4 months Celebration!

This month is perfect to celebrate, Thanksgiving is in 2 days and what more to be thankful for than being another month closer to being a family of 3.
We are also thankful that all but 8 of the cookbooks have sold, and we have been blessed with far more than we expected to raise with them!

Added a little blue to the "Wait Chain."

I had a little fun with the 4 months "Wait Chain" link pictures this month. :)

This past weekend I had a few girls from my church come over and help make and decorate cinnamon ornaments (another fundraiser.)  We had a great time giggling and letting our creative juices flow! :)Here are a few of the ornaments that we made, there are a lot more, but I just chose one of each shape for the picture!

Lots and lots of glitter!

Have a very HAPPY THANKSGIVING! We have a lot to be thankful for!

Cookbook Fundraiser! (SOLD OUT!!!)

The long awaited cookbooks are here!  I absolutely LOVE them! They couldn't have turned out any better!

They are ready for purchase, if you are interested in buying one I am selling them for $20. You may order by using my paypal button, just be sure to put cookbook and your name and address in the message!

Since this Sunday, Nov 6th, is Orphan Sunday my husband said we could sell them at church! So all my Sojourn Family can see them tomorrow! :) There are approximately 95 recipes.
Happy cooking! :)

3 months celebration

Sorry this is...3 days late.  We celebrated 3 months of waiting on the 22, like every month.   This month on the 23rd was our 7 year anniversary! YAY for marriage! :)
 We weren't able to celebrate either one on the actual day because Saturday the 22nd we had a leaders get away day and then church on the 23rd. ( Joseph now preaches 2 services and it wears him out...so proud though!) So here was our agenda.  Monday we celebrated our Anniversary by having a delicious (spaghetti) picnic in the park and walking around the zoo, (one of Joseph's favorite places.)
Here are a few pictures of the picnic with our cheap champagne! hehe :)

 

That was a fun day! :) Then today (Tuesday) Joseph took off again! YAY!
So we decided to do our DTE monthly celebration.  I had already started re-painting his changing table, which my dad built for me when I was a baby, so I decided to complete it today and sew the next link in the "Wait Chain."
No pictures of the changing table because it is still in the garage drying, but as soon as I get the nursery set up you will def see it. (that will still be a while, don't want to get ahead of myself.)
But here are a few pics of the new link! :)

 

 Til next time! :)

7 years

I have yet to post our 3 month waiting celebration post, because Today is our 7th Anniversary and we are focusing on that this weekend. :) I will be back mid week with how we celebrated the 3month waiting. Thanks for being patient! :)

Another Adoption Blog

I just read this blog post from another Adoption Blog that I follow, i thought it a great example of the emotions that come with Adoption! I find it to be pretty true in my case...for the most part. Hope you enjoy

http://www.pureandlasting.com/not-easy-but-so-worth-it/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PureLasting+%28Pure+%26+Lasting%29

Ordered the Cookbooks

Well, I finally ordered my cookbooks! They are going to be super cute! I had a graphic designer friend, Amanda, design the cover and it is exactly what I wanted. I am so excited! :)
Here is a peek at the cover.

Amazon Affiliate

As I am reading "Adopt Without Debt", she gives many fund raising ideas. I clearly love fund raising!

One of the suggestions was to become an Amazon Affiliate. This means that I promote Amazon on my web site and any purchase made using the link on my page to Amazon.com, I get around 4-6% of the purchase starting off. So I thought, i know a lot of people who use Amazon, why not try it.
So I am asking if you are an amazon user if you wouldn't mind getting to amazon by clicking the banner on the bottom on my blog. That is all you have to do. The only down fall is that I don't get credit if you use the 1- click order option. I don't know why but that's the rule!

Of coarse this will go towards our adoption fund! :)

Love,
Emily

Raffles Coming Soon!

Please be watching this blog for some upcoming Raffles! I will be raffling off amazing one of a kind homemade items, at $5 an entry! You will be able to purchase more entries or gain extra entries by sharing the raffle on either your blog, facebook, or twitter! Winner will be selected at Random!
All proceeds go towards our adoption!

