I can't believe it has been 10 years since I had my first precious baby. You have to give credit to the poor, unfortunate, first-born children. They have to break in the new parents -- and not just to being parents but forever. He was my first baby, my first toddler, my first preschooler, my first homeschooling student, and my first 10 year-old. With him, I will have to figure out how to parent a teen, homeschool high school, prepare for college, teach him to drive, let him date, and let him go. Wow! If a baby book is meant to be a record of firsts, it really should document every second of the firstborn's life! He has to survive parents who don't truly KNOW what they are doing. Every child that follows has a parent with a little experience.
Thank you, Colton, for being patient when we mess up. Thanks for giving us a starting place for how to parent the rest of the kids. You're a great son and a great big brother.
On the adoption, our fundraising is progressing. At this point we have raised about $2400 out of the $13,500 we need before the first trip. I've already applied for 3 grants. It is my prayer that fundraising will get us through the first trip, and grants will get us through the second. I'm taking the weekend off to celebrate Colton's birthday and to let my brain cool off. I was really close to overheating from so much processing. I'm still making lists of things to take on our trip, how to travel, what needs to be done before we go, what needs to be done between trips, etc. -- not to mention the usual whirlwind of doing school, church, and other activities.
We have really gained support since receiving our referral. It's true that the process becomes more real to others when there are cute little faces looking back at you. I'm already getting concerned about meeting them. Will they like me? I know they will like Tim -- everyone does! Will they WANT to be in our family? What gifts would they enjoy at their age? What will we do together for our visits? What if I forget to say something important to them. How bad is it going to hurt to leave them there and come home? Whew! Makes my head spin.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Saturday, March 31, 2012
TEAM UP
LATEST NEWS
For anyone
just joining us, we have been on an adoption journey for almost 5 years. We have now been matched with a beautiful
brother and sister in Bulgaria. These
children deserve a chance to have a loving home where they can grow up feeling
safe, secure, and wanted. We want to
provide them with that kind of home. Our
boys Colton and Eli are already very excited about their new brother and
sister.
If you are
familiar with international adoption, you know how expensive it can be. While some of the fees have already been
paid, we still have many more to go, not to mention the cost of traveling there
twice.
COUNTING THE
COST
We have
worked through many, many fundraisers so far including 28 yard sales. We’ve made things to sell and worked odd
jobs. While we don’t mind the work, we
are now pressed for time. We need
roughly $13,500 before we can begin making travel arrangements for our first
trip. Most grants that I can apply for,
now that we have a referral, would take 1-3 months to respond. I’ll
still be applying to them because we will have another $13,500 due by fall.
HOW YOU CAN
HELP
What we are
doing is asking our friends and family to TEAM UP with each other to help us
make this goal. We are asking you to be
a Team Leader and share our story with at least 9 other people who might like
to be a part of helping us bring our kids home.
Ask those 9 people to join you and your team in donating $10 each
(more or less won’t be refused). If you
could do that, your team would have generated $100! If we can find 135 people to be Team Leaders (and
everyone participates), we will reach our $13,500 goal with ease. As much as I hope everyone can help, I know
some people truly can’t. So if you happen
to be someone who can do more than $10, that would be
awesome! Ask your
team members to try to let us know in their transaction that they are donating
through your team (write it on the check, comment in PayPal, comment on my
blog, email me, etc.)
HOW TO BUILD
A TEAM
Here are a
few ideas of how to build your team…
- You can print copies of this post (or your letter or email if you got those from us) to give to your friends, coworkers, neighbors, Sunday school class…whomever. You might want to edit out the "How to Build a Team" section -- too much information.
- You can make a request on Facebook for people to join your team. For example…
- Some friends of mine are adopting 2 kids and need to raise a lot of money fast. If you could donate just $10 to their cause you can go to the link below. I’m looking for at least 9 people who will join my team in supporting them. Let me know if you are interested. If you do donate, please let them know you are supporting through my team.
