Trick-Or-Treat

Well I guess this wraps up the Halloween posts for the year. It is time to follow the yellow brick road in to November. Jaidyn has been so excited all week to wear her Dorothy costume. Nana gave her a copy of the Wizard of Oz movie and she has watched it several times this week so she would be in full character. Even though it was fantastic Halloween weather, we decided to have Addy wear the lion costume because it is warmer than her witch costume. The poor girl had her 18 month shots today so she started out the evening as the "Crabby" Lion instead of the Cowardly Lion. Nana came over to be a part of the festivities. While Wes, Jaidyn, Addy and I circled the neighborhood she gave out treats at our home.

Papa has been on a hunting trip all week, so he missed out on the festivities. I have an adorable purple and pink butterfly costume that I was telling Jaidyn that she could wear next year, but she has already decided that Papa can be the butterly next year since he missed out this year. So Papa, start looking for some purple tights to go with your costume. It is a beautiful costume, but on Papa it would probably turn out to be pretty SCARY. :)

Spooktacular Trail Evening at the Park

In Richland, the night before Halloween the park hosts a "Spooktacular Trail" evening at the park. It is a pumpkin carving contest and the carved Jack-O-Lanterns line the trail of the park. Wes and I had friends over for the evening for dinner and since the park is right out our backyard, we thought we would walk over with our kids and join in on the pumpkin carving festivities. Well, I should have looked into the details of the event a little more. After dinner we walked over to the park with our uncarved pumpkins as we assumed that we would carve them at the park. Wes noticed on the sign advertising the event that it said to bring your "carved" pumpkins for the contest. We could see in the pavillion that no one was carving pumpkins. So needless to say we quickly turned around and walked back to our yard carrying our pumpkins. Wes and Rick carved our pumpkins in about 5 minutes with their pocket knives. Okay, so maybe we didn't win the contest, but considering that pocket knives were used for our carvings, they turned out pretty good. Regardless of the pumpkin carving outcome, we had a great evening of nice weather and good company.

Wes and Rick carving the pumpkins

Rick, Cheryl, Emily & Cole with their Jack-O-Lantern
Wes, Jenny, Jaidyn, & Addy with their Jack-O-Lantern

The Kiddo Crew

Ebay Stores To Go

Ebay Stores to Go is a new feature that Ebay is using to promote Ebay items for sale. It allows me to showcase my eBay Store on websites, social networking sites and my blog. I am really not sure exactly how everything works for sure, but thought that I would try the promotional tools out. These widgets help showcase all of items that I have for sale.

Vote For Haley!!!

I just received this email from my sister-in-law Haley. She has a fantastic voice and besides that is a fantastic person. She deserves this opportunity. You have until November 1st to vote. Please send some votes her way! Thanks!

~ Hey Everyone!
I am so excited! As most of you know I have pursued a music career off and on over the past 4 years. I have met some great people and songwriters who have helped me get a start on some of my own original music that I would love to make a professional recording of someday. Of course that takes money. More money than I have.

Long story - short, my friend Chrissy and my mom sent me this website where I could enter to win and trip to Nashville a free recording session and a lot more. Well I sent in my video and they chose it to put onto their website for you to vote for! So now it is up to you all.

Please help me out and email this to everyone you know and ask them to do the same and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!!!

http://www.abcradionetworks.com/default.asp Click on Meet Kix Brooks contest to vote
Look for Haley singing, "Walkin After Midnight"

Thank you so much!
Love and blessings,
Haley Hawkins-Toombs ~

Halloween Party

Last Saturday, Wes and I took some time off from our hectic schedules to have our 2nd annual Halloween costume party. My sister graciously took the girls for the weekend so that we could clean and prepare for our party. It was so nice to be able to clean the house and 10 minutes later still have what I just cleaned up in place. Jaidyn and Addy were spoiled rotten by their Aunt Jill, so I am sure they didn't miss us anyways.

We had a great time at our party. This is a picture of Wes and I. This is Wes's attempt to be Johnny Dep from Pirate's of the Caribbean movie and I was a Rhinestone cowgirl which was the costume that I picked out from Halloweenmart.com after winning a $100 gift certificate.


Don't you just love the eyeliner? He does have pretty eyes! Ha!


Some other guests attending the party included a Blood Sucking Attorney At Law, Chick Magnet, Billy Ray Cirus and his Girlfriend, Pimp and his Ho, Mr. & Mrs. Dracula, Cruella Deville, Lumber Jack, the Headless Horseman,a Witch, Data Don, Black Kitty, Redneck Dope Dealer and School girl Brittney Spears. Lots of costume creativity!

