Bows for Katie

I have a friend named Christina, who has recently moved back to Tennessee from Savannah, Georgia.

Christina owns a business that makes hair bows and lots of other adorable, personalized items.  The name of her business is Totally Bowlicious, and all of her items are adorable.  Some of my favorites?  The personalized tumblers, the bandana dresses, the ribbon flops, and the little onesies with the ties on them - so, so cute!   Totally Bowlicious has items available to purchase online at her website (just click the link above) and has a Facebook page.   She also does craft shows and sets up a fabulous booth like this.

Her prices are very, very reasonable.  One of my other favorite things she has available?

Christina has very, very generously offered to partner with us to offer Bows for Katie.

Christina has offered to sell her bows (all except her bottle cap bows) for $6.00 through Bows for Katie.  If you buy a bow, she will donate $3.00 of that price to Coins for Katie.  And, if that wasn't enough, for every bow purchased through Bows for Katie, Christina will GIVE KATIE A BOW!!!  Ya'll, I have been dying to put a bow in someone's hair for seven years.  Katie needs bows!  

Look at the cute bows she has - and this is just a tiny sample!

If you would like to purchase a bow through Bows for Katie, you can contact Christina through her website at totallybowlicious.com or like her page on Facebook - she will be so happy to hear from you!  Please help support my friend's great business and help us bring Katie home!

More Cups!

I got two more Coins for Katie pictures today.  I love these photos, and the boys love to see where our cups are and who is saving their Coins for Katie.  I'm considering getting them a map and putting a mark on each place we've got a cup.    Today I got:

Rachel's from Larsen, Wisconsin.

And Lynn's from Manchester, New Hampshire.

Love Lynn taking it up a notch and using a jar instead of a sippy!

Please don't forget to send me photos of your cup!  

Email them to me at ksimp6577 at bellsouth dot net.

Dossier Update

Can I get a Hallelujah?!  Chris and I were married in Hawaii.  Amazing?  Yes.  Quick to respond when you need five certified copies of your marriage certificate?  Um, no.  I submitted my request online, you know - because that's faster - on July 16th.  I got my certified copies in the mail today.  I'm not going to lie.  I may or may not have danced a jig in the kitchen when I opened the envelope.  Unfortunately, now just have to put them back in an envelope and send them back to Honolulu for apostilling.  I'm going to include a self-addressed stamped envelope.  Maybe that will get them back to me a little faster.  The good news though is that, other than the apostilled copies of the marriage certificates, we are only waiting for our FBI clearance, our USCIS fingerprinting date, and our golden ticket.  We're getting so close!  We will need to submit $3,500 to our agency when our dossier is sent in.  As you can see by our thermometer, we have raised over $4,000.  We have spent some of that already on our home study fee ($1,500) and our psychological evaluation ($775.00).  To date, our expenses have totaled $4,350.96.  We have really only used about $2,000 of the money we raised so far, and the rest has come from our savings.  (So much for the picket fence Chris wanted so badly for the back yard!)  We hope to raise enough through our Run for Katie in October to fully fund our dossier expenses to submit and then some to start saving for our travel expenses.

When we travel on our first trip, we will have to obviously pay for our visas, airline tickets, meals, lodging, and transportation.  That will be a huge expense - I estimate at about $8,000 at least for each trip.  We will also have to our "support and service fees" of $3,750 on each trip.  This fee will cover our orphanage donation, overseas coordination fees, translation and notarization of dossier in country, the taxes to Katie Ruth's country, humanitarian aid, and an assistance fund.  Also, once we return from our first trip to her country, we will have a fee due to our agency for our match and acceptance, which is $1,925.00.  It is really overwhelming when I see those numbers typed out!  

I have two really fun fundraisers to tell you about tomorrow.  They both go hand in hand with Coins for Katie, and I think you'll like them!  One of the events involves a silent auction, and we got a prize in the mail today that was so generously donated for our auction.  It's such a great prize that I thought for a tiny minute about keeping it. . .

It's a Keurig Elite Brewing System with a 12 pack of K-cups!  This is a prize with a value of $119.95, and it was donated by my great friend Dawn, who works for Green Mountain Coffee.  Dawn and I have been friends since sophomore year of college.  She is such a hard worker, hilariously funny, and always thoughtful.  She is smart, pretty, fun, and never ever boring.  I only wish I got to see her more!

If nothing else, this journey to Katie Ruth has reinforced to me what amazing friends Chris and I have.  I can only hope that I am as good a friend to all of the people who have reached out to us through this process as you have been to us.  

Happy Birthday!

I made this cake this weekend for a sweet little girl named Grace.  You can read more about Grace here.  (And, PS.  Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman were at the party and rumor has it they loved the cake. . . only in Nashville.)

Making this cake made me think about making a birthday cake for Katie Ruth.  I promise that her first cake will be amazing.  I've made Legos, pirates, Star Wars, and puppy dogs for seven years.  The first girl cake I get to make for my own child?  It will be incredible!

Incredible Coins for Katie Opportunity!

