Incredible Night

 

As many of you know we had a Spagetti Benefit dinner at Silent Auction yesterday at the Wesley Chapel fire dept. We had no idea exactly how many to expect we just knew it could be somewhere around 200 people and so that is what we planned for. The night was a huge success.....between 5-7pm we raised over $2,500 and there is more to come to be added to that figure because several people who couldn't make it are mailing a check straight to the agency on our behalf!! How amazing! I had hoped we would raise around $1,000 that night but turns out it was more than doubled. God is good and we felt so humbled by everyone pouring out their love on us and our family. We had the help of so many wonderful friends and family that volunteered and it took each person giving of their time and energy to make it possible. There were about 150 people that came through and almost all of the silent auction items we had donated by local businesses were bid on. There were lots of kids there including Maylena who ran around and played on and inside of the fire trucks that the fire dept so generously allowed them to do and didn't mind at all. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of the event and neither did any of the other volunteers there because we were busy from the time we got there to set up at 2pm until about 9pm that night it just never stopped. If anyone took some photos that came to the event I would LOVE to have them emailed to Brittany_695@hotmail.com. The only photo we have is this one Billy took while playing with the kids around the fire trucks. Its Maylena on the left and Teagan and Aidan the kids I nanny for.
   We are so thankful to everyone who came and gave so generously to make this possible. You went above and beyond and blessed our socks off!! We even had people there we didn't know who came to play a part in our adoption journey...how cool is that?? It just goes to show when everyone comes and gives a little it can add up to A LOT. We made a finger print tree that Billy penciled on a paper and each person that attended put their fingerprint and first names to have a very cool keepsake from that night.  I will post a picture of it next time I do blog update. For now we are still in the waiting but God has been right here with us.

Puzzle Fundraiser Update...

    Here is a photo update of our Puzzle Fundraiser! How cool that we only have 74 pieces left to go on a 1,000 piece puzzle. Thanks to everyone we know and even some people we don't even know that donated to help us out with this. I will be a little glad to have it completed and my dining room table back in working order and able to have people over for dinner again :) Plus it will be a great addition to the nursery wall to have it framed and hung in there.
    Maylena and I took a last minute opportunity to go to Charleston for the night on Friday to celebrate my birthday and mother's day and just have a great girls weekend before baby brother is part of the family. We have never had a trip just the two of us and I know for sure I will treasure the memories we made for a lifetime. We are trying to take each day and live in the moment because we are not guaranteed our next breath or moment in time. We can get so caught up in the busyness of life that we forget what in life is worth living for....God and our families. That is what matters.
    With the spaghetti benefit dinner quickly approaching I am very excited and can't wait to see how God blesses our family that day through the help of others. We have worked hard to put together a great set of silent auction items that were donated by local vendors and it will take place this Sunday night May 17th from 5 to 7 pm as a drop in event that is family friendly. You can read my last blog post to get all the details. We have silent auction items from: Massage Envy, Shakeology, Moe's, Sweet Frog, Stone Theaters, Riverbanks Zoo, Lazy 5 ranch, Outback, Lowes, Starbucks and more. It will be a very fun night and a great time of fellowship. Hope to see you there and invite anyone you want!!
    I am trying very hard to be patient during this process of waiting but it is very addictive to pull up the Christian Adoption Services website of waiting families and monitor the status of everyone on there. I look at it almost every day and it is always exciting to see updates. In the last several weeks, like less than 2 months there have been 4 or 5 families put On Hold which means they are matched with a birth mother and waiting for the baby to be born and receive placement and then one couple it just automatically said Its a Girl, that means they didn't have much waiting to do that more than likely a baby was born and then the decision was made to place the baby for adoption and it was pretty immediate. Its like each week about 2 families go on hold it seems. And that is so exciting! It really gives you the feeling that this adoption thing works and one day it will be us that says On Hold and then It's a Boy!! So cool.

Spagetti Benefit Dinner!