- You can send out an email using something like this…
- Some friends of mine from church (work, etc) are adopting two kids from Bulgaria. You can read more about their story here (thedemossfamily.blogspot.com). They’ve asked me to team up with a few friends to help them raise money. I need to put together a team worth at least $100. Could you put in $10? You can donate by PayPal on their blog or mail it to the address shown there. Just look for the blog entry titled TEAM UP. You can also read more about this fundraiser there. Just let me know if you can’t so I can look for another person. If you do donate, please let them know that you are supporting through my team.
If you get
more than 9 people responding on Facebook OR
if you can think of more than 9 people to send an email to OR if anyone
wants to donate more than the requested $10, all the better!! Anything above our first goal will go toward
the final goal.
DONATIONS
Your donation
can be made in one of three ways:
- If you have the opportunity, give it to us personally.
- Send a check to us at 3438 Leslie Ln., Murfreesboro, TN 37128.
- Use the “Donate” button on the right to pay with PayPal.
Please help
bring these beautiful children home. Share
our story and make donations as soon as possible. We are setting April 15, 2012, as our goal for
raising these funds. Again, as soon as
we have the funds, we can arrange our trip.
Any funds that may come in later can still be used for the final fees
and 2nd trip, but remember we MUST have $13,500 before the 1st
trip can be scheduled. Hopefully we can raise the entire $27,000 and make this our last
fundraiser! Feel free to
share our story with more than 9 people or share through email or
Facebook. You might even make sure you have your team built and then post it on Facebook for anyone else who might be interested. If one of your team members
wants to start a new team, that will work too!
Any way you can reach people to join our cause would be greatly
appreciated.
With all our thanks,
The
DeMoss Family (Tim, Libby, Colton, Eli, M & V)
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
My Plan or God's Plan
For those of you who have recently joined our story (and don't read a person's blog entirely from the beginning to "catch up" like I do), let me give you an update on where our journey has brought us so far and our most recent twist.
May 2007 - We attended our first informational meeting about adoption.
Aug/Sept 2007 - We committed to adoption. We began fundraising first rather than applying. The plan was to adopt 2 girls preferably sisters.
April 2008 - I started this blog. By that time, we had decided on names for our girls: Keely Page and Maggie Elizabeth. We wanted them to be between the ages of 1 and 5. We were still researching countries and agencies.
May 2008 - Bulgaria was chosen.
August 2008 - Agencies were unofficially chosen. Miriam's Promise would be the homestudy and post-placement agency. All God's Children International would be the placing agency. We began paperwork for home study.
November 2008 - Changed agency choices. We now planned to use Heaven Sent Children for the home study and post-placement study. We also planned to use Christian World Adoption as the placing agency.
May 2009 - Changed one of the names from Maggie to Mattie.
November 2009 - We made our final change of agency choice (actually applying this time). Our official placing agency would be Tree of Life. Application submitted with Heaven Sent to officially begin our home study. We requested 2 girls between the ages of 2 and 7.
June 2010 - Submitted our dossier.
Dec 6 2010 - We were officially registered in Bulgaria.
August 2011 - Updated home study and USCIS. Changed the ages from 2-7 to read a birthday after "such and such". This would make the oldest possible age at most 6 months younger than Colton. It would also allow the maximum age to rise as Colton gets older. After much hesitation, we also indicated we would be open to considering boys...but we continued to refer to our future kids as "the girls" anyway.
December 2011 - Finally finished renewing our USCIS approval.
February 2012 - MOJ asked our agency if we would be interested in a sibling group of 3. We were interested but felt it might be more than we could take on.
So that brings us to March 2012. Last Thursday, I emailed our social worker to ask her a question about a couple of kids she had sent out an email about. Not really expressing interest, just curious. She answered my question but told me I couldn't ask for them because we had a referral coming. WHAT? At this point she only knew that we had been matched but knew absolutely no details. Friday, we got the details. It shook me a little because it wasn't our plan. It wasn't the little picture I had created in my head of our lives. I had pictured 2 cute little girls: one younger than Eli...maybe both. Not the case. Are you ready for this? We were matched with a brother and sister. Did you catch that? WE HAVE A REFERRAL!!!!! The boy (M) is 9, and his sister (V) is 7. In fact, she turned 7 just four days before Eli did. We had always joked that one might be close to Eli's age and we'd call them twins. So now we have twins (four days apart) -- Eli with his red hair and V with her long beautiful black hair. I can't wait to start braiding!
