Final night to order a Pure Religion tee

This is it, your final night to order a Pure Religion shirt and help us get baby Sophia home. Order will be placed with the printer tomorrow. Check them out at Bringing Sophia Home. Please feel free to share the word with your friends and family.  We appreciate all of the help and support we received in bringing our baby girl home.

The last weekend of the tee pre-sale

Time is running out to order your Pure Religion tee.  We are a long way from our goal of 50 tees, we would really appreciate your support!  You can place your order at Bringing Sophia Home.

We will be taking off bright and early tomorrow for soccer and then immediately leave for a family reunion.  It is really a very busy weekend, as most of them have been lately.  I am preparing maternity, baby, and childrens items for a consignment sale, it's amazing, I have 20 maternity items for the sale and I've never been pregnant.  I really appreciate everyone who has donated items to us for the yard sale and such, without your support we wouldn't be able to raise the needed funds to bring our little one home.  The last drop off day is Sunday afternoon so I had better get busy tonight!  If all goes well we might be able to make another couple hundred for the Sophia fund.

Our I800 has been approved

I received an email today from our NBC Officer stating he approved our I800 application yesterday and has sent off the notification to the National Visa Center.  Once it is entered into their system which seems to be taking one to two weeks then we will be about to submit for our Article 5.  There are so many new steps to the this process and I honestly do not know what they all mean but I am so glad when one more gets checked off the list!

Now we can skip our way into Costco and then get the kids some much needed haircuts.  Maybe we will have to stop by our favorite Chinese restaurant to pick up some take out on the way home.

We are getting closer to our baby girl.  We love you so very much Sophia!

I800 is on our officers desk

I called today and found out that our I800 was given to our officer today.  Praying for his stamp of approval by the end of the week.  If all goes well I think we will be traveling very late November to early December.  I just want out little cherub home for Christmas.

Four more days left on the t-shirt sale.  If you are wanting to order one please let me know.

Getting started on the next fundraiser auction.  Hope to have items rounded up and ready to go by the first part of October.  If you would like to contribute an item or two to the auction send me a message at acupquitefull@cableone.net.  I estimate we have a little over two months to raise the remaining $5700, while two months sounds like a long time when waiting for our little girl it really isn't very long when trying to raise such a large amount.  We know that this isn't really such a big amount in God's economy and we know He will provide.

One meal down...

Tonight began the stocking of food for my dear sweet husband and children when momma is in China and unable to thrown dinner together.  My goal is to have at least 10 meals in the freezer before I head on a plane to my baby girl.  I figure if I get a minimum of one a week put away I will easily make my goal.  Daddy works such long days and my sister will be putting in extra duty helping out with the kids.  I want to make dinner easy for all with them pulling out a bag or pan that just needs heated.

Tonight was suppose to be my very first home group but Mr. E is under the weather again.  I was so looking forward to the beginning of the "Rooted in Good Soil" study that our entire church is doing, oh well there is always next week.  I got a call as I was getting in my car from E's teacher that he was feeling a little hot, had a headache and just wanted to nap.  Sure enough, when I got there he was running a low grade temp and wasn't feeling well.  We have had a quiet night tonight and we will see how he feels tomorrow.  Nasty viruses going around right now, I need to look into getting us all our flu shots.

Praying our I800 gets approved this week, hoping that we can submit for our Article 5 before China's October holiday.

Weekend update

The yard sale ended on Saturday afternoon with us earning $700 to help bring Sophia home.  We are so grateful to all that donated goods, time, energy, support, etc to help us with this monsterous sale.  Without all of you we would not have been able to do this.  We had a great time getting to know new people and spending time with family.  The kids had a blast playing with their cousins and playing in the yard sale treasures.  I think they are going to be very bored in our garage after all the fun they have had this summer.  At the end of the day we packed everything up and moved it to the next house.  A friend is having a yard sale next week and this was the seed she needed to get started.  May her sale be as big a blessing as ours was!

We snuck away during the yard sale and headed to E's first soccer game.  They had a scheduling error and scheduled the 4's and 5's for a 12:30 game.  E did great during the first 30 minutes which is their practice and then during the actual game he melted.  Each time he was in the game he sat down and cried.  I felt so bad for the poor girls and the one little guy that had to play the majority of the game.  We had one kiddo out sick and then E melted down so it left us with 3 kids to play the majority of the game.  I pray E will have a better week next week when he is playing at 9:30.

We went to church on Sunday and then spent the evening with my husbands family.  We had a great time eating some wonderful pulled pork tacos, grilled asparagus and such.  The kids had an absolute blast playing with their cousin S.  They were begging not to go home but they were both asleep in the car within minutes.  We got home and all headed to bed but we were all feeling a little blah.  During the night we have all had some sort of a stomach illness or a cold pop up.  I started with the stomach and now I feel like I am getting an upper respiratory illness.  I hope not, way too much to do.

We have less than a week left for the t-shirt presale.  Please take a look at them at Bringing Sophia Home.  We appreciate all your support!

Yard Sale day 1

Let me tell ya, I am exhausted and I am sure my mom and my sisters are too.  I tried to get home from work early yesterday but I didn't get out too early, only about an hour.  I got the kids picked up from preschool and got home to start sorting the huge pile in the center of the garage.  I was completely overwhelmed but then my dad arrived and started to help us get things sorted.  By the time my mom and sisters arrived we had everything sorted and we were ready to start getting things displayed.  We didn't work too late into the night, we were inside by 10pm.

Morning came way too early and we were outside continuing to set things up at 7am with our first person stopping by at 7:20.  It was a slower day than our last Friday yardsale and the sales were down too but we sure did sell a lot of smaller odds and ends.  We sold a lot of items for under $1 and still managed to sell about $350 worth.  We still have our big ticket items and I pray they will be hot items tomorrow.

This sell was a lot different than our first one.  The first one we had a lot of big items and for this one we have just a few big items but a ton of smaller items.  My mom brought up a good point, it takes 400 hundred quarter items to make $100 so we had to have moved a lot of our treasures today.  I owe so much thanks to my parents and my sisters and their spouses.  They have all shown up for both of our yard sales and put a lot of work into them.  Our little Sophia is loved so much by them and we so appreciate their love and support.  Fundraising is hard work and they are always willing to roll up their sleeves and help us out.  It sure makes me feel special to have them rallying beside us.

Please keep us in your prayers that we will get the majority of our treasures sold tomorrow. 

We have a little over a week left of our t-shirt fundraiser.  Please check it out at Bringing Sophia Home, we appreciate your help in bringing our precious girl home!