How Can We help?

Adoption Update

 

Today Greg and I set up a fund or an account through our credit union specifically for our adoption.  When people donate on our adoption site on youcaring.com (http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/bringing-baby-owens-home/181884) it will be deposited into this account. Whenever we get any money for the adoption, it will go into this specific account earmarked just for adoption expenses.

Large Utility Tote: Month of June Special!

Tomorrow June 1^st, we kick off our first official fundraiser for the adoption. Shopt2Adopt with Thirty One gifts. I am pretty excited for this fundraiser because while we are raising money for our adoption we will also be able to pay it forward as well. See we will get 25% of all sales for the adoption. Any hostesses gifts or incentive earned will be donated to Lifetime Adoption, for the birth moms. Every birth mom gets a hospital bag that they stock with toiletries, and the hostess incentives earned on this fundraiser will be donated to that. You can order from this Fundraiser from June 1-15^th, by going to www.mythirtyone.com/annieowens then clicking on my parties and then Shop2Adopt. There is a great sale on our Large Utility Totes going on in the month of June including the deluxe utility tote. Get a Large Utility tote for $10 when you spend $35, get the deluxe for $25.

June 22^nd we will be having a bake sale at our church Celebration after both church services. We are looking for donations of baked goods such as cookies, bars, cupcakes, pretzels, and other goodies. You can email us at owensclan02@gmail.com if you would like to donate to this, message Annie or Greg on Facebook, or text us.

We are also in the works of planning a benefit with silent auction as well. The date for this will be announced. Again if you would like to donate an item or basket for this please email us, message, or text us. Perhaps you have a craft you are good at that we can auction off, or have a service to offer.  We may also incorporate vendors such as Lia Sophia, Thirty One, and others for booths.

Lastly we are in the process of going through everything we own and getting a rummage sale ready. The proceeds from this will again go towards the adoption. If you have anything you would like to get rid of and wouldn’t mind donating it to us so we can sell let us know!

Our goal for these fundraisers is to raise $12,000. This would pay for our down payment for adoption fees $7500 of $19,500, our home study fees of $3000. And have $1500 towards legal fees. This will help get the ball rolling. In addition to that once our home study is approved we can start applying for adoption grants, and there are several we will be applying for. Including one directly through Lifetime Adoption. In addition to the $12,000 we will need at least another $17000. The remaining 12,000 in fees, another 3500 in legal fees, and we are budgeting about 2000 for travel fees.  

To get all that money together, besides the fundraisers we are planning, we are hoping to get at least two or three substantial grants, Greg is looking for a part time job to earn some extra money, Annie is looking at starting a store on Etsy to sell some crafts. We are consistently looking for ways to reduce our spending and increase our income, so if you have ideas in regard to this, please let us know. We don’t have cable which is a huge savings, we have basic phone and internet packages, and we are starting to coupon. I really need lessons on this extreme couponing I keep hearing about.  Of course Annie still has her thirty one, photography, and graphic design.

Soph is in on this as well, today she said she is going to sell her Barbie’s to pay for her brother AND sister. (we are adopting ONE baby) We told her that was very nice, and sweet, but she can keep her Barbies! She also volunteered Aunt Emily to help her make bracelets to sell.

In case you haven’t seen, we made a specific Facebook group for “Bringing Baby Owens Home” We post updates, fundraising ideas, etc on this group. To be included you need to request it. Either by messaging Greg or I, or asking on Facebook.

Thank you so much for the ones who have donated so far. I can not tell you how much we appreciate it. No words could express the gratitude. To the ones that have been praying for us, have offered other sorts of help thank you.

I know everyone wants to help, but some are unsure how they can help, time, distance, or money seems to be prohibiting them from doing so. Other ways you can help:

1.)    Pray. I really can’t stress this enough. We need this adoption to be lifted up in prayers. I know we have said before we need prayers for funding, prayers for a successful match, prayers for us, for the birth mom, for the baby. I mean it. Prayers prayers prayers! I am trying to put together a list of prayers for adoptions, and encouraging scripture for this as well. If there   is a favorite versus, or scripture please share with us.

