a new kind of hot tub

                       

baby bird

          Somehow Jeremiah caught this little bird in his hands
                    he told us that it was sitting on his bike seat.
                           I just never know with this little guy
                            I think I went into a state of shock
                             when I saw how he was holding it
                   Poor little guy, we took him over to a field
                               and hopefully he flew away.

                                       On another note,
         3 of my children have fevers and are throwing up still. 
                           It was pretty much all weekend. 
                   I have a hard time just laying around like that. 
                               Praying for healthy kids soon!

frogs

this little guy came to greet us at 5:30 in the morning the other day

    and Jeremiah cannot get enough of these little creatures

                                This little one is feeling better.

 
               2 doses of medicine and she was a new person. 
                       I am thinking it is some strong stuff. 
                                       Expensive too
She had some signs of a UTI but they are going to culture it to see if it was anything else. Thanks for your prayers.

Happy Friday!

Praise the Lord!

 

My heart is overflowing with God's goodness

"Yours, O Lord is greatness and the power and the glory and the victory, and the majesty for all that is in the heavens and the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and give your strength to all. And now we thank you, our God and praise your glorious name." 1Chronicles29:11-13

Talked to the agency yesterday and they were nothing but wonderful. 

They have decided to roll over the whole amount to another birth mom.

We will have to get some more profile books made this week and get those sent out there so the birth moms can start looking at those.

There is a few situations going on right now that we will be proposed too. 

We are so grateful for all of your prayers and couldn't thank you enough.

 

On a another note, say a little prayer for our Olivia, she had a bad fever the last 2 nights (104.8) so I will be taking her in first thing this morning.

She seems fine, so I am not sure if it's a bladder infection or what.

That girl pees all the time.

Have a wonderful day

and thank you

thank you

thank you for all the prayers!

 

 









I was trying to teach Olivia how to make biscuits and

apparently, she needed a scarf on her head.
Thank you all for the prayers, donations, calls, chocolate chip cookies(that I ate 5 of in one sitting) and Dilly bars.  We appreciate everything you've done and are forever grateful. 
We are just waiting and praying.

a visit with our dear friends on the farm

                                                          visited our old house across the road
                                                    boy do we miss that house and the neighbors

 Gator ride

crossing over the creek

                                               Jeremiah is in heaven going for a ride in the tractor

Thank you Koehlers for a nice visit

We miss you guys!

Keeping our eyes on Jesus

prayed, talked, gathered our thoughts, prayed some more

trying to make sense of everything
and being at peace with it all

it really feels so much better being in constant conversation with God

knowing he will guide our path and make everything work out.

the anger is gone

just tears that come

 like a roller coaster ride throughout the day

God has the timing worked out

we just need to hang on, trust and draw near to Him for comfort.

Singing songs of praise to the Lord help the tears roll down my cheeks
his Grace is all I need
make me more like you Jesus
it is a way of life, an ongoing journey, and the defining characteristic of who we are as Christians
we seek his will
and trust him to direct our path
always watching
rising above our circumstances and challenges,
redirecting our focus away from ourselves and upward
to his ability to handle our struggles in a way that glorifies him in the end
With you we can do anything
Please keep praying for us as we should know more this week.
We cannot thank you enough.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
 (NIV)
16 Rejoice always, pray continually,  give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Broken hearted
Thank you all so much for the prayers, and phone calls.

We greatly appreciate it.

We couldn't get through this without all of you guys and our Heavenly Father.
Clinging to him
Praying
 constant conversation with God is

getting us through this.

What we do know:

It appears the birth mom is a con artist who has done this before in other states. At this point we're not even sure if she was even pregnant and may have been acting like a pregnant mom to get the money. Everyone who had contact with her fell for her act so she obviously is very good at this and we knew she must have done it before. Our agency put her info on a scam alert network and Dave is gathering as much info as he can find about her and will call the FBI to see if they will get involved. He's resisting a strong urge to get on a plane to Las Vegas and pick up the trail to try and catch her himself.

 The hard part for us is although we are quite angry about what she did to us and it appears to others too,

we know God loves her passionately so we are  praying for her and all the other families she did this too as well.

We are still waiting to find out how much of our money we actually lost from all of this. Yesterday as more information came out, we had many little blessings come our way in regards to the amount of money we lost. Hard to explain but your prayers are working so please keep them coming specifically that we recover as much of our money as possible!

