December Number

We got our new number!! Our number for December is 37! Honestly, I was shocked! I didn't think we would be in the thirties. It feels good to be in the thirties though.

We are so excited about adding our new little one to our family, and with each month, we are getting a little bit closer. I will keep this post short because we are in one of the busiest times of the year. I am drowning in papers and finals and M has a lot going on in campus ministry. We are ready for a break!

We hope you are having a wonderful Christmas season filled with lots of blessings! Please keep praying for us as we wait for the child God has for us. We have moments of joy ,but we always remember in the back of our minds that someone from our family is not with us this Christmas. We are excited and blessed to be surrounded by family and friends, but our hearts are torn because our we are wondering about our child.

New November Number!!

Well, today is November 1st! I love the beginnings of new months. I can't really explain why but I always have. Now, that we are in the adoption process I really love the start of new months because we get our new number on the first of every month. So, since it's a new month, we have a new number. Our November number is .............

Please keep praying for us while we are waiting for the child that God has picked out for us. Sometimes, we tend to get a little impatient. We are happy with our new number, but keep praying for us as we wait.

5 Favorite things

I've done a post like this before, but it has been a long time so I thought I would do another one and talk about 5 more of my favorite things. These are in no particular order and they will cover a wide range of categories from health and beauty to household. All of these things are not must haves to live, but they are just a few things that make me feel at home and comfortable.

My first favorite thing is... French Quarter Candles

I have liked these candles for a long time, but I don't think I had ever written about them. These candles smell amazing. They last for a long time and they have have a wide range scents that smell really fresh. I usually keep a couple at the house, and when I burn them all out I usually feel a little sad. These are soy candles, so they burn really clean. You should check them out, if you haven't before.

Favorite thing #2 is ....... Clinique Makeup Remover- Take the Day Off

When I was younger, I never washed off my makeup before going to bed. Now, I can't sleep if I have makeup on. No one warned me that everything changes after you turn 30! I like wearing makeup, but I really love going to bed with a clean face. This cleanser takes off everything without irritating my eyes. Sometimes my eyes get irritated when I use some cleansers, so I really like that this cleanser gently takes all my eye makeup off.

Favorite thing #3 is ........ Gap Yoga Pants

These are the most comfortable pants! I wear these around the house and to the gym.  I like the length and weight of these pants. They are not heavy, so they keep me cool but with the security of pants. Sometimes I just want to wear pants. Do ya'll ever feel like that?

Favorite thing #4 is ...... Target Boyfriend Pocket Tees

Along with my yoga pants, I usually wear a mossimo boyfriend tee. For a long time I was very loyal to Old Navy t-shirts, but one day my sister introduced me to these t-shirts from target and I have never looked back! They come in a wide range of colors and are really light and comfortable. They look great with jeans, shorts, capris, skirts, etc. I have a whole closet full and they get worn all the time!

Favorite thing #5 is..... Naked 2 Eyeshadow palette

This eyeshadow is amazing! I love all the colors that come with it and it lasts all day. I've had my palette for a while now, and it is still going strong. It is so fun to see all the different color combinations that I can make based on the way that I'm feeling that day. You can get the Naked 2 palette at any Sephora or Ulta store. Go pick one up, you won't regret it!

September Number

It's a new month, which means we have a new number. Our new number is......

We are excited to be in the forties! Our agency placed six children in forever families this month! That is awesome! Be praying for these families as they are waiting to to get court dates, they will soon be traveling to meet their children, bringing them home, and making big transitions. 

Be praying for us as we wait our turn. Waiting is not easy, but we know there is a reason why. God is sovereign and He is in control.  

Time to Update

I am way behind on updating you on what has been going on with us and with the adoption. My apologies! Since our dossier has made it to Ethiopia we have been put on a wait list to be matched with a child. At the beginning of every month we will get an update with a new number of where we are on the list. Currently we are number ......

We have had lots of questions about the wait list, so here is my best and quickest explanation of how the wait list works. Everyone from our agency that is adopting through Ethiopia is on the same wait list. So, we are on the same list as people who are waiting for an 8 year old or waiting for a 6 year old girl, etc. When a child becomes available for adoption the agency starts with the number 1 and works their way up the list. When the agency finds a family that meets the criteria of the child then the family is matched with that child. We have been approved for an infant 0-2 years old, no gender specified.

