In the March newsletter for Sweet Hope I titled the article something different. I thought Warm Heads, Warm Feet was a little better.
There have been so many people across the country who have expressed interest in helping with the chocolate making, but cannot because really, who wants to fly to Washington state to make candy? Ok, some of you.
I tried to think of a way that people could help the children in Russia in other ways. I thought about the most basic thing that the children are lacking, hats and shoes. My experience with Mirnoe orphanage taught me that many of the children cannot attend school because they do not have shoes. The weather in Khabarovsk in the winter is so cold that they cannot go out without hats. It is also a cultural practice that all children must wear hats outside.
When a children’s home only receives 24 cents a day per child to feed and clothe them proper clothing often goes by the wayside.
I know many people who are knitters. I once knew how to knit (badly). Knitting a hat is not that difficult, especially when you have one of those circle loom things. Heck, even the trusty husband could knit a hat with one of those. So why not appeal to people for hats? While we’re at it, why not appeal for shoes too.
Sweet Hope is starting an on-going collection of hats (no, you don’t have to knit them) and shoes. If you find hats and shoes on sale consider picking a few up. Ship them to us and we will then ship them to a family traveling to Russia.
Why do this? First, you’ll be helping children get to school. Life is nothing without a proper education. Especially for children who will be put on the street at 16 years old. Second, families traveling for their first visit trips are usually expected to bring donations of items to their orphanage. Going out to purchase donations is another financial hurdle in the already expensive process of Russian adoption. By helping families with a portion of their donation they will be that much closer to bringing their child home. After all, Sweet Hope started as an organization to help adoptive families.
The trusty husband and I will house all of the donation and ship them to the traveling families. All you have to do is send them to us. If you would like to donate shoes or hats please email me. If you are a potential adoptive family preparing for your first (or second) trip to Russia and would like to take shoes and hats email me.
It has always been my goal to make Sweet Hope a totally legit organization. And now some of you are going, “whoa, I bought stuff from her and she wasn’t legit?” I assure you, 100% of the proceeds from Sweet Hope goes directly to our cause. I benefit nothing from this endeavor. My payment is simply the photographs of the children. I promise I will share some of those when I get them scanned. I have a few done, but not all.
What I mean by legit is a fully fledged non-profit business with a 501(c)(3) status. That would mean that the money you spend on truffles and caramels would be tax deductible. That’s right! Buy candy and get a tax deduction. It’s pretty much win win.
The problem with the full on non-profit is that it is time consuming, difficult and costs money. Now I could have saved some of the money from our 2009 sales and used that to pay a lawyer to help us get all of this done. However, I decided that I would send it all. That leaves us with nothing in the bank for the pursuit of non-profit.
I also have one other small glitch. I need a board of directors. They don’t give tax exempt status to sole proprietors so we have to be a corporation. A corporation needs a board. A board could be 2 people (me and the trusty husband) but the eventual scope of Sweet Hope is much more than the two of us can do on our own. I need help. It isn’t very often that I admit that I need help. This time I do.
If you have ordered from Sweet Hope in the past you may have received our monthly newsletter that gives a little update on our non-profit status. Right now there isn’t much to report. We’ve recruited 2 more people for the board, bringing the total to 4. We can start with that, but I’d like more. We also have a grant writer lined up.
All of this is very promising. The goal is to get the board members together sometime this month to start on the initial formation of the corporation. There is so much that needs to be hashed out that it could take some time.
I am still recruiting board members. If you live in the Puget Sound area and would like to be on the board for Sweet Hope email me and let me know. We need someone with financial skills and someone will legal skills would also be a benefit. Or, if you know a lawyer who would be willing to donate their services also let me know. We need one of those too.
There will be more updates to come about an upcoming Sweet Hope project and other fund raising events.
No… I am not making truffles. I have been banned from making any chocolate confection until Christmas.
My girlfriend Alicia (aka Tacoma Chickadee) plastered Facebook and Twitter that she had made bacon truffles. If you will recall every time I put up the Sweet Hope nominating post at least one person suggests bacon. I refuse to make bacon truffles. Mostly because the thought of touching raw bacon totally skeeves me out. However, Alicia is adamant about the bacon truffle thing. She has tried on more than one occasion to create some sort of bacon-chocolate concoction that tastes decent. She claims she has done that. I tasted the last bacon truffles she made and they weren’t stellar by any means (sorry).
She offered me a taste of the new truffles, but I had to drive to her office to get them. Um, no. I’m not driving anywhere for bacon and chocolate. I love bacon and I love chocolate, but they don’t go together.
So now I’m asking you dear internetz. We haven’t had a good old fashioned poll here in a while. What do you think?
Loading ...When we finally arrived home with the boy he was one month shy of 2 years old. I missed out on 2 years of his life. I knew that would be the case going into the whole thing. We made the best of it. Instead of a first birthday we celebrated a first gotcha day. Instead of first steps we celebrated the first step on US soil (although none of us remember it, the photos tell us it happened). We missed out on 2 whole years.
Missing out on those years meant that the boy was 2 years closer to going to kindergarten when we got him home. He doesn’t start kindergarten until he’s almost 6 and we will celebrate our 4th gotcha day right before he goes to kindergarten. It doesn’t seem like it’s been 4 years. It does seem like it’s too soon for him to be going to “big kid” school.
Monday afternoon we went to the boy’s new school to register him for kindergarten. He was nervous. We had talked for 2 days about it and on the way home from preschool we talked about how visiting the new school would be an adventure and we would do it together. He seemed excited. The trusty husband also asked if we wanted him to go with us. I figured it couldn’t hurt. The boy knew what we were going to do that afternoon and ate his lunch slower than I’ve ever seen him eat any meal. He was totally stalling. Trouble was, it was encroaching on 1:00 and registration closed at 2:00.