At home we're still in shock and quite sad. I am broken hearted and deeply saddened and Dave is a wide mix of emotions right now from anger to sadness and everywhere in between. It's just so hard not to get angry and upset.  Constant prayer with God is what we are clinging too.  The kids are doing better but the first night was very hard. We decided to leave the crib and all the baby stuff just where it is.  Lots of tears, conversations, questions, hugs and prayers.
We know satan is at work in all of this and God will bring good from this. The con and scam stuff is too hard for them to understand. All they know is they lost a baby sister they had been praying for. 

 Again, thank you for all the prayers, please keep them coming, we greatly appreciate it. 
We get back on the waiting train....
Praying for God's wisdom, strength and peace and our money to be returned.

Lots of Love from the Funk's

Sad News

 

 

Tuesday late at night we received a call from our adoption agency. Yesterday morning, the agency rep had gone to meet with the birth mom but found the birth mom was gone. The front desk told the rep that the birth mom had cleared out of the rental and was gone.

As of now she has basically vanished and the agency rep is not even certain she is the person she claimed to be. It appears she may have used fake ID to register with the adoption agency but this is not confirmed. The expense checks the agency had given her on Monday (paid from the money we wired to them) to pay the birth mom’s her expenses (rent, utilities, food, etc.) were cashed yesterday morning in Las Vegas and as of right now, it appears this was all part of an elaborate adoption scam.

So far we are out several thousand dollars which the agency paid to her from the money we wired them on Monday. We haven’t received the total amount of money we lost yet from the adoption agency. Late last night we sent a contract cancellation so we hope to recover the remaining funds we still have at the agency.

There are no words to describe the loss we feel in our home. Our kids are devastated and cried themselves to sleep. We did too. Very heavy and sad hearts here in the Funkhouser home. We’re praying that God shows us some reason for this loss and pray that he guides us to our daughter. We ask for your prayers that we will be able to recover the rest of our money without any problems too.

We’re working with the agency and we will send or post more as we receive it but we will obviously not be flying to California this week.

So sorry to post this sad news, but we wanted everyone to know.

Your prayers are appreciated.

Help us bring our baby girl home! This is crazy fast!


Hello and welcome to our adoption journey!

If you are visiting our blog for the first time, it’s probably because you clicked on a link from someone’s Facebook status or blog.

Here’s the Scoop:

David and I are adopting a little girl from CA.We will be leaving Thursday! This little girl is in need of a forever family. We are that family. It has been a long, crazy journey so far. Please feel free to read all about the crazy story of our adoption by scrolling through our blog.

We are finally in the home stretch of the process itself, and are now eagerly awaiting her arrival to bring our daughter home. But we are still  in need $9804
of beng able to travel, pay for the legal fees, the rest of the adoption and finalization in CA.



Such a small feat for God, especially when you do the math and realize that all it would take is 980 people from Facebook, emails and the Bloggy world to donate at least $10 to our cause. We are bold enough to believe that God can do this for us in 1 day (from 6 am today until midnight tonight) through these means, if He so chooses.

So here’s how you can help:


1. Pray for us! Please!


2. Consider donating $10 or more to our adoption fund by scrolling down and clicking on the secure PayPal link in the column to the right (the "donate" button).

3.Leave us a comment below and let us know who you are. We would love to pray for you and your family as well.


Your help is greatly appreciated. Feel free to check back on this page during the day for updates on our  "Facebook-thon."

We will be updating every 2 hours!


Reaching our goal by midnight!


Thank you so much for helping us and spreading the word!



Update: 7/19/11  10:45
 $ 9804 left to go.
Believing God can do this!
 Thanks for continuing to spread the word!

Ordinary Hero grant starts today

and will go all week

We get 40% of the sales

Top 3 sellers  get $500 free cash towards their adoption

How cool is that!

Make sure you click the tab on the right

go to the store and shop

then during checkout click our name

Funkhouser, Jillaine(Jill)

where it says Affiliate name

That's it!

Here is some of there awesome products

 

Thank you so much for your support!

ORDINARY HERO GRANT CONTEST!

Starts THIS Friday!

Help support our adoption and a great cause

 The top 3 earners in sales get 40% of their profits

and a $500 GRANT from Ordinary HERO

 Contest will start THIS Friday and run for a week.