2.)    Do you craft? Have an amazing Photography eye? Can tell short stories? Get your crafts together, take pictures of them, and do your own online auction. Start Auction prices out so they include the cost of the material and a five dollar shipping cost add in. Photography buff, take some of your favorite prints and mount them real nice, sell prints of them. (Annie is considering doing this with some photos from Door County and Mackinac Island.) Again setting up an online store, or auction would work nice. Make sure to explain money raise will be going to benefit.

3.)    Have a service you can offer? Donate the service.

4.)    Coupon for us. We will start stock piling baby items, especially diapers, if you see a coupon for diapers let us know about it so we can get in on the deal.

5.)                            Have old baby things such as clothes, burp rags, blankets? Consider donating them to the baby for when the baby comes home. We will need lots of this stuff. While we did foster three babies, all our baby items have either went home with the child, given to nieces or nephews, dontated, or sold.

6.)                            Have I mentioned pray for the adoption? Pray for us? Pray. Prayer is powerful. I am hoping to set sometimes up when we can hold prayer sessions, where everyone stops what they are doing and says a quick prayers on our behalf.

7.)                            Be encouraging. Some days are really rough, keep that in mind. Sometimes we may want to talk a lot about it, where other times we just want to stay mum. Be understanding with it.

8.)                            Be a researcher- Annie has this amazing group of “cysters” women who are also affected by PCOS. We’ve been buddies along time, and we are pretty supportive of each other. As soon as we announced our intent to adopt, they had several grants and the information websites, they had adoption resources. It was a great way to show support with out spending a dime, and it was helpful. Share your ideas.

9.)                            Share, Share, Share. Share our adoption page, share our blog posts, share our fundraising information. Share our story.  I will be posting signs and flyers for fundraisers, share them. Print them out and post in church, grocery stores, gas stations. From Wisconsin to Texas, Virginia to Alaska, anyone can order thirty-one. Once our craft store is up and running, any one will be able to order from there.  

10.)                         Lastly, Pray! What? I mentioned it twice before? Yes I did. Its that important!

Memorial Day

Memorial Day. It’s one of my favorite holidays.  It’s the unofficial kick off to summer. My husband and I will at times head to my favorite gas tank getaway- Mackinaw Island. I love the Island, as soon as you arrive on the ferry the smell envelops you, a rich aroma mix of salty lake water, sweet fudge, grills from the many dockside restaurants, and of course the ever present smell of the local “smog” horse manure.  I love this combination of smells, it immediately takes my stress away.

The island is rich inland is rich in history and does an excellent job celebrating that history. Memorial Day is special. They have reenactments, and a special tribute to all our soldiers who gave the ultimate sacrifice to our county. So that you and I, our families can have the freedoms we love.

Sometimes like this year we have a special event and can’t make that trip up to the island. Michaela, my sister and Goddaughter graduated high school this weekend.  We needed to celebrate that victory with her. 

Since we were home Saturday we packed up Soph and went down to the local festival here in DePere. It always is a good time, with plenty of food, drinks, and entertainment to go around. They cap it off with the Fireworks Sunday night followed by-this year- the Nitty Gritty Dirt band. But in the mist of this celebration they pay homage to the veterans.

Monday is parade day and bright and early the streets in DePere are packed, lined either side with children, parents, the occasional dog. The smell of sunscreen is thick in the air as mom’s and dad’s slather their children in it. The rustle of grocery bags is heard as excited kids jump up and down to see if the parade is starting, if the candy train is on the way yet. Here in DePere, in Middle America, The United States is still respected, we may not agree with government decisions, but the flag is respected, the soldier is respected. Today as the flag turn the corner every person along that street was standing, the applause was loud, dotted throughout the crowd there were servicemen and women standing ramrod straight at attention and executing a perfect solute. This thundering applause continued for a near ten minutes while various veterans from the most recent war, to a few World War II Vets.   This to me was an amazing site, so many times on Facebook you see pictures of parades with the flag passing and people sitting down, or on their phones or disinterested.  That disinterest that lack of respect is going to get this country further into trouble. 