Here are some pictures of Jaidyn and Addy when they stayed with Aunt Jill. They visited two Pumpkin Patches and got to go to Chucky Cheese. Jared and Carrie and Cheryl all joined them at the pumpkin patches. They especially loved bathtime with their bath markers. I thought the whole idea of taking a bath was to become clean.

Halloween Contest Winner

Yesterday, I logged on to twomomsinablog.com blog site as was so thrilled to see this.

"We’re only a few weeks away from Halloween now, and our $100 Halloween Contest has come to a close:) A HUGE thank you goes to our sponsor, Halloween Mart, for offering the $100 gift certificate for our winner.

AND the winner is…..

JENNY of Days of My Life as a WAHM.

Thanks to everyone who participated! We have some more amazing contests and giveaways in the works, so keep your eyes peeled:) If you want to receive an email when new contests are posted, subscribe to our contest list at twomomscontests-subscribe@yahoogroups.com"

I am so excited to have won! I am supposed to receive my online code today to use. I can't wait to pick out our costumes. We are having our Halloween costume party this Saturday, so I am a little bummed that I may not be able to get our costumes in before then, but there is also next year.

Adoption Fundraising

This is my first post to my blog about our journey in the adoption process. We are currently in the process of adopting internationally from the Philippines. The overall process from time of application to time of travel to meet our child is approximately 28 months. We started our application process at the beginning of May 2007. We have completed our Homestudy and sent off our Dossier paperwork several weeks ago. We are hoping to hear by the end of December that we are officially on the country list of approved applicants. We are okay with this long time frame (well I say this now, but may change my mind) for several reasons. We have two little girls under the age of 3. By the time we receive a referal and child assignment, our girls will be 5 and 3. Our child will most likely be between the age of 1-2. We wanted to have at least a year between the ages of our children. We also needed the extra time to save money for all of adoption fees. So this brings about the topic of my blog post, Adoption Fundraising. Over the last month, I have been on the internet searching for adoption fundraising ideas, adoption grants and loans. I have researched and found many interesting ideas, but now I need to come up with a plan and get busy implementing some of them.

I found a great Squidoo lens about the adoption financing. http://www.squidoo.com/adoptionfinancing/ The author of this lens has organized several lists and included links to Adoption Financing Websites, Grants & Loans, Families with Fundraising Webpages, and other general fundraising links.

I also came across http://www.chipin.com/overview. ChipIn is a free online site that allows you to easily collect money from others. ChipIn is used for a variety of fundraising themes. Your purpose of the ChipIn account could be to collect money for a certain adoption fee (homestudy, dossier, or country fee). You set a goal amount that you are trying to raise and a date to be accomplished. The ChipIn widget can be placed on your website or blog and then people are able to log in and donate to your cause. You could share the link with people from church, work or relatives.

I have also recently joined an Adoption Fundraising forum group on Cafemoms.com. The owner of the group, Miki aka Adoptionsong is very inviting. She is active in the group and responds quickly to any posts. She has a fantastic fundraiser going for her upcoming adoption. She has a website called http://www.adoptionsong.com/ where they sell downloads of her husband's adoption song called "Waiting" for $1.50. I think this is one of the most creative fundraising ideas that I have seen yet. The song will be a neat keepsake for their child. The group is fairly new so there aren't many members yet, but it would be a great place to join if you would like to talk about raising money for your adoption. Please visit the forum group at http://www.cafemom.com/group/11614

As for me, my biggest fundraising effort is my Ebay store, The Sugar Bean's Closet. I primarily sell both new and gently used baby and children's clothing and toys. I have been working very hard to stock my store full of items ready for purchase. This has helped us to fund some of our early fees such as the homestudy and dossier.

http://stores.ebay.com/The-Sugar-Beans-Closet


Please feel free to comment! I would love to hear from others about their adoption fundraisers. There are so many children in the world who need a loving home and so many parents who long for a child. The expensive adoption fees sometimes stand in the way of making a family dream come true. Hopefully, some of these ideas will help inspire you to your journey of adoption.

PS - The Making Of A Mom blog is having an Adoption Blog Carnival. A carnival is a great way to meet fellow bloggers. The topic is Adoption. If you have an adoption blog post that you would like to share please enter it at this link http://makingofamom.blogspot.com/2007/09/adoption-blog-carnival.html. Please join in on the fun October 1st to find a list of some great adoption blogs.

Here is the compiled list of all participants in the Adoption Carnival. http://makingofamom.blogspot.com
There are some fantastic reads. Don't miss out!