We finally got the school, checked in and were sent to the library to fill out nearly as may forms as it took to adopt the child. The principal walked by and introduced himself and we talked about the boy visiting during school hours so he could get to see a classroom setting. He was very agreeable to that and seemed like a very nice guy.
I got to the immunization page of the forms and had to laugh. I just handed the lady the immunization records and the form and she filled most of it out. The boy’s immunization history is a little more extensive than most children’s. She said the nurse has a program that she inputs all of the dates into and it tells her if he needs any additional ones before school starts. That’s a good thing since I can’t make heads or tails of what he’s had done.
While I was filling out paperwork the lady registering children took the boy to the rock wall the school has. He had the chance to see the library and actually used the potty. It was a positive experience for him. This is good.
When we got home I took a minute to read the information packet included in the folder that had all of the forms. Included was a sheet that said what the basic 1/2 day kindergarten curriculum was. I read the list to the trust husband and his response was, “he’s going to be bored isn’t he?” Probably. Most of what they will be teaching is stuff that he has already learned in preschool or we’ve taught him at home. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to stop teaching him. We’ll use the upcoming school year as a way to transition him into “big kid” school. He will get used to the building, the schedule of school and his general surroundings.
I’m not regretting my choice for 1/2 day kindergarten. Especially when I saw how large the school was and how small my baby still is. How can this little boy that I just brought home 3 1/2 years ago be going to kindergarten already. I’m not ready for him to grow up so fast. I must say, he’s a pretty awesome 5 year old.
I am married to a nerd. I don’t feel bad calling him out on the interwebz because he is fully aware of his nerdyness. As a child the trusty husband would take computers apart for fun. Ask the trusty MIL about the time he did something to their computer during mid-terms during her masters coursework and she had to wake him up to fix it. No technological upgrade in our house comes without a price. It has been well documented on various blogs (here, here, here and here). I may pay the price for all of this work, but in the end it is pretty cool. My computer is custom built and our TV set-up is da bomb. It does come with written instructions for all babysitters, but it’s all good. I can stream Netflix, Hulu and LastFM from my computer to the TV. I have a DVR, Wii and Xbox. There are benefits to having a nerdy husband.
Last week the trusty husband finally received a bonus from work. It has been a very long time since he’s received a bonus or a merit increase (thankyouverymuch a-hole ex-president). My husband works his ass off. He never fully takes a vacation. He is forever checking his email on his phone and does it all with such grace it is amazing. So when he found out he was going to get this bonus he said he was going to buy himself a new TV. He is horribly jealous of anyone who has a flat screen TV. I was ok with the purchase. It wasn’t my money to spend so why not.
Let’ take a moment to also note that along with the nerdyness, my husband is a cheap Swede. This isn’t derogatory, just a fact of life.
Here’s where buying a TV gets painful.
Our entertainment center was not large enough to hold a new 42″ television thus requiring the purchase of a new entertainment center. Trusty husband looks online and finds what he thinks will work. Being the cheap Swede that he is cheap Swedish furniture is an excellent compromise. Last Thursday we head north to the big blue building where you get to keep your pants on*. When seeing the new entertainment center in person I hemmed and hawed over it. I wasn’t sure. I caved, but made a few add-on adjustments like drawers and doors. Read: I spent more money. We walked out having spent more money than he was originally anticipating. He pretty much had a panic attack the rest of the night.
By Friday he had recovered because that was TV buying day. In addition to the TV he also purchased a blueray player. I spent the afternoon at the church preparing for a fundraiser dinner that was Saturday night. When I got home the trusty husband had assembled the entertainment center and I had to do the adjoining book case. No prob. I’m pro at IKEA furniture. I slap together the book case and drawers. We go to put on the doors, but have to move the drawer hardware up because I had it in the wrong spot. Then we went to put in the drawers. They didn’t fit. A 20 minute discussion argument over doors and drawers ensued. Screw it and move on. I just want to watch TV. The Canada vs. Slovakia hockey game was on and I was missing it.
We get the TV mounted in the cabinet. (It is slightly crooked, but we are trying to ignore that for the time being) We start putting other stuff into the cabinet. Blueray player, check. Xbox… feck. It doesn’t fit into the spot we wanted it to go. Try the cable box in that spot. Nope. Does the stereo (which pretty much controls all of the sound for all of this stuff) fit? Nope. Danger! Danger! Elle is over tired, sore from standing all day and missing a very important hockey game. I gave up and went to bed.
Where we stand at the moment is more cables had to be purchased. The trusty husband also has to purchase a USB hub because apparently I either sold our extra one in a garage sale or it was in a box that went to the Goodwill. How was I supposed to know we’d need that? We had to move the stereo to the book case and cut a hole in the back so the cables will come out. He has to extend all of the speaker wire because it won’t reach the stereo. We have to return the doors we purchased for the cabinet and purchase two more drawers and to run the whole shebang we still need a PhD.
Basically, purchasing a new TV was a complete disaster with the exception that the picture is utterly amazing. We keep putting DVDs in the player just to see the difference. The new Star Trek in high def on a blueray player is almost as good as in the theater. Now if we only had surround sound**…
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*Years ago there was a radio commercial for IKEA and they were giving directions. They were it’s the big blue building where you get to keep your pants on, not the big white building where you have to take your pants off (the neighboring hospital)
**When we had our house re-roofed last fall all of the banging around loosened the surround sound speakers from the housings and one fell out and was hanging by the wires. I didn’t want to leave it like that so I pulled it down. When I did that I broke a connector so we also need new surround sound speakers.
