TACO DINNER RESULTS

I am snowed in again this morning! We have had an intense winter thus far. My birthday was this past weekend, and my dad wrote in my birthday card how the weather was similar this past weekend to the day I was born. I was encouraged to cancel our taco dinner (which was yesterday) due to the weather, but I decided since we already pretty much had the meat ready (a big thank you to Jackie Gipson) to go ahead and hold it. I am glad we did, as we earned a little over $800 dollars. Jan Winbigler won the 50/50 raffle. I would like to thank the following people who helped us in our dinner including my Mom (decorations), Jaimey (cleaning and helping with kids), Jess (decorating and serving food), Dad (50/50), Grandma Argyle (brownies), Grandma Jackie Gipson (made rice AND cooked 20 pounds of taco meat!), Grandpa Mike Gipson (ran back to Little York in a blizzard to get the hard taco shells), Aunt Stef Gipson (donated food items and helped serve food/clean up after), Aunt "Loony"Amanda Maleug (helped with food), Uncle Chad Maleug (entertained our brood), and Samantha for selling raffle tickets. As you can see, this was truly a group effort. We also appreciate all of you for donating cans and money to our efforts. Alan Otten from Cameron put our fundraiser on his sign in his yard. The final THANK YOU goes to Chad. He helped me stay on track and not get too worried about pulling it off; he sensed when I needed a breather and would give me a big hug and held on tight. We learned the downfalls of having fundraisers in the unpredictable winter months of Illinois. As for an update, we are awaiting to hear the dates to schedule our home study. After we complete the home study, we will be able to apply for grants. According to my fundraiser budget, we can just about cover the costs of the adoption itself with our savings/fundraisers, but the cost of travel is the area I am hoping the grants may cover. Many more people apply for grants than are available, so this is by no means a definite for us. Please send positive thoughts and prayers our way so that we may be awarded a few of these grants. I understand many of you wonder when exactly we will travel to Russia to bring the boys home. I wish I could give you a specific date, or even a specific month; we are simply unable to do so for many reasons. The biggest reason is we do not know how long the different steps of the process will take as there are so many different people and government institutions involved. You can believe we complete the paperwork as quickly as possible. At this point we are ahead of the game, and waiting for everyone else to catch up. We do know we will receive a telephone call from our adoption consultant and told to pack our bags and be ready to leave in the next two weeks for our first trip. I believe this could happen in the next three to six months. Please stay tuned as we will be rescheduling our bowling fundraiser to be in March as the bowling alley is opening next week!