Wrap-A-Thon

Hate wrapping? Well, we will wrap with a smile and a bow!

December 14, 2pm-5pm

Seaford Baptist Church
1311 Seaford Road
Seaford, VA 23696

Every gift gets a bow!

You will have the choice to stay and wait while we wrap 'em up (and enjoy a cookie while you wait) or you can drop them off and come back (suggested if you have a lot). Your gifts will be wrapped by adults, who will take utmost care of them and make them look beautiful. We will provide the wrapping paper and/or gift bag/box. 

You choose how much you would like to donate to our cause in appreciation for our wrapping. Our family is adopting a baby from Ethiopia. Every penny, minus the cost of supplies, will go to our fees and travel expenses.

Please help spread the word about this event to help make it a success. We have flyers available for you to give your friends. 

A few Guidelines:

• We do not know how crowded and busy this event will be. For the sake of the fundraiser we hope it will be busy. We ask that you please be patient and understanding if you have to wait in line.
• Please do not leave us with anything incredibly breakable or irreplaceable. We are cautious, but would still hate to see something broken. 
• After the gift is wrapped we will put a post-it note on it saying what is inside, so you can tag it appropriately.
• Please do not bring anything too big to fit into a box.
• If you have a special paper/box/bow/etc. you would like us to use, feel free to bring it.
• We will use Christmas paper, unless you provide paper for another holiday.

Fall Update

Fall around here is almost as busy as summer. Yes, we are summer camp directors, so summer is CRAZY busy, but fall is almost the same. Almost every weekend we have retreat groups using the camp. It's great. I enjoy the flexibility of this time of year. We sure are busy though. Matt, our associate director has been out for about a month for knee surgery, so it's like the old days with just Steve and I running the show.

We also have many birthdays in the fall. Elijah turned 5 on October 19, Steve's birthday is October 23, and mine is Nov. 4. I will be the big 3O! Crazy! I hear your 3Os are good and I'm excited to see what the Lord brings our way in the future.

All our kids are growing up too fast.
Elijah just turned 5! He missed the cutoff for kindergarden by 19 days. For now, we plan to homeschool him. I am doing a kindergarden homeschool curriculum with him 3-4 days a week. He is learning to sound out words, which is very fun to watch.
Yoseph is doing great. He loves to give hugs and kisses and is a bright little guy. For a long time we worried about his speech development. We now cannot seem to get him to be quiet! A big praise!
Lydia is 9 months old now. She's crawling and eating regular food. She's a smiley little sweetie.... Well, at least for me she's a smiley sweetie. She really likes mommy and daddy best and hates to be left with anyone.

Now, onto the adoption related update. Things are progressing as scheduled. Thankfully all of the government offices we need are not affected by the craziness going on (for now. We have a fingerprint appointment next week that is the final step to get USCIS pre-approval. We are working on our dossier. We have about 3/4 of it done. Then it all has to get notarized, state authenticated, and federally sealed. Whew!
Thanks to many of our friends and family and sheets sales we have ALL the money needed to submit our dossier. This is amazing!! We have come a long way!
The next step after our dossier is waiting to be matched with a child. We believe this will happen within the next 6-8 months. Oh, how I long for that day. To see the face and look into the eyes that will be our daughter. To know more concretely what special needs are in our future. Even though my head knows we have several months of waiting still, my heart still hopes every time that phone rings that it will be THE CALL that we've been matched.
Once we are matched we will owe $9,OOO and will have to be ready to travel to Ethiopia twice- about another $1O,OOO. These are big numbers. Oh, how I wish money wasn't an obstacle in adoption. We'd probably adopt many more, but we know our God is bigger and will provide somehow.

We have applied for 2 grants, and working on a third application.

Please continue to support us. One of the grant organizations we've applied to allows donors to give in our names and receive tax-deductions, so pray that this one especially goes through. However, if taxes are not a concern to you, and you'd like to give to our cause, you can do so by check or to our paypal account at the top right of this blog. We have thus far raised about $6,OOO through the sale of sheets. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.  Please buy sheets, please give them as Christmas gifts, please tell your friends how great they are, and please if you can, bring a flyer to your friends/coworkers to buy some. This has been a great fundraiser for us.

Thank you for supporting our family in the many ways you have.

Love and Blessings,
The Gourleys

A Detour- Same Destination

When you're going down the path of adoption, looking at the long road ahead, knowing there will be bumps in the way.... but wait, then you see a path, with the same destination, that looks a little brighter. Well, that seems to be what's happening in our journey. We're switching adoption agencies. Of course, there could still be "bumps" along the path, but we feel this is a good decision for many reasons, not all of which we are making public.
Why am I making this a big announcement? Well, first of all because you all are being incredibly generous with helping get us there and I feel the need to be transparent. Also, because this will likely mean a shorter process. While we had been thinking our wait would be a year or more, we've found a new, smaller agency that has told us to wait 4-6 months for a special needs referral.
There are a few things you- our faithful supporters- need to know about this.