At the parade we sat next to a couple with a little boy about four years old. Sapphira being Sapphira wasn’t really getting the whole concept of the candy being tossed, and this couple and this little boy made sure Sapphira got equal candy, and shared. When someone would pass her up but dump a huge amount into his bag, the little boy immediately gave some to Sapphira. When the little boy was afraid of a mascot Sapphira said “let’s give him high five together” and they did. There was a sense of compassion, and justice in this couple, and they were instilling it into their son. I applaud that. I don’t know this couple name, and I probably will never see them again, but they were so kind and friendly to Sapphira. And when the flag came by the father said “Stand up Son and show the flag the respect it deserves.”   The country needs more people like this. The country needs more kindness, more respect, more love and compassion in it.  And this was the perfect example of that. There was no judgment or censorship, but only kindness, compassion, and friendliness.  It was a perfect morning.

I know I am not the only one who loves Memorial Day, people get a day off, an extra day to spend with family and friends, doing things they enjoy. Celebrating Summer is around the corner. But it is important, that in the mist of celebrating all that, that we stop and remember the reason for this day. We have this day as a remembrance for those who lost their lives so we can enjoy ours.  For the people that even right now are protecting us in ways that you and I can only imagine. To those men and women, Thank YOU from the bottom of my heart. To their families, thank you as well, for the love and support you give them.

On Friday at work I received an email reminder to fly the flag at half staff till noon today. I didn’t exactly know why, but I forwarded it on to my boss. Today I found out why, and I find it beautiful in a heartbreaking way. And entirely appropriate way to close this entry:

"In traditional observance of Memorial Day, the American flag is raised briskly to the top of the staff and then solemnly lowered to the half-staff position, where it remains only until noon. It is then raised to full-staff for the remainder of the day.

 

 The half-staff position remembers the more than one million men and women who gave their lives in service of their country. At noon, their memory is raised by the living, who resolve not to let their sacrifice be in vain, but to rise up in their stead and continue the fight for liberty and justice for all."

 

 - www.usmemorialday.org

Happy Memorial Day everyone, I hope it was a safe and fun holiday for all. More important thank you to all the service men and women. God Bless and Keep you Safe.

Adopting!!!!

As I am sure you know, Greg and I have been struggling with fertility or should I say infertility for twelve years. It has been a heartbreaking journey, fertility cycles that have failed, a failed international adoption, two failed foster-adopt situations, and the general heart ache and break of foster care.  In November we were extremely blessed to add to our family being granted guardianship for Soph. We absolutely love her and find such joy and delight in her. We however would love to add to our forever family and are looking at adopting a child through Lifetime Adoption.


The adoption really depends on a couple of factors.  Funding of course, adoption is extremely expensive- it will be between 25,000 and 30,000 dollars.  Finding a birth mom that is a match, and then having a successful placement. Our adoption coordinator Jen feels we would probably have a match within 12-18 months, with placement being as soon as baby is born. We are extremely excited about this. But we need help...


How can you help? Several ways!


First off, like I said this is contingent upon funding. We are applying for grants like crazy- as we can. Some grants you can apply to immediately- in fact Lifetime has such a grant that we have applied for. Other grants you need to have a home study completed- a cost of $3000 in itself, and others still you need to have a match. Whatever grants we can at this time we are applying for- including match grants where people donate to us and then the company matches donations up to a certain amount.  Right now the match grants we have found you do need to have an active home study-which we are working on currently. Once we have that we will have match grant information on here and in Facebook.


We currently have a website set up for donations that you can send directly to us if it is on your heart to help us that way. http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/bringing-baby-owens-home/181884  Even if you can't help monetarily, if you could do two favors for us 1.) share this site with friends and family. The more people we have in it the better our chances are to get the funding we need. Currently it is set at $7500, but in total we will need about $25000.  2.) Pray over this, pray over the adoption in general!