Now, I posted all of the history up above to show you something. We have had our plan for quite a while. This brother/sister duo is not what I had planned. They are not what I had pictured. In my head all my thoughts centered around 2 little girls. I had their room planned somewhat. Their ages varied from one day to the next, but that was the most significant detail that was unknown. When I received the pictures of M and V, my first that was "What? A boy?" Would you believe I've actually had that reaction before? When we were planning a family, we casually talked about future kids' names. The first one we picked was a girl's name. When we found out we were finally expecting, we came up with a boy's name but mostly focused our talk on the girl we felt sure we would have. When the ultrasound showed (very clearly) that we were going to have a boy, we were stunned. "What? A boy?" It took us a good half hour or so to wrap our brains around the idea and decide life would be alright with a boy. Next Colton comes along, and we fell head over heels for him. God knew best. He had a plan better than ours. Fast forward to our referral. It felt the same way. Knowing how everything worked out so well last time, we knew we needed to seriously consider embracing this change. When I told Colton that we had received a referral, I told him that this wasn't exactly what we had planned, but that I didn't want to get so focused on my plan that I missed out on something God had planned ('cause I know He is a much better planner than I ever thought about being).
We did take a couple of days to think about it, talk about it, pray about it, and talk to a few other folks about it. I even spent some time staring at the boys' room trying to figure out how to put 3 boys in there. Long story short, we decided that these indeed were our children. We are so excited! Colton and Eli are so excited. They keep looking at the pictures over and over. They tell everyone. They keep asking why we can't leave now and bring them home. For those of you new to adoption, I can't post their pictures or names or detailed information about them here. Friends, I also can't email anything to you. But if I happen to see you in person, please ask to see my pictures (like I won't offer)! I have 77 of them on my phone!
The next step? Major fundraising fast. Big payments are due before we travel, and we have some expensive travelling to do. We are tentatively planning to travel in early May. It would have been sooner, but Tim needed to stay at school through the kids' state testing week. Then we come back and apply for as many grants as possible, do some more fundraising, get the house ready and travel again. The second trip may be some time in September or October. Then the new roller coaster ride begins.....
Did I mention they are beautiful????
May 2007 - We attended our first informational meeting about adoption.
Aug/Sept 2007 - We committed to adoption. We began fundraising first rather than applying. The plan was to adopt 2 girls preferably sisters.
April 2008 - I started this blog. By that time, we had decided on names for our girls: Keely Page and Maggie Elizabeth. We wanted them to be between the ages of 1 and 5. We were still researching countries and agencies.
May 2008 - Bulgaria was chosen.
August 2008 - Agencies were unofficially chosen. Miriam's Promise would be the homestudy and post-placement agency. All God's Children International would be the placing agency. We began paperwork for home study.
November 2008 - Changed agency choices. We now planned to use Heaven Sent Children for the home study and post-placement study. We also planned to use Christian World Adoption as the placing agency.
May 2009 - Changed one of the names from Maggie to Mattie.
November 2009 - We made our final change of agency choice (actually applying this time). Our official placing agency would be Tree of Life. Application submitted with Heaven Sent to officially begin our home study. We requested 2 girls between the ages of 2 and 7.
June 2010 - Submitted our dossier.
Dec 6 2010 - We were officially registered in Bulgaria.
August 2011 - Updated home study and USCIS. Changed the ages from 2-7 to read a birthday after "such and such". This would make the oldest possible age at most 6 months younger than Colton. It would also allow the maximum age to rise as Colton gets older. After much hesitation, we also indicated we would be open to considering boys...but we continued to refer to our future kids as "the girls" anyway.
