Update on Embryo Adoption!

Well folks, it's been another tough year, and again, it's been awhile since we've posted. Yes, we are still moving forward with embryo adoption - we still have not moved into the matching phase yet. It's been a LONG road...it's been tough to not get discouraged and distracted, to stay motivated and keep moving forward, but we are still longing to build our family!!

Now is the time for us to be strong and remember the foundation God has been laying for us! Andrea recently watched a Steven Furtick sermon, and the Lord's message in that sermon breathed new life into our journey! It's so important to remember and celebrate what God has already done for us, all He's helped us accomplish, rather than be discouraged that we've not arrived at the destination yet. It's so hard to be patient!! 

So, let's celebrate how far we've come! Here are our achievements so far on our embryo adoption journey:

• Jan-Mar 2021: Completed our Home Study Update for private infant adoption, which we can also use for our embryo adoption (required by Snowflakes - will need to do again in Mar’22)
• Apr 28, 2021: Andrea’s 1st call with Dawn Canny from Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program
• May 11, 2021: Our orientation phone call with Dawn
• May 18, 2021: Andrea received approval from her primary care doctor to proceed with pregnancy
• May 18, 2021: Decided on FCI (Fertility Centers of IL near Chicago) for the frozen embryo transfer based on extensive research of Snowflakes' preferred fertility clinics
• May 25, 2021: Our consultation call with Dr Jenny Hirschfeld-Cryton at FCI 
• May 26, 2021: Our call with Dawn to discuss questions and confirm our adoption preferences 
• Jun 13, 2021: Gathered all required documents, completed the application, and paid the $500 down payment
• Jun 14, 2021: Transferred the remainder of Andrea's severance pay to our adoption savings fund, which will fully fund our embryo adoption! It's going to be about $10-20K cheaper than private infant adoption - depending on how many frozen transfer cycles we will need.
• Jun 24, 2021: Updated our family Adoption Profile for embryo adoption, which the embryo donors will use to decide if they want us to adopt their embryos, similar to private infant adoption
• Jul 12, 2021: Decided on how to complete the required CPR and First Aid training and started reviewing materials
• Jul 21, 2021: Andrea completed the required webinars and summaries of lessons learned about embryo adoption
• Sep 7, 2021: Andrea had her mammogram and follow-up ultrasound - all is well!
• Sep 9, 2021: Andrea met with her OBGYN who will do the ultrasound monitoring prior to the frozen embryo transfer and got a baseline ultrasound and blood tests
• Oct 12, 2021: Andrea left her stressful job she started in January and started a job at a new company with a MUCH better work-life balance! The things she learned in all of her previous experiences will help her be successful in her new job, so it all worked out!
• Nov 1-15: We had our first round of Covid! We've been fortunate to not get infected until now, and Scott's symptoms were mild, and everyone else in our household avoided infection, so we got pretty lucky!! However, isolation/quarantine is HARD!!
• Nov 15, 2021: Updated Adoption Profile for Embryo Adoption - life changes a lot in 5 months! Had to add a picture of Andrea's stepdaughter's new baby boy that was born in October! We think the idea of raising our babies together is so fun and unique!

To-Do’s:

• Pre-Matching Phase:
• Scott to complete webinars and summaries
• Andrea to complete CPR and First Aid training and certification
• Scott to re-certify in CPR and First Aid
• Scott to complete blood tests required
• Andrea to complete more blood tests and procedures required
• Matching Phase (average time = 2-4 months): Snowflakes will match up our preferences with preferences of donating families and reach out to both families seeking agreement on a match
• Contract Phase (average time = 1-2 months): signing of contracts
• Shipping Phase (average time = 1-2 months): shipping of embryos to our fertility clinic
• Frozen Embryo Transfer Phase (1st cycle = 1-2 months; more cycles??)

FAQ's:

