Merry Christmas everyone! We hope it was a time of enjoying family and resting. We are so over-joyed to check in all our fundraising and calculate how many ornaments we ended up selling. We went over our goal of selling 100! I think the final count was 116 so between that and other donations we have made it to $2800.  We have calculated out just what we safely need for our full first payment (parts of it will vary depending on our state and requirements for backgrounds checks, etc) and we are only about $4000 short. We are hoping that by the end of January we can have that secured and ready to move forward. This will also allow us some time to recoup costs from having just moved and needing to replace what was lost in our storage unit as well as prepare our house for a home study.  We spent a lot of our Christmas dreaming and longing to one day share the joys of the season with our own child and already feel a pull in our hearts for a face we have never seen. On one hand we remain reserved and afraid to let our hearts go there...there is still so much unknown and process to face, but on the other hand...it just can't be helped. Our hearts naturally dream and ache for a part of our family we cannot wait to meet. Thank you all for your prayers and immense support.