Weekly update: 10/23/15

How far along are we: 9 months, 15 days

What we are waiting for: Immigration approval for Zeke

The next step:

Things we did these last few weeks: It has been a crazy past few weeks!

- 2 weeks ago, we received our LOA!!! YAY! It was only a 37 day wait so we are so thankful for that! It could have been up to a 50 day wait!

- Grady got bit by a neighbor's dog and got a very scary infection causing us to stay at the hospital for 2 nights, 3 days. But thankfully, he's doing SO much better and it didn't turn into something worse! Thank you for all who prayed!

- Mia's birthday was on the 19th! She turned 11! We celebrated as a family, with the Rorabeck family, and with my family :) She was so excited she got an Ipod!!! She's getting too big too fast! Were so proud of her!!

- I have been filling out applications for our visas in order to travel to China! Yay! I should have those done by tonight or tomorrow!

- We finished the boy's closet organizer! FINALLY! It looks awesome and will be so nice!

- We had issues with bees getting into our basement, so Andy tore down the ceiling in the corner and found 5 very large bee hives! You could hear the buzzing of all the bees! They had made homes in our walls!!! It was creepy! I think he went through 4 or 5 cans of bee spray to kill them! The only one that got stung was our cat, but that was because she was chasing a bee trying to eat it! So now we need to fix the ceiling!

Things we still need to do

-Buy a car seat for Zeke

-clean the garage

-put Zeke's clothes in his dresser! :)

-put up the crib

Grant updates:

Matching Grant update: We have received $1485 in donations for our matching grant!!! THANK YOU!!!! We still need $1515 to reach our goal of $3000. If you would like to be a part of bringing Zeke home, the instructions are below:

PRAISE THE LORD!!! We received a matching grant from Lifesong for Orphans for $3,000! If we raise $3,000 they will match that and we will make $6,000 towards our adoption! If you could contribute anything at all - even if it's $5, it would go a long way and help us bring our son home!

Instructions for helping us bring our son home:
1. Go to http://www.lifesongfororphans.org/give/donate/
2. Click, "Give to an Adoptive Family"
3. Type in your donation amount
4. Type in 5464 for Family account number
5. Type Rorabeck for Family name
6. Type in your personal information and submit

We appreciate your gift in helping us give this sweet little boy a home!!!!

Fundraiser opportunity: On November 14^th, at 5:30 at our Church(Open Door Bible Church) will be having a fundraiser Thanksgiving dinner to help bring Zeke home! We will be sharing our adoption journey as well as a few more families sharing theirs! There is no cost to come! But if you'd like to make a donation to help bring Zeke home, we would appreciate it!!

Fun Stuff:

I got a tula baby carrier! I am so excited!!! I have been doing research on baby carriers and on a down syndrome group, I learned that a tula is a good carrier for a child with down syndrome because they have a little more support! So we started to save up for one! But then my sister's friend, Julie said she had one that we could borrow! I was so honored she would let us use one of hers! So I went to my sister's so Julie could teach me how to use it and as I am trying it on, she pulls out another tula that has a pattern of the world on it! And she says, And this is for you!!” WHAT?! That's right, she gave us the wonderful gift of our very own tula and on that tula you can see that we had to travel across the world to get our little man Zeke! And on the head piece, she put, “He's got the whole world in his hands.” Such a wonderful gift! I was speechless!! Thank you so much Julie! I am looking forward to putting Zeke in that tula and having him so close to me!!!! Let the bonding begin :)

Feelings:

I'm getting anxious about traveling and leaving the kids! Please pray for peace about this! I am quite scared to fly!