Journey to Gracelyn

This is our fundraising blog to our newest daughter (to-be), Gracelyn, who resides in an orphanage across the sea. She has spina bifida and is waiting for us to bring her home! We need to raise $2225 in a very short amount of time- as in before our home study can be reviewed by our international agency. We've had a lot of delays with our home study for various reasons, but we are now ready to finalize our home study and need to pay this fee before we can proceed. Our dossier is due the end of October, so this has become a race to the finish to meet this deadline. We will not be granted another extension. If you can, please consider donating; if not, please pray and share our need. I will be honest, I was at the end of my rope, fearing a failed adoption, when God refreshed my spirit, answered some prayers, and gave us hope.

A little about our family. We are Evan and Lori. Evan is in the military, enlisted side,and Lori is a stay at home mom. We are a home schooling, God loving, adoption supporting family. We have four beautiful children- three biological sons and one daughter through adoption. Our kids are (please bear with me, as we let the children choose their own monikers)- Rocky, 8; Bella, 8; Kenta, 6; and Balloon Boy, 4. Rocky is our little professor and he takes his job as the oldest brother very seriously. He is very literal and doesn't forget a thing. He excels at just about anything academic and wants to be an astronautical engineer and make video games in his spare time. Bella is our firecracker and has been keeping us on our toes since we adopted her over two years ago. She struggles with an attachment disorder and we have our ups and downs, but we wouldn't trade her for anything. She has some learning challenges, but definitely uses her charming personality to supplement what she doesn't know. Kenta is our little architect and is forever building new and complex things with Legos or any thing he can get his hands on to build with. He would much rather build than do school work. He loves coatis and chupacabras and plans to fly the rockets that Rocky builds. Balloon Boy is our youngest, but don't let his small stature fool you. He is headstrong and independent. He doesn't let being the smallest stop him in anything he wants to do. He is our rough and tumble monkey of the crew and he loves being a big helper.

That's us in a nutshell. We are on this journey to grow our family in a way that most would find unusual. Even more unusual, we chose to adopt special needs children. I'm sure some people think we're a bit crazy, and maybe we are. We are passionate about God, about family and about orphans. In our spare time time, we all love to read- or be read to. We love learning and you can often find us dropping what we are doing to pursue a subject of interest to the children. Lori loves to bake, sew, and craft. Evan loves storytelling and games that involve story telling. We all love attending church as a family, walks in park or hiking in the local preserves or state parks, and being silly together. This is our journey to Gracelyn. We welcome you to be a part of our journey.