PAPERWORK - update

Thank you just does not convey the gratitude we feel at the donations that have been given for zack's race.  Receiving money from strangers and seeing an outpouring of support from family and friends is certainly humbling to say the least!
So it looks like our house is a little unorthodox to be considered for a home study.  Those of you who know us and our house are smacking your foreheads going "duh".  Apparently the presence of doors on ALL rooms matters to some and not to others.  Some fire extinguisher tagging and buying and extension cord changing and fire escape ladder buying and preliminary fire inspection walk throughs later, it is very up in the air whether this house could be approved.  We are going to keep trying to continue with our home study while living here in this house, but it is growing increasingly more evident that we will probably have to wait until we move to my parents house to complete the paperwork process.  That could well be a year from now.  The only solace in that is as long as our current house could be approved, we can do a lot of the paperwork now, and special needs adoptions are expidited.  The submission to travel should be relatively short.  We continue to follow the path we are shown, trusting God to reveal every step.  If it must be an arduous, slow process, then we would be joining the ranks of many an adoptive parent that had traveled before us!  It's probably a blessing in disguise as we will have more time to make the adjustment, learn more, and beef up our funds!

MONEY - ultra marathon!

Wowzers! First of all, he did it!  Zack completed all fifty miles of the race!  He even did well, coming in 54th out of 159 runners.  Not bad!  His official time was 10 hours, 57 minutes, 14 seconds.  Despite a few hours afterwards of intense crampy leg pain, we got his electrolytes back up to par (Zack learned a lot about that, the aid stations are really something, they even had a podiatrist on site!) and he was feeling functional again.  An ice bath and ibuprofen later and he was feeling even better.  He's got this weird bruise lump thing (i don't think it's a clot, more like a strain maybe?) on his left calf that he's wrapping.  Other than that, he came out fairly unscathed!  Hooray, way to go Zack!  I, however, got a sunburn... I know you are all shedding a tear for me.  I can tell you, it's quite traumatic.  I'm trying my best to rest and heal.  Aloe vera, where would I be?  :)

36 miles in

We want to express our deep gratitude to those who prayed for Zack during his training and run.  Thank you so very much.  And to those who prayed for nice weather, the day could not have been more beautiful!  We couldn't have done it without you!
We also want to thank those who pledged support and sponsored his many miles financially.  It looks like this fundraising effort will get us through the home study fees!  Praise the Lord, God is providing through awesome people like you!
Payment options:
Paypal: through the donate button on the side of this blog, you can securely send money directly to us.  There is a tiny fee taken out which, NOTE: I thought wouldn't be evident to you, but looks like they do tack it on top of the total.
Checks or cash can be given to us, our sent to our home address.  Please email me at zrmillers@gmail.com if you would like the address.
If you have forgotten how much you pledged, just email me at zrmillers@gmail.com and I will look it up!
Just a reminder that if you donate in the above ways, the giving cannot be claimed as a deduction on your taxes, as we are not a nonprofit agency.
God bless you for giving!!!

the deed is done

Thanks again to everyone!  It was quite an experience!

Ultramarathon update

  So, the Mohican 50 mile race is Saturday!  Zack's pretty pumped as you can imagine.  A few weekends ago he completed the longest training run in his schedule - 35 miles!  It took him about 7 hours.  He did it and did it well.  He said he was hardly even sore the next day.  The Ultramarathon running style is so different than the Marathon type.  It's more mind, eating, and endurance than times, pacing and speed.  Anyhow, I'm baking bread right now for his PB&J sandwiches (he'll eat about 4 throughout along with a laundry list of other foods - getting him the salt, fat, carbs and sugar he needs in the right balance).  He was going over the map with me and where I'm to be to give him his change of shoes (he changes clothes and shoes about halfway through), and additional food.
  If you think about it on Saturday, say a prayer for no falling and adequate nutrition and hydration and low humidity!  But also that our eyes would be opened once again and all the clearer to the bigger picture.  There is a bigger purpose to this race.  We wish to grow as people in our adoption journey, to gain all the more insight into how God loves and provides and strengthens us in journeys that can seem oh, so, long.
  Since this is also a fundraising effort, I want to say huge thanks to all who have pledged donations for this race!  Every cent per mile is huge to us!  (psst, Heather and Jason - your letter meant so much!)  I do want to plug in a quick reminder that it's not too late to sign up to pledge a donation!  Just e-mail us at zrmillers@gmail.com!  We will have information after the race is completed (watch this blog) with instructions on options for paying.  Thanks again!!!
  Also please remember my sister Carrie and team who will also be doing a dawn-dusk hike as a fundraiser for us on the same day!