• None of the money fundraised is being lost in this change! NONE. We are losing our application fee, which Steve and I paid with our own money. West Sands is being incredibly gracious in sending the remaining funds to the new agency.
• We will have a shorter wait- which means we have LESS time to fundraise. We are going to be applying for grants and doing garage sales, and continuing to sell sheets. So, PLEASE keep up your wonderful support!
• We will now likely be getting a baby instead of a toddler. The new agency has stricter policies on maintaining the birth order of the children. The new baby girl will have to be younger than Lydia. 
• The baby will have some kind of medical "special need". We are totally okay with this. This is what we wanted. We do not know what the special need will be, there are many possibilities. It could be something simple and easy to "fix" or something more complicated. We don't know. We feel this is the right path because there are hundreds of families waiting for healthy babies, and only a fraction who are willing/able to parent a child with medical needs. These babies need homes even more. However when referral time comes, don't be surprised if we don't share medical information publicly. I hope you all can respect that, just like I would for your children.

We know God has a daughter perfectly matched for our family. We are excited to see how He works!

SHEETS!!!!

A sheets fundraiser. I've never heard of a sheets fundraiser. Why sheets?

Well, everyone who owns a bed needs sheets! The best and easiest fundraisers are those where I don't have to convince you that you need something. Everyone needs sheets.

These are great sheets! They are VERY soft. They are made of microfiber, which is equal to a 1200 thread count. Microfiber holds its color so you don't need to worry about them fading or losing their softness after multiple washes.

Each set is $35, regardless of size or color, plus shipping. Please allow 2-3 weeks for those who need shipping, this is because I have a minimum of 12 for each order, they then send me the sheets and I send them out to you, all that shipping takes time.

Some people seem to think this deal is to good to be true. The company offers wholesale prices for fundraisers, it's that simple and we make a great profit. These are the same great sheets many stores sell, but we get the profits for our adoption instead of some stingy store.

How to order? It's so easy you won't believe it. Just tell me what size and color you want and pay me. If you need shipping I need to know your zipcode and I can calculate the shipping cost for you. Those who live locally don't have to pay anything for shipping since I'll give you the sheets.

Email Niki at: piankmomma@gmail.com

How do I pay? If you live locally you can give me a check or pay by credit card. Of course those who don't see us regularly will have to pay by credit card. To pay by credit card you will see a DONATE button to the top right of this very blog page. You can click that and pay securely through PayPal.

Now spread the word. Share this page with your friends. Print the picture and take it to collect orders. If you get 11 sheets orders I'll GIVE you the 12 set for FREE as a thank you for helping us. All 12 sets will ship to you for FREE and then you hand them out to your friends. The 12 all have to ship to the same address to get the free shipping.

This really is a great fundraiser. A friend of ours has paid for most of their adoption expenses by selling sheets.

We are also still needing donations. As of today, April 3rd, we have received $2,400 of the $8,000 needed for the first portion of our adoption expenses, which is awesome but we aren't there yet. Even small donations add up and help a lot. To make a donation you can use our PayPal account. In the future we'll get a way to make donations tax-deductible, but right now they are not.

Fundraising... Here we go!!!

I got a few minutes of quiet this morning. A rare thing these days with a 4 year old boy, 2 year old boy and an infant girl. After showering and doing dishes, I grabbed my Bible for a few minutes of time with the Lord. While in my prayer time I realized I have not prayed enough for my fourth child very much. It's possible that right now, across the world in Ethiopia, there's a baby girl who will some day be our baby girl. I don't know the circumstances of how she will some day become ours. All I know is to pray that my baby will feel God's love, and that those around her will show her love and fill her belly.

Yes! We are planning to adopt again. We have long known we wanted to have more than one adopted child in our family. After much research, prayer and thinking we decided to adopt from Ethiopia again. It currently takes 2-3 years to complete an adoption from Ethiopia. The wait times have increased due to increased paperwork requirements to insure ethical adoptions. A good thing, it just means it takes longer for everyone. We are asking for a girl, a toddler, who will likely have special medical needs. 

Adoption is a miracle. If you don't agree, then maybe you haven't met our Yoseph or heard his story.  Born the son of a student, who got pregnant through a tragic situation. She tried for 6 weeks to provide for him, she sacrificed a lot to give him LIFE and made the hardest decision any woman can make... to give him to another family. We were of course blessed to be that family. Now look at him! He smiles all day long! We are excited to be a part of a miracle again. And YOU can be a part of it too! While not everyone can adopt, everyone should support orphan care and adoption in some way. Here's one way.

We need $9,000 over the next 3 months to get started.  I bet YOU could give $30-$50, I bet many of you could actually give even more. We only need 180 people to give $50 and  BOOM we've got it! Give up coffee for a week or don't eat out this weekend and instead give to give a child a family. Even if you can't give, share this post with your friends and maybe they will feel led to give. 

Want to make a donation? That would be awesome! IT IS TAX DEDUCTIBLE!!!- if you donate through our agency. They will send you a nice letter documenting your gift.


Visit West Sands website. Click on donate. Follow the directions for the donations. MAKE SURE YOU PUT "GOURLEY FAMILY" in the purpose box!

You can also give using the DONATE button at the top right of the blog, but that way is not tax-deductible, that's our personal PayPal account.