    A date has been set and we are ready to go on this spagetti dinner! It will be held Sunday May 17th from 5 - 7pm at the fire dept located off Newtown Rd...right next to Walden Pond neighborhood. The address is 8821 New Town Rd, Waxhaw, NC 28173. This will be an event to help raise additional funds for our adoption!!! We are working on collecting donations from local businesses to have a silent auction/raffle that night as well. This is a kid friendly event so bring the whole family out! Each meal will include a drink, spagetti, bread, salad, and dessert. Suggested donation is $8 a plate for adults, $5 a plate for kids 4 to 12yr, and 3 and under eat free. However we will accept and appreciate any donation. We are going to need to try and keep track of how many we have coming so please post a comment on my blog or Billys Facebook letting us know you plan on coming, or text/call 704-607-5062 and leave a message if you don't get me. You can come and stay the whole time or drop in at any time. Please help us SPREAD the word for this event so we have a BIG turnout. : )
   Any questions let me know....,and we hope to see you there!

Spring Workshop/Addition to the Website

   Billy and I met with Doris for our follow up meeting we needed to have in order to move forward to the next step. She had told us back in February she would like to see us work some on spending more time together as just a couple and also going out to do fun things more often as a family. We listened and appreciated what she had to say in February and we began going to the park for the afternoon/taking a picnic, Billy and me had a couple of date nights and went to a marriage seminar, we went to grandfather mountain spontaneously the other weekend for an awesome day trip/picnic and found a park in downtown blowing rock where we spent the remainder of the day. There has been a lot of fun things going on and wonderful memories being made! I am so glad when someone like Doris takes the time to give you helpful insight about your family. When we went to meet with her the second time of course I was nervous...she is nice as can be but everything is so on the spot and you never know what questions or anything you will be hit with. And of course you want to do good so that you can continue on the adoption process. So she came in and we had small talk about this and that the first half hour it seemed, and then we shared a little about life and she was very happy with the progress we made. We were done in less than an hour and Doris had Debbie come down from her office to tell us about how to get on the website. I was overjoyed just to hear the words WEBSITE. That is literally the absolute final piece and sometimes you are found on the website before the birth mom ever even sees the family profile album you put together. Debbie told us we needed to submit roughly 20 pictures to her through an email and that was it, she uses the info that has already been prepared through your homestudy to write about you on the website. I worked all weekend and got those pictures compiled. I sent them to her on Sunday night. Wednesday April 15th I got an email from her saying DONE!, I was thinking does that mean we are officially on the website? I pulled it up right away and just to see our picture on there and see what was put together about our family sent waves of emotion over me. I couldn't believe how far we had come since last July when we started with an interest meeting. If you want to check us out and see the other waiting families you can go to Christianadopt.org and click on waiting familes. Then you will see our picture, click on it if you want to read more about our profile. The families you see pictures of that say On Hold, that means they have been matched and are waiting on the baby to be born...one day that will be us! :) So exciting!!!!!!

   Next we attended the second of our required workshops through the agency. One is in the fall which we already attended and this was the spring workshop. It was on Saturday and its an 8 hour deal. We literally learned so much. It was awesome! They had a pediatrician come and speak about infants for an hour, we had group break out sessions where we all shared our stories and different things and then met as a whole group again and shared, and as always they had a panel of adoptive families share. This is the part I love the most where we hear stories from people who have already adopted through the agency. There were 5 families on this panel and every story is so different as to how long it took to complete the process, how long you waited before placement, was it open or closed adoption, etc? Out of these 5 the main thing that stayed similar was how quick the turn around time was from going on the website to receiving a baby for placement. We have thought all along that we would be matched with a birth mom who had about 2 months of pregnancy left and that's a short amount of time to get everything ready so you work on things now along the way. Turns out 4 out of 5 of these couples have gotten the call from Doris that there is a baby and this baby was born 1 week later or possibly 3 weeks, or in 1 case it was that the baby had already been born and the birth mom then made up her mind to place the baby and they needed to be at the hospital the next day! This blew my mind that it could be that fast of a turn around. Its exciting and scary all at once just because we are going through life every day right now having no idea what day or time of day WE will be the ones to get this life changing call from Doris, and at that point we may bring home baby brother within a week. Also when she calls this doesn't mean we will be driving to CMC uptown, we could be driving anywhere in NC, to raleigh, the beach, the mountains, etc. You never know where the baby will be born because they work with birth moms all over NC. We left that meeting like WOW we have got to go pick up some baby boy things. So we went shopping and got the diaper bag, a blanket, some onesies that were newborn and 0-3 months, and a pack of newborn diapers. The other adoptive parents just couldn't emphasize enough how ready you need to be with a car seat, fully packed diaper bag, gift for birth mother, etc so that if you were like them and got a phone call and needed to leave your house in an hour to hurry to the hospital that was 3 hours away while the birth mom was already in labor that you can grab your stuff and run out the door. Sometimes it doesn't happen like this but we never know which end of the spectrum we will be on, the one where you have 2 months or the one where you need to GO. Please keep our family and the birth mom of our child in your prayers..this is an exciting time.
   We are in the process of nailing down a spagetti benefit dinner date. We are shooting for a weekend evening in late May to be held at a local fire dept. I will give more details when we know them! Thats all the updates for now : )

