Wednesday, July 27, 2011

"Bring Our Children Home"



With everything going on right now, this video WRECKED me!But OH.....HE IS FAITHFUL!


"When we cannot see you moving
When it seems the dark has won
May you find us still believing
That you want this more than us
You will finish what you started
And your plans for us are good
Help us cling to what you promised
You are faithful, You are sure "

Be sure to *pause* music playing at the bottom of the page

Friday, July 22, 2011

Wild Olive Tees

Wild Olive
We have been so blessed to be accepted into Wild Olive Tess adoption fundraising program!

"Wild Olive adoption tees have been created as a means to help families fundraise for their impending adoption. Our goal is to partner with adoptive families to help them gain support from friends and family to offset the cost of their adoption, and in turn, help bring children home to their forever families!"

These tees are some of the cutest inspirational tees I have ever come across! Here are few examples:









They even have tees for the littles!



Wild Olive Adoption Fundraiser Tees



You can check out their store by clicking the above button or the one located on the side of my blog. When checking out be sure to enter our family code CORIELL0722 into the coupon code field. (Note: this will not discount the price, but give our family credit for the sale ;)
UPDATE: Fundraiser has ended. Thank you to those who participated!
Finally... Please help us spread the word! :)


Saturday, July 16, 2011

Home Study Approved/USCIS (I800A) Bound!




We just heard back from our home study agency a couple days ago! Our adoption agency has had our HS for the past 2 weeks, they have reviewed and approved it...which means come next week we will be USCIS bound! Thank you JESUS! I can't wait to get that home study into my hands and FedEx it off, starting our next step!


So what is USCIS?


USCIS stands for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. This government organization will be an important part of our adoption process, as they will approve us to adopt a child and will also issue our child an immigrant visa! United States Immigration makes sure that everyone immigrating into the United States of American is doing so lawfully.


The average wait for this step/approval is about 2 months. Then Oct. when Nathan turns 30 we will then be allowed to submit our dossier to China and be MATCHED!!!


I will be a adding a brake down of our timeline and adoption lingo post to the "adoption" tab soon. I remember when we first started out and went to our first adoption conference all these terms seemed like a foreign language to me.
So hopefully this will be helpful in following along on our journey. :)


Now for an update on the littles!!

Noah is still our little rock star! Nathan took him out for a little daddy/son bonding time and Noah had his first experience at the Guitar Center! From the report I got... he.was.in.HEAVEN! They found him the smallest guitar and he strummed away! He even was eyeing another guy playing and was trying to keep tempo with him. If you know our Noah you know his love for music! I think he will have many more visits to the Guitar Center in his future!





Little Miss is turning into such a lady....and a comedian! She is quick in humor and if there is anyone that can get you to crack a smile it is this girl! I seriously need to keep a journal of the things this girl does and says....really I need to do it for both kiddos. They grow up all too fast and we forget these precious little day to day conversations that have us busting at our seems.

We are also doing a lot of celebrating around here as Madelynn has chosen to kiss diapers goodbye!YAY MADELYNN!!! :)

Thank you so much for following along! Please continue to lift our family,children and adoption in your prayers. We appreciate them more than you know!





"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it." Matthew 13:44-46