Everyone wins! (Poker Night Re-cap .... PICTURE HEAVY!)

Well you've read my plea's for help regarding our Poker Night Fundraiser. So many of you responded, and responded far beyond anything we hoped or imagined or prayed for. We cannot thank everyone enough. We are truly blown away by how faithful God is to provide, as well as how gracious and responsive our friends are. We had the matching grant of $2500 as I told you about, so we set our goal to raise a grand total of $5000. With the help of many, I'm humbled to tell you that we FAR exceeded this goal! I think about it still, 4 days later, and I tear up. This adoption has been moving rather quickly, and at every turn, runs the risk of coming to a halt until we have the money to proceed. After Friday night, we can continue to run this race full speed ahead to bring home our next precious girl!

Thank you's don't seem enough. Even as I hand write thank you's (which I'm horrible at), it seems so .... pitiful. So instead, I pray that God blesses the many that heard our cry, heard the cry of the Orphan, and responded so beautifully. I pray each person who gave, or helped, or prayed has their (sacrificial) gift doubled in their own lives. (Please don't hear me say that that will be in the form of money. No, blessings come to us in many ways. I pray blessing on each donor. That's all.)

Okay. Onto the fun! We had 40 players, and about 70 guests total come out to support and play. The Mercers did an amazing amount of prep work in both preparing their house, as well as preparing the players, and the gifts. Their efforts went above and beyond what any one friend should do. We are blessed to have them in our lives. They throw a mean party, too! They had their basement set up for the festivities, as you'll see below. Brian had detailed rules and cheat sheets, and kept the night running very smooth. There were prizes for just about everything - first party foul, first person to put Aaron and I out of the game, first re-buy, first to lose, most re-buys, whoever had a size 9 shoe, etc... The top 3 players left with some pretty fantastic gift bags. Tons of gift cards, coffee, and the top prize - an xbox 360. But hopefully, everyone felt like a winner....the cause makes it so! The games lasted until about 11:30, and I must admit, I can't remember the last time I've had so much fun. I actually stayed in the game until the final 3! (Okay, so I had to re-buy twice, but then I was on top it!) Who knew? The guys at my table kept calling me a "loose cannon". Hey, whatever works. :) (I also had serious issues with how to count the chips all night long. Thankfully, Mike was my counter every hand.) Maybe I'll head to Vegas to raise the rest of our funds. No. I won't. I'm completely kidding!

The pics really tell a better story than I can. Chelsea Hammond was there snapping some great shots of the evening. (The ones toward the end are the ones she took.) I'm so thankful to have this little photo collection to one day show our sweet girl how many people it took to bring her home, how many people thought she was worth it!

Enjoy!

Good friends, Blake, Joanna and baby B.

Neighbors and friends. Doesn't get much better!

They call him D.

Kassie, the hostess, passin' out some chips!

Brian, the host, explaining some rules...like when to use the bathroom.

Sweet girls soon to be pediatrician and family friend. (I'm not telling which one he is! You guess!)

The rookie. (That would be Amy. She had never played before this event, and now is asking when we can play again!)

Christy is counting cards. That's how come she was the one to figure out that the red deck was 10 cards short! Shoot, I knew I was playing with a short deck. Story of my life! (And that's why I'm claiming I had to re-buy! ha!)

The Bouncer. Don't mess with her. She'll eat your food.

Vanessa's husband was gonna cut her off, until she reminded him it was for a good cause. :)

Poor Aaron. Someone stole all his chips, so he had to just watch me play!

One of my last hands before going all in.

Top prize!!!

Neighbor Amber and friend Jen w/ baby - Jen and her husband, Isaac, were the first couple to be on the receiving end of this fundraiser. The Mercers did this same event for their adoption a few years back.

"YES!!! They totally didn't call my bluff!"

Prize Table

"Loose Cannon" I must have won that hand. Good thing, too, cuz all my chips were sitting in the middle! :)

Still in!

Aaron w/ the famous Clay Rush. No really, he is famous! (And he's got the ring to prove it.)

Fold. Sigh.

The first place winner - Sean!

Who's the girl w/ the blond hair? Oh, wait, that's Isaac. Remember the story a few pics up about Jen & Isaac? Yup, that's him.

YUMMY YUMMY!

The official "blinds" clock. (Right, it's called blinds isn't it? And how many are the blue chips worth Mike?)

Mike is praying that he doesn't lose right away.

Just here for the fun! Such great supporters, and friends, these girls are!