Coming soon! :)

Recommended Books for Parents & Adoptive Parents

I wanted to share a few books that either, I am reading or was highly suggested that I read...
I will start with the ones I am currently reading and recommend:

-"There is no me without you" One woman's Odyssey to Rescue Her Country's Children by Melissa Fay Greene- so far this book has had amazing history of Ethiopia. A personal story of a woman's life in Ethiopia and shares the things that people struggle with and see on a regular basis, that we in America can't even fathom.

-"Shepherding a Child's Heart" by Tedd Tripp- this book helps you to remember to care for your child's heart in the way you raise them. Don't forget that they have souls and everything you do or neglect to do effects who they become. Reminds you to always point to truth and explain your choices.

-"Adopting without Debt" Creative ways to cover the cost of adoption by Julie Gumm- Very encouraging, she uses a lot of Dave Ramsey method's and influence, also personal fund raising success stories and ideas.

-"The Connected Child" For parents who have welcomed children: From other countries and cultures, From troubled backgrounds, With Special behavioral or emotional needs by Karyn B. Purvis, David R. Cross and Wendy Lyons Sunshine- This book helps you through the tougher parts of parenting your children. It walks through the unique challenges adopted children face using compassion, care and consideration. AMAZING!

And some that were highly recommended:

-" Give Them Grace" Dazzling your kids with the love of Jesus by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick & Jessica Thompson- This book was recommended to my husband by an amazing friend and Mentor/Pastor Daniel Montgomery of Sojourn Church in Loiusville, Kentucky . He is an amazing Dad and said that this book helps you to teach your children Grace. I can not wait to read it.

-"I'm chocolate you're Vanilla" Raising healthy black and biracial children in a race-conscious world by Marguerite A. Wright- I have seen other adoptive parents say on their blogs that this is a great book, the back reads: Teaches parents and educators of black and biracial children how to reduce racism's impact on a child's development- from preschool through adolescence- and in doing so to raise emotionally healthy children.

-"Instructing a Child's Heart" by Tedd & Margy Tripp- This book helps you to raise your child in biblical truths to point them to the greatest joy and happiness that they can experience- delighting in God and the goodness of his ways.

I realized I have yet to complete any books because as you can see I have started a few at one time and this is only the adoption/ parent category! :) I'm reading more often now so hopefully I will finish and move on to the others! :)
I have more books I have purchased and look forward to reading. Here is a list:

-" Parenting with Love & Logic" by Foster Cline & Jim Fay
-" Bringing up Boys" by James Dobson
-" The Whole Life Adoption Book" by Jayne E. Schooler & Thomas C. Atwood
-" Adopted For Life" by Russell D. Moore
-" Big Truths for Young Hearts" by Bruce A. Ware
-" Orphanology" By Tony Merida & Rick Morton
-" Raising Adopted Children" by Lois Ruskai Melina
-" Boundaries with Kids" by Henry Cloud & John Townsend

Better start reading :)

2 Months Celebration

As I stated earlier, we planned to do our monthly celebration tonight! Joseph wanted to have a date lunch then head to Lowe's to get paint and flowers! :) (this makes me extremely happy.) He told me he wanted to paint one of Julani's waiting projects in the garage. We had both a highchair and changing table that needed to be painted. We chose the highchair because we could use spray paint for this one. So here are a few pictures of the "Celebration."
FYI, My Dad built the tray and foot rest, b/c I bought this highchair for $5 and it didn't have them.

That is CoCo testing it out, he was Joseph's "Buddy" growing up. CoCo has been stitched in several places, I LOVE him! :)

I also made the next link in our "Wait Chain!"
I moved the count down in our living room so we could see it more! :)

2 months

We have now been waiting for 2 months! I'm very thankful this time is going by quickly for us!

The official 2 month mark was Thursday the 22, but this weekend has been super busy, we have yet to celebrate together. I plan on making the next link in the "Wait Chain" this evening/afternoon. I will post a picture as soon as I finish and we have our "Celebration."
I bought an old fashioned wooden high chair a few years ago and have yet to paint it. Maybe I will paint it as my 2 month Celebration! :) Will let you know soon! Have a GREAT rest of the weekend!
Fundraisers still in the making! :)

Upcoming Fundraisers!

We have a few fundraisers in the making for Fall and Winter!!

