Summer, where are you going???

Wow, can you believe that it's already the end of July?!?!?  Crazy stuff!  July is an absolute nuts month around our house.  Both the Big Guy and Little Lady's birthdays are in July, so we have lots of celebrating to do!  And this year, the celebrating started while with family in Michigan....

And kept going....

And going!!!

To think that Big Man's birthday isn't actually until Thursday of this week, and that we are going to be doing this all over again in a few days is more than this momma can handle!  This month has been exhausting!  The great part about being so busy this last month, is that I actually haven't had the chance to obsess over our LOA (Letter of Acceptance,) wait time.  We are currently on day 47 of our wait...not like anyone is counting around here or anything!  The way things have been running lately, wait times have been between 70-90 days.  I'm expecting and hoping to hear something by the time Big Man starts school next month.  

In the meantime, a few things.  Again, a HUGE THANK YOU to all who were involved in any way with our Both Hands project.  Still blows my mind!  Sponsorships are still coming in, which you can do so until we are fully funded.  The link with instructions on how to sponsor the day are at our Both Hands website here.   Before it got too late, we wanted to get our thank you notes out to all of those involved, (so those of you who have been involved, SPOILER ALERT!)  This is the pic we have decided on:

Coming soon to a house near you!

Lastly, I would ask that you be praying for our process.  I cannot disclose the entire situation, but please be praying that everything stays on track in terms of our adoption timeline.  There may be something involved that may cause our process to be set back by months, and we are fervently praying that this will not be the case, and that our little man will be home with us by the holidays this year.  

Thanks to all of you!  Hopefully my next post will have something to do with receiving our LOA!  YAY!!!!

Part 2 - Both Hands Project Day Recap!

First and foremost, a huge THANK YOU goes to all of our family and friends who supported us on this very special day.  To everyone from those who were on our team who received sponsors for the day, those who worked beside us because they have a love for serving others, and to those of you reading this who have sponsored this event.  Both our family and Ms. Brenda have been doubly blessed by this day!

To start the day, we were  I was extremely nervous about the chance of rain.  They were only saying that it was about 30-40%, but here in good ol' Ohio this week, it has been very warm and humid, which typically leads to pop up afternoon showers.  Pop up showers + newly stained fence and shutters = bad news!!  Thankfully, the Lord blessed us with a beautiful day!  The day actually got nicer as it went on!  By the time we left for the day, there was nothing but sunny skies!  We descended upon Ms. Brenda's house around 9:00 in the morning and gathered everyone around Ms. Brenda for a time of prayer for the day.  We then got our job assignments from the Mister, sent Ms. Brenda on her way for a day at the spa, and were down to work!  We had a wonderful group of volunteers who gave up all or part of their day to come and help us serve Ms. Brenda.  It was absolutely awesome to see!  We all kept saying how much we felt like we were on a mini version of Extreme Home Makeover!

The fence turned out wonderful, the garage was cleaned and organized, (however not without at least 20-30 people stopping to ask if we were having a garage sale!)  The garage ceiling was scraped and repainted, wallpaper was stripped and the hallway was repainted, shutters were repainted, the main living space was deep cleaned, items were prepared and priced for a garage sale, and lots and lots of bush trimming and mulching happened!  We also managed to get half way through the process of removing wallpaper and painting the downstairs bathroom, however, the aquarium wallpaper proved to be a little more of a challenge for us than expected.  Nemo wasn't going down without a fight, people!  Michael and I promised to go and finish the job within the next few weeks.

My nemesis...the fish wallpaper

All in all, it was an AWESOME day!  We were so beyond blessed to have had the opportunity to serve Ms. Brenda for the day.  Again, thank you to everyone who was involved in the day and for all of your prayers surrounding the day!  

Several individuals have already mentioned to us that they had forgotten to send in their sponsorship amounts prior to the project, and were wondering if they could still do so.  The answer is definitely YES!  Our account on the Both Hands website stays open until we are fully supported.  When that day comes, believe me, you will ALL know about it!  

If you are interested in a tax deductible donation, please either go to www.bothhandsfoundation.org/schaadt to donate electronically, or send in your donation amounts to the address below.  Thanks again!