He kept trying to steal my chips. Oh wait, I just stole his!!! HAHAHAHAHA!

The Men in Black. They're intimidating, aren't they?

Amber and the hostess, Kassie.

Brian distributing chips to a minor. Wait....

Yes I did laugh really obnoxiously every time I took a hand. It just should never have been. :)

Well, there you have it! A night to be remembered! A night to celebrate friends, fun, the journey of adoption, but mostly God's goodness and faithfulness. He holds true to his promises to set the lonely in a family. We are honored that He chose us once again! Thanks for your part. We couldn't do this alone!

I'll see your $20, and they'll raise you $20

Yes, this is another post plugging our upcoming fundraiser.... thank you.

Exciting, exciting news!

1) We raised enough donations/prizes, to the point where even the money people donated for prizes, is now going toward our adoption instead. (This is b/c so many people gave gift cards, and other gifts for this part of the fundraiser. More on that to come in a minute.)

2) A family came forward and offered up a matching grant of $2500 for the money that is raised from this event! So now, your $20 buy in just became $40! For those who have already donated on Paypal, your $50 donations just turned into $100 ! We are so blessed to have such a gift donated to us, and couldn't help but sharing it with the blog world to shamelessly plead one last time (maybe) for your help. Won't you help us get to $2500???? If we can raise $2500 from this event, we will be able to have $5000 to help us bring home our next daughter. YES! $5000. I can't even begin to tell you how helpful this would be !

So we're asking again: come out and play (message me if you want details!), and for those of you who live far away or just aren't into the poker thing, would you PLEASE consider a virtual buy-in of $20 anyway? (Or any amount, really.)

You can use the same paypal link as before....and from this point on, all donations are going toward our little one!!!! Here's the link again:

We can't thank this family enough for offering up such a large amount, and we can't thank you enough for any amount. Everything counts .... only between now and Jan 14th, it counts double. :)

Also, for those of you who are thinking about playing .....Check out the prizes!!!!

Included in the first place winnings:
An XBox 360 !!!! WHAT, WHAT?!?!?!


All other prizes~
Gift Cards:
golf smith    $50
olive garden    $15
pf changs    $10
cold stone    $10
starbucks    $5
chipotle    $20
applebees    $25
amazon    $20
QDoba    $25

Gifts:
2 of these beautiful pieces of artwork by the famous Laura Prill (check out her other stuff. She's amazing!)
10lbs of starbucks coffee 
starbucks coffee themed basket 
A bunch of VANS gear  

And there's still more coming in.....

**Beginner players welcome!

I'll see your $20, and raise you a child....

Some great friends of ours are hosting a brilliant fundraiser on our behalf...on behalf of our next daughter. What makes it brilliant is that it is original, fun for all involved, and well thought out.

Here's the deal: (deal....haha)
Poker Night! (Texas Hold 'em to be exact)
Buy in: $20 (unlimited for the first hour, then $10 re-buy at the end of the hour)
Everyone wins, because the goal is to help us raise funds to bring home our next child.  At the end of the night, the entire pot goes toward our adoption! However, there wouldn't be much incentive to play poker if there wasn't a real prize for the winner(s). (We'd all be bluffing our way through the entire game, because there'd be nothing to lose! This is not the time for practicing your game faces. This is for real!)

Enter in the well thought out part:
This is where we need help NOW! We have 13 days to raise about $250 for prizes. The top 3 winners will walk away with a prize basket including gift cards to various places, coffee, VANS gear, etc.... Our goal was to raise $400 to cover the prizes. We are almost half way there.

So how can you help, you ask? Well, $5, $10, $15 can go a long way here. If you'd like to help out, you can donate through PAYPAL by clicking here:

If you can't play, but would like to "buy-in" anyway, you could also do that through that link. :) One more option ... did you get a gift card for Christmas that you would like to just donate to our event for the prizes? That would be a huge help! Any gift cards or prizes given would be that much less that needs to be raised for that, which means that much more that can help our adoption!

Sorry for my first few blog posts on this adoption to be regarding fundraising. We are flying through this adoption, and money is coming due at every turn. So we humbly plead for your help. I promise to get to the stuff you want to read about soon.

If you live locally and want to play, let me know if you didn't receive the invite, but would like to. We weren't sure who would be interested.

Thanks, friends! We love having such support around us as we strive to bring home another little one!


****CLARIFICATION ON BUY-IN'S*****


So I have limited knowledge on poker, and buy-ins, etc.... so straight from BMER's words:
"$20 buy-in(1500 in chips). unlimited re-buys at $20 (2000 in chips) for the first hour-or so. also at the break (one hour mark) everyone will have the change to "re-charge" for $10 (1500 in chips), one-time only, will be worth it."

