A penny saved...you know the rest

The last two weeks have been an intense dive into the fall semester. We haven't had a lot of time to think about the adoption.

Until yesterday. When I opened my email and saw that we are officially approved by our agency to become active. Just to remind you of adoption terminology, "active" means that birth mothers can be shown our print profile and our video, and can choose us. Pretty exciting and terrifying all at the same time.

While we have the $10,000 activation fee, we don't have the full match budget of $25,000 (for now), yet. We still need about $6000. Thankfully, it looks like Phillip is going to coach rec swimming, which will be a nice chunk of change to go directly toward the match.

Our latest fundraiser is a challenge to fill 48 baby bottles with pocket change to help with the costs. The bottles arrived earlier this week, so for those of you who have asked for one to be mailed, we will be shipping them out.

I have had some colleagues, students, former students, and friends take home their bottles this week. The first one already came back (a student of course-thanks Nicki!)-and it had almost $17 worth of change in it. Guess what. $17 multiplied by 48 is $816. Taking into account the cost of the bottles (about $80 with shipping), and the cost of shipping it to you (about .50 per person), we still have the potential to make over $700.

It might seem trivial for you to consider filling up a bottle with change, right? What difference could your "pennies" do? Your pennies make a huge difference in our ability to bring our baby home.

If you haven't asked for one, will you consider giving us your pocket change? You know, the stuff that's in your couch, on the floor board of your car, and in your dryer?As you can see from the picture below....we still need lots of people to take a bottle.

I continue to be amazed at those of you who have donated whatever you can to us. I also continue to be amazed that this baby is coming home due to the generosity of people who aren't particularly wealthy. Just people that love us and believe in us. It's hard to wrap your head around that. We certainly feel loved. We might feel ill-equipped and clueless about parenting, but clearly you all don't agree.

So...please ask for a bottle (or two, three....). And spread the word.