PAPERWORK - getting it all done!

Sometimes I wonder, really wonder, if we are a little bit crazy.  It's becoming more and more apparent.  It's also becoming more apparent that God is blessing us richly with time and energy when it comes to the adoption process.  It still gets me nervously excited to rifle through novel-length applications and peer into the distance at the long road ahead.  How do we find the time when we are involved in so so so much else?  Hobbies, work, family, work, church, work.  Honestly, I haven't the foggiest.  How does anyone find any time for anything they enjoy?  They make it, or God gifts it to them.  We've had a little combo of both.  An evening here, a rare both-kids-are-napping opportunity there, a 20 minute do-this-tiny-task-while-you-are-both-playing-nicely over there, and a read-this-thing-while-breastfeeding here.  Somehow the time has been found.  Sometimes it feels like I'm squeezing blood from a stone.  Yes, there are the moments when I get an important phone call and as much as I am wringing my hands and hoping that it ends soon because Logan is crying in his crib and Kian needs to use the potty, then something happens like Dad shows up out of the blue cuz he was in the area and wanted to see the boys (true story)!  Those moments are thankfully not the majority.  Still, God provides, yo.  It's a fact.

MONEY - Garage Sale

Wow, wow, wow.  What can I say?  Thank you doesn't begin to cover the gratitude I feel for everyone who helped with our garage sale this past weekend.  Even though the weather was cold and I missed the deadline to put it in the paper, we had a great turnout.  We were rarely without visitors and we met our goal plus $200!  It's a lot (*a. lot.*) of work, and our house was basically chaos for the week prior to the sale, but it was totally worth it.  Please to enjoy these basic snapshots of our festivities.

PAPERWORK - update

Our application was accepted by the placing agency and practice application sent to home study agency.  Deep breath!  Here we go!

MONEY - waste not want not!

Another way we are trying to be good stewards of our money is adhering as much as we can to the phrase: "deal with it, make it work, fix it, or do without".  We all have those items - they work great for a while, and then something breaks or becomes less than ideal or starts to fade - you get the idea.  For us, we have decided that we will do one of the above things until it becomes absolutely necessary to replace said item.  Some examples:

This has to be the most extreme example.  These were Zack's glasses when we finally decided they had no more life left in them.  He fixed them over and over and over again.  Used wires from twist ties when the screws fell out, bent the earpieces over when the plastic fell off, superglued nose pieces back on, you name it.  That black band is a hair tie holding a lens in place.  For those of you worrying about his prescription - don't worry about it, it was fine.  Don't worry about his prescription, the lenses were replaced frequently, the frames were used one too many times.  There are lots of things we fix before they need replaced.  I'm constantly patching holes in the toes of jammies, sewing up stuffed animals with holes, or gluing toys back together.  Books are a big one, too.  Tape those pages, the kids don't know the difference!  Zack will wear a pair of boots into the ground until he buys another pair, or gets a hand-me-down from his dad!

Yay for borrowed things!  Thank you to my sister in law for letting us borrow a bouncer!  (This is a picture of Kian by the way, not Logan)  Hooray for sharing!  Many very nonessential items (and some essential ones) like this were borrowed or hand-me-downs.  Several examples include our infant swing, this bouncer, our grill,  lawn mower, plants, furniture (like dressers and shelves), maternity items, books, a breadmaker, most of our kid's clothes and shoes, and many of our children's toys, the list could go on and on.  Lots of their toys are actually toys that Zack and I played with in our childhood.  Talk about hand-me-downs!  (P.S.  those things were made to last!!!)

A great example of "making it work" - is our printer situation.  Our printer is about 8 years old and still prints great (along with scanning and copying), so there's no reason to replace it.  It's only mildly annoying to have to stand there so you can hand feed each page into the machine.  The little apparatus that feeds the page in doesn't "grab" it, so there we sit hand feeding the pages in.  It really is only annoying with 20-some page documents when tiny people are tugging on your leg and wanting attention, or when you're in a hurry.  Otherwise it is working just fine for us in this season of life.

All I want to accomplish with posts like this is to reassure those who are financially supporting us - that we are trying our very best to be good stewards of the finances and material things we have been given.