Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Adoption

I want to discuss one of our goals in the future. I passionately want to adopt daughter. Eric is on board with my want and actually said he would like to adopt from Peru. Holding us back, though, is definitely the cost. I made a decision last week that I am going to start saving on my own for our goal. My special adoption fund. Last week I managed to save $150. I know its not much, but its a beginning. I plan on putting any extra money I lay my hands on in this fund. This will include any pet sitting, surveys, rebates, gifts, and hopefully another garage sale this spring. I also want to check about selling some of the boy's clothes on consignment. I hopefully can make more money doing this then the quarters you get at garage sales. I also am trying to pay off our debt and save money on our everyday costs. This is proving difficult with food costs these days. The fact that the boys eat gluten free is also another expense. I think if we seriously buckle down and work at this, we can do it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My wife has celiac disease. As you probably know, infertility is one of the potential consequences of untreated celiacs. We're in the midst of adopting four children and the legal expenses are significant. (Don't get me started about the reasons for that!) Before starting the adoption process we started a gluten free food business. We leased an existing cookie factory so our first product is a line of five flavors of gluten free / casein free (GFCF) cookies. We're at the "struggling to survive" stage of business.

If at all possible I strive to be self-sufficient, perhaps to a fault. Asking for help is not something that comes easy. (We won't even talk about asking for directions.) When I started thinking about possible adoption fund raisers it occurred to me, "I have a 10,000 square foot dedicated gluten free cookie factory, why not figure out a way to do a gluten free adoption fundraiser?"

When I googled "gluten free" "adoption fund" I found your blog, one of eight total hits. Given the number of people who must, or choose to, eat gluten free and the number of people trying to raise funds for adoption, eight hits seems like the internet equivalent of an absolute vacuum.

Any thoughts what kind of interest there might be for an online fundraiser, that would require zero upfront investment, and no need to handle product or collect money unless you want to? (A large order shipped in bulk would save on shipping costs and increase profits for the fund raiser.) I'm thinking about 33% would go to the fund raiser.

You're probably familiar with the reputation of gluten free food, which sad to say, in most cases is deserved. Our cookies are great! A second opinion you say? Although our adoption isn't final, we have had the kids in our home for over a month. We don't bring cookies home very often, but just tonight they each had some and let me tell you, a more honest critic you'll not find than a kid from ages 3 to 7.