Provi's Plane Change - Calling all the Children

Of course, it was only a matter of time before you knew I would be talking about our various fundraising efforts here on the Britton adoption blog. You just didn't know it would be post #2 of the new adoption blog, did you?

Well, I just couldn't help myself. We have several things going on right now trying to raise funds, but today's events are just flat out blog worthy.

Our oldest child, Providence, is really wanting to go to Ethiopia with us when we go to bring home her new sister. Ethiopia is requiring 2 trips right now, so if we were going to say no, we were going to have to say no twice. So sad. No. Really. We would LOVE for Provi to be able to experience such a trip. We can only imagine how life changing a trip to Ethiopia, visiting Orphans, seeing the final phase of an adoption first hand, eating strange foods, eating less food, and just plain experiencing a far different culture could be on a 10 (or 11) year old child. Why would we say no? Well, money of course. We will have about 2 weeks notice before leaving for Ethiopia .... two times. That's an expensive ticket(s). But in the grand scheme of how much this adoption costs, do we believe God could provide the funds needed for Providence to come along? Absolutely!

So we've been talking about fundraising ideas for her specifically. She really wants to be a part of this. As you know, at Christmas time, you can't escape a grocery store or Walmart without seeing a little red bucket with a bell ringer standing to the side. Yup. Salvation Army. I passed out some coinage to the kids just before Christmas for them to plop in the shiny red bucket. As we left the store, they couldn't stop asking about what it was for, who it would help, etc. I began to explain to them that The Salvation Army had collected around 3 million dollars this Christmas alone from peoples spare change. I was trying to teach the kids a lesson on how even their nickels and dimes can add up to something worth while.

Then it dawned on me - what if Provi started her own bucket fund? So I told her she should speak up to her friends about what she's raising money for, and ask for their spare change. Not only would this help her educate her friends about kids around the world who don't have all that they do, but it could really start to add up. She loved the idea.

So you heard it here first. If you have children in your home, would you consider placing a jar in your home for their spare change to fall into? Would you take this opportunity to teach your kids about all they have, and how a couple extra quarters here and there will leave them with nothing the less - but will instead help change the life of one pretty cool 10 year old, and her soon to be sister? Would you ask them to be part this WITH Providence?

Just so you know, we talk a lot around here about sacrifice as well. When we are adopting a child - a lot falls to the back burner. We eat out less, we buy less clothes, we eat the icky leftovers .... we do a lot different to plop some coins into our personal buckets in order to bring home our next girl. Here's where I get to what happened today.

All the kids received $20 for Christmas from a family member. Of course, the day after Christmas, they woke up begging to go to Target to spend their money that just wouldn't stop burning a whole in their pockets. Provi announced that she was going to spend half of her money, and save the other half for her plane ticket. However, when she saw the shiny new lego set that cost MORE than her $20, desire took over. She stuck the toy in the cart, and even googly eyed Grandma and Grandpa into kicking in the extra $6 needed to complete the transaction. However, as we were walking toward the check out, she turned to me and told me that she had changed her mind. She said she would rather just get a thing of tic-tacs, and save the rest of her money for her trip to Ethiopia, because she really wants to go.

Clean up in isle 12 ... some mom's heart just melted.

So she left the store content, with a bottle of tic tac's and $20 still in her pocket. (I couldn't let her spend $1.02 on tic tacs after such an expression of 10 year old sacrifice, so I bought them for her.)

Oh how I love that girl. And I do hope we can raise enough money for her to have the life-changing experience that Africa is. So.....will you enlist your kids?

Will you set a jar out for "Provi's Plane Change"?

Drum Roll Please

Malachi has an announcement to make:

It's true. Just over a year from when we ended this blog, we're officially re-opening it.

We are adopting again!

To answer your questions:
1) Yes we are crazy.
2) We are going back to Ethiopia. Why? So Malachi has a sibling from his country. Also because we saw what we saw, and we can't forget it. (In the words of Sarah Groves.)
3) We are planning to adopt a girl, between 3 & 6. (Years old silly! Not 3-6 girls. We're not that crazy.)
4) We are using a different adoption agency this time (WACAP), same homestudy agency. (Colorado Adoption Center)
5) We are anticipating things moving along a bit faster this time (for instance - we officially started this process a month and a half ago. We're almost done with our homestudy).
6) We are hoping to have the next Britton home by Christmas of 2011. (However, Aaron cautions me against such hopes. For those of you who followed our last adoption journey, you probably can understand why. I'm not super great at waiting longer than anticipated. Or waiting at all for that matter.)
7) Yes, we are crazy....and we wouldn't have it any other way!