So, the smaller our number the better because we will be closer to being matched with a child. I know it is already half way through the month and I'm just now updating you, I will try to be better in the future months. I'm afraid that in the next couple months we may not have too much to update other than the number because at this point the only thing that we can do is wait and pray. Please keep praying for us as we wait. Waiting is not easy, but we know it is what we have to do in order to be matched with the child that God has already picked out for us. 

3 things I look forward to doing after I graduate

I thought it might be time for a more fun or random blog, rather than always talking about adoption stuff. Since it is summer time and I have a little bit more free time, I feel like I am getting a little taste of what my life may look like after I graduate with my masters degree. In the last couple weeks I've been thinking about things that I would like to do after I graduate.
So here are some ideas that I have....

- Being a mother.
Depending on when we are able to go pick up the baby, I will hopefully graduate and be able to stay home and focus on raising a baby and being a wife. Matt is a huge help around the house, but I enjoy being able to cook dinner and do things around the house that need to be done. Matt has really stepped up and takes care of a lot of the household chores and he is so understanding when I haven't started dinner because I am working on school stuff.

- Read for fun.
I don't get to read anything for fun because I am so consumed with reading for school and assignments.

- Learn to sew.
I do not know how to sew, so I'm thinking about the possibility of learning to use a sewing machine. I would like to be able to make curtains, or halloween costumes, and even hem pants. I don't know how to do any of it and I would like to at least have a basic understanding of how to sew.

I know that adding a baby to our family is going to be a huge adjustment for our family, but these are just a few ideas that I've had the last few weeks. So depending on when we are able to travel and get the baby that would be my first priority before these other things. Lord willing, one day I will finish my degree and hopefully get to do a few things that I want to do.

A Mother's Day Poem

Mother's Day is a tough holiday for me for many reasons. I know that there are many other women who struggle on mother's day, for many reasons and I always take time to pray for those women on mother's day. For so long mother's day was difficult because of the death of my mother, when I was in college. Then for the years that Matt and I were trying to get pregnant, mother's day was a day of torture. Then this year the one year anniversary of my grandfather's death just happened to fall on May 13th, mother's day.
While mother's day is difficult it is also a time that I get to thank the women in my life that play motherly roles in my life. My grandmothers, my step-mom, my mother in law, and several other friends and family members. This year mother's day a little different. While it was still a tough day, I have hope for future mother's days. For so many years, I didn't have hope that mother's day was ever going to be a day for celebration. But now, I have hope that one day mother's day will be a day of mixed emotions of remembering my mother and all that she meant to me but also thankfulness for the blessings that God has given me.
This year our adoption agency sent me an email to wish me a happy mother's day and they included this poem in the email. I thought I would just share it because I thought it was really sweet.

A Mother's Day Poem Once there were two women who never knew each other One you do not remember, the other you call Mother Two different lives shaped to make you one The first one gave you life, and the second taught you to live it The first gave you a need for love, the second was there to give it One gave you a nationality, the other gave you a name One gave you a talent, the other gave you aim One gave you emotions, the other calmed your fears One saw your first sweet smile, the other dried your tears One made an adoption plan, that was all that she could do The other prayed for a child, and God led her straight to you. Now, which of these two women, are you the product of? Both, my darling, both, just two different types of love. ~ Author Unknown

Dossier has been sent!

Today we sent our dossier to our agency to be reviewed and then to be sent to several other places, including Ethiopia. A dossier is all  of the paperwork that is needed to do an adoption. Every country's requirements are different as to what they require in their dossier. Matt and I have been working several weeks on getting all of the required forms and paperwork. Today it all came together and we were able to send it off.

Here we are at fedex sending it off. The guy behind the counter thought I was totally crazy for asking if I could take a picture with our package, but I just had to explain what was going on and that I needed to document the moment! I'm not going to lie, we were both excited and nervous all at the same time. We were excited because we had worked so hard to get everything that we needed and we had finally completed all of our hard work, but nervous because we wanted to make sure everything was perfect and the realization that this package is really important. We spent some time praying over our dossier in the parking lot and asking God to protect it along the way.

