Monday, Monday

Monday. Not usually a very exciting day. But in the world of adoption, Mondays are exciting! Mondays mean that news can come. Things can happen, things are running again.  Weekends are a good rest from all of the crazy thoughts we adoptive parents think throughout the week, and this weekend was a great distraction as we headed to the mountains with the couples in our small group for a couples retreat! It was an incredibly fun weekend, much needed for all of us, with everything we've all got going on in our lives, and I am so thankful for it.  These past few weeks have been hard. Just plain and simple. This wait is hard.  I had gotten to a point where I was ok with the wait, knew we would be waiting for a while, but now, for some reason, things have changed, and it has just gotten a lot harder.  As we were away this weekend, hubs and I were in the Word together, reading through Colossians 1, and we came across this passage:

 "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Col. 1:15-17

Oh how our hearts needed to read that this weekend.  Our Father was speaking directly to us, reminding us that it's all in his hands. He holds everything together, he holds our lives together, our marriage, and our adoption.  Our adoption, that we want to have so much control over, is in his hands, it's because of him that we are on this journey, and it's because of him holding it together that our adoption will be completed. Now, don't get me wrong, we know these things, but as I've said before, it's hard to keep preaching them to yourself over this long, intentional, grueling process.  So our loving Father spoke soft reminders to us this weekend, loving us with his word. For that I am thankful. I am thankful for the gifts of the past week, prayers that have been answered, love that has been shown, faith that has grown. I am thankful for a Father that continues to draw us to Him in this process. And on this new Monday we wait with expectancy for big things to happen!

I'm on Etsy!

I finally did it.  I've had it in my mind to start a little Etsy shop for a while now.  It's nothing fancy, just some things I've been playing around with making.  Since I'm home all the time now, with lots of time on my hands while waiting for our baby, I figure I might as well try to make a little cash from the fun stuff I'm making!  I am by no means a salesman- so it was a bit awkward for me filling in all that info to "sell" my stuff, forgive me if it's corny :)  The shop link is here or try clicking on my banner below!

Stop by, take a look around, and see if you see anything you like :) Share with your friends!  I'd love to create something for you!

Shout out to the Braly family!

We have some pretty awesome friends here in Wake Forest! This particular couple happens to be some of them!  They have some very exciting news that they are announcing in this video, and we could not be more thrilled for them! Please watch their video and consider supporting them in whatever way you can.  They are being the hands and feet of Christ, and that is an awesome thing!

You can follow more of their journey here!

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: