I'm a married mother of "3 1/2" ;) and the loves of my life are my faith and my family. I've grown in my faith over the last two years since my daughter's adoption, she is the reason why I started this blog in the first place, and I'm so looking forward to watching God move in my heart, and the hearts of others who follow along on our journey towards bringing home one of "the least of these". Special needs adoption is my mission field, whether I'm adopting a child myself, or helping other families get funded, or shouting for waiting children who need families to find them, and I hope you'll come along for the ride and watch what God can accomplish when we say yes to His command to care for the orphan, and go out into the world to be His hands and feet.

Apparent Project Fundraiser

Apparent Project Fundraiser

Hello :)

Hello :)

My Better Half

My Better Half

The Crew

The Crew

The New Guy

The New Guy

Before Adoption

Before Adoption

Two Years After Adoption

Two Years After Adoption

Friday, August 31, 2012

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

We have winners for the giveaway!!

Here is how the winners were chosen. Every entry was assigned a number. if you entered 1 time you had 1 number, if you entered 100 times you had 100 numbers. There were 40 total prizes, I drew 40 numbers. The winners are as follows:

Ipad - Jill Williams
Kindle Fire - James Smith
$100 RR Donation - MutantMama
Sony Camera - Whitney Olsen
$50 Ruby Tuesday Gift Card- Christina Scott
$50 Amazon gift card - l.b.
$50 Target gift card - Mel
$25 itunes gift card - Jamie Lentz
$25 Old Navy gift card - Jessica Derstine
$15 Starbucks gift card - Quinn Family
Key Fob - Amy Livingston
Key Fob - Cheri
Key Fob - Kalesha
Blondies - DebW
Cookies - Jennylynnlsu
Bookmark - Leah
Bookmark - Molly
Bookmark - Lillian
Taggie Blanket - Amanda
Photo Canvas - Twotwice2
Handbag - Becky
Wallet - LisaM
Hat - Mary Sanders
USA Casserole cover - SarahV
Apple Casserole cover - Charlotte
Harvest Wreath - Ashlyn
Christmas Wreath - Riss
Earrings - Emily
Message board - Alice
Photo Session - Wilda
Owl Necklace - Ibtorismommy
One at a Time bracelet - LisaS
Princess Crown - Tiffany Bell Z
Baby Shoes - Jamie Y
Bow Holder w/clips - Monica
Knit Washcloths - Shantijoy2
Banner - Carrie Gilbert
Makeup Roll - Amber Gager
Uganda necklace - Christina Schye

Congrats and thank you for helping us bring Kenzi home!!! If you donated something, please message me on facebook or email me and I'll get you in touch with your winner!

Winners that I don't personally know, please email me at priscilla.morse@gmail.com with your shipping info. Thanks!


Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Koins 4 Kenzi

I tried this coin drive thing once before with some success...we made a little over $200! I thought I would give it a whirl again, since we're SO close to being fully funded, I think it would be awesome to get over that hump with nothing but spare change! So I set to work....check out my awesome change jar.
Of course I invited other people to collect their spare change for Kenzi too...what happened really surprised me.

FIVE kids are giving up their PIGGY BANK change to help Kenzi come home. My friend's daughter who is also adopted from Russia was the first to volunteer, then my friend's little boy offered to share the change he used to "feed his piggy" to help Kenzi, then my other friend's little girls did this:
three sweet little girls have pooled their money for Kenzi, and vowed not to stop collecting til "the teddy bears tummy is full".

Guys...this has touched me more than ANYTHING in this process so far. I have been humbled and blessed by all the donations we've received, all the acts of selflessness, all the help with fundraisers...I'm so grateful for all of it, but...to see babies raiding their piggy banks for a little girl they don't know...wow. It doesn't take a lot to know that every kid deserves a mommy...these sweet souls GET that, and they're sacrificing EVERYTHING they have without a thought to make sure my little girl gets a mommy. Thank you so, so much...you guys have raised AMAZING children. 

Friday, August 24, 2012

Meet My BFF

Check out my sassy pants doing what she does best...beating me up! LOL

The End Is Near

Hey Guys! I just wanted to post an update and let everyone know what's up with Kenzi's adoption. :) Well, as far as fundraising, we're almost done! We have a few things going on right now to get us over the hump and fully funded, here they are!



If you have little girls in your life, that one is for you! No starting bids for anything and super low shipping! 



Tons of crazy awesome items, get an entry for free, get more entries for donations to our FSP!