• Q: What are frozen embryos?
• A: Extra fertilized eggs that are frozen and stored at a medical facility for use in future IVF (in vitro fertilization) cycles
• Q: What is embryo adoption? 
• A: Embryo adoption is where we would adopt the frozen embryos from a couple who had extra frozen embryos from their IVF treatments and are done building their family (they may already have 1 or more children conceived through IVF). My local OBGYN will work with the fertility clinic Dr to prescribe me fertility medications and monitor my body's readiness for the transfer through ultrasounds. The fertility clinic Dr would then thaw and transfer 1-2 embryos to my body (just like a frozen IVF cycle) and I would hopefully grow at least one baby and give birth to our adopted child(ren). It's similar to surrogacy, only I would keep the baby I would give birth to. 
• Q: How many embryos will we adopt?
• A: We will transfer 1-2 embryos per cycle, depending on the quality of the embryos. We may need multiple cycles to have a successful cycle (a pregnancy). Not all embryos survive the thawing process, and not all embryos will implant. We hope to give birth to 1-2 children, depending on how everything goes. We would adopt all of the remaining embryos of a donating family, so we would be matched with a family that has 3-5 frozen embryos, giving us the best chance of conceiving 1-2 children. There are more options if things don't go according to plan, but let's hope for the best!
• Q: Why embryo adoption?
• A: The adoption would be final the minute we receive the embryos. The frozen embryos would be given a chance at life, since their biological parents are no longer able to, due to a variety of reasons: financial limitations, medical risks, etc. Andrea could experience the joys (and challenges!) of pregnancy: baby's kicks, breastfeeding, etc. We would both get to be present at every sonogram and ultrasound, in the delivery room, and the baby would be a part of our family immediately. Our names would be on the birth certificate as mother and father. We would also be able to control the prenatal environment - take all the vitamins, eat all the healthy food (and drinks), attend all the doctor's appointments, etc. Andrea would also receive 6 weeks of paid short term disability maternity leave - with private infant adoption, maternity leave is not a medical disability, so she would receive time off through FMLA, but it would not be paid - which we cannot afford. With the help of the Snowflakes organization, we would also be able to know the identity and medical history of both of the donating parents and have an opportunity for a semi-open adoption relationship. We would begin by sharing pictures and updates, with the possibility of in-person visits at some point if everyone feels comfortable. The spectrum of openness is just one of the adoption preferences mentioned above, as is race, medical history, etc.
• Q: What is Snowflakes?
• A: They are a division of a Christian adoption agency that facilitates embryo adoptions. Here is their website: https://nightlight.org/snowflakes-embryo-adoption-donation/embryo-adoption/

Please let us know what questions you have! Nearly everyone we talk to has never heard of embryo adoption, and we are learning a ton! Isn't it such a miracle that this is even possible!? We think so. :)

Love,

Scott & Andrea

Still Moving Forward... With Big Changes!!

Wow, what a crazy and hard year 2020 was for everyone!! The pandemic has thrown us some curve balls, like everyone else. But yet, God has sustained us. 

It has been awhile since we posted! Let me catch you up:

1. Our private infant adoption home study was approved in Jan20 and we immediately started planning our Trivia Night fundraiser, due to the extensive costs. When Covid-19 hit hard in the US in Mar'20, our Trivia Night planning came to a screeching halt - the pandemic just felt like a bad time to try to do fundraising, with so many hurting financially and physically, so we searched for other means of funding our adoption.

Thankfully, we were both able to work from home, and our church was able to have online services, and our family stayed healthy, so the impact of Covid on us was not as significant as others. We are so grateful for that. ❤️

2. We were able to refinance our house in Feb'20 for a lower payment and cash in hand, which enabled us to afford to hire our Christian Adoption Consultant, Dawn Wright in Apr'20! She has been awesome to work with! She emailed us several birth mom situations to consider. 

3. We were not approved for any of the grants we applied for, but we did find an adoption loan that we could afford to help us to fund our adoption without fundraising! 

4. Our oldest boy moved home from college in Mar'19 due to Covid-19 and struggled with severe anxiety, so we spent quite a bit of time supporting him through that. Thankfully, he's doing better, slowly but surely. 

5. The death of George Floyd and the resulting social unrest in our country really opened our eyes to the horrible treatment that our black friends are STILL experiencing after all these years. It's sad that it took all of that for us to have difficult conversations with our friends, read books and articles about white privilege, follow black authors and speakers on social media, listen to heart-breaking stories of racism still happening (whether we see it or not), and learn how to truly love our black friends and community. We also considered whether it's responsible for a white couple to be open to adopting children of other races with all the social unrest. After much consideration and prayer, we came back to our original belief that God knows which child is best for our family so we will continue to leave it in His very capable hands (as well as the birth family's). The good thing that came of this time of reflection is that we are now much more aware of the challenges that we could face, are more prepared, and more certain that our diverse church community, friends and family would be there to support us. We have some awesome people in our lives. ❤️

6. Scott got a new job as the supervisor in his department, which meant a lot more hours and stress, but also a bit more income, which will help with paying for our adoption! This also meant I needed to do more around the house to support him, including yard work, meals, and helping with our boys. 