   

In the Waiting

   It has literally been forever since I have had a chance to sit down for an update on the blog. My days are just slam full and before I know its its been another month. We are still adopting...so don't worry :). But once you get to the point of waiting there isn't a whole lot else to update on as quickly or in as much detail. Billy and I have been trying to do little things to work on our relationship as was suggested by Doris. We attended an awesome marriage seminar this weekend at Ovens Auditorium called "Making Good Marriages Better,"the main speakers were Michael and Amy Smalley and they did an incredible job. We walked away with great advice and tips. We were able to head to lunch at Pikes Old Fashioned Soda Shop in Charlotte for lunch afterwards. We love going there to get their hand-stirred Cherry Coke, if you have never been its worth a trip! However you may find yourself thinking about that drink more than you want to its sooo good.
    In the waiting period we are trying to add to the nursery bit by bit and the local consignment sales held at churches in the area have been a huge help. I was also able to blow up some pictures we took at the zoo a while back for the nursery wall over the crib. Pictures of elephants and a giraffe. It looks so cute and compliments the safari theme I am doing in there. We have been busy trying to think of baby names along the way just in case we get to be the one to pick. We don't have a definite name yet but I have a definite NO to a name Maylena provided. When we were talking about names with her and I would say how about...then she leaned over and whispered in my ear how about Puma. I don't know where so got that other than coming up with it on her own, we have never told her about the puma animal but I took the time to explain to her that it was an animal kinda like, and I said a tiger at first, then I remembered it closer to a mountain lion or something like that, but then she said I will call him Puma Tiger. And that's it for her because anytime we talk about it now she says no mommy its Puma Tiger, which would make him Puma Tiger Woods. I am just not feeling that name. : )
   There aren't many next steps for us at this point other than prayer, praying for the birth mother of our child and for the safety and health of her and the baby. Anyone is welcome to join us in that. We are also still working on raising our funds and I thought if anyone would like to donate items to be sold at a yard sale I would be willing to pick them up or meet you with them because we are thinking about having a sale this spring and if you have stuff you want to donate to get rid of and make space, then we would gladly accept them and it could help us raise some additional funds.
   We will be having a spagetti benefit dinner soon as well at one of the local fire departments. We are trying to pan out the details so there will be more to come on that as well. I was able to join an awesome Adoption Support group called Adoption Journey Group. They meet in a conference room at a hospital in Waxhaw. I have only been to 1 meeting so far, they are once a month, but I was blessed by the people there and hearing their stories because we are all at different places and have had different experiences. I learned a lot from the speaker and they recommended several good books. So I am excited to continue growing and learning with them.
 

Finalization Meeting

Hello! I have been very slow in posting updates, but it turns out we really didn't have anything to share until today when we met with Doris the head of the agency. We knew this meeting was coming ever since our home study was approved and submitted. I was having a hard time trying to stay calm thinking about it and wondering how intense it would be. All we knew is that it could take around 2 hours or more and we would be one on one in a room with Doris who we hadn't really even had a conversation with yet. We weren't sure what to expect.

