The house is up for sale!

Our house is finally on the market! At times I thought we'd never get it presentable, but here we are. So many people worked with us to help us make it look great. Thanks to everyone who help us with various projects and to our real estate team for the guidance, advice, and awesome pictures.

See our Listing!

You can pray for us to have trust and patience in God during the process, for a family to fall in love with our house and offer a good price, and for the everything to go well with purchasing our next home.

Thanks you all again for your support, this is a big step in the process for us. It means so much to us to have our friends and family encouraging and praying for us.

Next big step

So the plan is to put our house on the market in 2 1/2 weeks! We have already been preapproved for a loan for our next home and our realator thinks we can sell our house for much more than Jacob and I had thought! So here is the scenario we are hoping/praying for: We sell our house for a good price, 1/3 of the profit will be a down payment on the next house, 1/3 into our adoption fund, 1/3 to pay off a student loan and go into new paint and such for the new house. That will bring us to about half of our adoption costs and allow us to proceed with an agency and make our first payment without going into debt.

Second, we hope/pray that we will be able to by a home for less than we are selling this one. This means we will probably be getting a dated house with wood paneling and such. That's ok with me, we will make it our own something beautiful eventually, but its worth being able to bring home our daughter without a lot of debt. Not only will we be saving $100/month from paying off that student loan, we should have a lower mortgage payment as well. This will set us up to save more money monthly. We still hope to do various fundraisers later in the year, but we are considering this housing situation our current fundraiser.

So no fun pictures today, most of the current work on our house is minor touch-ups, cleaning, and staging. I also wanted to say that I've been encouraged about our pursuits in Nepal. My inlaws were over in Nepal in November and reassured of us the strong Christian contacts they have. I feel much better that we will be able to complete an ethical adoption.

Finally, Jacob's family is back in Nepal for the next several months. His dad is teaching a semester at a Bible college there. Please visit my mother-in-laws blog http://wakingupinnepal.com/ The orphanage there is always in need as well. You can contact my father-in law Kirk at kirkandliz@gmail.com if you want to know more specifically how you can support the orphans at New Life Children's Haven.

Praying for Plans

So I am very careful about how I speak about plans. Anyone that knows me from my childhood, knows that I had a very clear sense of direction with my life. God has blessed me in knowing well the desires of my heart, but how he fullfils those desires has rarely been what I expected, or would even have guessed. So as I begin to share with you our tentative plans, please be prayerful for us to trust and yeild joyfully to God's will in our family's life, whatever it may be.

Adoption is, well, expensive. I hate to talk money, but its just a fact. The other half of that fact is that we don't have oodles stored up somewhere. God has been so faithful and generous with us, I am by no means complaining. I am always astonished at tax time to see how much God allows us to give and how he stretches the little bit we actually live on. All this to say, we are saving and planning fundraisers, but a large sum would really help. My hope is that selling our home can really get us a good chunk to cover the expenses. We live in an older home and have been trying to finish up some renovations. Our hope is that it will sell well and we can then buy a relatively low-priced home and bank the earnings for adoption, or at least in part depending.

I ask that you pray for us about the timing that we place the house on the market and also God's provision for where we should buy next. There are many great houses in our neighborhood and we would love to stay nearby. Its hard to think about leaving our first home sometimes, but mostly I think about my neighbors that I have come to know and love.

For fun, I'm including some pictures of a couple renovations we've done.

Upstairs bathroom: Before (I know, it was pitiful)

After

Kitchen: Before (this is after we started stripping the cabinets, but they were gross and had literally 7 different colors of paint and who knows how many layers. The pictures are a bit misleading cause you can't see just how gross the cabinets were before, with rust coming throught the hinges, paint drips and stains.) Before:

After

And finally our front yard. Big thanks to Alan Murdock of Arthouse Gardens for the landscaping design. Jacob and I did all the labor to save some money and we got the peagravel for free from one of Alan's clients! Before:

After (excuse the fallen leaves)

We are almost out of projects before the house is ready! I'm excited to get this big process done so we can then focus on more specifics for our adoption. Again I think God has used circumstances to force me to wait. Nepal adoptions have been suspended recently and we are praying hard about whether to pursue our daughter there. I'm very tempted to freak out, but have resisted thus far. With all we are doing with the house, it may be months before we sell it and are then ready to proceed in the process. I'm thankful to have this time to pray, without having to make any big decisions immediately.

Again, with the flimsiness of plans, our house may not even sell. Even still, I'm thankful that we have been blessed in both of our work situations the last couple of months and have not had to go in debt to make these home improvements. We shall see just what God has in store!

A beautiful suprise in the mail!