Last, but not least...we're having another puzzle fundraiser! Someone donated a gorgeous puzzle of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow to us. It's 500 pieces, and we're selling the pieces for $5 each. If you would like one, donate to the new chipin provided on the right of the blog. Anything raised above and beyond what we need for adoption costs, will go towards Kenzi's medical care (heart surgery, oral surgery, hernia surgery, etc). 


Isn't it pretty?!? I love it!!! I can't wait to see it hanging in our dining room!

Ok, so on to the other updates! We had to make a short notice trip to Nashville to get a couple more apostilles....between overnighting the paperwork, the certifications/notaries/apostilles, gas, and feeding the kids...it set us back over $200! But, it's done now and hopefully we are really, REALLY done with paper chasing now!!!!

Our paperwork is either on the way to the Judge, or with the Judge in Kenzi's region...I'm not sure which. I do know that once the Judge has the paperwork in hand, he either has to issue a date or request more paperwork within 10 days...so we have a semi-accurate window for when we should expect our court date. When we get the court date, we'll also know whether or not our 3rd trip was waived. People seem to think it will be waived, but I'm hesitant to get excited until I know for sure. 

So, in short...we're still waiting! I can't wait to get my sweet girl home so please keep praying for our family as we continue to pace the floors waiting for travel dates and funding to come through!

Much love, 
Cilla

PS....Isn't it amazing what love can do? These two pictures of Kenzi, the left is her RR photo, the right is her playing with her mama....and I love that she's wearing the same dress in both! <3 This princess owns my heart!



Monday, August 20, 2012

A Plea

This is going to be one of those posts that make trolls squeal with delight...you know the ones I'm talking about, where you breakdown and wear your heart on your sleeve and basically grovel for help on behalf of a sweet, innocent child, your child, that you've held, kissed, loved on...and left behind so you could continue the fight for their freedom from 6,000 miles away.

I try. I mean I really, really try to stay strong through this process, I try to keep myself busy with anything and everything so I can maybe forget that the little girl I love is halfway around the world, an orphan who doesn't even "get" what it means to have a mother. It kills me when I sit down and let my mind go there, to how much pain she is in from an untreated hernia, from rotted out teeth. How tired she is from living with a bad heart that has never been treated...I just don't understand how anyone can watch such a sweet little girl suffer, and not do what needs to be done to heal her literally broken heart. 

I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for travel dates. Waiting to hear whether or not the judge in our adoption has agreed to waive our 3rd trip. Waiting to see if my baby girl will be home in her room, in her own bed, in less than a month...an orphan no more. This little girl is going to go from orphan to princess overnight. Her life will read like a Disney fairy tale...we just need to get over this final hurdle...the hurdle being $2,500. 

How crazy is it that a $48,000 adoption has boiled down to a $2,500 need! I'm so eternally grateful to everyone who has gotten us this far, who has gotten our sweet Kenzi this close to  home! All we need is one final push to get us over this hurdle! Will you help? We have a giveaway going on right now, you can FIND IT HERE, and you could win an awesome prize for a very small donation. Please consider entering! It ends in 11 days!

I need to get serious about this financial need. It is truly, truly a need. We don't have money tucked away where we could pull from to cover it, we don't have credit cards we can put our plane tickets on if we end up not getting funded. We're tapped. We've sunk everything we had into this adoption before ever asking for a donation from anyone. This adoption, start to finish, is about $48,000, Kenzi had $10700 in her grant, we have $14500 in our FSP, and we put in nearly $20,000, literally everything we had, our savings, cashed in retirement, all of it. We are going on nothing but faith at this point. Faith that the adoption community won't leave a precious little girl behind. Faith that our friends and family will wake up and see how much these kids need parents, advocates, prayer warriors. All we have left is faith, and it's scary to walk into the final stage of this adoption completely blind, and completely dependent on the kindness of strangers, but that's what we have to do now, so please, if you feel led at all...help Kenzi come home.

Friday, August 10, 2012

And the award goes to...

For the worst blogger *ever*....

Me!

So sorry I've been MIA for so long. I have been swamped, overwhelmed, on the verge of total craziness! lol

I'm also sorry for the shortness of this status update. Yo Gabba Gabba is about to end and my 2 year old will be bouncing off the walls again so I have to be quick!

THANK YOU to everyone who joined Team Pasha and Xenia and made our auction a success! We won the challenge and because of YOU 5 precious little ones will have a month long advocate! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Our giveaway is still going on! Please check it out and join in on the fun!!! 

I'm gearing up for some facebook fun in the next couple weeks, so stay tuned for that announcement! :)

Our dossier is on the way to Russia! We will hear very, very soon what our travel dates are! We are still $3,500 short, so please....if you feel led to help close this deal and get our girl home...now is the time!!!

Thank you so much, and God Bless! I will write more soon!