Right away Doris just began talking to us about anything and everything and I quickly relaxed as realized this was going to be O.K. She was very easy to talk to and you could just tell how much she cared about the agency and the birth mothers as well as you as an adoptive couple. She has such a heart for adoption and you can tell God put the calling on her life. We discussed in detail each of our autobiographies we wrote a while back and she had many highlighted areas to go over that may have raised concerns with her when she read them through. She had so much insight and knowledge to share...I felt really blessed to be in the meeting and tried to absorb all her wisdom she shared. One of the biggest areas she wants to see growth in is our marriage. I am not saying we have a bad marriage, but reading our autobiographies she could tell we need to spend more time going on date nights and taking short weekend trips together. I couldn't agree more. Anyone who has kids knows that there are so many needs and demands for your child that your own needs tend to get put aside and many sacrifices are made. She told us about the 5 C's of a good marriage: Christ (your marriage must be Christ centered to be healthy), Communication (no marriage can survive without communication), Commitment (it takes this on the good and bad days), Compatibility (we need to help each other out in areas of strengths/weaknesses), and Compromise (one person can not always be right you have to have compromise on the way things are done or how choices are made). I think these 5 things are good for all of married couples to remember and try to practice. She spoke so truthfully and so many of the things she said really hit home for us and helped us realize what we need to work on, she was like a mom talking to her children and it was easy to see how much she cared about us, she kept saying she always wants to see these couples that come through the agency succeed in life. Another saying that I wanted to pass along from her was something her grandmother used to say to her, "before your feet hit the floor each morning you should pray and ask God for Wisdom and Discernment each day, Wisdom to do the right thing and Discernment to help read other people."

We left the meeting feeling so refreshed and uplifted! It was a 2.5 hour meeting for us, but the time flew by. Doris requested to have another meeting with us in 6 weeks to follow up on if we are taking her suggestions and see how we are doing. I can't wait to meet with her again.

From here we will wait to be contacted by another lady at the agency who will help us get set up on their website and then it just the waiting period until we get the call that we have been matched with a birth mother. I can't even imagine what that feeling will be like just thinking about it now. I am sure it will be surreal, especially since you never know how long it will be or when it will come. All of our work is mostly done but it could still be a while before we hear the new that we have been matched and go to meet the birth mother for the first time. We will be in prayer for the right timing and the right match.

Puzzle Fundraiser Update

  This picture shows how much progress we have made on our puzzle project fundraiser since I last posted a picture of it. Before it was not even a complete outer frame and now it has been coming together so quickly from money donated to CAS on our behalf and mine & Billy ' s Christmas money that we put towards it. This year we requested no gifts just money that would go towards our adoption and we were able to collect a good size chunk to put towards our adoption fund.
  Puzzle Fundraiser Overview: We have sold 776 pieces total and have 224 left to sell. They are $10 a piece which means we have Raised a Total of, $7,760, and our goal is to reach $10,000 when all the pieces have sold. It's unbelievable that we are almost there!! Thank you so much to all of our supporters. I will say it has been a fun process putting this puzzle together. Our New Years Eve was spent around the puzzle on our dining room table (where it has a permanent home until completed), with my mom, sister and Billy just playing catch up to put together what has sold so far. The puzzle is still lacking some pieces to be added that have already sold. Plus Billy ' s parents made a very generous donation this week which will put us back to work for a puzzle night. It's creating great memories all around.
   I contacted the agency this week to have a copy emailed to me of our total funds raised to date. I wasn't sure how much we were lacking to finalize our home study so they could put it in the mail...they won't do that and contact us for the last meeting to become a waiting family until our 7,000 was fully paid to finish it. When I first called their accountant had been out sick for a week and Robin told me that some of the funds that may have already come in wouldn't be showing up on the account yet until she got back to sort it all out. I had a pretty good idea in mind as to where we should be and I thought we had about 1,000 left to raise...she said on her end it was showing  we still need a little over 3,000. I told her I would call back next week and see what the accountant could tell me. While I was standing in the checkout line at Walmart yesterday an email came through on my phone from Robin with an updated attachment showing the correct funds raised...turns out we were already above what was needed and had a credit of $324 dollars towards the next part. That was great news! I started looking at the breakdown and it showed there had been an anonymous donation of $1,000 posted on December 22! I was soooo excited!!! I just wish so bad I knew who it was so I could thank them for finishing off our home study payment literally right when we needed the funds they were there. What an incredible blessing. God is continuing to WOW us throughout this process. To date we have raised a total of $9,222, which is almost a third of the full adoption cost, that is so amazing considering we began our first fundraiser in October (so just 3 months ago). That doesn't include the $395 we have raised on the Youcaring.com site I set up for online donations via paypal. We have had anonymous donations on there and 1 donation from a client at Piper Glen Animal Hospital where I work part time. She saw it posted on the piper glen Facebook and gave $100!!
   CAS is putting our homestudy in the mail Monday so I really do expect our meeting with Doris to be soon and then we will officially we on their website as a waiting family and have our photo books being shown to any matching birthmoms. I really hope 2015 is the year we bring baby Wood's home!!