One Last Fundraiser

Y'all, have I mentioned how amazing my husband is? 'Cause he is pretty much the bee's knees. He works so hard to support our family, and then comes home and is about the best father I have ever seen. He gives every last drop of himself to his family and his patients, and there is not one ounce of selfishness in him. I think he's pretty cute too!


What does this have to do with the title of this post, you ask? Well, my husband is so wonderful that when I came up with the bright idea for him to run the 13.1 mile Indy 500 Mini-Marathon and try to get family and friends to sponsor him per mile as a fundraiser, he didn't say, "If that's such a good idea, why don't you do it?" (Probably because he knew I would die prior to the finish-possibly prior to the one mile mark-and leave all of our children motherless). Nope, he said, "Sure! I would love to run it!" So he has been training his legs off, and next Saturday is the big day!

This is what we sent out to select family and friends:

Dear Family and Friends,

As most of you probably are aware, our family began a journey to adopt a child from Ethiopia last August. After months of gathering documents, proving ourselves capable parents, petitioning the government to allow us to bring a child home, and waiting to be matched, we received a referral for a gorgeous baby girl in February. We have decided to name her Gabrielle Elise, and she is turning 6 months old today! We are waiting for our court date in Ethiopia, at which time we will become her legal parents. We hope to hear in the next week or so when that will be, and anticipate traveling there in early to mid-June. After our court date, we will have to leave Gabby for 6-10 weeks while we wait for her paperwork to be approved by the US Embassy. Once it is, we will travel one more time and finally get to bring her home!

As you might imagine, the process of adopting internationally is not inexpensive. This is something we believe we were called to do, and so far, the money we have needed has been there. We estimate we have spent $17,000 so far, and expect our travel expenses for the two trips to be another $11,000. While we have a good chunk of that money saved, we do not have enough to complete both trips at this time. We are writing today to ask if you might consider helping us.

As a fundraiser, Chad will be running in the Indianapolis 500 Mini-Marathon on May 7th. This 13.1 mile race is the largest half-marathon in the country, with 35,000 participants. We are asking you to consider sponsoring him in this race. Would you be willing to give a donation of $1, $2, or $5 per mile run? Or perhaps a flat donation? Every penny raised will go towards the remainder of our adoption expenses, and if we raise more money than we still need for our travel, we will use it to buy supplies to be donated to the orphanages in Ethiopia. To contribute, you can donate through PayPal (see the Donate button to the right), or if you would prefer to mail a check, please message me at janasolomon@hotmail.com.

Thank you for your thoughtful consideration. Even if you aren’t able to contribute at this time, we would appreciate your prayers as we complete this journey. We can’t wait to introduce Gabby to all of you SOON!

Love,
Chad and Jana

Asking people to help support us in this endeavor has been the most humbling thing I've ever done. I HATED sending that e-mail. But we still believe that all of us are called to do something to help the orphans in this world, although we know not all are called to adopt. I am very glad to announce that this will be our last fundraiser and I can stop hitting people up for money! If you did not receive this letter but would like to sponsor Chad, please follow either of the ways mentioned above. Thank you!

I Want...

a court date already!!!!! Still waiting. Feeling impatient. Glad that two other children, two dogs, and all the other "stuff" that fills our lives is keeping us busy. Ready to know the day we will get to meet our sweet girl. Dying to get a court date, preferably one that is not TOO far away.

That is all.

Pictures from the Dance

I want to write a post about the wonderful baby shower I was thrown this past weekend, but first I must post some pictures from our fundraiser. I've been so busy I just finally found time to upload them!

One of Griffin's many girlfriends from school came with her family, and she and Griffin danced quite a bit. He had a blast!


Most of our dancers were kids, though some brave adults got out on the floor too!


Cooper was simply exhausted from busting the moves :)


The dessert buffet about halfway through the night. We had so many wonderfully delicious treats made for the event by friends and family. Everything was awesome! One of the youth from the church is super into making cupcakes, and she made the most gorgeous (and delicious) cupcakes with fondant hearts with "Love Makes a Family" written on them. They were AMAZING! And of course I totally forgot to get a picture :(


The winners of a beautiful pear tree donated for the silent auction! That was such a huge success. Sarah and I really didn't know what to expect from the auction, but it raised a ton of money and people seemed to really enjoy it as well.


Again, we are so thankful to everyone who supported the event in any way. We had a lot of fun planning it, and were so glad that everyone seemed to have fun at it. It was especially neat that it was such a "family" event, since that's kind of what this whole thing is all about! :)

Success!

Well, our dance was a success!! All of that worrying was indeed for nothing, as it went better than we had ever expected! I don't have exact numbers, but we sold around 200 tickets, and then our silent auction was a much bigger success than we ever dreamed. When all is said and done, I think the total raised will be over $3,000, to be split between the Taylor family and ours. We are thrilled, and excited that the cost of one plane ticket was almost paid for in one night!

So many thank you's to hand out: to the friends and family who came out to support us and show their love, to the friends and family who bought tickets even though they couldn't be there, to the people who bid like crazy on the silent auction items, to those who baked delicious treats for the dessert buffet, to my dad for helping us find auction items, to our church for allowing us to have the event there, to all of the donors of silent auction items, and especially to Sarah Taylor for asking us to do the fundraiser with them and for being such an awesome partner throughout the process!

