The suitcases are out and we are filling them up!!

We are down to our last few days! Our suitcases are filling up and TR and Kman are just about ready to leave!

We have collected some goods including toothbrushes, toothpaste and floss from our family Orthodontist, Dr. Matt Jones... enough for FIFTY children!! Thanks Dr. Matt!

We also have collected some vitamins and pain relievers from several of TR's coworkers.

Kman loves soccer...

Here he is this season at one of his league games. He has been playing on a club team for about four years now and loves it. He decided he wanted to help kids in Ghana get to play futbol too by handing out jerseys and balls. So far, he has collected about 80 jerseys with a few more coming! This would not have been possible without the assistance of his teammates and friends from the Arsenal Soccer Club. Thanks to some of the families that have spread the word as we received many of the jerseys from a local high school! Kman was so excited to look at all the jerseys tonight as we washed them and folded them up to pack!



Our monetary donations are now over $2000!! We are so excited! This will allow us to do several things in Ghana to help orphans and those who need help. We know we will make a donation at the one orphanage we have mentioned in previous posts and I am working out details to get to the orthopedic center which is also the location of where my great uncle is laid to rest. I also am working on a few other things so I am confident we can easily spend any money given to us to help others as once you get to Ghana, it is easy to see where there is need and to lend a hand...

TR and Kman did get their visa back and so they are set to go! We are hopeful Kwame will get his visa to come home with us this week. While we did not get a visa pick up date yet, we were told to have our power of attorney go to the embassy starting Tuesday this week to see if it is ready... Once we have that visa, we are home free!

A huge thank you to those that are helping to fill our suitcases with donations or are clicking on the donate button above and sending some money our way to use to help others in Ghana. No donation is too small and even $5 can purchase a nice amount of water to give to an orphanage. Plus, just think, if you donate, how fun will it be to be a part of helping others and to wait to see where your donation goes and who it helps! Last year we were able to purchase an arm for a boy who did not have one... who would have thought they could be a part of changing a boy's life like that?

I know we are talking a lot about the donations lately and are putting out there what we are trying to collect. We only have a few days left and so I feel I need to try to do the best that I can to collect all the donations that we can. As you may recall from older posts that it is very important to our family to not just go to Ghana and adopt a child but that we also want to help those children that will not be adopted. It is estimated that there may be up to 1 million orphans in Ghana. Ghana is the size of Oregon and there may be 1 million children that do not have parents. That breaks my heart and we feel that we need to do something to help those left behind. We are blessed to be able to do so and feel that we are honoring our children to help those in the same situation that our children were once in.

Thank you all so much again for being a part of helping us to do so!

Kwame is not alone...

Kwame and his friend "J"

Kwame has been in the adoption center for over a year now. The way our timing went and because some things took us longer than other families, Kwame has seen friends come in and go to America. Even several kids that came after him left earlier.

Kwame has had one friend that has been there with him pretty much the entire time. The same week we received the referral of Kwame, J also found his family. While we seemed to get stuck along the way each step, J kept moving along and it seemed he would go home long before Kwame did. God must have had another plan though because Kwame's adoption timeline caught up to J. Then our family and J's family ended up waiting together for the boys passports for months.

In the time we have waited and prayed for our boys together, we have become friends. J's family lives in Oregon. They are a wonderful, wonderful couple and we are looking forward to keeping our boys in touch with each other. We have even talked about the dads meeting up with the boys and taking them to a baseball game together. We are sorry that their adoption has also taken much longer than they ever anticipated too. If it was God's plan for both of these boys to wait a little longer to come home, I find comfort in knowing our boys were not alone and have been together the last year.

We were so excited that our family and J's family got the news that the boys received their passports on the same day and we were excited and hoped that maybe we would end up in Ghana together picking up the boys.

We both had a little set back that makes it appear that we may not travel at the same time after all. They are still working on getting their set back fixed as we are also waiting for the visa pick up date for Kwame.

We would appreciate any prayers that both of our boys get to come home at the same time and that that time is next week. It would be so wonderful and comforting for the boys to get to go home at the same time as they have been together on this journey to finding their forever family together...

Seven days!!!

Seven days and counting...
Donations and offers of donations are coming in and we are getting closer to having things fall into place so TR and Kman can actually leave next Wed!

TR mailed the visa for him and Kman on Monday to Washington DC and is will arrive back tomorrow! How is that for quick? Of course we paid about $100 in postage there and back but at least it was worth it and we are getting it in time!

Kman is collecting soccer jerseys and will purchase some soccer balls in Ghana as he wants to give them out at a few orphanages. His soccer club as well as a local High School have really spread the word and it sounds like he will have enough to hand out!

Kman's orthodontist, Dr Matt Jones is donating toothbrushes, toothpaste and dental floss. We are thrilled to pick it up tomorrow as it will be enough to help all the children at the orphange we are making a donation at!

We have been especially blessed by TR's workplace. While some people knew about his adoption, after consideration he decided to send out an email to his entire workplace and we have been blessed by their support and encouragement.