7. We had a HUGE oak tree blown over by a storm in our back yard which took us, our neighbors, and neighbors' friends months to clean up! It destroyed our fire pit we worked so hard to create, and tore up part of our shed, but it didn't damage anything inside the shed or our house! And no one got hurt! Could've been much worse! We finally got the fire pit put back together in time for fall bonfires. We had lots of fire wood to burn 😊 

8. In Sep'20, Andrea decided to take a voluntary separation from a company she worked at for over 19 years due to massive reorganization company-wide. She spent months soul searching and debating this life changing decision, working with recruiters to fine tune her resume and search for a job in the difficult pandemic job market. 4 months later and after 5 interviews, she finally got a great job and started in Jan'21 She became extremely busy getting up to speed, but was grateful to be employed. 

10. Our oldest fur baby Finley passed away pretty quickly in September, which was heart-breaking! He was such a sweet boy. He soaked up lots of Andrea's tears about infertility over the years. He passed peacefully in his sleep with his mama laying by his side. She's so grateful she got to spend lots of time with him during his last couple of weeks. 

8. Our awesome next door neighbors moved to Texas! We were so sad to say goodbye but happy that they were able to move closer to family. They gave us a new free standing porch swing for our fire pit and we gained some awesome new neighbors and their dog Lulu who is our youngest fur baby Bonnie's new BFF! God works everything out for good. 

11. We used some of Andrea's severance pay to buy a new camper! We bought our truck 3 years ago to haul a camper and were so excited we could finally afford to buy a camper so we can camp comfortably with a little one someday. We also planned to use it to travel wherever we adopt our child, so we figured it would save us on travel expenses.

12. Andrea decided to start selling Pampered Chef products in Nov'20 so she could get discounts on all the things (budget-permitting) on her wish list and have fun socializing and meeting new people. Covid has been really hard on her since she loves to connect with people, so this is a fun outlet for her. 

13. We had to get our home study updated since it expired in Jan'21, and finally got it completed in Mar'21.

14. We finally submitted our applications to 2 of the agencies our consultant recommended for us in Mar'21! What a paper intensive and personally invasive process that is! They now know more about us than most of our family and friends do, haha! 

15. In May'21, after 2 years of trying to get our ducks in a row to adopt and receiving countless birth mom situations to review that didn't suit our preferences, and no movement from the agencies we applied to, we were starting to give up hope, when out of nowhere, the Lord popped an idea in Andrea's head: what about embryo adoption? We could control the prenatal environment and we wouldn't have to worry about tracking down the birth father for approval of adoption plans or birth mom changing her mind at the last minute. The more we looked into it, the more benefits we saw, and we realized that this may be the best way forward for us. We are so excited!! 

In a nutshell, embryo adoption is where we would adopt the frozen embryos, which are fertilized eggs, from a family who had leftover frozen embryos from their IVF (in vitro fertilization) treatments and are done building their family. We would then transfer the embryos to my body and I would hopefully grow the baby and give birth to our adopted child! There's so much more to this but this post is getting too long!! 

Stay tuned for our next post on embryo adoption!! 

Adoption Grants

Hey guys!
It's been awhile since we've posted an update! Just been busy researching adoption grants, picking the ones we want to apply for first, and gathering all the documentation we need. Here is our adoption binder where we keep all the paperwork. It's a lot! And we've only just begun!

We found a website that has a list of 80 different grants available to apply for! It's called http://fundyouradoption.tv/. They have free resources for people adopting, including a spreadsheet and advice about fundraising too! Plus we got some tips from our friend Kathryn who has adopted an adorable baby girl and guidance from our Christian Adoption Consultant, Dawn. Most of the grants were for international, special needs, or older or harder to place children, but we narrowed it down to our top 5 that we will apply for this week and a few more that we will apply for once we hear back from the first 5.

We were approved for an adoption loan (yay!) for the majority of the adoption agency fee, travel costs, and post-placement social worker visit costs, but we still need to raise between $10-15K in grants and fundraising. Nothing is guaranteed, and we can't register with agencies until we have all our funding in place, so we would appreciate your prayers through this!!

Adoption Update and Exciting News!!

Hey everyone! We hope you're all staying healthy and coping well with the changes that this pandemic has brought us. We have learned during this time that we are all going through something hard and we each have unique challenges. It's so heart-warming to hear how communities have come together to help each other out! Keep spreading kindness!!

Our family is all doing well. We have postponed our trivia night fundraiser that was scheduled on April 18th, due to social distancing guidelines, and we don't yet know the best day to reschedule it. We still plan to have it and will keep you all posted. It was extremely disappointing to have our journey put on hold since we didn't know how we would fund our adoption or when it will happen. We've already waited for so long for God to grant the desires of our hearts, so that's been one of our biggest challenges lately.