I have a friend named Erin.  We have been friends for as long as I can remember - I believe since first grade.  (Seriously?  That means we've been friends for twenty-eight years. . . that seems unbelievable.)  Want some proof?

This is a picture of a class trip to Boston.  I'm thinking fifth grade, purely based on the hair.  I'm the snotty looking one in the front row on the left.  Erin is right behind me with the curly hair.  (And maybe I should have warned her before I posted this on the internet!)  I loved to go play at Erin's house when I was little.  Their whole upstairs was just two bedrooms and a bathroom for the bedrooms to share, if my memory is correct.  I remember that her older sister Andrea had a TV with a VCR built in- the first one I had seen and I thought it was so cool.  They also had a play kitchen with a yellow phone, and David's speech clinic had the same kitchen.  I thought of her each time we went into the playroom and I saw that kitchen.  I remember having sleepovers at her house and going to Brownie day camp with her.  

Fast forward, and we're both grown ups now.  Erin is married and has an adorable little girl.  She and her family live in Massachusetts, and Erin is a first grade teacher.  (A job, by the way, that is PERFECT for her.)  Erin emailed me with an idea she had to share Coins for Katie with her class.  The school she works at does a community service learning project each year, and the entire first grade (four classes!) will be making Coins for Katie their community service learning project this year!  I am going to ship cups to Erin, and every single child in the first grade, all NINETY of them, will take a cup home.  Our boys will be pen pals with the first grade students in Erin's school.  They will be able to incorporate Coins for Katie into reading, writing, spelling, math, geography, and more.  This partnership is an amazing opportunity for us to bring awareness about Down syndrome adoption to a much larger group of people, raise money to bring Katie Ruth home, teach all of the children - at Erin's school and in my house - about generosity and helping others, and for a large group of students and their families to really make a difference in one child's life.  I am so hopeful that we will be able to get Katie home before the end of their school year so they can see what they will work so hard to achieve actually come true.

Katie Ruth is such a lucky little girl, and she doesn't even know it.  And her mama is so lucky to have friends like Erin - and the many others who have contacted me - who are willing to give of themselves to help us bring Katie Ruth home.  I have been humbled and amazed by the outpouring of support and excitement we have seen.  To date, we have given out 78 cups through our Coins for Katie project.  And I have thirteen more ready to go out tomorrow!

More Coins for Katie

Here is Sarah's Coins for Katie cup in Wisconsin.

Sarah is a remarkable young lady, who is 13 years old and has a real heart for orphans.  Her family has adopted from Eastern Europe, and Sarah is a fabulous advocate for many Reece's Rainbow children.  Sarah and her sweet friend Rachel have a blog through which they sell items they make (crochet, sew, etc.) to raise money for orphans.  They are truly incredible girls, and they are much better people at 13 years old than I could have dreamt of being.  They are generous, caring, and focused on helping others.  They've both got Coins for Katie cups (Rachel, email me a photo of yours so I can post it!) 

Sarah also has a blog named Matthew 18.14 .  ("It is not the will of my Father in Heaven that any of these little ones should perish.")  On her blog she posts a weekly Faithful Friday post, in which she highlights a family adopting.  We were here Faithful Friday post last week!  She wrote a very nice post about our family and about her excitement to help with Coins for Katie.  Take a look around both Sarah and Rachel's blogs and leave them a comment - let them know Katie Ruth's mama sent you!

And, because I could't resist. . . I added a bow to that sweet picture on our Coins for Katie jar.  She will after all be a Southern girl. . . 

Where is Your Coins For Katie Cup?

Where is your Coins for Katie cup?

We have this big jar on our counter in our kitchen.

(Next to one of my favorite pictures ever of us, back when we only had two babies!)

This is Kirk's cup, on his desk in Murfreesboro, TN.

This is Matt's, on his motorcycle in Gardner, MA.

For some reason I think this may not be the permanent location. . . 

This is Sonya's, in Murfreesboro, TN.

It's back in her house after being, of all places, at the Rutherford County jail!  Her husband is a corrections officer and brought it to work with him.

Don't worry - he's bringing it back on his next shift.

Look closely - there are dollars in there!

This jar is in my office.

When our cups get full, we're pouring them in this jar.

It's conveniently placed right between the two chairs I have for people to sit in.

Don't think that was an accident.

This is my cup in my office.  

I have it facing everyone who comes in to sit down or talk to me, and almost everyone asks me about it.

This is Auntie Nessa's on her kitchen counter in Smyrna, TN.

Auntie Nessa, who doesn't have children of her own and doesn't want them, is very excited about little miss Katie Ruth.

Do you have a Coins for Katie cup?  

If you do, I'd love for you to send me a picture of it, wherever you've got it, so I can include it here!

If you don't have one and you want one, I'd love to send you one!  

Leave a comment here, or send me an email and I'll get one right out to you!

And we've also gotten our first check in the mail.  My uncle Rob and his family (his wife, two daughters including the crafty Sarah of emmyloubeedo, and their families) counted up their coins and sent us a check for $174.67.  Thank you so, so much!!