Cookbook
Christmas Ornaments
Hand knitted scarves
T shirts

The only one that is ready is: one scarf for sell on my friends and my etsy shop!
I will be making more in different colors as well! Feel free to look!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/81322115/hand-knit-chunky-warm-winter-scarf-in

Stay tuned for the others!

1 month

We have made it through the first month of waiting! :)

To honor and remember I am making a "wait chain". I will sew a fabric ring and attach them together every month. The fabric will match his room so he will be able to have it forever! :)
Here is the first one in the top left corner of the chalk board. Brown hounds tooth fabric!

Tonight we are going to eat at a local Ethiopian restaurant "The Blue Nile!" We have been a few times and really enjoy the food, Ethiopian people and the decor! :)

DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia)

Dossier ready to be mailed (Paper Belly)

Our DTE date was July 22, 2011. This was the day the agency mailed it to Ethiopia. They told us that it might take a few weeks before it arrived at the Ethiopian AWAA do to stopping in other countries on the way. They sent me a tracking number to follow.. I waited a few days to see if it had even left America yet, on July 27th it had already been picked up by the AWAA staff in Ethiopia! WHAT? That was only 5 days! I'm feeling God's timing is quickly moving! :) So HAPPY!

Now our Official "wait" begins. The current wait time for a referral for an infant boy from Ethiopia is 10-16 months... This stretch was expected, but hoped against of coarse.
We are so ready to be parents. We will be celebrating every month of waiting that passes. We plan to do something related to Ethiopia, adoption, or something specifically for Julani (ie, go eat at an Ethiopian restaurant, do something in Julani's room, starting a new adoption book, etc...) I will be sharing how we celebrate each month on this blog! :)

While we were on our Sabbatical I was able to finish knitting Julani's baby blanket. It was my first attempt at knitting a blanket, its a little scrappy but, his mommy made it just for him! :) (Pictured)

Dossier in transit!

Well we have officially mailed our Dossier! :) :) :)

It has been a very emotional day in the Turner household! The day started very happy, having plans to mail our Dossier at lunch time. Before heading to mail it I was double checking everything and (not going into details) we discovered a HUGE obstacle, which would mean we could not mail it. Then the tears came and anxiety (first time for me to really feel it, not a fan.) Any ways, due to my wonderful husband and my amazing Father everything was solved and off we went... HAPPY tears at this point!
But I can OFFICIALLY say we are waiting! It is on its way to our agency to be checked and approved then hopefully by next Friday it will be heading to Ethiopia! :) (If everything is approved)
We are heading out early in the morning for our Sabbatical for 4 weeks. so no posts til we return, but please keep PRAYING! Love you all and thanks for caring about our Story!
Love,
Emily

The Evening Was Spent...

COMPILING ALL MY DOSSIER PAPERS AND MAKING THEM PERFECT!

We will be mailing it TOMORROW! I can not believe the time has come for us to mail off the "Paper Belly." We have 2 pictures to take and print tomorrow then we will be headed to Kinko's, making 3 copies and putting it in the mail!:) We are all smiles over here! :)
Pray that everything I do tomorrow is precisely the way it needs to be and that we don't miss anything! If something is missing or incorrect it will just take that much longer for me to fix. :( Sad! So no mistakes tomorrow! :)
I'm sure I will be posting again tomorrow just to confirm that we have mailed it off before our 4 week sabbatical!! :)

One step at a time!

It's been a while since I have posted and I apologize for that. Things have been a little hectic this past month or so. As some of you know Joseph's health has not been great, we spent 3 days in the hospital trying to figure out what is wrong! He is wearing a heart monitor now to see if it is his heart, I honestly think it is stress, anxiety and lack of rest. We shall see though!