About a month ago, we were approached by a friend with a potential birth mom situation. After praying and considering it quite a bit, we decided it wasn't a good fit for us and the birth mom also decided to choose another couple. It was disappointing, but Scott and I had some valuable conversations and we had the opportunity to pray for that birth mom and show her kindness during an especially difficult time for her.

However, we serve a Big God and His plans can't be stopped! There are babies born every day that need adoptive parents. The need is still there, even when it seems like the rest of the world has stopped or slowed way down.

With that, we have some exciting news to brighten your day! God made a way for us to hire our adoption consultant!! We signed a contract with Dawn and Jason Wright from Christian Adoption Consultants last night!! We are officially ready to start applying for birth mom situations all over the US. Our journey to bring our baby home continues. Please continue to pray for us as we enter the next phase, which brings new challenges.

How did God do it, you may ask? Well, back in early February (before COVID started becoming widespread and social distancing), we contacted our mortgage company to see if we could refinance our mortgage for a lower rate, with the rates being at a record low. We were approved for a lower rate, which would save us money. Then, we waited and waited for them to process our new mortgage. The deal was finally closed at the beginning of April. We learned then that we would be able to skip 2 mortgage payments and would receive $500 back at closing! With those funds and the funds leftover from the garage sale after paying for the home study, plus some generous cash donations from a few sweet friends, we were able to hire our consultant!! Yay!!! Thank you so much for everyone's support to help us get this far!!

We still have a long way to go to fully fund our adoption agency fee, which will cost at least $35K, plus travel. We will be able to finance part of that, but we will need to apply for grants and continue fundraising at some point for the rest. This is another area that we will need a lot of faith and some prayers that the Lord would continue to make a way for us. We love you all!

Trivia Night Fundraiser!!

We are excited to announce that we are hosting a trivia night fundraiser to help fund our adoption!! It should be a really fun night for a great cause. It's one way for our friends and family be a part of welcoming a baby into our family! I've explained in previous blog posts here , here , and here that adoptions can be very costly, so we appreciate any help we can get!

I met with some wonderful friends over the weekend that have volunteered to help us plan the details and ensure we have a successful fundraiser. We are truly blessed!

It's official! We're a "Waiting Family!"

Hi everyone!
Just thought I'd drop an update on where we're at. We are officially considered a "Waiting Family" on Adoption Associates of Iowa's website (our home study agency)!! Our profile is now public! Here is the website (click on Scott & Andrea):

https://adoptionsiowa.com/waiting-families/

This means that birth moms all over the country can view our profile and contact our home study agency if they are interested in talking to us and considering us for adopting their child. The home study agency doesn't do any kind of advertising to find birth parents, like adoption agencies do (so it's much less expensive to adopt through their agency)--it's all word of mouth. Oftentimes, attorneys will refer birth moms to the agency, or birth moms who have worked with them for prior adoptions will contact them for another adoption.

It's customary for birth parents to consider multiple families at once, and we can choose whether or not the situation is a good fit for us, so this process could take a while. Chrys, our home study agency social worker, said to be prepared to wait 1-2 years (2 years is the national average) for a successful placement. We could be chosen as adoptive parents anytime between now and 2 years from now! It's exciting!!

We are also still planning to hire Dawn, a Christian Adoption Consultant, but we need to do some more fundraising. We still need about $1500 more. We have been analyzing our finances and have come up with some plans to help contribute to the high costs as well, but we're not quite ready yet. It's a process. As I've mentioned in other posts, the benefit of hiring an adoption consultant is that she can put us in touch with multiple adoption agencies all over the country and we can apply for situations that are the best fit for our family. This approach results in child placement within an average of 6 months. The consultant would also be looking out for our best interest and helping us watch for any red flags that may result in an unsuccessful adoption and cost us thousands of dollars (and lots of heartache). She can also help us find and apply for grants that will help us with the high adoption costs and ideas on fundraising. Her guidance and our peace of mind is well worth her fee. Again, here is some background about Dawn's vast experience with adoptions:
https://www.christianadoptionconsultants.com/portfolio/dawn-jason-wright/

We're Home Study Approved!!!

We are excited to announce that our adoption Home Study has been approved!! This is a big milestone!! Chrys sent the final draft of the home study report to us and to our Christian Adoption Consultant, Dawn, on Monday. Her words were "I have attached the finalized home study for this family.  They are a fabulous family and are ready to go!"

This means that we are now able to start the adoption process if a birth mother were to choose us to adopt her baby. I've created our adoption profile, which is a summary with pictures describing who we are and why we want to adopt, but we just need to finalize it. Once we're ready, it will be posted on the Adoption Associates of Iowa's website in the "Waiting Families" section. Expectant parents all over the country will be able to view our profile and consider us for adopting their baby. They could choose to meet with us and other hopeful adopting parents to make their choice. This could happen anytime between now and 1-2 years from now. Chrys told us to be prepared to wait. We will need some prayers for our nerves while we wait!