December 2011 - Finally finished renewing our USCIS approval.
February 2012 - MOJ asked our agency if we would be interested in a sibling group of 3. We were interested but felt it might be more than we could take on.
So that brings us to March 2012. Last Thursday, I emailed our social worker to ask her a question about a couple of kids she had sent out an email about. Not really expressing interest, just curious. She answered my question but told me I couldn't ask for them because we had a referral coming. WHAT? At this point she only knew that we had been matched but knew absolutely no details. Friday, we got the details. It shook me a little because it wasn't our plan. It wasn't the little picture I had created in my head of our lives. I had pictured 2 cute little girls: one younger than Eli...maybe both. Not the case. Are you ready for this? We were matched with a brother and sister. Did you catch that? WE HAVE A REFERRAL!!!!! The boy (M) is 9, and his sister (V) is 7. In fact, she turned 7 just four days before Eli did. We had always joked that one might be close to Eli's age and we'd call them twins. So now we have twins (four days apart) -- Eli with his red hair and V with her long beautiful black hair. I can't wait to start braiding!
Now, I posted all of the history up above to show you something. We have had our plan for quite a while. This brother/sister duo is not what I had planned. They are not what I had pictured. In my head all my thoughts centered around 2 little girls. I had their room planned somewhat. Their ages varied from one day to the next, but that was the most significant detail that was unknown. When I received the pictures of M and V, my first that was "What? A boy?" Would you believe I've actually had that reaction before? When we were planning a family, we casually talked about future kids' names. The first one we picked was a girl's name. When we found out we were finally expecting, we came up with a boy's name but mostly focused our talk on the girl we felt sure we would have. When the ultrasound showed (very clearly) that we were going to have a boy, we were stunned. "What? A boy?" It took us a good half hour or so to wrap our brains around the idea and decide life would be alright with a boy. Next Colton comes along, and we fell head over heels for him. God knew best. He had a plan better than ours. Fast forward to our referral. It felt the same way. Knowing how everything worked out so well last time, we knew we needed to seriously consider embracing this change. When I told Colton that we had received a referral, I told him that this wasn't exactly what we had planned, but that I didn't want to get so focused on my plan that I missed out on something God had planned ('cause I know He is a much better planner than I ever thought about being).
We did take a couple of days to think about it, talk about it, pray about it, and talk to a few other folks about it. I even spent some time staring at the boys' room trying to figure out how to put 3 boys in there. Long story short, we decided that these indeed were our children. We are so excited! Colton and Eli are so excited. They keep looking at the pictures over and over. They tell everyone. They keep asking why we can't leave now and bring them home. For those of you new to adoption, I can't post their pictures or names or detailed information about them here. Friends, I also can't email anything to you. But if I happen to see you in person, please ask to see my pictures (like I won't offer)! I have 77 of them on my phone!
The next step? Major fundraising fast. Big payments are due before we travel, and we have some expensive travelling to do. We are tentatively planning to travel in early May. It would have been sooner, but Tim needed to stay at school through the kids' state testing week. Then we come back and apply for as many grants as possible, do some more fundraising, get the house ready and travel again. The second trip may be some time in September or October. Then the new roller coaster ride begins.....
Did I mention they are beautiful????
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Closer
Told you I wouldn't make it back on here before Christmas. We are now entering what I call Birthday Season. Counting our extended family, we have birthdays every month from January through October. For the 4 in our actual household, we run February through May -- one per month. Eli's is next week. He'll be 7. It's hard to believe that we went to our first informational adoption meeting just a little after Eli turned 2.
School is going fine. I'm still working on pacing ourselves and trying to balance school with housework, adoption work, and just-stuff-I-really-wanna-do. The boys are doing well academically. Of course, I'm their mom and teacher, so I think they are brilliant. I must confess that I have to continually remind myself that they are kids and that they are not me. Sometimes they have a different perspective about school than I did at their age. I probably need to cover our school time in more prayer than I do.
