We will be in front of Walgreens in Conway next Friday and Saturday (November 19 & 20) selling coupon books, t-shirts, and blankets...If you can stop by and see us!!

Last weekend we attended an international adoption seminar in St. Louis. Ethan got to stay with his Meema for the weekend. He hd a great time and so did we. The seminar was great....we really learned lot about what to expect when Ivy comes home. Think we are going to be stressed for a while but it will worth it in the end! I am getting anxious....can't wait fo the wait to be over...when we are all finally settled in and together. Ethan wants a baby sister for Christmas....had to tell him maybe for his birthday in the summer! :( he is ready for her to be here now and so are we. Hopefully the wait will go fast and so will the fundraising. Right now it is the fundraising hodling us up. I will just keep praying and everything will happen in Gods time.

We are planning a winter fest with games, bouncy houses, Santa, and a silent auction. If you would like to volunteer we need around 20-25 people to help! It will be great fun! Hope to see yall there if you live around and can make it....I will post more info later when we have a place, date and time. :)

New Ideas

Well...It has been a really long time since I have updated my page and alot has happened since then. We scraped the game because we couldn't get enough interest. We are now selling blankets, coupon books, and t-shirts. We are very excited about the shirts. My brother Pat designed them, my mom modified them, and my dad colored them! I love my family!! They are all helping us so much.

We are now working on our home study, but are stuck on the financial end of it. We need to raise $3000 before we can go on to it. We have the $ for the home study but not the management fee. We are thinking about hosting a winter or fall fest, but don't know where to do it at! I am going to post the shirts online for purchase and try to setup a paypal account...not real sure how to do that though..hopefully won't be hard! One of the girls at work asked me how much they would have to raise to see my shave my head! Thought about that hard and told her $15000! and I would do it too! I think that they are actually going to try to do it. Told her we would put up a cash prize of 10% to the person who raised the most $$. Thought that was a pretty good prize!! But I won't shave my head for less than the $15000. I work with a great group of people who are so supportive and want to help as mush as they possibly can! I love them all!

Halloween is tomorrow!! and we already have more candy than we need from trick-or-treating at the daycare, the nursing home, and Boo at the Zoo and we still have to go real trick-or-treating!! Hope everyone is having a great and spooky Halloween!!

Been awhile....

Well...It has been awhile since I have been on here! The game is not going very well. We have sold one corner ad on the board and 3 patron ads, but that won't produce the game. We missed the 1st deadline and are working on the 2nd. We have changed the game up several times to obtain interest but people just are not biting. We are still trying but it is getting very frustrating. I was so hoping it would work because it would have generated a large amount of $$. Keep praying for us and our success. We do have other projects in the works such as blankets, dresses, and coupon books for sale. I lost my friends and family letter when our computer crashed and now have to rewrite it from scratch. Oh well...once Ivy is here, we can tell her about all the obstacles we had to overcome to finally bring her home :o)

We received application #2 and I am trying to fill it out, but man the paperwork is mind boggling!! It alone is complicated enough....

I am going to have to have my gallbladder removed next month...during my time off I guess I will have time to sit and fill all kinds of stuff out! My friend at work says that recovery is usually 3-6 wks. So I will have plenty of time...

Businesses involved in game

So far we have sold a few ads. The following businesses are getting involved:

Academy at Riverdale (hopefully buying a corner ad and maybe putting pic on front)
Wilsons Home Improvement (hopefully buying corner ad or sponsoring the $$)
Riverview Healthcare Center (patron ad)
Kicks Active Wear (patron ad)
Blue Ribbon Antiques (patron ad)
Hortons Orthotics (hopefully buying game ad)

We want to thank those businesses for their support and will be posting others as the buy ads.

Love you all,

New Game Title

Ok so we are renaming the game Arkansasopoly so that anyone and everyone can participate! We have sold ads in Little Rock, Conway, and Morrilton but still have a long way to go and a very short time to do it in. We thank everyone one that has made a commitment to buying an ad!! God Bless you all

Selling Ads

I have spent 2 days attempting to sell the ads for our "Little Rockopoly" game and am exhausted. I dropped off approximately 50-60 brochures at various businesses and am awaiting many call backs. I have had several businesses confirm their willingness to participate and others that told me this was one of the most creative fundraisers that they had seen! I am very excited and encouraged by the feedback that I received this weekend. I am excitedly anticipating future phone calls confirming participation and discussion of ad placement and setup. My husband has a friend at work (who also just adopted a little boy from China) who is trying to help us sell the ads and has given us 4 names of businesses that he has already talked with and have said "yes". We definitely appreciate the help. We are very excited about this game and hope that everyone participating is just as excited. We are now this much closer to bringing home Ivy!!-----Love your sister in Christ

Background Info

Reposting this to make it easier to find if you are reading this blog for the first time because you received an email on our "Little Rockopoly game".



