Travel Approval...We're going to CHINA!!

Since we last updated our blog a lot has happened!! We were sent a file of a little boy on August 5th. After lots of prayer and talking with a few doctors we felt this little guy was our boy!! Meet Sawyer!

We submitted our LOI (Letter of Intent) to adopt this sweet boy. After that it seems like everything went along quickly. We had several more steps in the paper chase to finish up. We had to send our passports off to get a Visa to go to China and more WAITING! Our Article 5 was dropped off in China on Sept 20...then there was the National Holiday in China from Oct 1-7 so that put us back a week. Our Article 5 was finally picked up on Oct 13 and just a few days later on Oct 19 we had TA (TRAVEL APPROVAL)!! 

Now here we are ONE week away from leaving for China!! We leave on Nov 3rd to make the long journey to bring this sweet boy home! We will be in China for 2 weeks finalizing everything. 

Please keep all of us in your prayers the next few days and especially as we are in China. Just Jarred and I are traveling to pick up Sawyer, so our other kiddos will be here with family. I will try to update again before we leave with our itinerary so you'll know how to be in prayer specifically as we are in China.

Logged In!

As of April 20, 2016 our Dossier was logged into China's database. This is a huge milestone in our adoption journey and we are so excited to finally be at this stage. Our dossier had to go through several stages of review, and we are currently in the "To Be Matched" stage. We are officially waiting to be called about a little boy whom we know God has already CHOSEN for our family. Our Social Worker said the wait could be 3-6 months, but since we are open to a boy then it could be 1-3 months. We moved into the matching stage on June 8th. So only 2 weeks of waiting and we're feeling anxious, but God's word says not to worry or be anxious! And I was reminded of this today while listening to WayFM. I know that He has a great plan for our family, but it is hard waiting...

So while we wait some more...we're gonna keep praying and seeking Him! Would you all commit to praying with us during this waiting period? Pray for patience, provision, wisdom in preparing our other kids for this new adventure we are about to embark on. The kids are super excited about little brother, but as with any new addition to a family it will be a difficult transition on everyone. Pray that we can show them WHY we are adopting this precious boy.

We have a PRAISE!! We have been selected by Lifesong for a $2,500 matching grant! And we've been approved to be a part of a Both Hands project. This organization helps BOTH the Widow & the Orphan like God has called us all to do in James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. LOVE that verse! We are so excited to get a team together to help a widow in our own community AND to raise awareness for the orphans of the world and help bring our sweet boy home. We will have more information on this project soon. If that is something you'd be interested in being a part of just let us know and we'll contact you soon.

One final note...It's GARAGE SALE time!! We'll be having a Fundraiser Garage Sale on Saturday June 25th! I need to make a filer for it with the address. My sweet friend Jen is hosting it at her house in Thompson Station in a great spot! THANKS JEN!!

Jehovah Jireh...The Lord Provides

So...it looks like I'm on a roll for updating just once a month, which I guess is better than no update at all. Since my last update we had our Crawfish Boil Fundraiser. It was a HUGE success! God provided a beautiful day with awesome weather and a big crowd of family and friends who are so sweet in supporting us in our journey. Thank you all who helped with desserts, sides, drinks and other things. Thank you all who came out to eat with us! Thank you Murray and Brooke for planning this fun event for us. A HUGE Thank you to Brooke's parents Mrs. Barbara & Mr. Ron for donating all the crawfish and for letting us have the event at their home. We are so overwhelmed with everyone giving to our adoption so generously. Jarred and I have talked and said there are not enough words to tell you all just how thankful we are for each and every one of you. You truly are a blessing to not only us, but to the sweet boy that will soon have a forever family. YOU are caring for an orphan through your support for our adoption journey. We raised just over $2,000 which will allow us to pay our LAST agency fee! Praise God!

So from the bottom of our hearts THANK YOU!!