We still need about $1500 to hire Dawn so she can help us find birth mothers all over the country to apply to be matched with, which will speed up the process. We will use the adoption profile that we created for this process too. Dawn will also be available to answer our questions and help guide us through a complicated and emotional process, including applying for grants to help us afford the high costs of adoption. She has already been SO helpful and gracious to answer our many questions! Can't wait to be able to sign a contract with her!

We sincerely appreciate every prayer, every garage sale donation, every T-shirt bought, every dollar donated, and every minute spent helping us through this process from all of our loved ones. We could not keep going if it weren't for you. We love you!! And thanks for loving and welcoming our future peanut into our family.

2nd Home Study Visit and Next Steps

Happy New Year! Our 2nd and final home study visit was with our social worker Chrys Bitting on Dec 30th in Des Moines and it went great!! We spent four hours at a table at Panera Bread restaurant answering questions about our adoption preferences, our memories of growing up, our interests, our marriage, and how we plan to parent. Now, we are just waiting on Chrys to write our final report, which should come out this week. So far so good!! We are so grateful for all the prayers and well wishes!! It's been a busy and stressful past few months, but we're so relieved at how well the process is going.

To prepare for our 2nd visit, we had to get our FBI fingerprints taken for the background checks, decide on our preferences (number of children, ages, ethnicity, sex, etc), decide on guardians in case of emergency, gather life insurance amounts, retirement and savings account balances, divorce decrees, and our youngest boy's consent for his background check, since he's over 16. We also had to come up with a list of amenities our home town (and nearby cities) have to offer. As my list grew and grew, I got so excited thinking about all the fun things we will get to do with our future child! There really is so much to offer a child here. It gave us both a fresh dose of hope.

Update on Next Steps:

1. Create a profile (pictures and facts about our family) to post on Adoption Associates of Iowa's website for birth families to review and potentially choose us to talk to and/or adopt their child. Once we're home study approved, we will be ready and able to adopt!
2. Start applying for grants and continue fundraising to help with adoption costs:

• The remaining $1500 needed to hire our Christian Adoption Consultant, Dawn, to help connect us with adoption agencies all over the country and help us with applying for grants. 
• About $20,000-30,000 if we adopt through an agency in the US.
• $1050 (plus her travel cost) for at least 3 post-placement visits with Chrys our social worker (some states require more than 3 visits, so it could cost more). If we matched with a birth mom through Chrys, it would cost about $2000 plus our attorney's fees.
• At least $5000 for travel and hotel stay (if matched with a birth mom out of state). We will be required to stay at least 7-10 days in the state the baby is born while paperwork is completed so we can take baby home with us.

Update on Home Study

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas! Ours was so nice and relaxing. Several people have been asking for an update, so I thought I'd share where we're at in our adoption process. Our visit with our social worker on Dec 11th went well and our next visit with her will be in Des Moines where she lives on Dec 30th. After that, it should take about a week to write up the report and then we'll know if we're approved. We're feeling good about it and getting very excited!! After we're approved, we'll need to raise $1500 more so we can hire our adoption consultant and start applying for birth mom situations and for grants. Things are moving along!

We were so relieved with how our home visit went! Much better than we feared. It was very nerve wracking to have someone inspect our home, especially with so much riding on it! Scott got all our smoke detectors and fire extinguisher installed. Andrea cleaned, decorated for Christmas, and made some snacks. We really enjoyed meeting Chrys! She is so nice. First, she interviewed Michael, which she said went perfectly, then we went through all the documents she requested (she was so helpful in counseling us on what to expect ahead of time!). In case you're curious, here is the list of documents we had to produce:

Finally, we took her on a tour of our house. She told me I didn't need to clean that much, that it only had to look "lived in" but that means different things to different people! I prefer to err on the side of too clean, than too messy. She had all good things to say, much to our relief! We didn't have to have child locks or have the nursery set up yet, since we don't know when we'll get to bring our baby home yet. 

Our 2nd and final visit for the home study  will be a 3 hour interview with Chrys and just us two answering questions about our upbringing, our marriage, our families, and how we plan to parent. We will have more visits with her after we bring baby home, but that will depend on which state baby is born in. 