Here are some ways that we are praying now and also ways that you can be praying for us.
- Pray that our dossier will make it safely to all of it's destinations. Our dossier will travel to a couple different states, then on to Washington D.C., and on to Ethiopia.
- Pray that Matt and I will wait patiently as our dossier is being reviewed. We know that God is sovereign.
- Also, continue to pray for our baby in Africa. We don't know who our baby is yet, but we do know that God has a specific child for us.

Switching Countries

After a long few weeks, we have decided to switch countries for our adoption. We are now going to adopt a baby from Ethiopia. This decision was not an easy one for us. We have been through a roller coaster of emotions during the whole process. The decision to switch countries was no exception. Matt and I have had many conversations about what we should do and what we felt like God was leading us to do. Ultimately, we had to make a decision and pray that it was the right decision for us and where God was leading our family. We decided to switch countries to Ethiopia and have felt an overwhelming peace about the decision. Throughout the process of switching countries, we have experienced some grief. Grief over our unmet expectations, the way we thought the whole adoption process was going to go, our ideas about where our child was going to come from, etc. It is hard to explain all the emotions that we were feeling, but this is my best shot.
We switched officially last week. We now are working on paperwork to compile our dossier. A dossier is all of our paperwork that will be sent to Ethiopia. We are quickly trying to gather our paper work and send it off so that we can be put on the waiting list to be matched with a baby. Our process as a whole may be a little longer by switching to Ethiopia, but like someone told me in the process of making the decision to switch, "the right answer, isn't always the shortest". We are doing what we feel like the Lord has lead us to do. Some of our paper work will transfer over, but some will not. There are some other differences between the two countries in the adoption process but I won't go into all of them right now. Overall, we are excited about the switch and we feel like good things are happening.
In other news, we have both been sick this week. In the last week we have both been to the doctor and we are now both on antibiotics. So needless to say our weekend plans are not very exciting. I don't imagine that we will be doing much more than sleeping and watching movies. Also, I am getting very close to finishing my semester at NOBTS. I have two finals left and then I will be officially on summer break. This semester has been the most challenging semester since I have started working on my masters degree. However, while it has been a hard semester I feel like I learned so much. This semester has challenged me to grow both spiritually and intellectually, but I'm glad it's almost over.
Thank you for all the prayers, support, advice, and encouragement you have given us. At some points in this process we have felt very alone, but to hear and know people are praying for us and encouraging us is more helpful than I explain. Your encouragement and support has kept us going for the last few weeks. Thank you!

Struggle

There has been a lot going on with us lately. There has been a lot going on with us with regards to school and work but also with the adoption. Honestly, we have been going through a hard time emotionally. We know that there are a lot of people that are praying for us and want to support us. We are so blessed by you, and thankful to have you in our lives.

Our struggle is surrounding the adoption. We chose Uganda because we felt like the Lord was leading us to adopt a child from there. Recently we have received some news from our adoption agency, about the Ugandan government, that was unsettling to us. So we have a decision to make, whether to not to continue our adoption in Uganda or switch to another country.

I don't know how to explain the struggle that we going through trying to make a decision. We still haven't made a decision honestly. The only way that I know how to describe what we are going through is grief. We are grieving the idea of how we thought the adoption was going to go and now everything is changing. We have spent a lot of time talking through our options, and we've had our fair share of tears and break downs. Honestly, I feel like I've cried so much, that I can't cry anymore. It has taken us a few days to even feel like we can share this with other people. Honestly, we are hurting and we are emotionally exhausted.

Today I was reading Psalm 18. I started to read verse 1 out loud, but no noise would come out. I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I began to sob and the only noise that was coming from my mouth were squeaks. I had to stop and pray.

The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;

my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,

I love you, LORD, my strength.

my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

God has not forgotten us. We are not alone. We seek our refuge in God and when we don't have anymore strength, we can find our strength in him. I was so overwhelmed with a feeling of gratefulness for God that the only thing I could do was stop and pray and cry out to God for forgiveness for trying to deal with all of this on my own and not giving the whole situation and all the struggles over to Him. God is so good to us, and I get so overwhelmed by His love and faithfulness.

