A great start to 2015!

It was a joyous evening when we received notification on New Year's Day that someone had donated $500.00 to our adoption fund. That officially put us over our $7,100.00 home study/post-placement reports goal! So we are FINISHED with financial goal #2 and we have been thrust right into goal #3. Which is why I'm posting this blog entry.


After spending quite some time attempting to figure out as close and precise a number as possible on our next step, I realized just how roughly estimated I'm going to have to be on some of these steps. As I have mentioned in previous posts, we can't physically move on to the home study until we have moved to Northwest Arkansas (and we don't know when that is going to happen), but we still want to move on to raising money for what lies ahead in this adoption process. Anyway, back to a number. After everything I have added up from studying my adoption manual, as well as having a detailed conversation with my best friend (who is in the middle of her second international adoption), it looks like we will need roughly somewhere between $5000-$5500 for step #3. Let me further explain.


Once the home study is completed, we will immediately pay our adoption agency $3,231.25. Then we will have to send approximately $1,000 to USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) to apply for approval to adopt internationally. During that time, we will also be required to have medical physicals, blood work, and tests performed for the entire family (all 8 of us) and that's where the numbers are more of a guesstimate because it depends on what our medical insurance will/will not cover, costs of tests out of pocket, etc. However, we anticipate having to spend somewhere around $500.00 for that (it could be more or it could be less; we really will not know until we receive the bill). We also have some required parental training that adds up to $400.00. Throw in another $100-$200 for small things that have to be done (such as fingerprinting, copies of birth certificates, etc.) and there you have it. Each step requires many mini-steps, and each and every little thing has it's own fee.


The good news is that if we were to estimate a little too high (which I'm not anticipating) on any one step, we will use that money for the following step. It definitely will all get used! ;) No problem there.


As for the house-selling process, we have shown our home several times since November. December was slow, but we did manage to have a couple of lookers in the early part of the month. More recently we've shown it two different times over the last two days, however we have had no offers. No, not a single one in the nearly 1.5 years it has been on the market. Where we live, the housing market is very slow compared to many other places and because we are considered rural, that makes things even more difficult. However we know that God has said that He will move us to NWA... and so that is what we continue to stand on.


2014 was a phenomenal year for our family. Between beginning the adoption process, my traveling to my daughter's birth country and meeting her, Robby beginning a brand new job in a brand new city, fun adventures at Disneyland/Legoland (with people we dearly love) in California, having the opportunity to meet one of my top role models, Terri Savelle Foy (not once, but TWICE in 2014), making new friends, and so much more, it was incredible. Given all of that, you'd think it'd be a hard year to top, but I am 100% convinced that 2015 will be even greater! I hope the same for all of you.