Fire Corn Festival Fundraiser

We wanted to update everyone on our progress. We are still waiting to hear back about our paperwork in China. Waiting is the name of the game right now! I try not to think about it so that I'm not consumed with the waiting. I have 3 sweet kiddos here to keep me busy! We've been filling out any grant application we can get our hands on to help with funding our adoption. We haven't heard back from any of them yet so please pray for God's provision in those. He's provided so much for this journey so far and we are trusting that he will help us all the way to the finish line! He is Jehovah Jireh! 

On another note we are working on our next BIG fundraiser with our sweet friends Brooke & Murray. They are from Louisiana and usually have a crawfish boil for all our church friends. This year they wanted to make it into a fundraiser for our adoption. We are so grateful for all our supporters through this journey, you are all caring for an orphan through your support! So we have set a date for the crawfish boil and would like to invite you to come out and enjoy a fun afternoon with us! I'll add the details below. Hope to see you there!

Fire Corn Festival

May 15, 2016 @ 4pm

Place: "Harlan Hill" 

Harlan Rd Columbia, TN

Suggested Donation $10 per person/$25 per family

This is a family friendly event!

There will be hot dogs and other items for those who are not up for crawfish...

We will have some games for kids and feel free to bring any toys/games for your kids to play with too. 

Also bring your chair!

Please let us know if you are able to come and let me know if you have any question. 

Email me: akrobinson06@gmail.com

Exciting Adoption Update!

I've been trying to write this blog post for nearly 2 weeks now! We've all been battling colds/allergies for about 2 weeks. We are all finally on the mend and we're trying to get back to a regular schedule...whatever that looks like. ;) Thanks for all those who have prayed for us to feel better! He hears our prayers! And now for the update!

The first weekend in March I had the opportunity to sell some Compelled Designs necklaces at a friends church's women's weekend conference. I'm so thankful for Mindy inviting me to be able to share our story with so many women as they shopped at the conference. I was there Friday night and Saturday...I had SOLD out by lunch on Saturday!! Praise God for all those wonderful women who stopped by my booth! I pray for many blessings on their families!

We were able to send all our paperwork in to be sent for authentication. These documents were sent off on March 9th. We were then notified on April 7th that we were officially DTC (Dossier to China) on April 6th. Our dossier has been uploaded into China's system and has been mailed to China. THIS is a huge step in our journey! Praise God!

So what next!? Well...waiting! Our dossier has a few steps to go through to be approved. The next step is to be LID (Log in Date) which is when our dossier is actually logged into the CCCWA. (3-4 weeks after DTC) So after LID, we will be waiting for a call from our social worker with a child's file for us to review. HOW EXCITING!! Everything seems to be moving along quickly now.

So our plan while we are waiting for this very important call...is to continue raising funds to bring this little child home! We have been filling out grant applications and trying to decide on our next fundraiser.

Thanks for praying with us through this amazing journey! We love you all!

God Answers Prayers!

God has been at work in this adoption! Of course He has, He brought us to this journey and is providing every step of the way. Glory to God! In our last update we said we needed about $5,000 to send our paperwork to China. As of today we still need about $2,400.

This past weekend our sweet friends hosted a Family Dance Fundraiser at our church. We want to give a HUGE Thank You to everyone who helped organize this event for us. Thank you Ryan, Emily, Kim, Brian, Karen, Maury, Brooke, Murray, April, Trey, Esther, Robert, Beth, David, Jenn, Mark, Becca, Aaron, Candace, Brian, Nora, Dave, Sarah, Rick, Angela, Randy, Karla, Jim. I tried to name everyone, but please forgive me if I forgot someone. These are the ones who were behind the scenes working on every detail to make this fundraiser such a success! 

Also a HUGE thank you to everyone who came out to the dance on Friday night. Y'all could have been anywhere, but you sacrificed your Friday night to come support our adoption. We are so thankful for everyone who came out to support us in this journey.

The money raised this weekend will help us to send our paperwork to be authenticated and ready for the next step which is sending it to CHINA! We're praying to have this done in a few weeks so that our paperwork doesn't start to expire and have more delays.