We hadn't made much progress on the adoption since we were focused on Joseph and our home life right now. But we did manage to send away a few papers that needed "State Certifying." Well, I received them back in the mail today! YAY! I get excited with every step checked off the list! Sooo...This means all we have left to do it print pictures, and scan all our papers to our Family Coordinator and once she approves we make 3 copies of the final "Dossier" and mail it in! YAY! And that is all we can do until Ethiopia finds us a baby! :) We leave for an A29 Pastors retreat June 19th and we are hoping to have the Dossier mailed off before we leave! :)
If we get is mailed off then, I will be working on the nursery this fall! OMG so exciting! :)

We pray for our Julani everyday! We pray that God will have him selected for us, that his heart and emotions will be ready to be our son, That he is healthy and happy, that his heart will be ready to hear the Gospel. And that we will raise him in a home that lives and preaches the Gospel! Please pray with us! :)

An Update from Joseph

Hey everyone this is Joseph. I just wanted to give a quick update on the Turner adoption process. We apologize for disappearing off the radar for a while. However, we basically had to take a brief "timeout" in our paperwork process due to some major changes taking place in the Ethiopian adoption system.

To make a long story short, there was a temporary scare that indicated Ethiopia could be cutting back the number of adoptions by 90% due to a fear of children being placed in orphanages illegally. The result of cutting back the number of adoptions processed each day would mean that a family awaiting a child referral could end up waiting for 3 to 5 years before their paperwork was cleared by Ethiopian adoption officials.

Since Emily and I only have a few more documents to prepare before we submit our Dossier, we felt led to wait and see where everything in Ethiopia was headed. We chose to wait because once we have written the massive check to pay for our Dossier - we are locked into the Ethiopian program - for better or for worse. While we intended to adopt from Ethiopia no matter what, we wanted to keep our options and finances open until we heard the official word from Ethiopian officials... Possibly even for a domestic adoption in the mean time.

However, the Ethiopian government has appointed new personnel to oversee the Ministry of Women Affairs (MOWA) and it appears that they will be able to continue processing a high number of referrals every day. In light of this, we have prayed and feel led to continue our journey with Ethiopia and will be submitting the final papers needed for our dossier soon.

Please continue to pray with us. In specific, please pray that the doors to adopt from Ethiopia will remain open. Also pray that Ethiopian officials will keep the interest of the children at the top of their priorities.

Adoption process

I found this nice step explanation on our Agency's website. I hope this help's you understand a little bit more! I like for as many people as possible to understand why it takes so long and what exactly you have to do to adopt! :)
Hope it helps!

The Dossier

Each adoption process begins with assembling a collection of 13-15 documents called a dossier. The dossier mainly consists of a financial statement, employment verification, medical and health information, background checks, and a homestudy. The homestudy is a report submitted by a social worker, after meeting at the family’s home, outlining the family’s background and details of the household. All of these documents must go through several levels of certification so that they can ultimately be used as the legal framework for your adoption process. This stage is often referred to as the “paper chase,” and should take, on average, 3-6 months to complete. The finished dossier is forwarded to America World where our staff carefully reviews it to ensure accuracy. Once approved, your dossier is forwarded to the country which you have chosen to adopt from, and is then translated and processed.

Waiting Period

This stage can often be the hardest for many adoptive families. Much like a physical pregnancy, there will be much waiting involved with your adoption process. Although sometimes documents need renewal and homestudies need to be updated, the majority of the time is spent waiting during this stage of the process. To help families use this time constructively, we provide specific materials and resources to you to further educate yourself on your child’s cultural heritage, transcultural parenting and other prevalent topics for a family through adoption. We also encourage you to further your education process by joining the America World chat group dedicated to your country program, as well as build community by speaking with other families whom have gone through the same adoption process you’re currently in.

Referral & Travel

After you submit your dossier and the waiting period is over, you will receive your child’s referral. The referral is your child’s basic profile, medical information, and will also include your first picture of your son or daughter. Once you complete some additional work online and the acceptance paperwork, our staff will make all travel arrangements for the trip to bring your child home. Once in-country, the moment you have anticipated will finally be a reality – you will meet the child that the Lord has purposefully chosen for you! After being united with your child, there is time in-country for the bonding process to begin while you apply for his or her U.S. visa.

Post Adoption

When you return home with your son or daughter, the adoption process is still not quite over – there are still steps that need to be taken and ones that we encourage families to pursue. Upon your return, we will provide you with a “Welcome Back” packet, which will outline all remaining steps, including post-placement reports. These reports are designed to be a checkup on your child to see how he or she is adjusting to his or her new home environment and how the family bonding is progressing. We also strongly encourage families to re-adopt even when a specific country program does not require that this occurs.