I have began this blog to tell you a little about my family and to ellicit some help.

My name is Tiffany. I was born in Mississippi, the 3rd of 4 children and the only girl. All my life I have dreamed of the family that I would once have, never seeing few children in my future. I have always wanted a big family so I was devasted when I ran into infertility problems after getting married. But before I go into that, let me tell you a little more about my past.

I was always a very healthy child, never sick...until my sophmore year in high school. I began to feel very weak and winded. I thought that I was sure getting out of shape..even though I went dancing every weekend and was in gymnastics. I really didn't know what was going on. That January, I turned 16. Like any ordinary teenager, I got to have the car that weekend and took my friends "cruising" town. We had so much fun that night. Little did I know what was about to happen. My birthday was on the 13th. On the 19th, my mother woke me up, told me to take a shower (not to put any makeup on), and to get ready to go to the doctor (again). This was not my 1st visit. This was probably the 4 or 5. We had already been to my PCP and the ENT because of a swollen lymph node behind my right ear that was soo big my friends were teasing me about having a tumor. (Boy did they feel bad later!!)

That morning, I was so tired that I didn't want to do anything. I got up, took a shower, and did what my mom said to do. As we walked into the doctor's office, I could hear to nurses talking to one another. I was so white that they could not beleive that I was walking on my own. This doctor's visit, the doctor took blood for the 1st time and sent us home with iron pills for anemia. I went home and crashed on the couch. The next thing I knew, my mom was waking me up and telling me to get in the car. I was so confused. My dad was home in the middle of a work day and my mom had packed our bags. I was told that we were going to Arkansas Children's Hospital but nothing else. (oh yeah did I forget to mention we moved to Arkansas)

At Children's, the news was finally broke to me. I had leukemia (ALL--acute lymphacytic leukemia). I underwent 2 1/2 yrs of chemotherapy, lost all my hair, and missed 1/3 of my sophmore year in school (however my teachers found it in their hearts to send my work home to me). I tried to be positive through everything even though I occassionally got boughed down by the chemo or by loosing my hair again after it had begun to come back in.

Good did come from this time in my life. I met my husband during this time. I was ball headed and he had just come home from the Army. We had mutual friends and had both stopped to talk to them "cruising town" (on one of the few nights that my mom let me out of the house). We instantly hit it off and have been together for 15 years (married for 11 of those). He has seen me during my worst and best times. His friends use to ask him "who the little boy was riding in the truck with him", but it never bothered him.

Years later after high school and during my last semester in college, we got the news that I was pregnant. We were so excited but the pregnancy was accompanied by appendicitis. Following a appendectomy the doctor said that the baby was fine. We were elated until our 1st miscarriage. I was 4 1/2 months along and devastated. A year later, we got pregnant again. Worried but excited again, I found myself trying to do everything right. At our visit to hear the heartbeat, we found out that I had had another miscarriage at 7 wks. Devastated is putting it lightly. I fell into a pretty deep depression. Crying myself to sleep nightly.

When we decided to try again, I was terrified. I didn't think I could go through it again. I got pregnant again and this time with the help of my doctor (who saw me weekly because I was always frightened something was going wrong), I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. He came 3 weeks early and I was on bed rest for 6 weeks but everyday that I look into his face, I know that he is a gift from GOD!!

I couldn't have been happier until my son was 6 months old and I found out that I was pregnant again. Scared but very happy, I called the doctor. This pregnancy ended in disaster too but was alot easier to take since I had my precious little boy.

My son is the light of my life, my little miracle baby, but I still have that desire for a larger family. He is now 3 1/2 and wants a baby sister badly. We have not prevented getting pregnant since the last miscarriage but have not been pregnant since (3 yrs). I really don't want to be pregnant again and neither does my loving husband. In the last year or 2, we have felt a very strong pull to adopt. We started the process last June through DHS but have decided that we want to adopt internationally.

