things.)

The next big step is my home visit (said with a little dread and fear in one's voice).  That will occur in a week or so.  Apparently the house doesn't have to be "white glove" clean, and it's mainly about making sure the house is safe for a child to live in. So that's good and will be fun, I hope!  There are a few things I need to do around the house (namely, get a fire extinguisher and update the dog's shots) but all in all we are in pretty good shape.  After that there is one more visit then my homestudy will be complete.  And then once it is approved, I can apply for USCIS approval...so things are moving along. Hooray!  It's hard to wait, and sometimes boring to wait, in between steps.  But ticking off the increments of time does help and I know that the year will pass more quickly than I realize!

The other big thing I checked off the list was getting my first set of documents notarized!  I was very afraid of getting anything on my dossier documents.  Have you seen the episode of "Friends" where Rachel is supposed to be addressing Monica's wedding invitations (The One with the Videotape...and yes I knew that offhand)?  I felt like Monica in that episode..."There will be no food or drink around the dossier documents..."  They survived.  So did I.  So the next step there is to get them certified by both the county and the state, and then sent to DC for authentication.

SUPER interesting, huh.

At any rate.  There is a lot to do, and I am excited to be getting it done!  I will post a little more next week about some things I am doing to prepare for the little lady.

A couple of "fun"d-raisers! (See what I did there?)

Oh, I crack myself up.  :)

I promise this will not be a fundraising blog forever.  Sadly, there just isn't much to update about Ella or the adoption process right now.  I did have the awesome privilege of being fingerprinted for the FBI this week.  You'll all be pleased to know I am record free.  (When my court records check came back I got so excited that it was clear.  Then I realized I have never even seen the inside of a courtroom {please don't call me for jury duty!} so I wasn't sure why I was worried.)  My home study will begin on Thursday with my first meeting with my social worker.  By all accounts, she is wonderful, so I am excited to meet her face to face and get this going!  I am really hoping to be waiting for I-800a approval (which is approval from US Customs and Immigration to bring a foreign-born child into the country) by the end of February.  That wait is at about 60 days but potentially speeding up, so I'd like to catch it on the upswing. 

At any rate, there are two fundraisers going on right now that I wanted to put out there.  One I mentioned a bit in my Christmas post.  My niece, Jenna, is "arm-knitting" scarves to help bring Ella home!  There are three styles of scarves.  The information can be found on the Facebook page Knitting for a Cause.  Here are a couple of pictures, one of Jenna knitting and one of a finished scarf:

If you'd be interested in a scarf, I know Jenna would be honored to make one.  She's really enjoying this project! 

Another event coming up is a photography mini-session day with Kelley Davis from Wild Honey Photography.  I got connected with Kelley at a Santa Breakfast for my friends Brian and Sara Tyler, who will be bringing their son Beau home from China very soon!  She contacted me about scheduling a mini-session event.  The day is March 8.  It will be held at Blackacre Nature Preserve.  The details are in the photo below.  Kelley is generously donating 50% of all proceeds to bringing Ella home!

To schedule a mini-session, contact Kelley via the Wild Honey Facebook Page or at wildhoneyphotos@gmail.com.

I will keep everyone posted on any news and progress!  I don't expect to receive any official updates on Ella for some time (probably months).  Which stinks, but it is just the way it goes.  I will update after my social worker meeting Thursday!

A HUGE thank you!

Ella's Puzzle Fundraiser is complete!

Ella's complete puzzle!

Ella's puzzle was finished yesterday (January 5).  It was almost a little bittersweet to finish it!  It has been such a fun project to work on this puzzle and see people's excitement as it got closer and closer to being complete.  It just exploded over the weekend.  It went from 41 pieces left on Thursday to two left on Saturday night.

The back of the puzzle.  It looks SO COOL.

The most exciting part of this puzzle has been seeing where all the pieces have come from.  I started this journey a little (okay, a lot) nervous about IF I would be supported.  I have received nothing but support.  I received donations from as far away as Togo, West Africa (Hi Kelly!) and as close as my family.  I received donations from my best friends and from people I don't even know.  There are people on this puzzle I've known my entire life and that I've known for a year (or less).  It's just incredible.  There were 115 donors total for Ella's puzzle, but I wanted to see what "categories" the supporters fell into.  The breakdown is as such (a couple people were counted in two categories):

Family: 12

Friends: 43

Friends/Family of Family/Friends: 20

Co-Workers: 19

Church Family: 8

Former Students/Families: 3

Adoptive Families/Adoptees: 12

Every single name I wrote on the back of that puzzle (and yes, I wrote every single name, I am a bit obsessive about handwriting and it all had to match!) was special, but there was something extra special about writing an adoptee's name on the back of a puzzle piece.  Six of them are not home yet.    

I started this puzzle with the goal of raising enough money to pay my first agency fee.  With the help of some other donations that came in and my savings, I was able to pay the fee in mid-December.  The remaining funds from the puzzle are going toward paying my home study fee and my USCIS filing and fingerprinting fee (which equals immigration approval to bring a foreign-born child into the country).  I have been so blessed by the financial support - I am not going to pretend that wasn't part of the goal!  But the overwhelming joy and expressions of excitement and love for Ella (and me!) have been what really have made this so fun.  There are so many neat stories that have come from participating in this puzzle. Each family represented has a connection to Ella and there is a neat story involved with each piece.

So thank you SO much to each of you who participated.  I am just so grateful for people who are so kind and generous and who want to help bring Ella home.  I could not be on this journey without your support.

I wish I could pinpoint a certain date for everyone for when I will travel to China/Ella will come home, although it is looking pretty on track to be October as of right now.  (I am okay with that.  Or as okay with that as one can be.  It is just part of it.)  I will be doing a couple of other fundraisers in the future (one I mentioned is my niece selling scarves to raise money for Ella's adoption, and I will post about that soon as it seems a lot of people like and want scarves!).  I will post about the fundraisers in the future, but for now, allow me to say it one more time.

THANK YOU.  :)