Lifesong for Orphans

PO Box 40

Gridley, IL 61744

Write in the memo line: Preference Schaadt #4556

So without further adieu, why don't you just take a peek and see what we were up to yesterday??

Part 1 - Weeks Leading up to Both Hands

Wow!  SO much has happened since our last post that I suppose we should update everyone, not only on how awesome our Both Hands project was, but on all of the amazing adoption process updates as well!  

First and foremost, I had mentioned in our last post that our Dossier was sent to China.  It was officially logged in to the system on June 11th.  This date is referred to as your LID, (Log in Date,) in the adoption world.  We are hoping to get our Letter of Acceptance, (LOA,) for our little man by the first part of August. Anything after that would be amazing, and anything after that I would prefer not to discuss at this time ;)

This past month with the project, I, (Erin,) have been running around like a crazy woman trying to coordinate everything for our big day.  This included getting all of the sponsorship letters out to not only the members of our core team who live out of town so they could send them out to their sponsors, but also to all of the individuals that we were mailing letters to.  Once the letters were gone, I then moved on to finding sponsors within the community to help pay for our work supplies, lunch, etc.  It was amazing to see how God worked through this portion of our project.  A sweet new friend from the local adoption community donated our breakfast, and lunch was donated to us by both Bada Bing Pizza and Papa Johns, which was awesome!  Wooster Brush, in Wooster, Ohio donated our painting supplies, and Home Depot donated ALL of our other supplies!  This included stain, paint, mulch, etc.  It.was.amazing!  When the assistant manager told me the news, I wanted to cry, laugh, hug him all at the same time. Don't worry, I refrained!   When I saw our quote with all of our supplies totaled up to an amount that would've been a lot for us to have to pay, with the word PAID on it, it instantly made me think of the cross.  We all had a list of sins too long for any of us to cover ourselves, and Jesus stamped out PAID with His blood on our lists.  Amazing!  So thankful that God is continually receiving all of the glory throughout this process!  We had to pick up a few extra items during the day, but God also provided as several workers chipped in to cover the majority of those costs as well!  

Oh, and on the glorious day this past week when Home Depot so graciously decided to pay our bill, we also received an email that informed us that we received a grant for our adoption from an organization called the JSC Foundation!  Knock my little socks off!  We only applied for this one grant since we have focused almost all of our time on our Both Hands project, so we were thinking we wouldn't have much of a shot.  Of course God had different plans, and gave us the one-two punch with both the Home Depot donation and this email in one day!  So completely amazing!  

Part 2 - Both Hands Project Day Recap is on the way!

Both Hands!!

The Mister and I are over the moon beyond excited to announce that we have been approved for a Both Hands project!  Since a lot almost all of you have never heard of Both Hands, or a project with them, let me take a minute to break it down for you!

Both Hands is an organization that was created to help adoptive families serve others while in the process of their adoption as a means of helping to bring home their little one.  The foundation of the project centers around James 1:27, which tells us to look after widows and orphans.  What this means is that we create a group of family and friends to be on our team, and this group gets "sponsored," from their family and friends to help us work at a local widow's home for the day.  Our team members get sponsored for the day like someone would get sponsors for a walk-a-thon or something similar.  The most AWESOME part about this project though, is that we get to spend a day with those we love, loving on a sweet widow in the community who needs our help, all while raising funds to help us bring home our little man!  100% of all proceeds raised will go towards bringing our son home to us from China!  Wow, I just don't think it could get any better! A wonderful friend of ours introduced us to the Both Hands project last spring, and we fell in love with the idea.  This fall, we actually were able to help support another friend's project, and that completely sealed the deal!  We wanted in too!  

The widow we have selected lives in our community and attends our church.  She has no local family, and her house is in need of many repairs.  She is also getting ready to downsize, so we want to help her get ready for the sale of her home as well!  She is a wonderful woman, and we are so excited to get to bless her for a day!  

Do you want in too?  If you have gotten fired up like I am about this awesome opportunity, there are definitely ways that you can help!  

Pray.  Pray for things like extra helping hands on the work day, materials and supplies to be provided, and of course for no rain!  Also, please pray that God blesses this project in the way that He sees fit.  