Now I have finally come to the reason that I began this blog.....We need your help! Adoption is a very expensive process and we are now in major fundraising mode. We will be posting ways that you can help us in the days to come and I will be keeping you updated on our progress along with family news and decisions. I am very excited about this blog and plan on trying to write something on it daily. Please keep us in your prayers and check in with us often to see how we are doing. Our goal is to raise $30,000 and so far with our 1st fundraisers (Rhea Lana and Duck Duck Goose consignment sales and blankets), we have raise $1200. Not much but it is a start:)

Well it is getting late and I need to go to bed......Love your sister in Christ

New Addition to the family

We welcomed a new addition to the family this week. It is a 13 week old cocker spaniel puppy!! He is so sweet! I had a cocker spaniel when I was little and knew what good dogs they are. My son loves him (but being a little boy, he is a little to rough with the puppy and we have to get onto him frequently). He is a family dog and gets to stay in the house when we are home. I missed having a dog around....

Updates on the fundraisers. We are currently trying to sell the game ads through email and nobody is biting. Next step is to start going business to business. We sent a brochure to the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce but haven't heard from them either. This weekend is going to be busy as I start to go from business to business by myself with a 3 year old in tow. Maybe we will have more luck face to face. We have to have all the ads sold by June 23rd (I think) so that we can have the game out by Labor Day! I will be mailing out our contribution letter soon to family and friends. Maybe that will bring some $$ in too. Through Rhea Lana, Duck Duck Goose, and the blankets, we have raised over $1200. Small start but still a start. Most the $$ will come from our games (if we can get the ads sold). I am feeling a little stressed out! But we know that in the end God will take care of everything and that we will raise the amount needed to bring home our baby Ivy!

Adoption Update

Well....I finally got our application totally filed out and mailed into Dillon. It has been such a process and I had to type 4 pages worth of questions they wanted answered. I really had to think about some of them. But it is totally done and sent in....so the next step is to go online and watch an orientation and then fill out another application. Oh boy hope it is not like the last!!

I am so excited that the process is progressing but worried about the earthquakes in China!! I hope my baby girl is ok .... I pray for her safety and hope that GOD brings her to us quickly. I haven't heard anything about damage to orphanages but I have heard that a school collapsed. I heard a statistic that there are over a million children in orphanages and foster care in China and only 4% of them will ever find homes!! That is so sad!! They are in my prayers daily!! I wish more people would take adoption to heart.........................

another kind of fundraiser

Ethan is involved in a Trike-a-thon for St Jude Children's Hospital tomorrow at the daycare. We went door to door tonight getting him sponsors for the event. He raised over $100.00. It was so cute watching him try to explain what he is doing. He kept saying he was raising money for his bike instead of for the kids or for the hospital. All he knew was that he was getting money to ride his bike!! even though we discussed what it was for...our neighbors are great!! They all talked with him and told him what a great thing he was doing for such a worthy cause!! I love it that he is getting involved with giving to others at such a young age.. God truly gives us opportunities to grow in spirit and grace from very young to very old!! HE is so good!

Busy, Busy

Wow, I haven't been very good at this lately but been really busy..We have finally set deadlines for our game..have been making blankets and they have been selling like hotcakes at work...and I have been trying to get all out application filled out and our contribution letter written. We are getting down to the line on our game but are trying to find a couple of people to help us sell the ads. Think I might try at church...surely someone will volunteer (I hope).

Well I have been looking for a new car since mine is giving out on me and is way too small to add a 2nd carseat into. We have found a Dodge Journey and I think I really like it. Could get better gas mileage but it has tons of room and lots of extras. Think it may be the one....a very good friend of mine said the name is appropriate for the adoption journey we are currently on. and I agree:)

Well wish I had more funny stories to tell but can't think of any right now..I will try to get better about my updates...Love you all---your sister in Christ

Monster Under the Bed

Last night, we spent the night at my mom and dad's house. At bed time, Ethan gave me such as scare that had me laughing my booty off. As I put Ethan to bed, I performed our usual routine. We changed, read books, I laid down with him for 15 minutes and then left him alone in the room. He got up 1 time and I put him back to bed, tucked him in, and told him that I would be back soon (since we were sleeping in the same room). Well about an hour later, I got ready for bed, changed into my jammies, took my contacts out (yes...I am blind), and retired to bed. Once in the room, I glanced at Ethan's bed to check on him but couldn't see him so I felt around the bed....No Ethan! I thought "that little stinker, he is in my bed" but he wasn't there either. Well I was carrying my phone and shone it around the room....No Ethan! I began to freak out....until I hear a small noise. I listened closely and could hear him breathing. I began to look harder and found him underneath the bed. He had purposely crawled under the bed because he had his pillow, blanket, 2 stuffed animals, and a toy tractor! I couldn't beleive it! I laughed so hard and I had to share my find....so I called my mom into the room to help me try to fish him out. We got him out and he never even woke up. We had a really good laugh but the night was not over yet....