 In addition to the above June 1-15th I will be doing a “Shop To Adopt” Thirty-One Event. Friends, Family, anyone can order through this event, and 25% of all sales will go towards our adoption. The hostess rewards I will use to donate bags, totes, etc to Lifetime Adoption for their Lifetime Adoption Foundation-which helps birth moms get through pregnancy, as well as provides them schooling or training to help in the future. Each birth mom is given a hospital bag that Lifetime fills with things like soap, shampoo, lotion, socks, pads, etc. Many of them do not have anything thing. So this is a really great thing for them to do, and I would love to donate as many bags as possible to them. How do you come into play? You can invite friends to the Facebook event I have set up by sharing this link or share the events link https://www.mythirtyone.com/shop/eventhome.aspx?eventId=E4570965&from=MYEVENTS
with friends, coworkers, neighbors. If everyone shared with 10 people and those 10 people each brought one bag and one special we would have a significant amount of money.

We are trying to put together a benefit either June 22 or June 29th. Again inviting all your friends, family, anyone you know, to that as well as attending would be a great help. We are looking for a restaurant or bar to donate food/drinks, and then businesses and individuals to donate for a silent auction/raffle, prizes, perhaps someone to donate music. If you know anyone or would like to donate or have your company donate please let me know. I will also need help planning and organizing this.



If you have other ideas, or know of other resources to help us with the ADOPTION - that we can use please let us know!


Secondly we need your support. We need positive support, we have enough negativity in our lives, we don’t need more. We will also need to travel, and it maybe in the middle of the night on a Tuesday, and we may be gone for 7-10 days. If that happens we will need someone to watch Sapphira while we are gone. We will probably need a shoulder to cry on, or positive reinforcement when we are discouraged. I am only going to say the following once, this is not to hurt feelings, or sound ungrateful, but commenting on how expensive adoption is -not supportive. Telling me its not fair we have to pay so much when their are druggies and "bad" people popping out kids- not supportive- especially if one of them is yourself. Asking if we have tried a,b, &c- not supportive. I guarantee you- we've tried a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z...  Saying "oh but don't you want your own baby" Is absolutely not supportive. 1.) this baby and any baby/child we are blessed with whether they are born from my loins or born from my heart- is OUR baby. OUR child. They are not second rate, second class, or second choice. They are OUR choice.  They are a BLESSING from GOD. And as such will be treated as a blessing by us and everyone in their lives. If you can not understand that, then perhaps you should not come around.

We may need a place to stay. We will have to travel to the birth most likely and can not leave the state for 7-10 days after. Since we are working with Lifetime and they do adoptions all over the states, then we could potentially have a birth in HI or Alaska. So we may need a place to stay, or suggestions on a place to stay. And Greg would like suggestions on places to eat as well.


We need your prayers. This is most important. We need prayers we find the funding needed, prayers for a great birth mom match and a smooth adoption. Prayers for our sanity, and patience. Prayers for the birth mom, who is making such a sacrifice and gifting us with our greatest wish. Prayers for the entire birth family. Prayers for the adoption facilitators (Lifetime Adoption) prayers for our legal team. Prayers all around.


Lastly we just need you to be who you are, and be there for us. Whether it is a phone call and a listening ear, someone to make us laugh, someone to hold our hands, someone to pray with us. Someone to help organize various fundraisers, or help massage our hands after we do all this paperwork. Knowing you are in the background there for us if we need you to be, routing for us, is extremely helpful. We both love you all very much and appreciate everything you do for us.


Note: I know some have commented they can not help out for whatever reason. We aren't looking for a 1000 dollar donation. That would be incredible, and very appreciated. But a dollar adds up, five dollars adds up. I have roughly 200 people on my Facebook Friends list, and Greg has about 100 more that are not on mine. So about 300 people. If each of those people donated $5 dollars we would have 1500 dollars- half of our home study fee. or a portion of our travel costs (depending where we adopt from) If those 300 people each shared with their friends list, and each had an additional 5 people donate 5 dollars, that would be 7500 the cost of our down payment. What I am saying is it only takes a small amount to make a big difference. We also need prayers, or maybe you do crafts and have something you can donate that we can auction off.  But every single one of you can help in a huge huge way! Hit share on our donation page. Pin it on your Pinterest. Email our story to friends, families, colleagues.