LOA!!!!!!!!

LOA FOR OUR FAMILY TODAY!!!


I came home this evening to a letter from our agency announcing that our LOA is in and on it's way to us. I kind of feel like the initial response went like this. "YIP...WHOA!!! That was the excitement of what the LOA means and then the flash to reality and our finances at this point. We have had a few set backs... let me rephrase... We have had a few major set backs. The main one being a $5000 chunk for new drain fields. We have been in this house since 2002 and it decides that now, in 2010 as we are scrambling for funds, to decimate our tax return. As it is it actually started in December 2009 and when we learned what needed to be done we invested $500. on some Internet thing that was supposed to do the trick and save us the money we had to spend anyway. In the mean time we began limiting shower time and when each person was taking their shower. We told the kids that unless it was a BM not to flush the toilet. Yeah... it was getting pretty yucky but we were praying that this rip off stuff would kick in. It didn't.

So our great news today came with a bit of a cloud above it. You hear people all the time needing funds for their adoptions. They have a travel date yet everything sounds so desperate, but somehow they always end up traveling even though all the money they have asked for doesn't come. We have been there before. Not this time. Our situation has now become that we won't travel until we have the money. Not we will have a travel date and funds that have to come in by that time... well... errr... we will have a projection date of when we are hoping to travel... but if we don't get the money pulled together we will not be traveling... we will not be traveling until we do. And if we don't then our adoption won't happen.

As it is, at the end of this month, my husband will leave for North Carolina to work a scheduled outage for a month at a nuclear plant there. Then he will come home for a week and a half and leave for a second outage in North Carolina. He is a nuclear I&C tech. These outages net him more pay. Of course it also costs us a bit as he has his own temporary household in NC to maintain during his absence from home. They compensate him for that. Anyway, it will give us 2 grand toward the 11 we need. But it will not suddenly create a miracle.

I have started a Kingdom Kids account so that there is a place for tax deductible donations. I printed out 20 letters today to send out to people I really don't know in hopes of receiving donations. Haiti is happening. The Cancer Society Relay for Life is going on. And the school is hitting up everyone for money. And on top of that our economy stinks right now so people who might have normally jumped up to help us are letting us know in advance that money is tight in hopes that we won't come to them.

This is our eighth adoption in 10 years. It is our final final adoption due to this being the last empty bed in our home. And,no... we don't have the money to buy a bigger house or the sob story for a free upgrade from any of those home make over shows. So this is it. Once we pay down all our adoption debt we will be able to provide a comfortable future for our children. Once this adoption is complete we can concentrate on getting it paid down over the next five years. It is that debt that keeps us from having this lump sum. I think I explained in an earlier post that what we are raising is all about our travel costs. We have 5300. just for the orphanage donation. It is estimated at 1700. for the in country cost for notaries and so forth. Then there is the 3000. for our travel costs. And 3400. which is the low side estimate for the agency travel fees which covers hotels, transportation once in the province through the last day in Guangzhou and guide services. The agency travel fees seem a bit high. If the guides are still at 1200 and the hotel is 100 per night so 1400 and the flight for Maggie and I from the province to Guangzhou about 500... well I guess their estimate isn't too crazy. Uuuuhhhhhgggggg... And yes, I am aware that it comes up to 13,400. I am hoping to yard sale the 2400 or to find better deals that will cut cost. I already did that once by deciding not to take my six-year-old daughter, Ajia, with me to help Maggie's transition. That decrease the cost by 2 grand.

So now we kick it into high gear on pulling the funds together. It is sad to think that there is still a possibility that we could have come this far for a child that had been passed up by so many families and could still fall short. Once we get TA we have three months in which to travel to get her. Being an I-171h family we will get TA in about 30 days. So early March. We are praying to have it all pulled together by the beginning of May as that is when my husband will return and be here to care for the kids so I can travel alone. If June arrives without success it will be the end. I'll say no more to that end. And so it goes...