AND, not only was the night a financial success, but I think it was a lot of fun! There was dancing (mostly by the under age 10 set :), doorprizes, a dessert buffet so huge that despite everyone's best efforts to clean it out, there were a lot of leftovers, and a silent auction room constantly crowded with people stalking their bids!

Thank you, thank you, thanks for your support and love!

Why So Glum, Chum?

I'm having another one of those "woe is me" kind of days today :( It's not any one thing, but a few different things all kind of combining to make me feel glum.

I have a tendency to completely freak out whenever I have a party or event, and convince myself that no one is going to come. Every birthday party I have for one of the boys, every Pampered Chef/Discovery Toys/etc. party, even (if you remember back to last October) our big garage sale fundraiser. It's embarassing to admit what a freak I am, but hey, why not share that with the world, right?! What I should have learned by now is that usually people do indeed come, and in fact more often I am blown away by the attendance and success of the event. Witness the $2,500 raised at that garage sale I was convinced no one was coming to! So now we are having this dance fundraiser on Saturday, and I am getting myself all worried again that not many people will come, that all the hard work Sarah and I have put into it will be for naught, and on and on... I really am my own worst enemy! Combine that with the shower my BFF is having for me just one week later, which only a very small percent of guests have RSVPed for, and I think I've decided to throw my very own pity party freak out instead. Sigh... I am sure both events will be fantastic, but I still always seem to need to worry first. I wish I could skip that step!

I think part of my feeling weird about the shower is that when she asked to have one for me and started looking at dates, we were so hopeful we would be traveling in May, so we decided on April to make sure our court date didn't interfere with it. And now here we are almost to mid-April, and not only are we not close to traveling, we don't even have our court date yet. I feel a little awkward, I guess. And things still seem to be very much up in the air in Ethiopia right now.

If you remember my posts from early March, there was much worry about a proposal from MOWA, the ministry in Ethiopia that must send a letter to the court approving all matches between parents and child. They claimed they were going to start writing only 5 letters per day instead of 40-50, everyone freaked out (me most definitely included), and we worried about significant delays. But then we kept hearing great things about progress being made and things seeming to stay as they had been, so I quit worrying about it. Well, a few days ago the US State Department posted a new notice, saying that although MOWA had been working quite quickly over the past few weeks, that was just to clear the backlog of cases, and all new cases submitted for court would probably be processed at the 5 per day plan. Ouch. Since they are still working on the old cases at a fast pace, it remains to be seen how all of this plays out for real, but understandably, I am freaking out a bit and very nervous about what this means for us. It sounds like it won't be as bad as we feared originally, since they are clearing out the huge backlog and cases with court dates through early May will most likely be taken care of. But there will still be a bunch of cases before ours (assuming they even handle them in a "first come, first served" order-never a guarantee). Our main concern right now is that courts close for most of August and September, and we really, really, really want to pass court before that. It seemed like it would be easy to do. Several families with our agency who were submitted for court on March 9th (so 19 days before us) got their May 25th court date on Monday. Following that logic, we were/are hopeful that we might get a date for mid-June by the end of April. Even if our MOWA letter were missing at the court date, we figured having a 6-7 week cushion before the court closed would be plenty of time to pass. But if this slowdown really occurs, even if we have a June court date (Please God!), there is no guarantee our letter will come before August. Sigh... And of course, this could all worry us and make us crazy and then everything could still be fine. I would happily take the worry now for that to be the case later! :)

Oh, and, although we are hoping and praying more than anything that we do receive a June court date, we also just learned that June starts the peak travel season, and our plane tickets will probably be $500 each more than we had been thinking. So, you see, pretty much everything is designed to make me completely bonkers right now!

I tell you, this adoption process is a remarkable one. It is so filled with the highest of highs, and then just as quickly come the lowest of lows. I feel like I have been worried and anxious for more than a month now. Here's hoping some good and reassuring news comes soon.

I Want to Dance With Somebody...

With somebody who loves me! (I really hope you heard that in your head a la Whitney Houston, otherwise I bet it was just weird :) What are you doing a week from tonight? Nothing? Trying to find something fun to do with bored kids? Looking to support two nice families as they bring sweet Ethiopian babies home? Well, you are in luck! I have a great way to spend a Saturday night!

Next Saturday from 6:30-9 pm, please consider joining us at our "Love Makes a Family" Spring Dance. It's being held at our church, Mt. Auburn United Methodist at SR 135 and Stones Crossing in Greenwood. All money raised goes directly to our adoption travel expenses and the adoption expenses of our awesome friends, the Taylor family. They adopted their beautiful daughter Mia in 2009 from Ethiopia, and are in the process of adopting a baby boy this time. Tickets are $5 per person, with a maximum of $25 per family. There will be dancing (but it is NOT required!!), a huge dessert buffet full of cakes, cookies, pies, and other treats, activities for the kids, and a silent auction filled with great items to bid on.

Some of the goodies we have, just to tempt you:
*A private wine tasting for 20 people at Mallow Run Winery
*A private suite for an Indiana Fever game
*Photo packages from 3 different Indianapolis photographers
*gift certificates for restaurants, salons, and other area businesses
*beautiful handmade items
*and lots more!

If you haven't already purchased your tickets, you can do so by using the link to the right, or by emailing taylor-hennessyadoption@hotmail.com. If you'd like to help us out by bringing a dessert of any kind, just send us an email letting us know what you'd like to bring. Tickets will be available at the door as well. Please, please share this info with friends and family who might enjoy a night of family entertainment while supporting a good cause. Thanks so much for supporting us!