Dear 2011,

You were a good year, a great year really.  You were a hard year at times.  We have struggled, we have grown, we have had our faith tested like never before.  There were many ups and downs, but thankfully there were way more ups!  We have learned to lean on God as our source of strength and for everything that we need.  We have many great memories from this year, we've made great new friends that we are so thankful to walk through this life with.  This journey we are on has been stretching, it has been long and hard.  Our hearts have ached to hold the child that God has for us.  This time last year we optimistically thought we'd have seen a picture of our babe by now, but that was not God's plan.  We needed more time, more time to learn and grow, more time to prepare our hearts to be parents, more time to establish our firm foundation, more time to draw closer to God, more time to learn to trust Him in everything.  Some of these things are still a work in progress.  There are still things we have to learn to trust Him for, but by His grace, we are not the same people we were at the beginning of this year.  Yes, our hearts are still longing for that child, and we are praying this is the last end of a year we will see without at least knowing who that child is, but we are also grateful for the year we have had and all that we have learned along the way in this journey to our precious baby.  2011, we are thankful for what you have given us, but we are more than ready to embrace 2012, to continue on this journey, and see what the Lord has in store for this next year.

We are so richly blessed! Happy New Year everyone!!

December Numbers!!

Well, we finally have December numbers!! And we are finally beginning to see some movement after almost 3 months of none at all.  So I am actually excited about posting these this month.  We are so thankful for this journey, even when the hard months come, we know it is all worth it.  Even when our hearts ache this Christmas, we know that the time will come, in His perfect timing, where there will be the cutest little smile looking up at us from under the tree and it will all be worth it.  All the pain will seem like a distant memory, and although there will be new hard and painful things, we will do it as a family, and we will have learned so much.  So yes, this wait is worth it. And we would gladly do it all over again.  Here are our numbers this month:

For a Girl:

For a Boy:

We moved 3 spots on both lists this month, and the day before we got these there was more movement that isn't included in these numbers, so we are actually unofficially a little lower :)  We are rejoicing in the one whose birth we will be celebrating this weekend, He is faithful!!

It's Christmas time!

Things have been looking very festive around our house over the past few weeks!  We got our tree up the day after Thanksgiving and have been enjoying it ever since!  This Christmas season has seemed a little more special than normal and I've had a hard time putting my finger on it.  Sure, we've done all our traditional Christmas festivities, in fact, tonight making fudge and watching Rudolph are on the agenda :)  we had a small group Christmas party at our house Wednesday night that was a lot of fun, we've been reading our Story a Day til' Christmas (love this tradition!), there's even an extra stocking hung this year for our precious little one (thanks Lauren!) and Christmas music constantly playing. The kids at the preschool are in full Christmas mode and we're having our party Tuesday morning on our last day, these are just a few examples of the festivities we've been partaking in.  But this year, Christmas is a little more sentimental for me.  I've posted before that over the past year since we've started this adoption process, the Gospel has become so much more real.  So it makes sense that the Christmas story would mean that much more this year.  We watched a movie of the First Noel with the kids at preschool yesterday, and I literally got all teary eyed watching it.  Not only is it such a beautiful story of love, but sitting there, watching it with so many little ones, some of who were probably hearing it for the first time, I just got overwhelmed.  It's such a simple story, the birth of a baby, doesn't seem like anything special.  But that story is the epitome of love, and that baby is the King of Kings, our Savior!! That baby grew into the man who is weaving our story with another little baby on the other side of the world, and that gets me teary (ask my hubby, that's not hard to do these days!).  So while I can't wait to experience Christmas with a little one, and my heart aches for a baby that we've never met, this Christmas, I'm rejoicing in another birth, the birth of our Lord!  I'm rejoicing in a redeemer and a Father who cares enough to send a total stranger that I've never met before(and they didn't even know about the fundraiser, they were there for the band), along with her precious Ethiopian princess, to our Chick-Fil-A fundraiser last night who had just the right words of encouragement that we needed to keep going when this road looks never-ending.  Thank you Father for these precious gifts!

Eat Mor Chikin!!