No, we did not get a big fat check, if that's what you're thinking. But quite a nice treat nonetheless. In our county, we get a book in the mail each month for each child until they are 5. R2's book for the month came in today. It was called "A Mother for Choco" by Keiko Kasza. It was a beautiful, loving picture of adoption. K1 told me almost immediately when we got home and wanted me to read it to him. After we read it he said, "its adoption!" A must read for sure. Briefly, it begins with baby bird Choco looking for someone who looks like him who might be his mother. It ends with Mrs. Bear, who looks nothing like him, bringing him home to be his Mama. He joins her family, that includes a little pig, a little alligator, and a little hippo. The last illustration is Mama Bear hugging all four in her lap, so so sweet.

While I'm on the subject I must give a shout out to another favorite, the PBS Kids series "Dinosaur Train." The premise is the adventures of the Pteranodon the are often facilitated by a special train that can travel through time tunnels that take them into other eras to learn about the dinosaurs there. The Pteranodon siblings consists of 3 pteranodons and a T-rex who somehow ended up in their nest before he hatched. They so wonderfully show him as part of the family, while celebrating his uniqueness. I love this show for a zillion reasons, but I'm so glad to teach K1 about adoption with this help.

So if you know of anymore great jewels like this, let me know.

I am feeling very encouraged at the end of this day: sharing this book with my boys and reading the blogs of the Hollis family who just met their son in China and my childhood friend Jill celebrating he new son's 1 month birthday. Its so encouraging to see God's faithfullness in guiding and providing for such a rich blessing as family and adoption. My heart is overflowing with love, gladness and thankfulness today.

Fundraiser follow -up #2

Highlights of our Jacksonville, AR fundraiser.

-We had LOTS of stuff for the swap. Everyone who came walked away with a good bit. It is sometimes hard for me to take money from people, so it really helps me to see them be blessed as well. I have to remind myself that with this adoption, the giving done by others will be rewarded in heaven as well, and not just by the material nature of the fundraisers.

-The food was AMAZING! My sister-in-law, Katie, made the most delicious, Nepali-inspired food for the reception. Curried chicken and potato kabobs, rice balls (rice, cheese and red pepper rolled together and fried), pita chips and veggies with cumin yogurt dip, shortbread cookies, Nepali tea. SOOOO good. She decorated the table with pictures from the orphanage my father-in-law visits each winter as well.

-The turn out was not quite what I had hoped, but I learned a lot about how I might aproach it better next time (nearer the end if we are still needing help with funds). It was still great to talk about our adoption and the work of 147 Million Orphans. We made less money on this second fundraiser, but I feel like we raised so much spiritual and personal support sharing our desires with so many close friends and family. I definately feel the priority of prayer in this endeavor. We will need to save and raise quite a bit of money, but even more we need the continued prayer and encouragement.

Thanks again to everyone who helped and participated.

Fundraiser #2

So we are coming to Jacksonville next! Below is a link to the evite. I've been to this kind of fundraiser before and I got so much more than my money's worth. It's not the point of the fundraiser of course, but its a nice plushttp://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?inviteId=PPBQLPWRCLBDCYBJSFCG

I've saved some women's clothing sizes 4-16 from the Russellville yard sale. I've also got a handful of accessories and children's items leftover too. So I know there will be some variety. Let me know if there are any questions that the evite doesn't clarify.

First Fundraiser Update

Our first fundraiser went really well, exceeding our goal by 50%! It took much more work than I had anticipated because my parents had so much stuff to get rid of. It was great to raise money in a way that blessed other people too. My mom is recovering from a broken leg and hasn't been able to walk, much less do many projects around the house (like cleaning out her storage closet and garage). I was able to help them sort through lots of stuff and move most of it out. We also had so much stuff, we were selling everything VERY cheap, even some really nice stuff. We also discovered that Jacob is the salesman in the family. After an hour or so of my mom and I giving everything away for $1, Jacob took over and made sure we actually earned a decent amount. Allie and CJ were awesome too selling stuff for us on the other side of town.

My merch from 147 million orphans did not show up in time. So I can definately take some orders in the future. When I get the stuff back I'll try to organize a sale for that.

A few old friends from my grade school days showed up with their babies. It was so good to see them and catch -up a little.

Thanks again to everyone, you have truly blessed our family. I was thinking about this as I drove to Allie's house to collect tables and funds. Helping us with this fundraiser, through donations, purchases, even prayers, has accomplished so much more than making us feel loved or helping out an orphaned girl. I truly believe that you all have had a hand in something eternal. A treasure in heaven worth so much more than a good feeling. I hope God pleases you tenfold for the way you have blessed us.