We're traveling through our HomeStudy

I came on to post a blog I started about a month ago. After adding to it, I see that I'm not much of a story teller, so I ditched most of it...Writing a blog is like writing facts to me it seems...kind of like a report at work or something.  As I'm typing my Vizsla, Autumn, who wants to be a lap dog...is slipping and sliding and trying to not fall off the chair.  At one point her hind legs slipped and she was standing on the floor but in the same position in my lap. We have bar chairs for our table. She's not the 8 week puppy that she was when we brought her home, but she's not full grown either.  Most of the kids decided to sleep on the floor in our room last night with blankets and pillows and she usually finds one of them to cuddle up with. This morning when I couldn't sleep, I got up to go downstairs and found her under the blanket with Katie. Now she has found a comfortable position in my lap and is snoring. At least one of us is comfortable.

She can somehow squeeze under the couch still as well

We attempted to go camping this weekend. It wasn't much of an attempt, but with the Holiday on Monday, we wanted to try for something. My wife and I were really feeling like just keeping everyone close this weekend and being a family. With the cold and rainy weather, we decided to stay home but find some fun things to do. This also gave us some time to get some more paperwork figured out for adoption. I made the boys a deal yesterday....do the dirty pick up after the dog work and I would do all the mowing. They also helped put up some branches that I cut down from the trees a week ago. We eventually made it to see a Marvel movie showing at the dollar theatre...Christopher Robin is in our future tomorrow. The dollar theater costs 2.50 these days, but it's still quite a bit cheaper when you have 6 people.

Just wanted to say thanks for everyone's support so far. Every donation is a huge help and we're humbled by your willingness to help.  We've been able to raise $8050 to date...sacrifices from a lot of people and huge blessings for which we are thankful. Hopefully we can get a grant and/or hold a fundraising event before the next portion is due. If you're were on the list for a survival bracelet, we've finished them and they're on their way...except for a check we received this week..a few more to make!

Enjoying time with family and friends a few weeks ago

We submitted some more paperwork this week to our agency and continued with more training items. Chris is halfway through “The Connected Child" book that I handed off to her and we will both submit reports for credit towards our training.  We completed a Hague training package recently and another third of our training was filled by the connected child two day conference that we attended a few months ago. We learned about Trust Based Relational Interference (TBRI) which discussed a lot about caring for children that have undergone trauma.

Our home study is almost completed. All four meetings are done with our case worker...I think they're making it into a movie script. I'll let you know when the trailer is released (kidding). Just waiting for it to be finalized so we can begin our Dossier process at our agency...that means lots of over-nighting paperwork back and forth with our agency and immigration. Our home study is part of that package.

Our thoughts are often filled with our son sitting in a care center somewhere in Asia.  We've been praying that he has enough food, protection, and love until we're able to be joined as a family. We feel like we're in a kind of limbo right now as we're anxiously waiting for our home study to be finalized.  God knows who our son is and His timing is perfect, so we continue to trust in him.

Click on on one of these links to Donate:

    GoFundMe.com/team-mayfield-adoption 
        (not tax deductible, but less fees )

     PureCharity.com/team-mayfield-adoption 

        (tax deductible and grants can go straight to our Adoption Agency)