I'm still working on that weight loss thing. My contract with Curves is almost up. I wish I could go regularly, but I just can't. We are too crazy busy. So I'll be glad to quit making monthly donations to their company. ; ) But I absolutely MUST find time to exercise on my own and find a way to make sure I stick to it.
The boys are getting restless about the adoption. I can't say I blame them. It must look like we are all talk and no action. They want the girls to hurry up and get here. We actually did get a call recently asking if we would consider a sibling set of 3 instead of 2. Of course, we would consider it! And we did consider it. And it hurt really bad to say that we didn't feel we could support 3. It's not that I don't trust God's provision. I've always trusted that He will provide the funds for our adoption fees, travel expenses, etc. But, Tim's a teacher; I stay home; our income is what it is. To adopt ONE more child than we have right now would not be a huge blow to our budget. To adopt 30, would be a huge blow. It would be insane and impossible. So somewhere in between 1 and 30, is a line where just one more is too many. I don't know how to find that exactly, but right now it feels like that line is between 2 and 3. TWO is okay; THREE is too many. It was tempting to say yes just to make the process finish and go away. When I was pregnant, I tried to "enjoy" every moment of the process...knowing that it was temporary. Now, I'm like the woman who loves her babies but hates everything about being pregnant. I am not enjoying being paper pregnant. I just keep telling myself that this too shall pass.
It does show that our papers are before the MOJ, and they know our names. They are trying to match us. So maybe Keely and Mattie will be here before too much longer! Guess I'd better get back to my fundraising!
Happy Valentine's Day (a little early)
School is going fine. I'm still working on pacing ourselves and trying to balance school with housework, adoption work, and just-stuff-I-really-wanna-do. The boys are doing well academically. Of course, I'm their mom and teacher, so I think they are brilliant. I must confess that I have to continually remind myself that they are kids and that they are not me. Sometimes they have a different perspective about school than I did at their age. I probably need to cover our school time in more prayer than I do.
I'm still working on that weight loss thing. My contract with Curves is almost up. I wish I could go regularly, but I just can't. We are too crazy busy. So I'll be glad to quit making monthly donations to their company. ; ) But I absolutely MUST find time to exercise on my own and find a way to make sure I stick to it.
The boys are getting restless about the adoption. I can't say I blame them. It must look like we are all talk and no action. They want the girls to hurry up and get here. We actually did get a call recently asking if we would consider a sibling set of 3 instead of 2. Of course, we would consider it! And we did consider it. And it hurt really bad to say that we didn't feel we could support 3. It's not that I don't trust God's provision. I've always trusted that He will provide the funds for our adoption fees, travel expenses, etc. But, Tim's a teacher; I stay home; our income is what it is. To adopt ONE more child than we have right now would not be a huge blow to our budget. To adopt 30, would be a huge blow. It would be insane and impossible. So somewhere in between 1 and 30, is a line where just one more is too many. I don't know how to find that exactly, but right now it feels like that line is between 2 and 3. TWO is okay; THREE is too many. It was tempting to say yes just to make the process finish and go away. When I was pregnant, I tried to "enjoy" every moment of the process...knowing that it was temporary. Now, I'm like the woman who loves her babies but hates everything about being pregnant. I am not enjoying being paper pregnant. I just keep telling myself that this too shall pass.
It does show that our papers are before the MOJ, and they know our names. They are trying to match us. So maybe Keely and Mattie will be here before too much longer! Guess I'd better get back to my fundraising!
Happy Valentine's Day (a little early)
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Back on Track (One Year Later)
Finally, we have our immigration papers updated. Last time I posted (I know, it's been awhile), I was about to head back to Nashville for yet another set of fingerprints. Good or bad, USCIS only makes you re-do them once. So if they were bad again, it really didn't matter.
Since then, we went back for the fingerprints, got our I-797C (immigration approval), printed off another document saying that the I-797C is "True and Accurate", had that notarized, and had the notarization certified. Today, we made the trip back to Nashville to have the certification of the notarization apostilled by the secretary of state. Are you following? The US government issued the I-797C themselves; you'd think that would be official enough. Oh well, I'm learning to just jump through the hoops.