Family Dance Fundraiser

Sweet Friends at the Family Dance Fundraiser

I'll be at a friend's church this coming weekend March 4-5 for a Women's Weekend. They had asked if I wanted to sell some of my necklaces at the conference! What a blessing! Pray for all the ladies that will be attending the conference that they will feel God's presence. Also pray that we will SELL OUT of necklaces! ;) We are so close to being able to send our dossier to China! Pray we can be diligent in saving and raising funds to get this done quickly.

Again Thank You for ALL your support!

Compelled Designs Jewelry Fundraiser!

Update: January 19, 2016
ALL necklaces have been sold! Praise God for answering our prayers and providing for this adoption! Thank you all who purchased a necklace from us! I am planning to get another bundle so if you missed out on this round just wait I'll be getting more in soon!

As I had mentioned in my last post, I ordered a fundraising kit from Compelled Designs to raise funds to bring our little one HOME! We need about $5,000 to get our paperwork sent to China so that we can be matched with our sweet boy! I'm so excited about this opportunity. The necklaces are $24 a piece and I can ship them to you for an extra $1. Each piece has a Bible verse reference on the back, so if you are interested in knowing which verse corresponds with a specific piece, let me know! The best way to contact me would be email akrobinson06@gmail.com. In the subject line please put Compelled Designs Fundraiser just so I can keep track of everyone's order. Just include the number that you'd like and if I need to mail it to you please include your address. Just in time for Valentine's Day!! These are first come first serve, so don't wait!

#1 sold
#2 sold
#3 sold
#4 sold
#5 sold

#6 sold
#7 sold
#8 sold
#9 sold
#10 sold

#11 sold
#12 sold
#13 sold
#14 sold
#15 sold

#16 sold
#17 sold
#18 sold
#19 sold
#20 sold

1. Proverbs 3:5-6
2. Lam 3:22-23
3. Eph 3:20
4. Prov 3:5-6
5. Psalm 91:2
6. Matt 11:28
7. Jer 29:11
8. Prov 3:5-6
9. Phil 4:6-7
10. Rom 15:13
11. Eph 3:20
12. Ecc 3:11
13. Psalm 91:4
14. Prov 3:5-6
15. Rom 15:13
16. Eph 3:20
17. Psalm 139
18. Joshua 1:9
19. Jer 29:11
20. 1 Peter 5:7

I800-A Approved!!

So our last update we had an appointment to get our fingerprints done on December 28th. Everything went smoothly at the appointment, the employees there were VERY nice and professional. There was a pretty good line of people in front of us, but with only 2 people doing the fingerprinting they moved pretty quickly. We had prepared ourselves that there'd be a waiting period after they were done because of the New Year. But just ONE week after our fingerprinting was done we received our I800-A approval notice in the mail! The date of approval on the notice was actually December 28th...yes the same day we got our fingerprinting done. We were shocked to get this back so quickly! GO GOD!

Next I had my passport appointment on December 30th. Everything went smoothly there too and the guy who took my application said he had to tell me 6-8 weeks, but he figured I'd get it in less than 30 days and sometimes he's saw them come back in 2 weeks. Wow! Well I was one to get it back in just 2 weeks! So glad I didn't pay for the expedited service. ;)

We are so THANKFUL for everyone who supported us through our Christmas ornament fundraiser. We were blown away at how many we sold. We wanted to share with you all how well we did on this fundraiser to give God the glory for this awesome blessing! And maybe to help other adoptive families know which fundraisers worked for us. We brought in a total of $803 with a few donations made without them getting an ornament. We took home a net of $727 with all of the supplies taken out. We were hoping to sell at least 20 ornaments. We ended up selling 47...an odd number because we broke only 1 out of all of them! So thank you all again for buying an ornament and we hope that you put it on your tree each year and think of us and hopefully by next Christmas we'll have our little one home!