We appreciate all the love and prayers that have carried us this far and could use more prayers to cover us until our adoption is final! ♥️ 

Adoption Home Study

Happy Friday!! Just wanted to give you guys an update on where we're at on our adoption process. We have our first home study visit at our home next Wednesday, Dec 11th, so we’ve been very busy getting ready for that! The social worker (Chrys Bitting) will tour the house and interview Scott, me, and my 16 year old stepson. Our 2nd visit will be in Chrys's office in Des Moines and then she’ll write up a report letting us know if we’re approved. It should take about 1-2 months to complete. Exciting!! Also, nerve-wracking!! 

We’ve been busy taking pictures of donations left over from the yard sale to sell online, de-cluttering/organizing a bit, cleaning, doing fall yard work, gathering home study documents, installing some extra smoke detectors, getting some Christmas shopping done, and switching out fall and Christmas decorations. Will be very glad to relax a little next weekend!! Scott's going hunting and I'm doing some fun stuff at the church like singing Christmas carols at nursing homes and helping with the kids' PJ party!! Love this time of year!!

Merry Christmas everyone!! Isn't this baby adorable?! This could be in our future next year!!

Update on Donations from Yard Sale!

I finally finished up valuing our yard sale leftovers that we donated to multiple charities! Turbo Tax has this great online tool called Its Deductible that lets you keep track of your donations throughout the year and estimate the value of donations to make it easier at tax time. Where has this been all my life!?

The Grand Total was $8,411.50!! Wowza!! It all added up and it was totally worth tracking all of it for our tax return!! Since charitable donations reduce your taxable income, it's not dollar for dollar tax savings, but that means we will see about $2000 in tax savings. That will help us so much! Thank you again to all of our friends and family who donated their items to our sale!!

Note: the donation to Cross Point Church was the clothes and coats for Lakota Journey.

T-shirt Adoption Fundraiser!!

Attention Friends and Family! Here is our next fundraiser to help us adopt a baby!! Please consider buying a t-shirt designed by Fund the Nations to help us raise funds within the next 2 weeks!! The last day for orders is Fri, Dec 6th. You get a cool shirt that promotes adoption and we get a portion of the cost to help us pay adoption expenses. It's a win-win!

Here’s some trivia: how many of these superheroes did you know were adopted? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Superheroes_who_are_adopted

Do you know someone who has adopted a child, has been adopted themselves, or has a loved one who has been adopted? Please share this link with them! OR, this would be the perfect gift for them for the holidays. :) We are wrapping up this fundraiser early enough to allow time for shipment before Dec 25th.

It's easy to order! You click the link, select the color shirt, select the size, click add to cart, then you can click continue shopping to add more or you can click checkout, then enter your contact and payment information, and they will ship it right to you!

We have a big goal of $2000 so we can hire our adoption consultant to get advice on our home study and adoption profile, and eventually help us apply for grants and birth mom situations. We need to sell at least 200 shirts to achieve this goal! We sincerely appreciate your purchase!!

Here’s the link to buy a shirt: scottandandreasadoptionfundraiser.bigcartel.com

Details (also included in the link):

Shirt Color: Heather Midnight Navy or Solid Black

Letters: White

Fabric Blend: 52/48 cotton, polyester blend

Adult T-shirts - $18 plus shipping

Sizing: XS-4XL

*2XL and larger are an additional $2 per shirt

Youth T-shirts - $19 plus shipping

Sizing: M-L

If you need youth size small shirts (or smaller) then we will need to create a completely separate youth order. Let me know if you're interested and I'll see what I can do! We need at least 13 orders to place the order.

Shipping - $5.99

Each additional shirt you add to your order is $1 more (example: 2 shirts is $6.99 shipping)

**Additional shipping charges do apply for Canada, Hawaii, and Alaska

***All prices given are in US currency.

Leftover Donations: Making the Most of Our Blessings

It's been a busy couple of weeks since the yard sale!! I've been returning borrowed tables and canopies and itemizing leftover donations. Because of our seriously generous friends who donated items for our sale, we had a TON of donations leftover, which I felt compelled/responsible/called to donate to organizations that are important to us and to ensure that we receive the tax deductions on our tax return. Our friends donated their items to us, giving up their own tax deductions, hoping it would help us adopt our baby, so I want as much of the donations going towards our adoption as possible. Tax savings = more money to adopt our baby!!

I spent a lot of time thoughtfully and prayerfully considering which non-profits our donations would go to, and in the process, I learned more about these wonderful organizations in our community! I feel so grateful that I was able to contribute to them! Read on to learn about the places who received all of our leftover donations and their important missions. Much more important than emptying my garage so I can park in it this winter, but that is a huge plus. :)

The Salvation Army is great because it's a Christian organization and they donate the items they can't sell to people who need them, rather than just throwing them away, like other organizations do. They received our furniture, household, and kitchen items.
>>>Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/pg/RiverValleyARC/about/?ref=page_internal.