Tomorrow, I make sure I have scanned all parts of this document before mailing it to our agency so they can send it to Bulgaria. Then I will email scanned copies to both of our agencies, and begin focusing again on fundraising. Has anyone done any fundraising near Christmas? My gut instinct is that it is a bad time of year to ask for donations. After all everyone else is also asking, and there are Christmas presents to buy, etc. I know folks are supposed to feel more giving at this time, but still.
I guess this all means we are back on track -- through with updating and back to waiting. By the way, today marks the 1 year anniversary of our being officially registered in Bulgaria. Maybe we are getting close to a referral. At least we are a year closer! LOL My thoughts bounce around from being excited to feeling not ready; I'm scared to go, but I want the process behind me.
Just in case I don't post again before Christmas, I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season.
Since then, we went back for the fingerprints, got our I-797C (immigration approval), printed off another document saying that the I-797C is "True and Accurate", had that notarized, and had the notarization certified. Today, we made the trip back to Nashville to have the certification of the notarization apostilled by the secretary of state. Are you following? The US government issued the I-797C themselves; you'd think that would be official enough. Oh well, I'm learning to just jump through the hoops.
Tomorrow, I make sure I have scanned all parts of this document before mailing it to our agency so they can send it to Bulgaria. Then I will email scanned copies to both of our agencies, and begin focusing again on fundraising. Has anyone done any fundraising near Christmas? My gut instinct is that it is a bad time of year to ask for donations. After all everyone else is also asking, and there are Christmas presents to buy, etc. I know folks are supposed to feel more giving at this time, but still.
I guess this all means we are back on track -- through with updating and back to waiting. By the way, today marks the 1 year anniversary of our being officially registered in Bulgaria. Maybe we are getting close to a referral. At least we are a year closer! LOL My thoughts bounce around from being excited to feeling not ready; I'm scared to go, but I want the process behind me.
Just in case I don't post again before Christmas, I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season.
- Enjoy your family.
- Don't rush through the holidays.
- Make memories.
- Start a new tradition.
- Focus more on others than on yourself.
- Remember it truly is better to give than to receive.
- And remember that it isn't about the gifts we exchange but about the Gift we were given over 2000 years ago when Jesus Christ was born. (If you don't know Him personally, accept His gift this year above all others.)
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
I Stand Corrected
I stand corrected. Apparently, the fingerprints did NOT go well. I got a letter today from USCIS that they were unable to read my prints, and I will have to do it again. Really? Are you kidding me? The computer said "accepted" or "rejected" as we took each print. What is the point of doing them until they all say "accepted" while I'm standing there, if they are only going to wait two weeks and make me go back?
The lady and computer in Nashville thought they were fine....
Why can't you use the ones taken locally in July for our home study? I believe they went to the SAME place.
Why can't you use the ones you took 18 months ago? They don't REALLY expire, you know. Fingerprints are fingerprints!
I bet there are people in prison who have not been fingerprinted as many times as I have. Next week will make #8.
(Deep breath. Let it out...) : o
Lord, what do you want to teach me? This has not been an easy process...I didn't expect it to be. But I wasn't expecting blatant aggravation--feels almost like harassment at times. Through Your strength, we WILL persevere. We will not give up on our girls. Please show Yourself in this process--despite the process. May You receive all the glory and honor for completing this adoption. For we cannot do this alone but through YOUR power and YOUR provision. We are Your instruments...Your vessels. May we truly be Your hands and feet. Bless our family -- bless those who help us along the way. Amen.
The lady and computer in Nashville thought they were fine....
Why can't you use the ones taken locally in July for our home study? I believe they went to the SAME place.
Why can't you use the ones you took 18 months ago? They don't REALLY expire, you know. Fingerprints are fingerprints!
I bet there are people in prison who have not been fingerprinted as many times as I have. Next week will make #8.