That's right, our next fundraiser is going to be a Chick-Fil-A spirit night!  Who doesn't love Chick-Fil-A?  We're going to ask all of our friends and family here in RDU, and all of their friends and family, to join us on Thursday, December 15th at the Falls Village Chick-Fil-A.  We will get a portion of all the sales from 5:00-8:00pm that use one our our fliers at the register.  I'm going to try to get a picture of it up on here to make it easy to print out, but if not, email me and I can send you a copy!  You will need to have one of these that night to make sure that we get the credit.  We are so thankful for this opportunity!  There will also be live music that night from a local Raleigh artist, Daniel Renstrom, so hopefully that will draw a big crowd as well. If you don't have any plans for dinner that night, please come out and eat with us! We would love to see all of you there! And help us spread the word on Facebook, Twitter, email, word of mouth, etc.  We love seeing how God provides to bring this baby home!!

Happy Thanksgiving & November #'s

I hope everyone had a very happy Thanksgiving yesterday!  We enjoyed the day with several friends here in NC and missed our families back home in GA.  We ate way more food than we should have, laughed, thanked God for all of our blessings, and just had a great time with each other.  I love the holidays!!  We were sad that we couldn't spend this one with our families in GA but we will be home for Christmas, and we are enjoying our new tradition of having Thanksgiving here in our home for friends and students who aren't able to go home for the holiday.  We love opening our home for that reason!

It's been a while since I posted on here, just proof of how busy we've been!  But right before Thanksgiving we got our November numbers and I wanted to post them.  We were a little bummed this month as we had no movement on the girl list and moved back a spot on the boy list(a family that lost their referral joined the list again so that's how we got moved back).  Although we are a little bummed about this, this is the first month that this has happened since we've joined the list, and for that we are thankful.  We are thankful that we've experienced movement every other month and we are thankful that we know there is movement coming because several kiddos are being picked up in the next few weeks to join their forever families and we hear that several new babies have come in to HH!! So, I'm not doing the regular numbers post that I normally do, but just wanted to put it on here to have a record of this month and our numbers.  For November we are still 75 for a girl and 60 for a boy.

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of this holiday weekend.  I'm super excited because we are going to get a Christmas tree this afternoon when my hubby gets off work and we found a local farm where we can choose and cut it ourselves!!! I have always wanted to do this and make it a tradition in our family, so here we go!!

Ordinary Hero Grant Contest!!

Hey everyone!! I am excited to announce this new fundraiser we are doing!!  I have signed us up to become an affiliate family working with Ordinary Hero!  We are very excited about this and hope that many of you will partner with us in this fundraiser.  Basically, this is an organization that has ties to Ethiopia, the owner has adopted from Ethiopia herself, and she has started Ordinary Hero as a chid advocacy program.  It's so awesome! You can read more about that here.  Their store sells lots of awesome stuff: t-shirts & sweatshirts, jewelry, accessories, and now they even have items that you can donate to Ethiopia! Here's where YOU come in!  If you go to the store and do some shopping, whenever you purchase an item, make sure you choose my name (Stephanie Coalson) from the affiliate drop-down list to make sure that we get the credit for that item.  We will get 40% of any purchase that you make and the total will go straight to our account at our agency so you can be sure that the money will go to our adoption!  Now...starting TODAY, until next Sunday, November 13 at midnight we are going to try to win a $500 grant from OH.  That means that we get 40% of all the sales that we make, plus the $500 grant if we are one of the top 3 sellers!! How awesome is that?? We would be so grateful if each of you reading would just take a look at the store and see if anything catches your eye.  Even if you don't see anything you want for yourself, how about taking some Christmas money and donating an Amharic(Ethiopian language) children's Bible to a child in Ethiopia?  I have to tell you though, I have ordered two of their shirts and they are super soft and comfy, I love them!!  We especially want our family and friends to take advantage of this. Please, please don't spend anything on us for Christmas, but consider donating some blankets or maybe even a sheep to feed about 40 children.  Check out the store here, there is really something for everyone!  Thanks for thinking of us and I apologize in advance that I am going to be blowing up your Facebook feeds and emails for the next 10 days :)

October #'s!!

Yep, we got 'em!  Finally!  I don't have much to update on other than numbers right now.  Hubs and I just got back from a wedding in Charleston.  I don't know about you, but I love weddings :)  Here's the numbers:

For a girl:

For a Boy:

That's down 5 on the girl list and 3 for the boys!  Happy to still be seeing movement, but praying for lots more!! Happy Monday!

Passing the Time with a Past Time

While we've been anxiously awaiting our October numbers (is it really almost November and no numbers?!! There has been good news lately though and I'm hoping those numbers will be in my inbox tonight but I'm not getting my hopes up) we have been getting some things done around here.  Our new goal, since we(i.e. my hubby) have such busy schedules is we have decided to pick 1 or 2 small things that need to be done around the house each weekend and do them.  This weekend we tackled cleaning out our closet(fun right?)...it was horrendous and it was beginning to scare me to open it! So with that getting done, we decided we needed some fun afterwards.  Monday's are now my hubby's day off so we include that in our weekend since he works Sat. and Sun. We've had our pumpkins and mum sitting on our front porch since oh, about the end of September! Those are 2 of my favorite things about fall, and Monday we decided it was high time to carve that pumpkin!  We've made this a tradition in our family and we can't wait to have a little one join us in the fun, but for now as you'll see in the pictures, we enjoyed our 4 legged child getting in on some action.  He was eating the pumpkin guts out of the bowl at one point, pretty gross if you ask me, but he seemed to enjoy it and we spent the rest of the evening trying to get him to quit licking the pumpkin lid!  So, this was us passing some more time waiting with a fun fall night :)

For some reason hubs decided to name our pumpkins George and Phyllis, respectively

1 Year

Today marks one year since we officially started down this road of adoption!  I can't believe that this time last year we had just said a prayer and sent in that pre-application to see if we would even qualify to work with AGCI.  This year has literally flown by, and for that I am grateful.  I know when we started out last year that we were extremely optimistic about where we would be in the process this year, we thought we would be a lot closer to seeing that precious face.  But...the paperwork took longer then we anticipated, and we ended up getting in the official waiting game a little "late" according to our timeline.  However, God placed us exactly where we needed to be on that list, and all those little bumps we hit leading to the paperwork taking longer, are eventually going to match us with the child God had picked out before time even began; before adoption was even a thought in our mind.  How awesome is that?  That is what we are clinging to right now.  We know we still have a long road ahead, and this year we are still being optimistic, that we will have seen that face by this time next year.  We(really me) is praying that this year goes by just as fast, even without all the paperwork and deadlines to look forward to and keep us pushing on.  I know I shouldn't wish the time away, and I'm really not, because of my last post. I know that God is teaching us right now, and has designed this so that we would seek to have more of Him during this time.  So I'm not wishing the time away, just that we would have much to keep us busy, and that we would get as much out the time as possible, all the while making it go by fast :)  And judging by life lately, that shouldn't be a problem!  We have learned so much in this one year, and we can't wait to see what God has planned for the next!

More of Him

Life is busy, as usual.  At the moment, I am thankful for this busyness.  I am thankful that we are going full speed ahead, living life right now, because if we weren't I would constantly be dwelling on the fact that my heart is on the other side of the world and there's nothing I can do about it.  If we weren't I might be a sad person dwelling on the fact that our baby isn't home yet and we still have a long way to go.  But...I'm not.  Yes, those things do creep into my mind more often than I would like right now, but having never done this before, I assume it comes with the territory.  I was listening to a sermon on prayer a few days ago, one that I have heard several times already(it's just that good!) and I am amazed that every time I hear it, something different jumps out at me.  This time, it was that during this waiting time, God is seeking to give me more of himself.  And I desperately want and need this.  It's the only way I can get through the weeks and months ahead.  God has specifically designed this circumstance for my sanctification, and to allow me to experience more of him.  How awesome is that?  I am just more and more amazed by the love we have from the Father more and more every day.  My heart continues to be full because even during this time, when some days I think it's about me getting a baby, God continually shows me that it's about me getting more of Him, and out of that flows my love for the orphan. Seriously? SO GOOD!! So today, I am thankful for the busyness, I am thankful that God is revealing himself to me a little more each day, and I am thankful that I am learning.  Learning what it's like to truly lean on Him, learning to truly make Him my strength and my portion.