Hopefully that answered most of your questions. If not, follow along. Buckle up!

Please keep your arms and legs inside at all times. This ride is known for making sudden stops, and sharp turns.

One Year Ago Today ( A letter to my son)

One year ago today, we had the honor of taking you away from a life lived in an orphanage, to a life lived in a family ... our family. One year ago today, I rocked you to sleep for the first time. One year ago today, I placed you in a bed right next to me. One year ago today, I woke up through the night to check on you and make sure you were okay. One year ago today, you officially became ours.

One year ago, you were drinking formula from a bottle and eating just bread and spaghetti. Today you drink from sippy cups filled with milk, juice and water and feast on pizza and M&M's. One year ago today, you only knew children who, just like you, were left alone. Today you know the love of two sisters and one brother. One year ago today, your needs had only been met by people getting paid to respond to them (and a blessed few who I believe truly loved you). Today you get your deepest needs met by parents who love, cherish and adore you. One year ago today you were quiet, lethargic, and sad. Today you love to talk and laugh (and make others laugh) and sing and dance and be the center of attention.

We've had quite the year ! You've grown so much. You've changed so much. You've learned more than I have in the last 10 years combined, I'm sure. We've learned so much about each other. We've learned how to comfort you. You've learned how to let us love you. We've had sleepless nights, and tear-filled days. You've learned to talk, and I'm learning to listen. You've learned to walk, and I'm learning to keep up. You learned to sleep securely all the night through ...huge ! You've come to realize that when I leave, I WILL BE BACK. You've come to realize that babysitters and Sunday School are fun, and that I WILL BE BACK.

Not a day goes by that I don't think of the life you had. Not a day goes by that I don't think of your birth Mom and what she sacrificed for you. Not a day goes by that I am in awe of you and the difference you have made in our life. Not a day goes by that I don't thank God for his work in your life - for His trusting us with your life.

I pray you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Father. I pray you grow to know the fullness of your adoption not in us as sinful broken parents ... but in the One who created you, who knit you together in your mother's womb, who hems you in, who graciously and sovereignly placed you in our family.

Ephesians 1:3-8

³Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace ⁸that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.



One year ago today, you changed our lives ... you changed my life. I will never be the same. Some may say that you are lucky or blessed to have been brought into a family. Maybe. I know for sure though, that I am blessed that you are in our family. You are a part of me. I loved you before I met you. My life is better because you are in it. My heart is fuller because it loves you. To say that I'm glad we "gotcha" wouldn't even describe it. I'm so excited to see what year two, three, four, etc.... will bring ! I love you, my son.



One year ago today ....



TODAY !!!
One year ago today....


TODAY !!!!

One year ago today ....TODAY !!!!


TODAY !!!!
TODAY !!!

Malachi is ...... TWO !!!

Provi, Eden & Sam in unison - "Malachi is ?!?!?!?!?!?"
Malachi - "TWO !!!!"
So cute !

September 1st Malachi turned 2 ! Or somewhere around there actually ... Sept. 1st is the day they picked in Ethiopia. It makes me sad still that his actual birthday is unknown to everyone who loves him ... everyone but his birth mother I'm sure - wherever she is. On this special day of his, I couldn't help but imagine her sadness, and at the same time thank God for our joy and for the strength his family in Ethiopia possessed to give him over to a better life. Last year Malachi was still in Ethiopia waiting for us to get him. We celebrated his first birthday apart from him. His second birthday was extra special because of it! His first (second) birthday as part of a family .... our family!

Enough of the sappy sad stuff.....
Believe it or not, Malachi had not ever had cake. I was determined to have him wait like every other child until his first (second) birthday. One of his favorite things is BALLS !!! So, here was the cake :
He wasn't all that interested actually. He took 2 little bites, and decided he wanted to play ball instead of eat cake.



We have a group of friends who come to our home weekly, and were with us through our adoption journey, as well as Malachi's first 10 months home. These were the ones we thought he'd want to spend his birthday with. So we had a low key celebration. (Low key, because another bash is around the corner as we celebrate the day he came into our family! PARTAAAYYY!!!!)



It was a great day as we celebrated his life. We look forward to many more years to come ! So, watch out world - Baby Man is 2 !!!!