It is Fall Y'all!

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I've finally came to admit it as much as I really hate to....

It is Fall!

The weather is cooler and the sky is filled with large fall clouds.  Leaves are starting to change and fall off of trees. I do not like it one bit.

For those of you who know me know I am 100% a summer girl.  I LOVE summer! I love everything about it; swimming on hot summer days, going to water slide parks, watching the kids catch fireflies, the longer days and cookouts. It is my favorite time of the year.

If I had it my way it would be summer all year round.  I always tell Jeff that I need to live someplace tropical but he quickly reminds me how much I dislike bugs and tells me how much bigger they are in tropical areas then I quickly change my mind.

BUT this year I am actually looking forward to Fall...Why you may be wondering?  Well, because as time marches by and seasons change we are getting closer and closer to Meiya.  Each passing day brings us a day closer to our precious little girl half way around this big beautiful world God created!

So I say Welcome Fall!!!  Hurry up Winter! (Yes, I just said that) We are ready to get on that big plane and travel to our daughter and bring her home.

It's HERE!!!

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Our I-797 came in the mail today!!!! Yes, our i800a was just approved on July 26 and today we got the approval in the mail!!!!  BIG DAY for the Phillis family! 

Children Who Wait....

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Hope is Fading from Allan Rosenow on Vimeo.

The Ball is Rolling...FINALLY!

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Hallelujah!!!!! Our Home Study has been approved by our adoption agency!  

So glad to have this part of our adoption process complete and we are SO READY to start the next step!  

We have several steps left in our adoption process and now that our Home Study has been formally approved by our adoption agency (or placing agency) now we can get the ball rolling! 

So you may be wondering...

After we get original, notarized, signed copies of our Home Study we will submit an application to the USCIS.  This application is called the i800a and the USCIS, aka homeland security, will review it along with our home study and schedule Jeff and I to be fingerprinted at their office.  We PRAY that we are blessed with a USCIS officer that has a true heart for adoption so we can get our process with them done quickly.  After we get our i800a approval then we will send all of our documents to be certified by the Secretary of State and authenticated by the Ch*n*se consulate.  When that is all complete then we will send ALL of those documents to Ch*n* also known as DTC.

  We are really excited to get DTC!!!! Once we have that then we can relax 

a little!

One other great blessing with having our home study approved by our adoption agency is that when it is in our hands we can start applying for grants!  Praise the Lord for those awesome organizations that offer grants to adoptive families!  It will be a while before we hear anything on them, I've heard it can take several months to hear if you've been approved for them.

For now we are plugging away at our FUNDRAISING!  We are still selling these COOL t- shirts:  Proceeds for EACH shirt sold will go towards our adoption fund!  Click on the box below to go to our store and see all of the other amazing styles we offer!

We currently need to raise $4,020 to get our next step accomplished!  We are doing EVERYTHING we can do to raise this money for Meiya.  We are having a garage sale on June 8 and 9th to raise funds. If you live in our area and have stuff you'd like to donate to our sale we would really appreciate it.  Please email me if you live in the Martinsburg area for directions.  We appreciate any prayers and help that we can get.  It means a lot to us!  We are grateful to all of you who have prayed for our adoption and for Meiya.  We are also grateful to all of you who have supported us through giving and through our fundraisers.  Our dream and prayer is to get Meiya home THIS year!!!  Nothing is impossible for God!  He is in FULL control of everything in this world because this is HIS world not ours!  He can change the hearts of kings, He can move mountains! We are fully trusting in Him to see us through!

Sweet Frog Spirit Night!

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On Monday, we had our second Spirit Night Fundraiser. 

This time at Sweet Frog!

If you are not familiar with Sweet Frog it is a frozen yogurt cafe.  So YUMMY!

Hannah and Hailee wore their new T-shirts that say "I Love my sister in Ch*na" with their Mieya red thread bracelets.

All in all we had a pretty good turn out!  I think we did pretty well!  We met a lot of sweet people who loved the fact that we are adopting and they commented on how adorable Meiya is, who can blame them?  Have you seen this precious face?  She gives me goosies every time I look at her pictures! 

As far as our process, we are hoping to get our home study turned in to our agency NOW THIS week!  Yes, we are still waiting on it (84 days to be exact) but we know it will happen.  It MUST happen this week.  I am running out of patience!  We should have our DTC right now but sadly, we do not!  Nobody's fault!   Just the devil throwing wrenches and God is always right there throwing them back at him.  God is in control, this I know!  
He will make a way!

I LOVE this!  I need to tattoo it on my forehead hang it up all over my house because I am so guilty of feeling alone and defeated.  I get angry!  I won't lie!  I get really angry because of how things are moving at a snails pace!  I see other's who started the adoption process when we did and already have DTC!  We do not even have our stinkin home study turned into our agency yet!  It is frustrating!  But God keeps reminding me that this is HIS world and HE is in control of everything!  Nothing is impossible for Him!  He will see to it that we get our sweet Meiya home soon!  He knows what she needs.  She is His child created in His image. I need to trust Him and let Him take the wheel.  It is going to happen in His timing.