Lakota Journey is an important mission we support at Cross Point Church. A group of ladies drove over to the Indian reservation in South Dakota recently to visit them and provide new coats and gently used clothing for the people this ministry serves, so I pulled some coats and cute/warm winter clothes out of our leftover donations for them to stuff in their mini van (pictured below).
>>>Check them out at https://www.lakotajourney.org/purpose.

Pregnancy Resources is an organization in Davenport that provides free resources to moms and dads to help them when they don't have what they need to raise their child. They provide so many different resources, including parenting training, diapers, and free ultrasounds! We donated baby items, stuffed animals, and clothes for ages 0-3T to them.
>>>Check them out at https://qcpregnancy.org/
or https://www.facebook.com/pg/PRQuadCities/about/?ref=page_internal.
>>>More info about the services they provide in this interview (both clips are very informative!!!): https://wqad.com/2019/02/12/coffee-break-how-pregnancy-resources-supports-the-qc-community/.

Life's Little Treasures is a thrift store with lots of cute stuff of all kinds on Brady St in Davenport which donates all proceeds to QC Right to Life. They received our kids' clothes and toys for ages 4T+ and some framed art. I bought my cute little "Welcome" pot holder for my front porch there!
>>>Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/pg/LifesLittleTreasuresResaleShop/about/?ref=page_internal

Closet 2 Closet is an organization in Rock Island that was built, in part, through the adoption of preteen foster children. They offer, free of charge, all-season clothing, accessories, and hygiene items exclusively for foster teens. They will be receiving our adult clothes, shoes, and bags from our leftover donations after I deliver them tomorrow (and then my garage will finally be empty!!). 
>>>Check them out at http://www.closet2closet.org/about.php
or https://www.facebook.com/QCCloset2Closet/.

Dress For Success is another awesome organization that provides professional work clothes and guidance to help women get jobs and support themselves. They received some very nice dresses, blazers, and dress shoes out of our leftover donations.
>>>Check them out at https://quadcities.dressforsuccess.org/about-us/
or https://www.facebook.com/pg/dfsqc/about/?ref=page_internal

Bettendorf Public Library is where my stepsons spent a lot of time after school before they got licenses and vehicles, so they received 10 boxes of books! Note: books are generally not deductible on your tax return, but a library is always a good cause! Another good cause is the Rock Island County Jail. A lady from work is collecting paperback books for a Christian ministry that supports this jail, so I pulled out 2 boxes of paperbacks to give her! Note: I did let my stepdad Dan who owns The Source Books used bookstore in downtown Davenport have first dibs on what he can sell at his store. This picture is what was left AFTER he picked out what he wanted!! We had TONS of books!! I built up some serious ab muscles hauling these boxes around, haha!

We also set aside several higher value donations that we thought would sell better online, so we're still working on getting prices set and pictures taken and loaded online. Expect to see lots of Facebook Marketplace posts from me soon! Planning to start on that next week! We're getting closer to bringing our baby home!!

Tips on Donations to Multiple Charities

1. If you have the time and desire, consider donating your leftover items to multiple nonprofit charities that are important to you or you know have the greatest needs. Google has a wealth of information as well as Facebook. It feels awesome when you can spread the love!
2. When boxing up leftovers from your garage sale, decide which types of items are going to which charity and write on top of the box which charity the items go to. Be sure to set boxes going to the same charity in the same spot and keep them separate from the boxes for other charities. This will make it helpful for when you are ready to itemize (write down the types of items and the number of each type) and then drop off donations.
3. Be sure to itemize the donations for your tax return at home or take pictures of the items to itemize later. There is often not enough time to itemize when you're at the site of donation.
4. Be sure to ask for a receipt for your donations just in case you were to ever get audited by the IRS someday. Keep your itemized list attached to your receipt in your taxes folder.
5. The highest value items for tax deductions would be clothing, shoes, bags, coats, bedding, rugs, lamps, TV's, and furniture. Books are not tax-deductible with a few exceptions, so be sure to do your research. Here are some tips on valuing donations:  https://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/valuation-guide-for-donated-goods.aspx  https://satruck.org/Home/DonationValueGuide
6. Turbo Tax has an online tool that helps you value and keep track of your donations throughout the year to make it easier to file your tax return: https://itsdeductibleonline.intuit.com/
7. After you've itemized the items in a box, place a yard sale sticker on the side (or some kind of sticker) so you'll know if you've already gone through the box. I went through my boxes in my living room over a couple of weeks while watching Grey's Anatomy. Highly recommend! Hehe

Our Yard Sale Success!!