We are so excited not only to be going to get our son but to be able to once again help others when we are there. For those that know us, you know how important it is for us to not only adopt but to do something to help some of the other orphans in Ghana. Thank you so much for helping us to help them!

Eight more days...

g2-47 from AAIGhana on Vimeo.

...so now can you understand how we can have fallen in love with a child we have not met yet?

Getting ready to leave... and helping us help others...

This is the first picture I have of our son from September 2008...
Here is one of the most recent I have of him as another visiting mom reads him a letter we wrote him...

We are so excited as we are getting ready to head to Ghana to get Kwame. We have purchased our tickets and are just waiting to hear our visa pick up date. Once we have that date which will hopefully be in the next few weeks, we will know if we can actually leave or if we have to change our flights. We are hopeful we get to fly out as scheduled...
I have been crazy busy around the house nesting. We had a garage sale today which helped us make a little money to help with costs once in Ghana. The boys room is almost ready. I tore it apart and am almost done putting it back together.
I am so thrilled as TR will bring out the suitcases tonight so I can pack Kwame's things and start getting donations ready.
As I did last year when we went to Ghana, I added a donate button on the sidebar for those that want to help us help those in Ghana. Last year, we collected over $3500 in money so that we could do some different projects when I was there. To read about what I did with that money, go here. If you visit the post, summarizes our projects but links you to the individual posts that go into detail on each of the donations made.
TR and Kman will be going to Ghana and hope to be able to do a few things when they are there to make a difference for those in Ghana. I have some ideas of what we would like to do and am very excited. This year our personal finances are much tighter (as this is our second adoption in two years) and so in advance we want to thank those of you inspired to help us help others. All of the money you donate will go directly towards helping others as we did last year.
As plans fall into place, I will update the blog and plan to update throughout TR and Kman's trip so check back in with us! Woo Hoo, our son is coming home!!!

Praise God, We have a Passport!!

We received the fabulous news this morning that our son now has a passport! We are thrilled beyond belief and I took one minute to celebrate before I moved on to planning for the next steps!
We just now need the visa and then TR and Kman can go to Ghana to bring Kwame home! We are hoping to have him home in the next month!
I am so excited to have so much to do to get ready for Kwame's arrival!
We are so thankful that our time has come and that our son will be coming home...

Stay tuned because now it really gets fun

As Dora would say.... We Did It!!

We did it!! Five days and over 20 hours later, Selina's braids are done!! I had no idea when I started on Sunday if she would even let me do braids again. We did them in April but I did most of it while she slept, staying up until 3 or 4am two days in a row.

After over a year of disliking having her hair combed, braided or touched the majority of the time, she sat down for 20 waking hours and let me braid her hair!
We did about nine hours on Sunday alone and then every day this week, we sat down as soon as we got home from school and work and braided until bedtime. It usually would not take that long but I used really small pieces of hair and did about double the braids I did last time. I think they look better now than they did last time but I am interested to see how they last and look over time. This time I also did two knots to hold the beads in place at the bottom instead of one as I found last time that as the braid got older, the knot got smaller and sometimes the beads would fall right out.

Selina usually does not like having her hair combed and does not have much tolerance for having it done. I think this is partly because when she was younger, she had her hair done while she screamed sometimes and so it was kind of traumatic for her and I also think she is extra sensitive on certain parts of her head.

My recommendation to other adoptive moms regarding hair if you are having some of the difficulties we have faced would be the following...
1. Make hair time fun. We watched movies, sang songs, had snacks and laughed a lot. For your own sanity, I would not recommend the 30 episodes of Dora that we watched but Selina did best with Dora. If I turned something else on, she was not happy so Dora it was!
2. Do a little at a time at the beginning. If you don't finish in one session, it is okay. Selina could not handle too much and so we would stop when she got tired of having her hair done so that our experience was positive.
3. If you can get together with others and have a hair party, try it. That helped us a lot. When she first came home, I went to several gatherings of a local adoption group I belong to where we got together to do our kids hair. Sometimes Selina and I just went to hang out and I would just comb her hair and let her see that doing hair is fun! We also would go hang out with Rita and Racheal as they got their hair done or go visit them and see their hair if they had it done in a new style.
4. Consider the hairstyle you do. If I am putting things in Selina's hair, puffs and things where I am not manipulating her hair as much works best. The braids while taking longer are much better than cornrows or twists where you are doing something where you keep grabbing and tightening hair. For the braids, once I got started, she did not feel it at all because I was done touching her hair. So for her, 20 hours of braiding is more desirable than two or three hours of cornrows.

We have slowly eased into this the past 16 months and I have not stressed out about it. I figured that she would do better with time and as she got older. I have to laugh as when we got home today, she started pulling me over to the area where we braid her hair and asked for Dora. She wanted more braids! I don't know how she is going to react tomorrow when she doesn't get all of mom's attention or watch all the Dora she wants!

I have to say that I think that Selina was truly happy to have her hair done. Tonight we laid down together as she went to bed and she was just beaming and she kept saying, "I love you mommy" "Thank you mommmy!" "We did it!"

I hope this is a new beginning for us...and hair time will be less hairy in the future!