Later that night Ethan woke me up making noises. He was in the act of shoving everything back under the bed! I asked him what he was doing and he responded "Momma your here!" then grabbed a spare pillow and pulled up his blankets and went back to sleep...very odd. When my alarm went off the next morning, I found Ethan again trying to crawl under the bed but this time he was trying to pull out his pillow, blanket and the stuffed animals! I asked him why he was under the bed and his response was that he was playing with his tractor! nothing else.

What I find really weird is that he is terrified of shadows but he can crawl under the bed in the dark!!!

Easter fun

Took Ethan Easter egg hunting in the front yard yesterday..It was so much fun. He gets so excited when he finds one. He has this funny little dance and yell. He made us hide the eggs 2x. We put change in the eggs and after we were done, he was even more excited about the $1.49 he had gotten! So cute....he puts all his change in his piggy bank and when it is full, we deposit it in this savings and start all over again.

When I was logging everything into the computer for the Rhea Lana sale, Ethan found a tractor within the toys that he wanted. I told him that it was for sale so he went into his room got his bank and wanted to know how much. I told him that it was $4.50 and he dumped his change out and made me count out the change. I guess it was his finacial contribution toward his little sister!! I was adorable and a real teaching method about $$.

Well Easter is almost here. HE IS RISEN!! HE IS RISEN INDEED!

Hoping everyone has a great Easter and remember that Christ died on the cross so that we may all have eternal life.

Happy Easter---you sister in Christ

Spring is here!!

Spring is finally here!! I love the warm sun on my face! I love being able to go for a walk after dinner and not freezing..or walking in the dark.

Today, Ethan and I decided to take a walk after dinner. He rode his Spiderman bike and I ran/walked next to him (depending on how fast he was going)...well we didn't make it far before meeting our neighbors....everyone had the same idea today since it was such a beautiful day. We have more and more young people moving into our neighborhood and I am so excited because when we moved in, we were the youngest couple by about 10-20 years!! We now have young children all around us! Hope great that our kids will have neighbor kids to play with!! We need to have a block party to meet all the new people in the neighborhood......Maybe we will host one this summer. How fun that would be.

The Grumpy Spider

Ok so this story is totally not adoption material but it has made me laugh all night long hysterically every time I think about it.

My husband was in a lousy mood this evening. The day started out by getting up early, having pancakes for breakfast, and going to church. After church, we went to see "How to Train Your Dragon". It was so cute....but on the way there my husband decided to stop at the Hyunda place and look at a car. After the movies, he stopped back by and we ended up spending 1 1/2 hrs there talking to the dealer! (but we did leave with a car for an overnight test drive which is a good thing since my car is in the shop) But we still had to go to Walmart afterwards to get groceries and fix something for dinner once we got home. Everything put my husband in a foul mood and he was a bear in the store!

I left the store early with Ethan to go to the car and get cleaned up (we are still trying to potty train...got peepee down but poopoo is another story). Once we got to the car, Ethan says, "Daddy's grumpy. Why is daddy grumpy?" and without thinking I replied "something must have crawled up his rear end". Well Ethan rode home with his daddy from the store and evidently he told his daddy that I said something crawled up his butt and wanted to know what is was! He somehow came up with a spider ..... The grumpy spider!

When I got home David walked past me very mad and told me that Ethan had asked what had crawled up his butt. I was shocked but wanted to laugh so hard but the look on David's face said that I shouldn't. All night long, the giggles overtook me and finally after dinner, I burst out laughing. When David asked what I was laughing at, I told him and the whole story came out. David finally admitted that it was funny and as we put Ethan to bed, he began to joke about it to.

So now when anyone you know is in a bad mood, just know that the Grumpy Spider got them!!!!

Spring Break

We had so much fun this past week but back to real life now and dealing with my car!

The hotel we stayed at was having problems while we were there. First the electricity kept going off...they were somehow throwing a breaker over and over again and didn't know why!! That was the first problem...next on the first night we were there, the lady across the hallway decided to smoke in her non-smoking room and set all the fire alarms off at 4:00 in the morning!! Luckily, David was able to make ours stop screaming by taking it down off the ceiling so that Ethan didn't wake up but we were awake listening to all the commotion going on in the hallway and especially when the fire department showed up! I was slightly mad when they beat on our door and asked if we were smoking too!!! The lady that started the whole fiasco was mad and didn't know why it was such a big deal that she was smoking in her room....and she wasn't smoking a little! When David opened our door, the smoke came billowing in and stunk up our room until it finally aired out again! It was crazy! A day later, we came back to the hotel only to find the fire department there again...this time we had no idea why but they were down by the breakers. It wasn't a bad hotel in all but I wouldn't stay there again.