With that said I am working on another post about another fundraiser I found. Compelled Designs sells handmade pottery jewelry with a scripture reference on the back. Each one comes in a fabric drawstring bag that is hand sewn through a ministry in Kenya. I love that they are handmade pieces and that the fabric bag is supporting a ministry in Kenya. I will try to have the post up later today with pictures of the necklaces I have for sale!

Where Things Stand

First of all, thank you all SO much for supporting us in our ornament fundraiser! We are so blessed to have such awesome family and friends. Since our last update we FINALLY have a completed Home Study! We initiated the home study process in July and had a finalized copy in November. I know this is a long process, but I feel like ours was really slow. We had a lot of waiting time in between interviews and waiting on email replies. Though the process was long and tiresome it's all worth it. We have learned to be patient and wait. Praise God this huge part of the process is behind us.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received our application December 2nd and we received notification of this on December 7th. We received our fingerprint appointment date today, December 17. Our appointment is December 28th. The Department of Homeland Security will complete an additional background check after they take our fingerprints. Then we will await our immigration approval. We are trying to be patient and TRUST Him in the whole process. We have many, many more steps to go, but one-by-one, we are getting closer to meeting our new child. All in His timing, which is always BEST!

Below is a list of milestones we have met so far and more to come. I've also put this on the sidebar of our blog for you to check for updates on our progress. Thanks again for loving us and supporting us through our journey!

05/2015 - Made the decision to adopt
05/19/15- Submitted application to LL
07/2015 - Initiated Home Study with Catholic Charities
08/11/15- First Home Study Interview
09/30/15- Second Home Study Interview
10/14/15- Home Study Visit
11/2015 - Home Study Report Complete
12/01/15- Immigration Application sent
12/02/15- USCIS Received Application
12/07/15- USCIS Letter of Receipt
12/17/15 - Fingerprint appt received
12/28/15- Fingerprint appointment
              - Immigration Approval
              - Dossier Authentication
              - Dossier to China (DTC)
              - Log In Date (LID)
              - Out of Translation (OOT)
              - LOI Submitted
              - PreApproval for Child
              - Dossier Match Reviewed
              - Letter of Acceptance (LOA)
              - I-800 Approval
              - NVC GUZ # PDF
              - Article 5 Drop Off
              - Article 5 Pick Up
              - Travel Approval (TA)
              - Depart for China
              - Meet Child
              - Adoption Finalized
              - Consulate Appointment

Adoption Ornament Pre-order

Fundraising Poll

We are currently waiting for our home study to be completed so that we can send it on to the next person. I have been brainstorming and researching fundraisers that would work for us. We have come up with three different ideas....

I found these cool bracelets on one blog that I follow and really liked the business. It is MudLove and they have bracelets and some coffee mugs also. They sell these products and they give 20% to Water for Good which helps give someone in need clean water! These are just a few of the bracelets that they have to choose from.

Everyone loves T-shirts and I've seen many adoption shirts around. I do not have a design yet, but we are working on coming up with something that ANYONE would love to wear. I don't want something that says "Robinson Adoption" or I don't even know if I want a China specific shirt. Maybe something as simple as saying "Adopted" on the front...well because we are ALL adopted by God! This is just an example...this is not our design! But maybe something similar.

Lastly, I saw a post on Pinterest of an adoption Christmas Ornament! I haven't made one yet, but have the stuff to make one to see if I like it or not. I could not find an example for China, but here is one for Africa to show you the idea. Just something simple so that you can hang it on your tree and remember that YOU helped bring a child home to his/her FOREVER family!

*Please vote for your top choice. We may end up doing a couple of these, but just wanted to see what y'all were interested in before we go all in on one of them. :) Thank you for your support in our journey to adoption.*

Which product would you purchase for our fundraiser?

