A Personal Bleg

As you know, we've been in limbo for what feels like years regarding the termination of the Fries' biological parents' rights and thus the ability for the adoption of the Fries to proceed.

It's been nearly two weeks now since we heard from our lawyer that the Superior Court upheld the trial court's ruling to sever the bios' rights.

We received information last week on the background checks we need to have done to prove that we are stalwart, worthy folks who should be entrusted with these children (three of 'em, folks), and started to do that, and my black printer cartridge promptly went out of ink. Feh. I ordered ink through Amazon, and then turned my attention to the more pressing issue:

The $1000 retainer that our lawyer said she needed.

Gleeps.

We hadn't been expecting that, although I suppose we should have.

So, in the process of filling out forms and remembering every address I've ever lived at for my whole freaking life, along with every person I've ever shared a dwelling with, and the same for Hubby, we also had to figure out how to come up with the $1200 for the retainer and the fees for running three different background checks.

We do not have the money. We have growing kids, a growing grocery budget, and Christmas next month. We have a shoestring budget, and back child support that's still owed (but not being paid) from during the appeal process. And our usual benefactors have said they unfortunately cannot help with this one.

They're our kids.

We will find a way to do this.

To that end, we have our own GoFundMe campaign now running. GoFundMe offers secure online donations. (I've also put up a link in the sidebar.)

I'm hopeful we can raise the money by the end of the week.

We need about 24 people who can kick in $50 each, or 60 people who can kick in $20 each. Every little bit helps.

We all want to have Hubby's last name by Christmas. Can you help us make that happen?