Volunteer. If you want to get more involved, please feel free to consider volunteering to work the day of the project, which is going to be June 28th.  Both Hands has created a Facebook page for our event, which you can go to at https://www.facebook.com/events/296604640520636/.  At this page, you can sign up to attend the project and get down and dirty with us!

Donate.  Please consider sponsoring us on our work day.  We have already given and/or raised about $12,000 towards our adoption, however, we are still about $20,000 away from what we will need in order to bring our little man home.  Any amount given brings us one step closer to having our little man in our arms!  Some of you reading this will be receiving a letter in the mail either from our family, or from one of our team members.  There will be instructions on how to either mail in a donation, or donate online at http://www.bothhandsfoundation.org/schaadt.  If you are that excited and just cannot wait for your letter to arrive in the mail, or will just forget if you don't take action now, please by all means feel free to go to our Both Hands link!  Both the online donate button is ready for use, and the Both Hands mailing address is on that site as well.  All donations are tax deductible as well...bonus!  Also, if you have any extra work supplies laying around that you have no use for, I will be soon posting a list of items needed for the project date on our project website noted above.

We are so so so excited for this project, and know that it will be a day full of memories, not only for our team, but also for our widow as well!  In other news, our dossier did officially make it to China on Monday of this weekl!  YAY!  We are waiting to hear when we are logged into the computer system, which begins our loooong wait.  

More updates to come soon!!!

DTC!!!!!!!!!!!!

WE ARE DTC!!!!!!!!  For all you non-Chinese adoption obsessed people, that stands for Dossier to China.  I think I have mentioned in posts past that our dossier is all of our certified and authenticated documents that we have spent the last 6 months running all over Michigan and Ohio to gather notaries on, taking them onto Columbus to the Secretary of State's office for special authentication, only to tearfully send them off to Washington D.C. to spend a week getting even more authentications and certifications completed on them! Yes, I did actually cry after these precious pieces of paper were in Fed Ex's hands earlier this month.  We send them off to Washington D.C. to a courier service who actually walked them into the offices where they needed to go for certification.  When I was telling the courier over the phone that I cried when I sent them off to him, he didn't laugh at me as I had expected him to.  He simply said, "...to an adoptive parent, until you get your child in your arms, those documents are all you have of your child, and so you cling onto them as if they are one."  That really stuck to me, and I'm sure any adoptive parent can relate to those words.  All of those precious hours spent collecting that information that gets us one step closer to getting our little man in our arms.  Gone.  It was as though I was leaving my child for a week instead of just a set of papers!

Once the dossier left Washington D.C., it went straight onto our agency in Washington.  It arrived there safely late last week, but of course with the holiday, they weren't able to add what they needed to until this week.  With that being said, at about 6pm last night, I received the most glorious Fed Ex tracking email that I have ever received...in Chinese!  It looks as though our dossier should be arriving in China on June 3rd.  Once it arrives, we will then be looking to be notified of our LID, or Log In Date.  This is the date that our dossier is logged into their system, and that is when we start to wait for our LOA, or Letter of Acceptance to arrive on our doorstep.  This is simply a letter from the Chinese government that asks us if we are wanting to move forward with this adoption process.  I know what you are thinking...really?  I know, formalities...ugh! This LOA has been trending for others anywhere from 35-100ish days after receiving their LID.  So...it will be a looooooong summer!   Not really, we are actually busy as ever, and I'm hoping if we keep busy, we don't get wrapped up in our wait!  Once we receive our LOA, they say it is typically around 8-12 weeks from that point to when you actually get on a plane for China!  Whoo hooo!!!

That's all for now, but we have a VERY exciting part 2 to this post that you will want to stay tuned for!  If you have been praying for us, please pray for our little man, for his safety and physical health.  Also for the protection of our documents as they travel to China, and for a speedy processing of them!

Birthday Boy!

