As you can see our Puzzle Name Reveal Fundraiser is coming along. If you have sponsored a puzzle piece (s) already, look for your name and message here printed on the back of the puzzle.  So many dear friends and family, as well as some new friends are stepping out to help us work towards bringing him HOME.  Gosh, I can't wait until I can openly refer to him by his name.  Can you?  Only 192 more pieces to go and we will have assemble the entire puzzle!  (Don't worry, his name will be revealed somewhere before it gets to the last couple pieces- lol lol.)  
This fundraiser is happening with great timing too, because last Friday we just received notification that we were chosen for the Brittany's Hope grant program.  Our adoption agency is an affiliate agency of Brittany's Hope.  This grant program exists to help unite families with their adopted children by reducing some of the financial barriers that many families encounter.  This program provides grant monies while giving families the opportunity to assist Brittany's Hope in raising funds so that the next child may also be united with their family.  Our family received a $5,000. grant amount.  Isn't that exciting!  We are feeling so blessed that our agency and Brittany's Hope want to partner with our family and help us in the financial strains of adoption.  As part of this program and to help it keep being able to help future families, we are responsible to fundraise 1/2 of this total grant amount in order to receive the full $5,000.  (In other words, it's like a matching grant.)  If we can fundraise $2,500. then they will match that - totalling $5,000. to be applied to our costs for this adoption.

Adoption Process Status:
We are just coming off the scare that when China just released their new guidelines that we might not be able to re-use our dossier or bring him home as soon as we had anticipated.  Bu thankfully, we had received pre-provisional approval for our son prior to these new rules, and China is saying they are going to honor that, and according to the rules that were in place when we started his adoption process.  Thank GOD!  My heart still aches though for many of the larger families that now are not going to be allowed to continue to adopt children secondary to their size of family (according to China's new rules).  The other big change is that families can no longer adopt two children at the same time.  I do not understand and we will never really know the reasons behind some of these changes.  But I do see the faces of some of the children who had families that were planning and making preparations to move forward and adopt them, and now some of them are unable.  The adoption community is still praying that these rules will somehow or sometime revert back to the way they were. but in the meantime praying that these children find families to step out and bring them home.  
Our Homestudy is completed and approved by our agency, so I'm just waiting now to receive the notarized hard copies.  Then I can submit our I-800A form to USCIS.  This step/form alone costs $945.00.  Hopefully I will be able to submit this form by the end of this week or beginning of next????  (As you can see there is a lot of hurry up and complete a form and then wait for someone else to do their part before we can submit it or move onto the next step.  :{ )
Also after I receive the hard copies of our homestudy, I will be eligible to apply for more grants.  I read a statistic, that for every 10-15 grants one applies for, you will be lucky to receive 2-3.  Well 2-3, would be a whole lot more than what I have now.  So I will do it!!!!!

Upcoming Fundraisers or Ways that you can Help:
1) We are accepting donations for our Yard Sale July 20-22.  Anyone that would like to help "man" the yard sale, is welcome!  We are going to have a lot of stuff to organize and set up.  Hopefully we will have a successful sale, and good weather!
2) I'm still ironing out the designs for our T-shirt sales.  But that should be ready to launch soon.
3) The boys (Jace and Doug) are still open for business if you want your car washed.  They will travel to you. $20. donation.
4) My friend Jackie Sherwood has offered to do an online auction to fundraise for our adoption.  She is collecting donations of any kind.  Just message her a picture of your donation for her to upload to the page/auction.
5) We also have friends the Gupta's that are hosting a Poker Tournament Aug.5th, to benefit our adoption.  So any local friends that are interested in this type of venue, contact myself or Jennifer Gupta on fb for details.
6) We always have our adoption PayPal account up and running for any contributions that people would like to make to help us apply towards the fees during the adoption process.   WaldmanAdoption@hotmail.com 
7) We have this tax deductible site that people can make donations and be updated to our process.  Please, feel free to share this link/our page with your friends and family so they can follow along and be a part of our adoption journey.  

Well that's a lot- don't you think!?!?  I'm tired, and I need to get to sleep.  Doug's alarm will be going off here in less than 3 hrs.  :{  Then my early riser, Ting won't be to much longer behind that!  
Thank you for your part in this journey, and I hope that you continue to follow along.  Sweet Dreams!