PS- courts opened on Wednesday after being closed for nearly 2 months for the rainy season, yay!! Hopefully this means that things will pick up a little now, although there has already been a bit of a buzz around our list serve over the past week, including some very good friends of ours making it to the number one spot! Can't wait to hear of their referral! And we're also pretty excited about our October numbers that we will hopefully be posting soon! Happy Weekend :)

3 Years!

This post is a little late to the party, but I wanted to get it on here anyway.  Tuesday my awesome hubby and I celebrated 3 wonderful years of marriage!!  I can hardly believe it's been 3 years since this moment:

So much has happened over the past 3 years.  It's amazing to look back and see all the blessings that God has given us.  We have been in ministry, shared the Gospel on the other side of the world, moved our lives 8 hours away from our family to follow a calling to seminary, become part of an awesome church and involved in more ministry, bought our first house, made some amazing friends who push us deeper into the Gospel, started the adoption process to grow our family, seen God provide in ways that only he can, and those are just the big moments!  There are countless other small things that are a part of our story, and I love the evidence of God's hand all over our lives.

When I said "I do" 3 years ago, I had no idea that this is what our life would look like 3 years later.  Now, I can't imagine it any other way!  We have learned so much about ourselves, about the Gospel, about the beauty of marriage.  I never thought we would be this close to adding a little one 3 years into this(but i hoped!) and here we are, right in the middle of this process, trusting God with hearts changed.  I can't wait to see my husband become a father, it's going to be so good!  We are praying that we don't celebrate another year without our little one home, and that this post next year will include pictures of that precious face!  I'll leave you with some of the fun we've had over the past 3 years!

Our rehearsal!

First Fall!

Greece Mission Trip 2009

Our first addition :)

Our house!

 First "big" snow at our house!

Cruise, Spring of 2010

Starting this crazy adoption process!!

Latest Baby Find!

I love books, I love to read, and I love kids who love to read books :)  My hubby is the same way, we can be a little nerdy sometimes!  Every trip we take, before we go, hubs is always googling some book stores we can hit up while we're there and we spend lots of time just browsing.  We would love to have a library room one day(and we're already well on our way with all the full shelves we have)!  So books are the one thing I know I can't go wrong in buying right now for our little one, we can't wait to pass on our love for reading!  On our trip to Rhode Island a few weeks ago we found a cute little bookstore in the middle of Providence and snagged this little find:

(sorry, for some reason I couldn't get this to rotate!)

This is such a cute story, and hubs is a sucker for anything involving bears!  We can't wait to read this to our sweet baby.  I have been missing our baby something awful this week.  It's amazing to me that I can miss someone so much that I have never even met before, someone who may not even be born yet.  I feel like a piece of my heart is missing, but I know that the Lord is connecting our stories every day and it will make that sweet day when he/she is forever in our arms so much better! Until then, we'll just keep preparing our hearts, and wait on the Lord's perfect timing.

September Numbers!

We finally got them!! Here are our September numbers! We had quite a bit of movement this month and we are so thankful. Every day we are getting closer to seeing that sweet face, and we cannot wait!

For a Girl:

For a Boy:

That means we moved 6 spots on the girl list and 3 on the boy list this month, love it!! Thanks for the continued prayers for our family and this journey.  Please keep Ethiopia in your prayers right now, there are some things going on with some families with our agency who have children coming from the Southern region of Ethiopia that greatly need prayers right now.  So thankful that the Father is holding us all in his hands.

Created for Care!