Today is our little man's 3rd birthday!  A day that I feel mixed emotions towards, as I have been thinking of May 5th for some time now in my head.  Birthdays are great days around our house.  I mean, your birthday around here is a BIG deal!  But as I rose out of bed this morning, I had a heavy heart knowing that our little man was alone for his birthday.  Not alone in the literal sense, but alone in the sense that no one celebrated his most very special day.  I've read that often times in orphanages, they don't celebrate each child's birthday because there are just too many kids to make that possible.  Just breaks my heart.  On the other hand, it does make this momma's heart happy to know that this is the LAST birthday that our little guy will be alone, and that makes me smile!

As an early birthday gift for our little man, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office decided to send us our approval letter for our I800A, which also magically turned into the I797C.  Insert ooohhhs and ahhhs here :)  So, our goal for this week is to get everything down to the Secretary of State's office for our final round of certification and to also get everything out to Washington D.C. to get authenticated by the U.S. government and Chinese Embassy.  Once these documents have gone through both, they will be overnighted to our agency in Washington, and then they will send our dossier to China!  I'm being optimistic and thinking that we have a shot of getting them there by our early June deadline if all goes well!  Please be praying for this next and very important step to go smoothly!

Once I'm finished sending things out Wednesday, then I'm going to be focusing on completing a few more grant applications and hopefully starting to get working on that top secret fundraiser that I may or may not have mentioned in my last post...I can't remember!

Thanks to all for all of your continued support and prayers!  We are so thankful to have such wonderful friends and family!

Amazing Love and an Update!!!

Easter season is so amazing and so emotional for me.  Even in thinking about how to write this post, I am still stumped for words because to be honest, I feel like there are no words to even encapsulate what Easter means to us as Christians, or to even truly grasp the reality of the emotions and the situations that Jesus felt and experienced during the last days of His life on Earth.  It is completely overwhelming for me to consider, and it brings me to tears every single time.  Yes, I have to admit, I have become "the crier," in church.  Not sure if there is actually a label for different types of people during praise and worship, but that is what I am.  I find myself often times getting caught up on the words I am singing and the reality of the lyrics that speak of Jesus' death and the price He paid for me, and before I know it, I'm like a leaky faucet.  Jesus Christ came to Earth to die for our sins, and loves us in spite of you fill in the blank here.  All sins. Gone. Forever. All you need to do is ask for His free gift of salvation.  How overwhelming is that!?!?!  Hence the reason for my water works.  Now I'm not writing this to sound like some super awesome better than you type Christian, because that is totally NOT the case.  I think that God's grace has been something that even since becoming a mom I have just been taken back by.  I know I'm not anywhere close to being the perfect Christian, wife, mom, etc., but I know that there is grace waiting for me at the foot of the cross, and that grace is sufficient for me.

On another note, I have some adoption news!  Man, that was not a smooth transition!  As you know, we submitted our I800A form several weeks ago to US Immigration, and part of the process is getting fingerprinted...again.  So, tomorrow the Mister and I are heading to Columbus to get our fingerprints taken and to get all of our documents authenticated by the Secretary of States' office that we have gathered, gotten notarized, and gotten certificates for from the county clerk of courts stating that our notaries who notarized them are in fact notaries.  Yes, it was a looong process...and to be honest, I am completely paranoid about having to let those sweet little pieces of paper out of my sight when we will have to send out our dossier to D.C.  Almost considering driving them there myself!  Now, we have been assigned a date for fingerprinting, which is in another week, but I'm working that day, so we are going to press our luck and walk in tomorrow.  Please send prayers our way that they will accept us tomorrow, and that the lady who is in charge at the office, (who I heard is always super grumpy,) is in a great mood tomorrow and doesn't give us any hassle about our changing dates!  Now if we are successful in the fingerprinting tomorrow, I'm told this won't speed up our I800A approval, so I'm hoping we can have this by mid-May, and still be able to send our dossier to China by the first part of June..ahem....which also happens to be the exact time in which China is expecting this document to arrive from us.  We also got an application out this week for a project we are hoping to be approved for to help us to raise funds to bring our little man home.  It is an awesome opportunity to serve others while helping our little guy as well, so please pray for our request to be approved for the project.  I will unveil more soon!  Also, please continue to pray for our sweet boy as well.  This mama is growing more and more anxious as the days pass!  I have never in my life wanted to wish away the summer like I do now!