The Winner Is.....

Julie Young!!! Congrats Julie on winning the necklace and thank you for your support. Thanks to everyone that participated. Every dollar is appreciated.

Sending love & hugs to Elli,
Rodney, Marcy, Carter, Jacob, Parker & Anna

Fundraising Experiment....

Well, we are always looking at options on how to help save/make some extra money for adoption costs/fees. Several of my adoption "buddies" have held various raffle type events in order to raise money. So, I thought I would do a Fundraising Experiment to see if it would work for us. There are drawings for Wii consoles, cameras, GPS devices...you name it. I didn't want to do anything "big" until I found out if it would be successful or if the readers of this blog even wanted to do anything like this. But, I thought we would give it a shot and see.

I have one of these necklaces that I got as an early birthday present this year. I really like mine because it has my kiddos on it...I know that there are many mommies that follow this blog that are just as nuts over their kids as I am mine, so I thought this item might be a good start for us.

my loves

anna (heart) elli

carter (dot) jacob (dot) parker

So, here are the details about the piece - the sterling sliver discs are each hand stamped to your specification. The discs can be smooth, like the two shown or textured. There are two sterling sliver chains to choose from in 16 or 18 inches; rope or serpentine. The large disc is 1 inch in diameter, then 3/4 inch and the smallest is 1/2 inch. You can chose the Swarovski crystal(s) to match birthstones, anniversary months or just your favorite color. You can chose the channel stone or the plain crystals. The necklace is handmade by The Pretty Peacock in Mill Creek, Washington. You can check out some of her work at the The Pretty Peacock Etsy Store.

I have spoken with Ana at The Pretty Peacock and she is excited about participating in the giveaway. These are the rules. ANYONE can enter. You don't have to make a donation to get your name in the "pot". But, hey, that is the reason I am doing this, so if you would like to make a donation...thanks! At the end of the "entering phase" we will hold a drawing for the necklace. After the winner is announced, I will pay for the necklace, giving Ana your contact information, you and she will work out your customization for your piece. The piece will be shipped to you and that's it!

In order to enter, you can either make a donation through the ChipIn on the sidebar of the blog or if you just want to enter, you can email me your information at jacarg2@yahoo.com Either way, your name will be entered into the drawing for the necklace.

This is a great gift to yourself ;-) or for a special mom, aunt, sister, or friend for Christmas. We will hold the drawing on Wednesday, November 26 so that the transaction can be made before the December 1 deadline for Christmas delivery. Now, the "small print". IF this were to be a complete flop...well, we are done with this type of fundraisers. IF this is successful and we raise some money to help with Elli's adoption, then we will be looking for other items (suggestions are appreciated) to give away. We are working towards our travel money (airline tickets, hotel stay, food, etc.) as well as our in-country fees and orphanage donation (mandatory donation of $3000, possibly $5000 by the time we travel), so yeah, we are doing everything we can think of to round up the cash!

We are appreciative of all you who faithfully read this blog and pray for our sweet girl...we desire prayers above anything else. We know that God will provide what is needed.

Sending love & hugs to Elli,

Rodney, Marcy, Carter, Jacob, Parker & Anna

No LID Yet....

No word of a log in date as of today...that doesn't mean that we aren't logged in though. Hopefully, we just aren't aware of it yet. Our agency is checking daily for any information, so we just wait.

Once we get word of our LID, we are just going to wait again, so I am not too stressed about it. I know the dossier is there and that is more than half the battle. Do I want LID? Yes, I wanted it back in June...I wanted to be traveling to China by now, but apparently that wasn't "the plan." So thankfully today, I am optimistic about where we are, enjoying the ones traveling this journey with me and excited about the future. Now that's today...we'll see about tomorrow :)

Sending love & hugs to Elli,
Rodney, Marcy, Carter, Jacob, Parker & Anna

Thank You .CHOP!

At 3:13 pm Monday afternoon in Beijing, China .CHOP signed for the delivery of our dossier. Our dossier, filled with 10 months of work, lot of tears and a bundle of dreams arrived safely in China where we will wait for our log in date. It may take several days or even weeks before we learn of our log in date. So we wait again!

With Anna's adoption, we were 30 days in our LOA wait before we knew our log in date. It was a little bitter sweet to have to wait so long to discover our date, but nice to know that we had over a month under our belt of "wait" time. We have been on this journey for nearly a year, but Elli has been waiting for almost 3...we will be glad when her wait is over.

She is already here with us in our hearts, so the fact that she physically is missing is hard. We were out on Sunday at a restaurant; the server asked how many was in our party and Rodney called out 11 (we were with my sister, her husband and my two nephews). Jacob told Rodney that it was only 10...Rodney agreed he was wrong, but he had counted Elli. We are already a family of 7...but she isn't here yet.

Thankful that our dossier is in China, but wishing our Elli was at home. Sending love & hugs to Elli,

Rodney, Marcy, Carter, Jacob, Parker & Anna