(Deep breath. Let it out...) : o
Lord, what do you want to teach me? This has not been an easy process...I didn't expect it to be. But I wasn't expecting blatant aggravation--feels almost like harassment at times. Through Your strength, we WILL persevere. We will not give up on our girls. Please show Yourself in this process--despite the process. May You receive all the glory and honor for completing this adoption. For we cannot do this alone but through YOUR power and YOUR provision. We are Your instruments...Your vessels. May we truly be Your hands and feet. Bless our family -- bless those who help us along the way. Amen.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
USCIS, Olive Tree, Curves, School
I actually started a post a couple of weeks ago, but I see I never got it finished...much less posted. So let's just start fresh. (HA! This post got put aside too! But I'm just going to finish it as is...)
I made my first sale on Olive Tree -- sent one of my bracelets to Michigan. That was cool. Then we were named the Featured Family, which meant we would get a very small cut of any purchase that supported anyone. THEN we got word that someone we didn't even know had placed a sizable order naming us as the family to support. That was extra cool! I'm now trying to make some baby blankets to see if I can sell those on Olive Tree. (Just today we made two more sales. Don't recognize their names and don't know what they ordered, but they supported us. THANK YOU!)
We did get our second application submitted for immigration. The appointments came and were set for Oct 20. Yeah...not gonna wait that long. We were in Nashville for a couple of doctor's appointments on Oct 4, so we just dropped by and had our fingerprints done. By the way, if you've been reading my blog for a while, you will remember what a TERRIBLE time I had last year with my ink prints (for the FBI clearance letter). 33 WEEKS!! Three trips to the police department! Paid twice! Well, that was ink.. But I also had trouble with the electronic prints. At least with electronic prints you know right away to try again. When we updated our home study this summer, I dreaded the two fingerprintings...even though they were both electronic. At the first, the man started out having trouble with me. He finally stopped and handed me some Corn Huskers Lotion. After that, we got the prints! So, just as we were leaving for Nashville this week, I remembered to check. We had some! I put some on just before going in the fingerprinting place. It worked! She barely had to redo any of my prints. I don't know if that would work with ink prints, but I do remember that I am supposed to ask for Officer Cross if/when I have to do ink prints again.
In other news, I have not made it back to Curves since school started. It's just been SO busy! I keep hoping that I can work it back in (especially since I'm still paying for it). In the meantime, though, I finally starting losing!! Yay me! I've been trying to get this weight off since Eli was born (6 years ago) and was slowly losing until maybe 2 or 3 years ago when my weight suddenly jumped up and then kept creeping up gradually and consistently. Five months with Curves had not done anything really, but I did use their philosophy to start my own program at home, and I've now officially lost 11 pounds. I know that's not phenomenal, but it is a huge answer to prayer for me. It's been maybe 6 or 7 weeks, and I've gone up and down, but overall I've gone down. Whenever I notice the weight starting to climb back up, I take a couple of days "off" and eat whatever I want -- not binge eating, just not putting a lot of thought into it. Then I jump back in, and it starts slowly falling again.
Back to school talk, we are doing well. I actually bought desks for the boys and have them in the living room..I know it may sound dumb to some, but I'm really liking it, and the boys think they are neat. It does let me tend to both of them at the same time, getting one started on something and then tending to the other without having to leave the room. Did you know that if you leave a first or fourth grader alone with their work, they very often stopping working??? This keeps our day moving forward a lot better. Sometimes I catch myself standing and pacing between them just like when I was in the classroom. Now all I need is a whiteboard on one wall, and our living room will be complete. ; ) Seriously, I think it keeps us from getting too relaxed and informal.
For those of you who may homeschool, I'm also trying a new approach with Colton (4th grade) that kind of goes against my "teacherness". Instead of doing a lesson in each subject every day, we are attacking a subject a week at a time. For example, we may do a week's worth of grammar and reading on Monday and a week's worth of math on Tuesday, etc. He seems to respond well to having the subject over with, and he thinks he has less if he only does 1 or 2 subjects -- even though the number of lessons is the same. My only exception to the all-at-once method is when there is a test. I don't want him to study 4 math lessons and immediately close the book and take the test. Maybe that is fine, but it just feels like short-term memory only to me. So if there is a test this week, we plan 2 days -- one for everything leading up to the test, and one for the test and anything scheduled after it. So far this is working for us. He is staying caught up better and seems to still be comprehending everything as we go.