MudLove Bracelets

Christmas Ornament

Adoption T-shirt

Poll Maker

Home Study Visit

Almost 2 months have passed since my last post! Wow! We have been gathering paper work and had another interview in Nashville with our social worker. Everything has been going pretty smoothly. We had our home study visit on Wednesday the 14th. We had 2 weeks from our last interview to prepare for our home visit. Our social worker had told us not to worry about the home visit that it really wasn't as crazy as you'd think....but I was still nervous not knowing what she was gonna be looking for! Thankfully our house was already pretty child proof so we didn't have much to do in that area. I spent most of the day Tuesday cleaning and decluttering our house. We made sure all of our smoke alarms had batteries and were working. We worked on our special needs consideration list until about 1am on Wednesday. We wanted to have the list complete for her when she came, but we still have a few needs that we need to research and pray over. That list is so intimidating and hard to put a yes, no, or maybe on each need. So please pray with us about that list! We know God already has a sweet little one waiting for us, but we don't want this list to delay our process.

So Wednesday is here and we are going around the house making sure the house looks presentable and the kids are all dressed! I got up early and made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins so the house would smell like FALL....and for some breakfast for us and a treat to offer our social worker too! She gets to our house right on time. Our kids are wonderful and they actually talked to her when she was asking questions. Sierra even made a picture while she was here of "mama, daddy, and our little boy" in China. She said we were running to each other in the picture! Wow, what a sweet sister....and NO we did not pay her to do that! HAHA! Everything went great during the visit. She basically asked if we had any questions for her and we gave her some of the paper work we had been working on and then I showed her around our house. She then went through our 'next steps' with us and was on her way! She was at our house for maybe 30 minutes! I was relieved to have that part over with even though it really wasn't as bad as I had imagined it might be.

So our next steps are to get a couple more pieces of paper work in to our social worker and she will write up our home study report. Then she will send it to us and our placing agency for review. Then when it's finalized it will be sent in to Immigration! CRAZY!! And the waiting begins....While we wait we plan to start some fundraising. We are brainstorming some ideas and hopefully in the next few days I'll post some ideas and y'all can give us some feedback to help us in what direction to go with our fundraising.

We are so thankful to have such a wonderful group supporting us in our adoption journey!!

Interview, Paperwork, and More...Oh my!

We finally made our first home study appointment for Aug 10th. So thankful for Mrs. Robin and Ms. DeAnna for hanging out with our kiddos while we went for our first appointment! Y'all are AWESOME!! We made it up to Nashville right on time for our appt. NICE! Our social worker is very sweet and is working hard with us to complete our home study in a timely manner. The first interview was just a kind of an intro to home study. I had already filled out several things for the application so she had a little info on us already. She had a few get to know you questions for us up front. Then she had the blue folder of paper work to read over with us. Every time she went over a set of papers she would ask if we had questions...we'd look at each other and say no...I felt kinda like 'should I have questions?...I do feel overwhelmed.' Anyways she was very thorough with everything and really made sure we understood each part. So we left there feeling pretty good about our home study agency and social worker. Lots of paper work ahead of us, Dr appts to schedule for everyone, and background checks to be performed. Let the fun begin. She said the ball was in our court now...meaning we control how fast this next step will go.

After we finish a few questionnaires and our autobiographies we will schedule our 2nd interview where we will have separate interviews and one together if I'm remembering correctly.

Blue folder of paper work to complete!

As for homeschooling, we are on week 3. We've been easing ourselves into everything. At first it felt like a rocky start, but we had a really good day today! Sierra had been bored with learning new words, but today she read two lines from her first poem! She was so excited and couldn't wait to tell daddy how she could read. I'm so proud of my big girl! She's been going around all day reading to anyone who will listen. Savannah is finally interested in learning her letters! She learned how to write the letter E today and was so proud of herself! I too am very proud of my girls! They are so smart. I am enjoying being the one to teach them these things that will be with them forever. Thank you Lord for this opportunity with my kiddos! I'll add a few pictures of our learning these last few weeks.

We learned about apple trees and how apples grow!

We learned how the apple blossom
turns into the apple! So amazing!

Sierra's drawing of an apple.

We learned about God's promises!

Savannah learns the letter E!

Sierra learns to READ!

Home study in process...