All in all..our trip was great! I really didn't want to come home. The zoo was awesome and we will definitely go back again. We also went to the Pink Palace Museum where Ethan got to see dinosaurs! He was so excited. We walked down Beale St and ate some awesome BBQ and listened to great music. We just took our time with everything and walked a lot.

But back home .... glad I cleaned the house before we left.

I finally filled out the application for Dillon..we have decided to do the Waiting Child Program in China!! I noted in the Dillon contract that I am going to have to make my blog private...so I guess that means if you are not a friend, you can't see it. Not real sure how that works but if you want to keep following us on our journey, just send a request and I will approve you if you are a friend or a supporter.

We are getting ready to kick off our major fundraising efforts and are needing help to sell the ads for our games. If you would like to help, please send me an email at tiffanydpt@yahoo.com and I will let you know place, time, date, and details. If you can't be here in person ...please pray from where you are!

ZOO

I love the zoo!! Watching the bears, monkeys, and other animals and comparing them to people. My favorite was the panda...she was sitting leaned up against a tree and eating cane in the morning and had only moved about 5 feet by late in the afternoon. Sometimes this is how I feel but never get to do!! Some of the other animals were in constant motion which is how I usual am with my 3 yr old who only stops moving when he is sleep. He would fit in well with the monkeys!! In the panda exhibit, we got the feel of China and got more excited about our child to be! In the gift shop, my son bought a stuffed panda and I got a jade hanger of Kwan Yin. Kwan Yin means "One who hears the cries of the world, and comes." The most celebrated goddess in Asia, she is the goddess of mercy or compassion, the protector of children and goddess of fertility. It just seemed appropriate! and it is very pretty!

AHHHHH!

Just when I thought everything was going right....the transmission went out on my car!!! It is going to cost $1308.00 to fix it! Well there goes almost all the $$ we have earned so far......yes I will try to replace all of it but will have to work some Fridays and that takes away from my Ethan time. This really sucks!!! I will never buy another Ford. It has been nothing but trouble since it turned over 80,000 miles and the guy at the Ford dealership told me it was just time for stuff to start going wrong! That just isn't right! Next time, I will buy a foreign car like a Honda or Nissan or Hyunda.

Oh well, just one obstacle in a long process. We will get over it and continue to push forward. Please pray for us...we need it right now!

YEAH!!

We made $477.00 at the Rhea Lana sale. We are so excited and I found out that there is still the Duck Duck Goose sale to put items in!! We want to thank everyone that shopped.

I think we have made our decision. We are going to stick with China and Dillon. I can picture my little China doll named Ivy and am sooooo excited. Now to begin our paperwork. I have everything that I need for our first application. Doesn't look too complicated but I could be wrong. I do know that I will have to make a trip to ACH for my oncologist to write a letter clearing me. I have been cured for 15 years and my last chemo trip was 13 years ago. I was discharged from my oncologist 2 years ago. I was very excited until I talked to my mom who said "doesn't that make you nervous? You won't have your yearly checkups anymore!" I wasn't nervous until she said that!! but was still very excited. I was finally set free!!!!

I still go back to ACH to visit occassionally but rarely know any of the nurses anymore. I love to go back to visit....maybe I can be an inspiration to one the cancer patients one day.

Decisions, Decisions

I never knew it would be so hard to pick a country for our child to come from. I thought we had picked China until today an adoption agency called that I had inquired about. They perform adoptions from Poland. We are very interested in Poland because my great grandparents came from Prussia (Polish Russia). This is a country that I was greatly considering early on because of my heritage but was having trouble finding an agency that did Polish adoptions. I found out that this is because only 3 agencies in the US do these adoptions. After further research, I have found that the stay in Poland is really long or to be broken down into 2-3 trips because they require a bonding time before you take your child home. That sounds great in theory but I don't think I could be away from Ethan that long! I have never even spent a night away from him. We would probably have to take him with us....But wow would that be a looooooooooooong flight with a 3-4 year old and then 2 kids on the way home! I just don't know .......... so stressful just picking out a country. HELP