Well, I am SUPER excited about this event this year.  Last year, when registration opened, we had not yet started the adoption process.  However, a few months later, we were in the thick of paperwork and I remembered this retreat, only to find out that it had filled up within 48 hours, so it just wasn't going to happen, and I was kicking myself the whole time for not signing up.  This year, I am ready for it! Registration opens at 12:01 am tonight!! We are leaving out early in the morning for a trip to pray about church planting, so I can't decided if I should stay up and register at midnight or wait and do it right before we leave bright and early.  Either way, I could not be more excited!! For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, this is an event for adoption mama's(although you don't have to be, you can just be interested in adoption, or want to support a friend who is adopting).  It's a weekend long retreat at an awesome lodge in GA, spent meeting hundreds of other women who are right where we are, have already been where we are, or want to learn more.  A weekend spent learning more about the Father, from the Father, learning from each other, and just sharing our hearts with other women who have the same passion.  To see the orphan become orphan no more.  Seriously, it's going to be an amazing weekend and I can't wait!!  I'm also excited to get to meet lots of my bloggy "friends" in person!!  So, if you want more info, check out the website here, and there's a list of the awesome breakouts over on Andrea's blog.  You really don't want to miss this!! Who's in??

August Numbers!

Well, Friday afternoon we got our official August numbers!  We were excited to see more movement this month.  With the courts closed it helps to at least keep seeing a little progress during these slow months.  Withour further ado we are, for a girl:

And for a boy:

We moved 4 spots on both lists this month! Pretty exciting!  My hubby is convinced that he's going to get a son, it's pretty cute :)  We'll see if he's right or not, but it's looking pretty promising!

What are we waiting for?

Now that I am not in the habit of blogging regularly I randomly have thoughts float through my head that I think would make a good blog post, but I rarely take the time to sit down and actually write it.  I've been thinking about this post for about a week now.  I've been listening to this awesome CD:

This is the new CD of one of the awesome worship leaders at our church.  Everyone needs to get this CD!! There is so much truth and so much Gospel in this one album, it's amazing!  Definitely a nice change from some of the fluff that's on Christian radio right now.  The premise of the CD is that the Gospel changes everything and asks the questions, are we living as though Jesus is alive? and what are we waiting for?  Jesus has called us all to go, he has called us all to care for orphans in some way.  That along with this video(pause the music at the bottom of the page first):



have just really gotten me thinking lately.What are we waiting for? As Matt's song says, "a message in the sky? a sign from up above? is not His Word enough?"  God's word clearly tells us to care for the poor, the orphan, the widow, as Katie says in her video "it's not an option."  Us adopting should not be viewed as us doing something noble, or "super christian", we are just obeying God's word. Not to say that everyone should adopt, but we are all called to care for the orphan in some capacity.   
We are also all called to make disciples and take His Word to the nations. And yet so many times we don't, myself included.  My prayer lately has been,taken from  another line in the song, that I would not become to comfortable with amazing grace, and to familiar with the empty grave. We cannot wait to have this baby home so that we can share the love of our amazing Father with him/her.We have so much to celebrate, and so much to tell the world about.  So what are we waiting for? 

It's that time

Well, it's that time.  The dreaded time involved in Ethiopia adoption.  Friday, the Ethiopian courts closed for the rainy season and will not reopen until mid-October.  I have not been looking forward to this since we started the process.  Things will slow down a good deal over the next two months.  Referrals can still happen, and the Embassy will keep scheduling dates, but with the courts closed, things will be pretty slow.  On the other hand, this will be a blessing because the people are in desperate need of rain right now, so we are praying the God sends lots of it!  Focusing on that blessing will hopefully make this time a little easier. I start back to work at the preschool tomorrow so that should help move things along too!  We are praying for all of the families caught in the middle of this closure.  I can only imagine how hard it would be to have seen our baby's face and then get stuck in this closure, waiting extra months to be able to hold them. 

There have also been several orphanage closures in the southern region of Ethiopia recently.  No one is quite sure of the reason for this yet, but this is also causing several families with our agency to be in a limbo of sorts, not knowing what will happen next or when they will get their babies home even though they have already been approved by the courts.  Our hearts are hurting for them and we are constantly lifting them up before the Father.  We ask that you would pray with us, and that these little ones would get home to their families as quickly as possible!  It's still amazing to me how quickly things can change in this world of International Adoption, but I am thankful that we have a Father who holds us all in the palm of His hand, and has ordained all of this from the beginning of time, so amazing!