Please continue to pray for us, while we are trying to make a decision about what to do. Pray for clarification in our decision making and pray for peace. Also, please know that you can talk to us about our struggles, we will talk to you about what is going on. Don't be afraid to bring it up or ask questions, it helps us to know that people are praying for us and supporting us.

Passing the Time

Since we know that we have at least a year before we are going to be matched with a child, I decided that I needed something to help me keep track of the time. I came up with this idea to do a prayer chain. I've talked about how important prayer has been to us during the whole process. So, I made a chain with 52 links, one for every week. I wrote out a prayer on each chain link and each friday we get to remove a chain and that is our prayer for the week for our baby. We pray everyday for our baby or babies but this just helps us focus on one major theme for the week. We will keep each link and put them altogether, so one day our child will be able to see all the different things that we prayed for.

Now, I recognize that we don't know exactly how long our wait time could be and it could be longer than a year, but I just have to remember not to get discouraged if the links run out and I have to make another chain.

Here is a picture of the chain after we finished it.

We are having a good weekend and spending some time together. We have spent some of our weekend moving furniture around and doing some cleaning. I didn't realize how dusty everything had gotten, until I started moving furniture and one thing led to another so most everything is clean now. Hope you are having a great weekend!

Waiting

Now that we have our immigration approval we have been put on a referral waiting list. So, we are waiting to be matched with a baby or babies. We were originally told that the wait would be about 6 months before we go matched. However, since then we have been told that the wait is probably going to be more like a year. Ouch! Our first set back. I was trying to prepare myself emotionally for a 6 month wait and now I have to prepare myself for a year long wait.

We know that God has a plan and He knows what He is doing, but this is still a downer for us. So, yes we are a little sad that it is going to be a little longer than what we had expected, but God has a plan and He is working all things out.

That is really the only update that we have as of right now. We have some paper work to get done before we get matched, but I have some time to get it done now. We have had a great start to the year. We have been really busy but we have been saving time to spend together and just enjoy our time that we have together. We were able to go home to celebrate my dad's birthday last weekend and we had a great time with family. I have gotten horrible about taking pictures, so I didn't get one picture the whole weekend. I'm so mad that I didn't get any pictures! But I guess that just shows that I was having such a good time, that I didn't want to stop and take any pictures.

Finally!

After three months we finally received our official immigration letter! Basically, what that means is that we got permission to bring children back into the U.S.. We are so excited and honestly shocked that we got the letter already!

It takes a long time to get this approval and there is not much that you can do while you are waiting to get approved. So we have just been waiting on this letter, so that we can move on to the next step!

While we are in the process of adoption we have been taking advantage of some of our free time. All of our friends with children have encouraged us to go on dates, go to the movies, take vacations, etc. Just because we won't have as much free time after we get the baby. So, we have been taking peoples advice. Last night Matt planned a date to go to a painting class. We had so much fun! Here are some of the pictures I took from last night.

This is my painting just after having started. We went to a place called BYO Brush in Ocean Springs, MS. We also went on a night that all the proceeds were going to Sisters with a Purpose, a non-profit for abused women and children. So we were happy to go and support them.

The picture above is part way through the painting class and then the picture below is us with our finished products! We had tons of fun and it was nice to get some creative energy out. I felt so relaxed when we left. So if you ever have a chance to go to one of these classes, I would recommend it!

Update

I'm sorry it has been so long since I posted. Someone asked me about the blog the other day and I was explaining to them that we really didn't have anything to update about. However, I should just update about other things that are going on. So, I'm sorry!

Well, we are still waiting on getting out official approval from immigration, but we went last week and did our biometric fingerprints. We had been waiting to hear about this appointment since some time in October and finally when we got back from Christmas we had a letter with our appointment date and time. We were so excited! So last week we went and had our fingerprints taken. We were there about 10 minutes total for our appointment. I asked the lady that was helping us about 2 or 3 times if that was all we needed to do. She reassured me that it would be ok and that we had done everything. I just couldn't believe that was what we had been waiting on for close to 2 months!

So here we are again....waiting. Even though we are waiting and have been for some time now, we are in a good place emotionally. We definitely have our moments of impatience but we know that God is working out all things for His Glory. He has already worked out so many things with regards to our adoption. God is so good!

I'll try to do a better job of keeping you informed of what is going on!