Amazon Affiliate Program

Hey guys! With the holidays fast approaching, I just wanted to take a second to "plug" our Amazon Affiliate Program! If you shop at Amazon, please use the link on our blog. It's on the right hand side, about half way down the page, or you can use this link:

Kenzi's Affiliate Link


By using our link, you are helping us bring Kenzi home! 5% of your purchase will go to Kenzi's adoption fund, or her medical care fund depending on when you use the link! It's a small way to make a big difference to our princess!

<3

Special Request

In roughly 3 hours my friend's daughter will be going under the knife for what seems like the millionth time in her short, sweet life. She is having a piece of her skull removed from her stomach, where it was put to continue growing, and placed back on her head. She was the victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome back in August and is truly a miracle baby. I will admit that when I saw the first photos of her lying in the hospital, I couldn't wrap my head around how such a tiny person could fight hard enough to overcome what had been done to her...but Cheyenne has shocked us all with her strength, and what has stood out the most to me is how HAPPY she still is. What a sweet spirit she has. I know grown men who couldn't fight as hard as this princess has! 

Please keep Chey in your hearts and prayers as she undergoes this procedure!

I would like to share another blog post with you that talks about Cheyenne, and shows just how many people she has in her corner! I shared Cheyenne's story in the Reece's Rainbow community and so many people came together to pray for her recovery. Please read the post above. It's so touching.

Also, I would again like to say thank you to Amy, Chey's mom, who even though she is enduring so much with her own daughter right now, still took the time to try and help me bring my daughter home. Many of you know that Cheyenne has a facebook page with over 100,000 fans! So many people have rallied behind Chey and Amy and really wrapped them up in prayers and well wishes. Amy used this outlet to ask for prayers for my Kenzi and because of it I gained over 100 facebook friends in a day! So many well wishes, some donations, and just a general sense of people caring not only about Kenzi, but all the children like Kenzi who have been left in orphanages around the world. Thank you Amy for taking a tragedy and doing your part to bless other children through it. We all love Chey and will be there with you every step of the way!

28 Days Later

I'm sitting our hotel room, feeling awful due to the bug I caught somewhere in Russia (Hello, Guardia...how nice to host you...not). It's 9am, I'm watching BBC World....coverage about Hurricane Sandy. I wonder if our flight to NYC is going to happen.

Moscow is a beautiful city. We are staying in the hotel for the most part, partly because of my stomach bug, partly to keep from spending money. Moscow is so expensive! It's been fun though. I'm lucky to be married to a guy who can make ANYTHING hysterical. 

I've had a lot of time to reflect on this adoption journey. I'm not big on melodrama, I would rather find the humor in any given situation, so I'd be lying if I said I had some great epiphany and now everything we've been through makes sense. It doesn't. None of this makes sense to me! I've tried over and over to figure out WHY we've had so many hiccups, bumps in the road, whatever you want to call them. What is the MEANING of all of this. What is God trying to teach me? Where is the LESSON, what am I missing?!

As I sit here, and reflect, and wonder, and theorize...it hits me like a ton of bricks. All of this is happening because this is just how life rolls sometimes...peaks and valleys. Sometimes you're the windshield...sometimes you're the bug. You have two choices when life deals you a crappy hand, throw in the towel and declare you're just not strong enough for this, or put your big girl panties on and deal with it. 

I'm so glad I decided to roll with the punches because the reward for doing so will be here in 28 days. I'll walk off a plane, in my hometown, with my daughter on my hip, and this nightmare of a journey will be over, and a new journey will begin.

I just have to claw my way past that finish line. I can do 28 days standing on my head, right? We have an auction starting up on the 30th to help get some of the last $$ put together so I can come back to Mother Russia and ransom my sweet girl. 

So, what is the current "thing" standing between me and my kiddo? It's $3,000. Which seems so ridiculous. After all the waiting, redtape, paperwork, THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of dollars, it all comes down to $3,000. Will it come together before I head back to Kenzi's region? I certainly hope so. Will a miracle happen? Only time will tell. Maybe there really is a big lesson to be learned in this stage of the game, maybe it's faith. I have 19 days to go before I board a plane back to Kenzi's region, and I don't know how I'm going to do it. I don't know if the money will be there to make it happen. I'm just trusting God, and the Universe, and mankind in general to come through and make this happen for the sake of a little girl. It is taking all the faith I can muster to just pray, and watch, and hope and wait to see the pieces fall in place. 