Both methods of online donations are secure, through PayPal. If you prefer to make a donation by check, our address is P.O. Box 435 Hartfield, VA 23071. But, only donations made directly to the agency can get a letter for tax purposes.

Also, stay tuned. We plan to sell cookbooks, sheets, and maybe jewelry too.

Thank you so much!!!

Home study, Dossier, Waiting list.... Here we come!

Well, it's official. We're starting the process to adopt again! From Ethiopia again!

Now, I know many of you are thinking- "Didn't you JUST have a baby? What's the rush?" Well, that's the thing. It will not be a rush at all. To adopt a young child from Ethiopia right now we will be waiting at least 18-24 months for a referral (possibly longer) plus add in there 6-8 months to process paperwork. To give you perspective we waited 7 1/2 months for Yoseph's referral- big difference. That's why we are starting now.  We know this will be a very long process. We are also open to a pretty wide variety of special needs, so that factor may speed up our process or it might not.
We expect Lydia to be 2-3 years old when this child comes home. We are requesting a girl, 1-3 years old (yes, a toddler) so they may actually be close in age. We expect this to be the last child added to our family, but the Lord is always in control. We would have loved to adopt an older waiting child, but since our kids are young it wouldn't work for us right now. We didn't want to displace Elijah as our oldest.

Now, please keep following our blog because one thing is going to be very different this time around. We will be doing a lot more fundraising for this adoption. This is in big part out of need and also partly to give our family and friends the opportunity to help in their own way to make one less orphan in this world. We are very much stepping out in faith for God's financial provision. So, stay tuned for opportunities to help. For example, over the next 6 months we have about $10,000 due just to get all of our paperwork done and get us on the waiting list. Then, I'll let you imagine the costs for two adults traveling two times to Ethiopia for a week each trip and all the legal processing. We do not currently have that much money.... SO we have several plans in the works to help us raise money and we will need YOUR support! Now, don't think I'm saying we're raising all the money. We are personally contributing as much as we can, but we know we will not have it all.

For those of you who are interested- We knew we would adopt again. We took many months thinking and praying if this was the right avenue for us. We looked into many other country's adoption programs and a US adoption and began researching many agencies pretty in depth. Ethiopia is not the fastest option and its not the most stable option- though probably the most stable of all the african countries. The main reason we decided on Ethiopia again is so that Yoseph will share heritage with another child in our family. That is huge for us. We can take heritage trips to one country and really dive into integrating the one other culture into our family. Pray for us and our future daughter!

FYI: We are using West Sands Adoptions, a different agency than last time. We have had 3 friends adopt through them, with good experiences. While we know no agency is perfect we are excited to start the journey with them. If you are at all interested in adoption, look them up. They especially place older and special needs children quickly.

Want to get a head start on your donation? That would be awesome! Our first fee is
$5700 and due soon. IT IS TAX DEDUCTIBLE!!!- if you donate through our agency.
Visit West Sands website. Click on donate. Follow the directions for the donations. MAKE SURE YOU PUT "GOURLEY FAMILY" in the comments!

Lydia Grace

Haven't updated the blog in a while. It looks like my last post was my shock of being pregnant. Well, right now I am currently learning the art of breast feeding while typing, as I hold our beautiful daughter in my arms. Lydia Grace was born January 23, weighing 7 lbs 5 oz. Her birth was pretty uneventful, except for the fact that it was one of the best and biggest days of my life. I had to have a c-section when Elijah was born and opted for a repeat c-section this time around. So, we were scheduled to go in a week before my due date, had a relaxed morning, watched tv while we waited, then went in and had a baby. A breeze compared to many hours of labor. A c-section is definitely no walk in the park, but hey it's over now.

I was shocked to hear she has dark hair. Elijah's was lighter and we even thought she might be a red head.
We really struggled over deciding her name. Going in to the hospital we had it narrowed down to two names, neither of which were Lydia. And, it took me weeks of deciding to narrow it down to those two. We thought when we saw her we could decide which one she was, but no, she was not an Evangeline Grace or Maisie-Grace Calhoun. We thought back to some names we had discussed before, and Lydia seemed beautifully perfect.

My recovery has been as expected also. Still pretty sore, . Lydia is eating well and sleeping well and growing. We're easing into life as a family of 5. As of today Elijah is actually having a harder time than Yoseph. We expected Yos to have the harder adjustment. Elijah understands a lot more, he's trying to figure out things like "why does she only drink milk?" and "what's that thing on her belly?". He's a sweet kid and is really just wanting encouragement and reassurance right now. So, we're working on that.

I have used this blog to announce adoption related things. Well, a few months ago we were rearing and ready to go to sign with an agency for another Ethiopia adoption. BUT, as it turns out, with the arrival of a new baby and moving into a new house in May or June it's better to wait until after we move to start. We would have to totally re-do our home study, costing a lot more money, if we started now. So, we're trusting God's timing. It's really probably the best. It's giving us time to just chill and enjoy our current blessings instead of worrying about piles of paperwork and dossiers and stuff in an adoption. We just know this waiting time is part of the story towards our fourth child.