Hey y'all! Sorry to leave you hanging for so long. We finally got our paperwork in to the home study agency and now we are trying to schedule our first interview in Nashville. We will have two interviews at the agency in Nashville and one at our home. This is the only real update I have on our adoption so far. I'm sure in the next several weeks we'll be gathering documents and getting physicals and such! Let the busy season begin!

On another note, most of you saw that our little man just had ear tubes put in on Monday. He did really well. I'm proud of my sweet boy. There's such a special bond between a mom and her son. I just can't explain it. We haven't ever had to do any other surgeries with the girls, we've been extremely blessed to have such healthy kids. Thank you Lord! But as we sat in the room as our little guy was getting ready for his very routine surgery, we looked around at all the precious kids there waiting to have surgery too. I wondered what kind of surgery they would be having and what their story was...I was thinking about our adoption journey and about all the sweet kids just waiting for someone to bring them home. Some of those kiddos just need a simple surgery and some love! I thought maybe this is why we are here right now in this hospital...and as soon as I had that thought, Jarred was saying the very same thing to me. Was this God slowly preparing us for what we may face in the future with our new little one? If so, I'm thankful that He is opening our eyes to these things now. He is always in the smallest and largest of details! I don't know what special need our little one will have, but I do know that no matter what God is preparing us to love this precious gift with all that we have!

Little man ready for a ride!

Lastly, we are planning to start Robinson Academy on Aug 10th. I'm a little nervous and excited all at the same time. This will be our first year homeschooling! Just want to ask for prayers that we all have fun and learn lots. 

A New Journey

About 5 1/2 years ago I started a blog so that family could watch our first baby girl grow and learn new things. I've since lost that blog and gained 2 more precious babies. Today I start a new blog for a new journey. I've been wanting to start this one, but had a hard time finding a blog name/title. I've asked Jarred to help me come up with something and here's what he came to me with..."Rocks by the River." I kinda chuckled when he mentioned it and then I realized he was for real...HA! He told me the story in Joshua 4 where God told Joshua to choose 12 men to take up rocks from the Jordan and place them by their camp for the people of Israel to see and remember what God had done for them. This blog is our "rocks by the river" for us to remember ALL the things God is doing for us throughout this new journey He has set us out on for His glory!

With all that...some of you already know where I am going with this. We are on a new journey together to bring a sweet child to their 'forever home.' Jarred and I have always talked about adoption and definitely wanted to adopt one day, but we weren't sure how/when/what that would look like for our family. So here is our story of how we got to this point...

After our sweet Savannah was born we talked about our next steps. We weren't sure if we should have another baby of our own or step into adoption. Well of course God knew exactly what we should do. I found out I was pregnant so that was our answer and we put adoption back on the back burner. We then had our sweet little guy, Seth! We were back in the newborn stage and just trying to survive day to day. We hadn't really talked anymore about adoption until Seth was a year old. God was then stirring in both our hearts again. I had come across Francis & Lisa Chan's book "You and Me Forever." It's a book about marriage and your relationship with Christ. We started reading that together. The first chapter we read talked about them adopting...and saying that God tells us to take care of the widows & orphans, and that we should "DO SOMETHING." Wow..ok! So then we just kept getting little whispers from God saying to do something to help the orphans. We prayed and talked to each other about what we had been feeling about adoption. We both agreed that it was time to get serious and look into starting this process! WHAT! Francis Chan said in a video we watched that he thinks you should be pursuing adoption until God says no and closes that door. So that is what we are doing. So far the door is WIDE open.

We are so blessed to have several friends from our church who have already walked the adoption road. I know God has placed them in our lives at just the right time. We've been able to talk to them and ask questions and get advice. Thank you for that!! Right now we have found an agency that we are so excited to be working with, our social worker is super sweet and really seems to care about our family. We are now about to start the long home study process. This will probably be the longest part of the whole journey. I plan to put a timeline of everything on the blog so that you can look at where we are in the process.

We are so excited to have y'all come alongside us on this exciting new journey!