Olen! He was our family's Angel Tree child last year! Angel Tree is a fundraiser that Reece's Rainbow puts together each Christmas season. Anyone can sign up to be a "Christmas Warrior" for a child listed on the Reece's Rainbow photolisting; when you do that, you are committing to advocating and fundraising for your child through the months of November and December. Last year, our family chose Olen. Olen turned a year old in May and has Down Syndrome. He lives in an orphanage in Eastern Europe. Last spring, a family committed to adopting him, and then when they arrived in his country, they discovered his paperwork was not ready and they were not able to complete his adoption. :( So he waited some more. However, another family has just committed to him and are now working to bring him home. Hooray!! I was also excited to see that his family lives in North Dakota - the state where I grew up and where we visit a few times a year to see family. It's amazing to think that Olen will be so close to us (relatively speaking, of course). It gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, someday, there's a chance we could actually meet him. Hey, I can dream, right?
His family's information is here: http://reecesrainbow.org/79929/sponsorstewart-2
Angel Tree sign-ups are going on now! If you are interested in signing up to advocate/fundraise for one of these children yourself this year, check out this link: http://reecesrainbow.org/christmaswarriorprogram
As far as our own adoption, there's really nothing new. We are on day 42 of our LOA wait, which means in about two weeks we can realistically start hoping, just a little, to receive our LOA. Not that it will necessarily come in two weeks, but by then it will be possible that it COULD come.
Fundraising continues to move ahead. We have another garage sale this weekend, another benefit on October 11th, and Pizza Ranch night on October 20th. As we are only about $5000 from our goal, we are hoping to be there after all these events are over. When you look at how far we have come, $5000 really doesn't seem like much, but it's still $5000!
On Sunday, I randomly decided I wanted to watch our video of Kellin. We have just the one video, about 30 seconds long, taken over a year and half ago. It shows Kellin laying on the floor making some noises, and then rolling to his side and starting to cry. That's it. I ended up watching it several times, and then Pooh (our two-year-old) came over and wanted to watch it too, so we watched three more times. Sigh. I SO long for the day that we will KNOW Kellin, not just as a handful of pictures, a 30-second video, and a few pages of medical/developmental information, but as a PERSON. What does he like? What doesn't he like? What does his voice sound like? How big is he now? What will it feel like to finally hold him?
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