You guys...God provided for us in a huge way...we raised $2900 this past weekend on our yard sale and bake sale!! Amazing!!! We are so, so grateful!! We could not have done any of it without our amazing volunteers who worked their butts off, friends who donated items, and friends who loaned us tables and canopies!!! It was SO MUCH work, but wonderful to know it was all worth it! We felt very loved and encouraged that so many could help us bring our baby home.

Speaking of our friends who donated items...we FILLED a 26 foot U-Haul with donations from over 15 families!! Thank goodness we had just enough tables!! We sold about 2/3 of the donations, even though it started storming around 2pm on Saturday. The canopies seriously came in handy! They gave us time to get the donations inside so they weren't ruined. Friday was our biggest day, but we still made about $800 on Saturday! We made another $100 on Sunday selling leftover baked goods items at church...wonderful idea and so sweet of our friends to coordinate! We were too exhausted to go anywhere Sunday except to return the U-Haul, haha! Speaking of which...a kind soul paid for half of our truck rental!! We really felt God's presence and love throughout the whole weekend! We are truly blessed :)

We decided not to do another sale since we don't have space to store leftover donations until Spring, so we decided to donate the leftovers. We decided to split them between Salvation Army (household items and furniture), Pregnancy Resources - a local nonprofit that provides resources to people who decide to parent but can't afford it (kids clothes, toys, and baby items), and Closet 2 Closet - a local non-profit who provides clothes for teenage foster kids (adult clothes and bags). We will keep receipts for our tax return of course. :) We also held back several high value items to sell online for the adoption fund, so we will likely have even more sales coming! Will keep ya'll posted on the grand total!

What's next: 1) finish itemizing receipts and running donations to charities 2) sell leftover donations online 3) get our house decluttered and cleaned up 4) start our home study (which we can afford now, YAY!!!)  5) start our next fundraiser to raise the rest of our $5000 goal so we can hire our Christian Adoption Consultant, apply for grants, and start applying for birth mom situations!

We talked to a lady at our sale who works at the Davenport Knights of Columbus, and she gave us a great idea: host a trivia night fundraiser! She thinks we could get a discount on the space, so we're going to look into that next! That would be so much fun and hopefully less work for our friends and family. :) Check out all these donations we had!! It was wonderful how kind and generous most people were. It was exhausting, but at the end of the weekend, our hearts were overflowing.

  

 

Yard Sale Week!!

Get excited!! It's yard sale week!! I have been busy picking up donations, sorting donations into Boxes by category, deciding on my plan for pricing items, ordering balloons, buying supplies and making signs. I feel like I should post a blog after all this busyness dies down to share what all I've learned. It's all coming together nicely! I really could not have done this without the help of some really amazing friends and God's grace. We are so so blessed!! Hope to see some of you Thursday night to help set up or at the sale Friday and Saturday!

Our front porch turned out to be a good space for sorting donations while it's raining!

Look at all those donations!

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs 😁👍

And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. Lots of sign making to do tonight and tomorrow! 

New Location and Times for the Garage/Yard Sale!!

We have a new location and times for our Garage/Yard Sale!! Dates are the same. We moved it to our church parking lot to give us more space for all the donations!! Also planning to start Friday a little later so we have time to set it all up. I am SO excited about this 😀💗

Garage Sale is coming along!!

Happy Sunday! Just thought I'd give everyone an update on our garage sale progress. My friend Karin, my sister Jen, and my niece Tricia took advantage of the gorgeous weather yesterday and came over to help organize donations by boxing up like items for a couple of hours and we got a lot done! Yayyy!!! But still have a lot to do! We have donations from 10 families and have a whole month to collect more!! This is gonna be a sale you DON'T want to miss!!

Items collected so far:

• Men, women, and children's clothes and coats
• Kitchen appliances
• Bags, purses, and wallets
• Halloween costumes
• Christmas decorations 
• Baby items
• Household items: organizers, foot/back massages, wine glasses, serving dishes
• Health & beauty: lotions, curling irons, mirrors
• Home decor: pictures, lamps, baskets, candles
• Lots of books for kids and grownups
• Pet cages/carriers
• Craft supplies: ribbons, jars, fabric
• Furniture: book shelves, chairs
• Kids toys, puzzles, and games 

Baked goods planned: 

• Caramel Pecan chocolate chips cookies and Chocolate cake
• Caramels and pies
• Pumpkin muffins, Apple streusel muffins, blueberry muffins, banana bread muffins
• Cocoa Puffs cookies, peanut butter cookies, call Mama peanut blossom cookies, pumpkin dark chocolate chip cookies and sugar cookies