I made my first sale on Olive Tree -- sent one of my bracelets to Michigan. That was cool. Then we were named the Featured Family, which meant we would get a very small cut of any purchase that supported anyone. THEN we got word that someone we didn't even know had placed a sizable order naming us as the family to support. That was extra cool! I'm now trying to make some baby blankets to see if I can sell those on Olive Tree. (Just today we made two more sales. Don't recognize their names and don't know what they ordered, but they supported us. THANK YOU!)
We did get our second application submitted for immigration. The appointments came and were set for Oct 20. Yeah...not gonna wait that long. We were in Nashville for a couple of doctor's appointments on Oct 4, so we just dropped by and had our fingerprints done. By the way, if you've been reading my blog for a while, you will remember what a TERRIBLE time I had last year with my ink prints (for the FBI clearance letter). 33 WEEKS!! Three trips to the police department! Paid twice! Well, that was ink.. But I also had trouble with the electronic prints. At least with electronic prints you know right away to try again. When we updated our home study this summer, I dreaded the two fingerprintings...even though they were both electronic. At the first, the man started out having trouble with me. He finally stopped and handed me some Corn Huskers Lotion. After that, we got the prints! So, just as we were leaving for Nashville this week, I remembered to check. We had some! I put some on just before going in the fingerprinting place. It worked! She barely had to redo any of my prints. I don't know if that would work with ink prints, but I do remember that I am supposed to ask for Officer Cross if/when I have to do ink prints again.
In other news, I have not made it back to Curves since school started. It's just been SO busy! I keep hoping that I can work it back in (especially since I'm still paying for it). In the meantime, though, I finally starting losing!! Yay me! I've been trying to get this weight off since Eli was born (6 years ago) and was slowly losing until maybe 2 or 3 years ago when my weight suddenly jumped up and then kept creeping up gradually and consistently. Five months with Curves had not done anything really, but I did use their philosophy to start my own program at home, and I've now officially lost 11 pounds. I know that's not phenomenal, but it is a huge answer to prayer for me. It's been maybe 6 or 7 weeks, and I've gone up and down, but overall I've gone down. Whenever I notice the weight starting to climb back up, I take a couple of days "off" and eat whatever I want -- not binge eating, just not putting a lot of thought into it. Then I jump back in, and it starts slowly falling again.
Back to school talk, we are doing well. I actually bought desks for the boys and have them in the living room..I know it may sound dumb to some, but I'm really liking it, and the boys think they are neat. It does let me tend to both of them at the same time, getting one started on something and then tending to the other without having to leave the room. Did you know that if you leave a first or fourth grader alone with their work, they very often stopping working??? This keeps our day moving forward a lot better. Sometimes I catch myself standing and pacing between them just like when I was in the classroom. Now all I need is a whiteboard on one wall, and our living room will be complete. ; ) Seriously, I think it keeps us from getting too relaxed and informal.
For those of you who may homeschool, I'm also trying a new approach with Colton (4th grade) that kind of goes against my "teacherness". Instead of doing a lesson in each subject every day, we are attacking a subject a week at a time. For example, we may do a week's worth of grammar and reading on Monday and a week's worth of math on Tuesday, etc. He seems to respond well to having the subject over with, and he thinks he has less if he only does 1 or 2 subjects -- even though the number of lessons is the same. My only exception to the all-at-once method is when there is a test. I don't want him to study 4 math lessons and immediately close the book and take the test. Maybe that is fine, but it just feels like short-term memory only to me. So if there is a test this week, we plan 2 days -- one for everything leading up to the test, and one for the test and anything scheduled after it. So far this is working for us. He is staying caught up better and seems to still be comprehending everything as we go.
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