Growing Snowflowers

what is it worth to you?

What would you sacrifice to bring your child home? Would you sell a car, your house, your wedding ring? At this point I'd have to answer yes. Although it wouldn't be in our best interest to sell either our house or our car, especially since my 99 Subaru has seen better days and our house owes us more than what we paid for it (thanks to dishonest Sellers and the crappy real estate market and $60K of repairs after a storm and a flood). We have cleaned out our bank accounts, maxed out our credit cards and pretty much sold anything that wasn't nailed down to be able to bring our little girl home. Now that we are in the final stretch there is some pretty serious number crunching going on. We are short, not by much, just a few thousand dollars, but it is worrying. I have spent hours and hours writing grant applications, but we haven't heard anything, well, it would be silly to expect to hear, especially when there are thousands of families vying for a handful of grants. But you always hope, right until the last minute you hope.

So what I need from you are IDEAS...lots of ideas! What can I do to make it past the finish line, to raise that final $3000? I am already planning on putting anything I think is saleable on eBay...but what else? Where can I magic a few thousand from in a couple of months? I am not having any other ipod fundraisers, they were great, but we don't want to wear out our welcome! There is always tax time, and I'm pretty sure we will receive a small refund...but will it be enough?

I get emails from other adoptive families all the time, they have enough to raise a child but to find the additional funds in a short time is often much more difficult. It's not a question of not doing it because you don't have the money, why if everyone waited to have children until they could afford it then half the people I know wouldn't have kids! Yes I agree that you should save so that you can afford to adopt, but quite often families have exhausted all their finances with fertility treatments or failed adoptions. Yet, the desire to parent is so strong we will do whatever it takes to move forward. For Mike and I, life would be quite lovely with just Piper, we cannot complain, but there was a desire in our hearts so strong that we could not ignore, we knew we wanted to bring another child home. From the moment Piper was placed in our arms on that steamy October day in Southern China, and from the moment we gazed into the faces of dozens of children in the orphanage where Piper had spent her first 10 months we knew that it was meant to be; that we'd be back. People adopt for many reasons, ours was because we had the desire to parent, and we knew that there were many children in our world that did not have that luxury, and so we were led no further into the world of fertility treatments (even after our Doctors corrected my issue and gave us the green light) but our hearts were set on China, and to bring home one of the millions of children that needed a Mummy & Daddy.

I've heard of people voicing that fundraising for an adoption lacks taste or decorum, frankly I don't care about the few who bring that to our attention, what I do care about it our daughter, and I know she will flourish in our family, and I know we will give her everything she will ever need, and maybe even some things she just wants. We wont bow our heads, or lower our shoulders, we remain empowered as parents, inspired by adoption and blessed by our children. We were told not to rock the boat when we petitioned Mike's employer three years in a row with proposals for adoption benefits...it didn't stop us, and finally for 2008 the company agreed to implement a benefit...can you imagine how many children will find parents because of this? Our family is not just proud of how we were created, we are magnificently blessed!