Help spread the word!

clay

we got this clay from our dear friend Peggy and the kiddos loved it

soft yet very durable

this is what we created

 thanks Peggy for the crafts!
please pray for us
hoping for some answers today!
Thank you

Olivia

I just happen to be taking a nap and Olivia decided to help me out

by cutting a tomatoe on her own
(which she thought was a pineapple)
 with rubber gloves on.

she left me this package as well

 this girl loves packaging things
 and leaving notes for people she loves
I love this about her!
This was another little contraption she left for me...

lipgloss and a flower floating in water

date with dad

all this little guy wanted to do was go fishing

he loves fishing

there is this little park by us where you can catch

fish after fish

Jeremiah caught 10 fish in a half hour

they had a blast
we love this special time with our kiddos

 random thoughts
 yesterday in church I was listening to Pastor Glen's sermon and my mind was all over the place.
I couldn't stop thinking about orphans and helping and giving to the needy and the poor.
thinking about the older children that are left in orphanages and foster care and picked over
thinking about children with special needs
and how I have always had a love for children with Down Syndrome
seeing people suffering on a daily basis right in front of us
just hoping and praying that God would heal them and they would ask him into their lives
I just have a heavy heart lately and am trying to figure out how to deal with it
 I think about this every day but I just cannot seem to shake it lately
I just wish we could give more, help more, adopt more children, on and on
I was tyring to think of ways or where we could cut down more on groceries or bills but there just isn't anywhere else to cut from.
We do not go out to eat unless we get a gift card,
we do not go to a salon or have our nails done
we do not buy new clothes
we do easy and cheap meals
we do not buy toys or go places that cost money  unless they are gifts to us
we have tried to sell our house 3 times
we really just have fixed bills
besides Dave's teeth
we have dental work for Dave that needs to be done(because he is missing teeth)
which will cost between( 15-20,000) and we do not have any kind of dental insurance
we went to a local college in Milwaukee called Marquette  and checked out there dental school and of course they wanted Dave.
they said he could come once a week all day for a whole year.
Serioulsy who could drive an hour one way and take off a day of work to do that and still pay 12,000?
We just have a special VISA card that we use for our dental and try to pay it off with our taxes each year
Each year we have a dental debt, so it's just this vicious cycle that drives me crazy
So please pray about dental insurance or a new job or how in the world we can do this
(please if you have any idea let us know, we have looked into self insurance plans and they just don't pay either)
It just bothers me that this is the only thing that keeps us from doing more of what God has put on our hearts to do and what we love to do as a family
It just seems so silly to me
I am not complaining just venting
We are just trying to stay focused on what God's plan is for us.
Staying strong in faith and in his timing.
If God were to give me everything I wanted in the midst of a struggle (like a sign from him, hear his voice loud and clear, for it to be all over, or get a big answer) I would miss out on getting to know him and feeling his hand in mine throughout the whole ordeal.
Please pray for us in the dental/finance department
and thanks for all your prayers!
Lots of Love

months on the Domestic waitlist

I am not going to lie, this is a loooong wait!

We have had our profile book shown 2 times to birthmoms

It is exciting yet hard

We just pray every time that if this is our child that God would make it clear to us

It is clearly an emotional rollercoaster

so keep those prayers coming

and pray for Dave and our dental situation

he broke another tooth

he has about 15,000 worth of dental work to be done

with no dental insurance

It sucks having to worry about paying for dental work when we want to adopt more kiddos and give and help others more.

I am going to apologize for not being able to write much this summer

it's hard to get time alone without the kiddos

we always have a lot of pictures to share though so I hope your enjoying them.

Happy 8th  Birthday to Odin a little late! 

Time just goes right on by

I can remember walking the morning before I had you

and what an easy pregnancy and labor you were.

loving

kind

serving

giving of all things to avoid confrontation

                                                 artistic
                                   loves feeding the homeless
                                            loves Lego's
                              would stay home everyday with me
                              asks me to home school every week

waiting for Odin to get up

 thanks Auntie Annie

thanks Auntie Sarah

this guy loves to read

He chose bowling instead of a gift from us

It was quite funny

they have never been in a bowling alley

much less bowl

It took awhile to get the hang of it

 but they all loved bowling

Olivia loved the shoes more than anything.

Something funny ...

I loved old vintage bowling shoes just to wear to school and hang out!

Thank you all for the gifts and the well wishes!

We are home!

We had a

FUN

FUN

FUN

mini vacation together as a family.

It was such a blessing.

Thank you so very much

I have lots of laundry, catch up and groceries to get

will share more later!

Hope everyone had a great Independence Day!

Lots of love and hugs!

We were gifted some money to go take the kiddos out of town for the weekend so we will be back on Tuesday.  We went up to Door County to bike, hike, swim and spend time together!
Thank you so much for the gift, we greatly appreciate it!
Lots of Love from the Funkhousers