Longing

We are close to hitting the 2 month mark of "officially" waiting for our baby!  Some days this is extremely exciting, and others it just reminds me of the long road ahead we still have to travel.  Some days I can't believe that 2 months have already flown by, and other it seems like we have been waiting forever.  I still have to remind myself that we are actually making progress now.  Before we were on the list, I would hear of a referall, but it wouldn't be nearly as exciting because we weren't on the list and weren't slowly creeping towards that #1 spot with every referral.  So it's taken me a little bit to get used the the fact that we really are on the list, and every referral does mean we are closer to seeing that sweet face!  It does my heart good to hear of referral news and see "Gotcha Day" videos, because even though I cry like a baby every time I watch one, it is a reminder that we will get there one day, that one day it will be us rejoicing over seeing a first glimpse of that face, it will be us walking up those stairs and into the room of our precious child. 


This week I have been reading a lot of blogs about people's trips to Ethiopia, or Africa in general, and hearing about the devastating drought going on in the horn right now.  Sometimes my heart longs to be in Africa, longs to be able to do something to help these people.  Longs to see our baby's face and know that he/she is being taken care of, that he/she is safe and has plenty of food and water.  I find it odd that my heart longs to be in a place that I've never been before, and I can only explain it as God preparing my heart for the hard things our baby will experience, tying me to a country that holds more beauty than most of the world knows.  Our baby's home is hurting, this last sentence from the article above broke my heart:
                     

"'We are supposed to have an early warning system, but what is the point of warning the rest of the world when it doesn't listen?'"

 

I pray that we will listen, that our hearts will be broken for those who are hurting, and that we will be moved to help. 

July Numbers!

Well, we finally got our official July Numbers!  There was a lot of movement this month and the exciting part is that these numbers are already lower!! These are official, but our unofficial numbers(a list kept by another AGCI mom) have dropped a few spots of both lists!  Here they are:

For a Girl

For a Boy

Here's our little countdown at home, love looking at these every day!



Time

Well, I can't think of a better time to post this then after the incredibly busy week we've just had, thus my lack of blogging.  Let me set it up for you, last weekend the hubby and I headed to TN for a weekend in a cabin with my brother and sister in law, Tuesday night we left TN and arrived home at 1:30am Wednesday morning.  Hubs worked Wed and Thurs, then we got up bright and early at 4:30am Friday morning to head home to GA for the wedding of one of my girlfriends.  This weekend was a big mix of family and wedding related events, and Sunday morning after a quick breakfast with my parents we were on the road again with 7 hours between us and home.  Needless to say, we crashed when we finally hit the bed last night.  I was thinking of writing another blog post from One Thousand Gifts and this post just fits perfectly so here we go!

Time is something we all think we need more of.  The one thing we revolve our schedules around and always wish there were more hours in the day.  At least I know I do sometimes.  How do we get to be so busy?  I look at our life now, without kids, and see how busy we are, and can only imagine what's going to happen when we add a little one to the mix!  This thought from the book really hit me hard, is "Is the busyness of your life leaving little room for the source of your life?" Yikes! That was convicting for me.  Among all the busyness, am I leaving room and prioritizing for the only thing that gets me through the busyness?  Honestly, a lot of times I really fail at this, and it has been one of my goals this summer, while I'm somewhat less busy, to really prioritize this.  To really make the source of my life the SOURCE of my life.  How else am I going to make it through this whirlwind? 

Voskamp quoted another woman in this chapter saying "On every level of life,  from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are the sure marks of an amateur."  I do not want to be an amateur.  I want to really soak in the bits of life and not wish away my weeks and months.  Right now it's very hard not to do this, all I want is for our waitlist numbers to get smaller and smaller and for me to snap my fingers and us be fast forwarded a year to be at the top of the list.  But if I do that, I miss what God is trying to do right now.  I miss all the little blessings he's giving us along the way.  Voskamp says that "hurry empties the soul."  A good friend of mine emailed this to me last week and it was so encouraging.
                        "Waiting on God isn't about the suspension of meaning and purpose. It's part of the meaning and purpose that God has brought into my life.  Waiting on God isn't to be viewed as an obstruction in the way of the plan.  Waiting is an essential part of the plan. For the child of God, waiting isn't simply about what I'll receive at the end of my wait.  No, waiting is much more purposeful, efficient, and practical than that. Waiting is fundamentally about what I'll become as I wait.  God is using the wait to do in and through me exactly what He's promised. Through the wait He's changing me.  By means of the wait He's altering the fabric of my thoughts and desires.  Through the wait He's causing me to see and experience new things about Him and His kingdom.  And all of this sharpens me, enabling me to be a more useful tool in His redemptive hands" (emphasis mine).  Paul Tripp

