Our Family!

We were making a picture book and took pictures of our family today that I thought I would share. We are making the picture book for the girls. Thank you Tammy for taking it to Vietnam for us and getting it to the girls. We owe you big time!!

We were told this week that it will be several weeks before we have travel dates. We are thinking it will be June when we travel.

We are having our last trip this weekend, as a family of 5. Nothing big, just time together and to see grandparents.

Have a great weekend!!

Christie

I just could not resist!!

We got these two babies this afternoon as a gift for the girls from some friends. When I first showed my boys, it was like they were aliens in our house. But a few hours later I could hear them playing and from the other room could not figure out what they were doing. When I entered the room I found them playing with the dolls. I couldn’t resist and went to get the camera.

Some day this picture will become a great bargaining tool, plus when they start to date I will have so much fun.

They'll forgive me someday for posting this, I couldn't resist.

Names!!!

We have decided on the names for the girls. We know that their birth mother gave them their Vietnamese names and felt that those were very important, not only because their mother gave them those names but it is apart of who they are and their heritage, so we decided to keep them as middle names.



The oldest one will be: Sarah Elizabeth Quynh









The youngest will be : Abigail Carley Cuc

More pictures!

I thought I would share another picture of the girls. This one is with their nanny in the orphanage.

Quynh is in yellow on the left she is 30 months in this picture. Cuc is in pink on the right and is 11 months when the picture was taken. This picture was taken in January.

We are still waiting on travel dates. We still hope to travel in May.

Christie

Happy Easter!!

It is hard to believe that it is Easter today. I have been so busy since the beginning of the year with the paper work chase for the adoption and with all the worry and stress that comes along with it, that the year has flown by.

While sitting in church today, I suddenly felt so blessed and thankful to my Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ for all they have given our family this year. We have had our ups and downs but have become stronger as a family. I had such an overwhelming feeling during church to not worry about finances so much and that everything would work itself out and to just enjoy the journey.

We are hoping to have final travel dates sometime this month. I really hope so. I can't wait.

The Relief Society (women's group) in my ward at church have decided to do a Humanitarian project this month. They are going to gather supplies for me to take to the orphanages to help them out. I have two empty suitcases I told them that they could fill and gave them some suggestions of what they could donate. I am so grateful to them for their willingness to help, I wanted to bring stuff for the orphanages but was not going to be able to fill both suitcases.

Christie

Financing an Adoption

Financing an adoption is not an easy task, especially if you are adopting two. Many have asked how much it costs and for some reason I have been reluctant to say but have told people and the reaction is both positive and negative. Both wow and you are in the baby buying business. The last one really rubbed me the wrong way for some odd reason.

So you ask how much is it going to be? For us to adopt two, will be roughly $45,000. No we are not rich or even close. Then to answer the next question is no we did not receive a large inheritance for some rich relative that has passed away. So then how are we paying for it you ask? We are trying to scrimp and scrap everything that we can.

We have borrowed a large portion of it. We are using our tax return. Have sold a few things. But still we are short. Many of you know that Matt (my husband) herniated a disc in is back on the 1st of March. We had planned to save his overtime to cover the additional travel expenses that we may run into. Well we did not have over time for over a month and have not been able to save for them. Thank goodness his employer offers 100% short term disability on base pay, or we would be up a creek
I do have options for paying the last travel portion that we would need:
A - max out every credit card we have
B- take a loan out of our 401K

We would rather not do either of these.

We had planned a fund raiser for this weekend to sell strawberry (homemade) Jam but I had a blonde moment and the strawberry Jam is now strawberry syrup. I am not sure what happened, cause this has never happened to me before.
Today we (ok my husband) is taking a proposal to his employer asking them to add an adoption benefit to there already good benefits package to help those families like us to help defray the outlandish costs of adoption.

I have also applied for Adoption grant to help with the cost. Keep us in your prayers that one of these will turn up positive and help us in our adventure.

Christie