We'll hopefully have a happy ending to this story in 28 days. <3

A Journey in Pictures, Court Trip Visit Two

A journey in pictures - Court Trip Visit One

The Latest

 

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has been there for us through this latest turn of events. For those that don't know, the Judge who approved Kenzi's adoption also waived the 30 day waiting period that should have allowed us to bring her home with us during our court trip. Because of red tape and many things falling through the cracks, that was not allowed to happen. What that means is that I will be going back to Kenzi's region in a few weeks to bring her home. We spent many, many days extra in Russia trying to get the kinks ironed out so she would be able to come home with us and receive medical treatment, but it just wasn't going to happen. Because we spent so much extra money to combine the 2nd and 3rd trips in order to bring her home earlier, we are now  not funded for my return trip. 

A friend who's own daughter is facing medical struggles right now has a prayer page for her daughter with thousands of viewers, and she was kind enough to ask those people to pray for my Kenzi as well. Many people asked how they can help, what they can do, etc and that is what this blogpost is about.

How you can help get Kenzi home:

Pray.

Prayer is the number one thing we are requesting. We have faith that God will move mountains to bring our daughter home, and that He will heal her heart. We really covet your prayers during this time for Kenzi, and for us, and for our sweet boys who have sacrificed a lot of time with us in order to bring their sister home.

Donate.

I know a lot of people hold the opinion that if you can't afford adoption, you can't afford the child and that just isn't true. There is so much red tape to cut through to bring these kids home and unfortunately the ransom for their lives is extremely high. Things pop up, "hiccups" you might call them, and these hiccups can cost thousands of dollars. Unfortunately we have had MORE than our fair share of  "hiccups" and it isn't easy for us to ask for help but we feel like Kenzi deserves parents who will do ANYTHING to help her, including putting aside their pride and asking for help when it's needed. It hasn't been easy, but it's what she needs so it's what we'll do.

We have a donation "chip in" account set up.

But if you would like to make a tax deductible donation through Reece's Rainbow, you can follow THIS LINK

Thank you all for your interest, and your love and support...donations and prayers. We are floored by the number of people who care about our daughter. You're all amazing.

My sweet girl having her passport photo taken...one step closer!

An Orphan No More - Part Three

Ok, so I don't have any pics from court day of Dave and I because I was too scared stupid to even think about taking pics. Dave did, however, manage to take a pic of our friends after their court appearance and before ours when we met up for sushi!

Court wasn't as scary as I had psyched myself up for...Dave got most of the questions, and they were pretty basic. I got asked a few questions...bada bing, bada boom...court is over, our adoption is approved aaaaaaand our 30 day waiting period is over!

Awesome right?

Not so much. Even though the judge waived the 30 day wait, no one knew what to do to actually get all of the paperwork we needed prior to the 30 days. We changed our plane tickets from Friday to the following Thursday to give our team some time to iron out the kinks.

While that was going on, we were busy taking pics of this beautiful city to put in an album for our princess to see when she's older. We want her to know her roots, where she's from, etc so we decided to make the best of this additional time in Russia and learn all about our daughters culture.

Sadly, we learned today that we will not be able to bring our daughter home on this trip. I will coming back alone in November to bring her home. This is heartbreaking for us, as well as a huge financial blow. We were funded for 3 trips, we even had a family lined up to donate our extra funds to as a matching grant because we would have been close to $2,000 in the black had we been able to bring our girl home with us. The cost of switching our plane tickets, losing the money we used to book our NYC hotel, losing the money we spent to buy Kenz a plane ticket, staying 6 additional days in this hotel, plus food, then food for 5 days in Moscow (we were blessed to have a friend use points to pay for our hotel in Moscow), and so on and so forth...has put us a little in the red, and now I have to buy myself a plane ticket to come back, Kenzi a plane ticket to come home, hotel here for I think 4-5 days plus food, then Moscow again...we're about $3,000 short and I have roughly 3 weeks when I get home to put it together. We took down our FSP on the blog (we thought we were finally done!) but if you would like to help you can donate here:

 http://reecesrainbow.org/29701/sponsormorse

We don't expect anyone to use the above link. You have all been so wonderful, so generous, it's been humbling to say the least to watch our friends, as well as complete strangers come together to give this little girl a family. We would like to ask you to pray for Kenzi while we're gone. Please pray for her heart to hold out just one more month. She's a strong little girl, we just need God to give her a little more strength to hang on for us a little longer.

So, I don't want to leave this blog post on a down note, so here are some pics with our sweet pea from this morning.