Puzzle Update

Some of you, who have been reading for a while, may remember this post, which can also be found on the tabs at the top of the blog.  We did a puzzle fundraiser back at the beginning of this process.  We purchased a puzzle to go with the theme of our nursery, which is classic pooh( side note- I've been working little by little on the nursery and it's starting to come together, it's super cute and I can't wait to show you!) Anywho, the fundraiser involved selling pieces of the puzzle, writing names on the back, and framing it in a double sided frame so that we could always remember who helped us bring our baby home.  Our goal was to sell 500 pieces, and to date, we've sold about 260, so about half of our goal.  Until last week, the puzzle was just sitting in the top of our closet, waiting to be put together. Well, now that I've been working on the nursery, I figured it was as good a time as any to put that thing together and get it ready! I'm sure some of you have been sitting on the edge of your seat just wondering where this puzzle has been :) Wait no longer, here are the beginnings of our puzzle!

It's coming along quite nicely! The top picture was taken last week, and the bottom one I took this afternoon, so it's almost done! Hoping to have it done by this weekend b/c I got an awesome coupon to use for framing in the paper this weekend! And I don't know if you can tell by the picture or not, but we couldn't have picked a more irritating puzzle to put together! It's 1000 pieces and they are all GREEN!! or some sort of greenish brown, dark green, etc, etc. As you can see, I've managed to get the "easy" part done and am now left with just a pile of green that I'm supposed to figure out how to put together.  Don't know who's bright idea that was, or who thought it was a good idea to by a puzzle with such awesome color variation, but alas, I love it and can't wait to hang it in our baby's room!

July Numbers!

Well...I told you that July numbers would be exciting, and they did not disappoint!  We felt a lot of movement this month-more than several months combined the way things have been going over the last few months!  So here they are, for girl we are:

For a boy:

We are SOOO thankful for this amount of movement this month! Our home study update is DONE and waiting to be approved, which should happen next week!! We are so close to seeing our baby's face, we feel like it's right around the corner, and with our Great God, anything is possible!!!

Lots of great news!

       These past few weeks have brought lots of exciting adoption news!! In the past 2 weeks alone there have been 9 referrals with our agency! Praise God for that! That means 9 more precious children have been matched with their forever families! It's also very exciting because there haven't been that many referrals in so short amount of time since before the slow down last year.  And there were 3 more referrals the few weeks before that, so overall 12 referrals in the past month and a half, so so exciting!! Our agency has also started to partner with a new orphanage, which we hope will be bringing in lots more children!  All of this has filled us with renewed hope, hope that our Father will indeed finish what he started, and hope in His love for these children.  As much as we love our yet to be known son or daughter, our Father loves him or her so much more, and he know him intimately.  He knows their innermost being, and knit them together in the womb.  There is such amazing peace in that.  There will be times that I will have major mommy fails, but I can rest in the fact that my Father never fails.  This chorus has been ringing in my head a lot lately:


"I may be weak, but you're spirit's strong in me. 
My flesh may fail, but my God you never will.
Give me faith, to trust what you say,
that you're good, and your love is great."

I am so thankful for the love of my Father.

We also are in the final stages of our home study being updated.  We met with our social worker last week so we are just waiting for it to be written and then approved by our agency, which will hopefully happen in the next week or so.  We got our state background checks back in a record amount of time which was all we had left to get, so they have everything they need! And after all this movement, we are seriously excited about our July numbers! We are getting there precious one!!
 

June Numbers!

Here we are again! Time for more numbers! This is our 2nd round of June numbers.  This time last year we had just gotten on the wait list and were so excited to be getting our numbers.  This year, it's still exciting to get these numbers, and we are thrilled that there has been movement, but personally, I'm ready to say goodbye to the 40's and say hello to the 30's, which I believe we are pretty close to doing, unofficially, and I'm really hoping our July numbers reflect that!  We are closer every day to seeing our baby's face, and we are finding our hope in the Lord being faithful to his calling on our family.  We are so blessed!  We have been praying some really exciting/bold prayers.  This journey has been amazing so far, and we can't wait to see where it takes us! So here are our numbers for the month of June:

For a boy:

For a girl:

Paperwork Round 2!

It's that time! We have reached the time period where most of our adoption paperwork is going to expire, sad, I know.  And lucky for us, everything expires at different times, fun! Our USCIS fingerprints expire in August, but we already got those redone earlier this month.  Our Home study expires in October, which we have to start working on now! And our immigration approval expires in December. Lucky for me, our awesome caseworker got me on the right track to know when to start working on this stuff, because there's another catch, most things can't be updated unless you're within 90 days of the original expiring.  Which is why we have to start working on our home study update in July, but we can't send it in to immigration until September.  Are you confused yet? :) So today and next week we've got all our appointments lined up to update documents for our Home study that I plan to send off before I head down to GA for one of my best friend's wedding! Our home study agency says to plan on a few week turn around since they have such a huge case load right now.  Our amendment we did 2 months ago took a LONG time to get done, and we want this update done ASAP, so I've already been working ahead making sure I've got everything ready to go before I go out of town next week!  Hopefully everything will go as planned and it will be a smooth update process, and we will be that much closer to seeing our baby's face!! I won't have a number update until next week, they got a little backed up from having an exciting week of movement, praise the Lord!! But we are so close to the 30's, praying we get there by the update next week :)

Yard Sale- Round 4!

We're having another yard sale this weekend!  We have graciously been donated literally car-loads of stuff from our church family and friends and we are hoping and praying to put a dent in the last chunk of money we need to raise for this adoption!  We've got furniture, toys, clothes, home decor, books, baby items, etc. So if you're local, we would love for you to stop by!  These yard sales have been a huge success for us in the past, and Lord willing, we won't be encountering any snow on Saturday, but it will be quite warm!  Apparently, we only do yard sales in extremes around here :)  We are beyond thrilled that we are working towards raising the last amount of money we need to fund this adoption. As I mentioned before we are about $3500 away from being fully funded, praise the Lord!  Only God could do this, only he could have provided so much, and we want all the glory to be his!  Even after 18 months, he is still providing a way for us to bring this baby home, we are so blessed! Email me at scoalson104 (at) gmail (dot) com if you would like to come by this weekend and need the address. We would love to see some of you and would appreciate the prayers for Saturday!

Finding the Crib

Yep, that's right, I found a crib!  One of my summer projects this summer has been to start working on the nursery.  I've been scouring websites and craigslist to find the perfect crib, and about 2 weeks ago I found it!  I looked on craigslist one last time one night after being frustrated about not finding anything, and this beauty popped up!  I was so excited and snagged it right away.  It might still be early, but it helps to have this and know that things are coming together! I've had the bedding for a year now and I was excited to finally have something to put it on to see what it looks like, and I love it! I didn't take a picture of that yet, but I had a couple from us putting it together until hubs told me to put down the camera and help him :) So, here is where our sweet baby will be sleeping!!

It's practically brand new and we got too good of a deal on it to pass it up!  Can't wait until there is a little one sleeping in there!