T-Shirts Fundraiser!

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Today we are so excited because our AdoptionBug T-shirt store is open and ready for business!  This is our first official fundraiser that we have started for our adoption. Please click on the box below and it will take you directly to our store.  This is an awesome opportunity for you to help us bring Meiya home! Oh and the shirts are cool!  We have 6 different styles to choose from!  Did I mention how cool they are?

We've decided to Adopt from China.

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I have always wanted to adopt. I knew this from a very young age (probably 8 or 9). I remember riding in the backseat of my mothers car with my sister sitting beside me and my mom driving and our neighbor sitting in the passenger seat. With great excitement I spoke up and said "When I grow up I am going to adopt a little baby from another country!" Our neighbor looked at my mom with her mouth wide open, as if she was told the world was going to end right that very minute! Then she turned around and scolded me saying "Now why would you want to go and do something like that? What would people think? Why would you do that to your family?" She was offended by my statement. I did not care what anyone would think. In my mind I felt sorry for this woman for saying such a rude thing to me. As I grew up that feeling of wanting to adopt kept growing stronger and stronger. One day while working in my cousins law firm I overheard her speaking to a woman about the situation in China and how they had a 1 child rule there and that the little girls were not wanted by their families. She went on telling how these precious little girls were being abandoned by their families. My heart sank into my chest! I felt such sadness for these little girls. Right then is when I knew which country I was going to adopt from, China! I had just started dating my husband, Jeff, around that time and I told him that I am going to adopt from China someday. He thought that was a brilliant idea! He shared with me that he had 2 cousins that were adopted when they were infants and he too had always wanted to adopt because of them. It was cool that we were on the same page about adopting. We both agreed that we still wanted to have biological children too. We got married a year after we started dating in 1996.

We started trying to have a baby soon after we married but we had fertility issues. It was not until 2001 that we finally became pregnant with our first child, with the help of fertility medications. In November of 2001 Hannah was born! Then in November of 2002, on Hannah's first birthday we found out that we were expecting our second child. Big surprise this time because we were not trying. In July of 2003 we welcomed our second daughter Hailee. She was born 6 weeks early but she was fine! Praise God!

Even after we were blessed with both of our amazing little girls Jeff and I still felt like we wanted to adopt. We knew that adopting is expensive so we decided to wait. Wait for what? Yes adoption is expensive but where was our Faith in God? He has ALWAYS been faithful to us and he has ALWAYS provided for us. Last winter we decided that it was time to get serious, put our faith in the Lord and go for it! No more waiting for us. It is now or never! We started praying for God's guidance and for his blessings in adoption. We prayed for the child that we knew he has planned for us, the one we WILL adopt! We prayed for Him to bless and watch over this child and protect her. Over the past year I have joined many advocate sites for Waiting Children in China and Korea. I searched almost daily through these listings. I looked at literally hundreds of lists of children. I was waiting for Him to give me that nudge. I wanted Him to show me our child. Jeff and I had always prayed for that too that He would show us our child and he would let us know when we found her! Last week while doing my regular searching on Waiting Children sites He showed me HER! This precious little girl in China almost jumped off of the page at me. I felt God's presence! I almost could hear him say "here is your daughter that I have planned for you". It was such a strong feeling of love, excitement and a feeling like I had found a long lost relative. When Jeff came home from work that afternoon I showed her to him. I tried not to react. I just said "what do you think of her?" He looked at her with tears in his eyes and he said "She is the one!" We both cried and we hugged each other. We showed her picture to Hannah and Hailee and they asked us "is that our sister?" It was like they knew too!

I immediately felt led to contact the advocate that had her listed and she gave me this little girls agency information. We contacted the agency and filled out a pre-application and emailed it the following day. The next 2 days felt like eternity. Jeff and I were both emotional. We worried that we would not be qualified to adopt her. I checked our email constantly and waited. Finally we got the email with her medical file. We were pre approved! We were told to send her file to an IAP for them to review it and go over it with us. Things just started moving quickly! We felt God's hands all over this and we still do. We are trying to finish up all of the needed paperwork and the "official" application. We are also trying to come up with all of the fee's that need to be turned in with the "official" application. When we found out the total amount due NOW we almost fainted! We did not expect it to be so much NOW! We just made our van payment and paid some other bills so we just don't have it this very second. But we are not letting this discourage us because GOD is our provider. He is the one in charge of everything! He has the final say not man! We are trusting that He will provide for us every cent we need to adopt our precious princess. We are asking for our friends and family and even strangers to pray for us that this will all work out.