I have essentially been given the gift of time in this wait, as Voskamp puts it "God Himself framed in a moment."  That is amazing to think about.  In this waiting, God is giving me more of Himself and preparing me for this journey of motherhood.  Preparing me by teaching me that "The real problem of life is never a lack of time....it's a lack of thanksgiving"  and that I "redeem time from neglect and apathy and inattentiveness when I swell with thanks and weigh the moment down and it's giving thanks to God for this moment that multiplies the moments, time made enough."  Such great encouragment and perspective for me amidst the busyness of life.  I am trying my hardest to put these things into practice and allow myself to be prepared by my Father, to be made ready for the journey, and to no longer hurry through as an amateur.  I'm making my list longer every day, soaking in these gifts and attempting to learn. 

**On another note, there has been lots of good news and movement on the list lately, we should be getting new numbers for July any day now and I'm excited to post them!

What a Weekend!!

Whew...what a weekend!! We had some exciting stuff take place this weekend!  A couple months ago we had some friends from church approach us about a fundraiser they were doing.  Last year they started this event that they named "The Benefit Ball."  It's a pretty awesome concept, they have a 3 on 3 basketball tournament during the morning, then a prom like "ball" in the evening for everyone who participated in the tournament and more!!  They sell tickets for both parts and all proceeds go to benefit a cause.  Last year it was a couple raising money to be missionaries in Spain, and this year, the benefit was our ADOPTION!!  We were so excited, honored, humbled that they would choose us to be a part of this.  This weekend was it! Saturday we got all dressed up and danced the night away with lots of people, most of whom we didn't know, which was even more awesome!  We got to have lots of conversations with people about adoption, hopefully many seeds were planted!  We had so much fun!! Here's some pictures and a little video from the evening(make sure you pause the music at the bottom to watch the video.) 

The Location of The Benefit Ball 2011!

Me and my handsome hubby :)

This room was set up to take prom pictures :)

Table set up with our adoption information

They even had a picture mat for people to write messages to baby Coalson :)

Towards the end of the night, tired, hot, sweaty, curls long gone

We took more pictures, but they're on the camera that was set up for the awkward prom picutres, so hopefully we'll get those soon!!



It was such a great evening! That night we raised $1000!! That, combined with a few other random donations we received  from the weekend we were able to raise about $2000 this weekend! Praise God! We were so blessed to be a part of this event and are forever grateful to our friends having a part in our child's story.  God's hand just continues to be evident in our life and we are thankful!

Another great thing from this weekend, we were privileged to have Dr. Russell Moore preach at our church!!  He is the author of this book:

Such a great, great book on adoption and the Gospel! This book played a huge role in us adopting sooner rather than later.  He preached an awesome sermon on adoption, that you can find here.  We were blessed to be able to meet Dr. Moore and have him pray over us and our sweet baby.  Such a great end to an awesome weekend!  God is so good and we are continuing to revel in His blessings over us.

Thankfulness

This is one of those posts I've been meaning to get around to for a while.  Might get a little wordy and long, but stick with it, it might be good :)

  One of my friends and I have been going through the book One Thousand Gifts this summer, and WOW!!  I don't know if I've ever read a book where I've taken so much away from it.  Most of the time I just want to underline every sentence.  There's SO much goodness and wisdom in this book.  I have learned a great deal about being thankful, and how thankfulness is an essential part of my salvation.  In the very beginning Voskamp talks of Adam and Eve's sin of ungratefulness, that they just weren't grateful for all God had given them, leading them into Satan's trap.  This idea seems so simple, so easy to see, yet I have grown up in church and never really heard it put this way.  That my sin ultimately is caused by my ungratefulness.  Such a realization for me!


She talks of longing to live the life of "eucharisteo", which broken down in the greek means grace, thanksgiving, joy.  That this is how we should always be living.  She gives example after example from scripture that eucharisteo always comes before a miracle. Our salvation is a miracle.  So eloquently she says "our very saving is associated with our gratitude........We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives.  Thanksgiving is the manifestion of our Yes! to his grace."  I know this is a lot of her words for one post, but it is just so beautiful the way she puts it.  Here is more on this idea: "At the Eucharist, Christ breaks His heart to heal ours--Christ, the complete accomplishment of our salvation.  And the miracle of eucharisteo never ends: thanksgiving is what precedes the miracle of that salvation being fully worked out in our lives.  Thanksgiving--giving thanks in everything--is what prepares the way for salvation's whole restoration.  Our salvation in Christ is real, yet the completeness of that salvation is not fully realized in a life until the life realizes the need to give thanks. In everything." 

This is so, so good! The fulness of my salvation is being worked out according to my gratitude??  Why had I not heard this before?  Sure I am thankful for what God has blessed me with, thankful for this journey we are on to our sweet baby, but am I really thankful? Do I cry out to God daily, just thankful for all that He's given me?  Do I appreciate the little things in life?  The premise of the book is to figure out how to practically live a life of eucharisteo.  So Voskamp makes a list, of 1000 gifts that God has given her .  I've quoted this on here before, she is learning "how to be grateful and happy, whether hands full or hands empty."  When you think about it, what other way is there to live, really?  "I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life."  I for one am SO guilty of this.  Just going about each day, saying that I'm thankful, but what am I thankful for?  So I have started my own list, in an attempt to work all this out in my own life, to be thankful in every little moment I am given.  Because these are all the ways that God is telling me He loves me.  This is the way that I will fully experience the presence of God and bring Him glory with my life.  To recognize His gifts and truly be thankful for them. 

Sweet baby,
You are one of these precious gifts, and I am going to be thankful for every little thing on our journey to you.  I do not want to miss any of these moments, and I can only imagine how many moments there will be when you are finally here. We can't wait to experience them with you! 


If you don't read any other book this summer, you can not go wrong with this one.  Seriously, you won't regret it!! I have lots more to share, and I'm only half-way through the book.  More to come!

Quick Update

I have totally gotten behind in my blogging.  I figured since summer was here I'd have the time to do it, so far, not the case!  We had my parents come into town last weekend to celebrate my brother's birthday, and tomorrow Aaron's parents will be here for the weekend!  We are excited to see both of our parents within a week, a rare treat, especially for them to come here!  So we have been a bit busy lately, but a good busy!  I am definitely not complaining since I've got things to do to keep my mind off this wait!  I'm also keeping myself busy with a long reading list and projects to do around the house.  Anyway, just wanted to update that we did get our FDL in the mail last Monday, woo hoo!!! We got it notarized and mailed it of to AGCI and our dossier is now COMPLETE!! Now there really is no more paperwork for a while. YES!!  We're sittin' pretty on the bottom of the list right now, enjoying this time of preparation.  I promise I do have some posts in the works of things I'm working through, I've been saying that for like a month, but they're coming.  Maybe next week?  Also, if y'all wouldn't mind praying for my brother and sister in law, they're leaving to go on a mission trip to Haiti this weekend and I know they would love your prayers!! They actually going to be visiting an orphanage while there so they'll get to love on the kiddos!  Happy Weekend y'all!

June Numbers!

We are excited to get a change in numbers so quickly.  Normally it won't be like this, but since we got our first numbers on the last day of May, we didn't have to wait long to get the June numbers.  We didn't see much movement this time, but we are thankful for the little amount we did move.  Little movement is better than staying still! And there are lots of families picking up kiddos in the next week, so we're hoping for lots of movement this month!!  Without further ado, here are our official numbers for the month of June:

For a girl

For a boy

From last month we moved 1 spot on the girl list and 3 spots on the boy list.  Hope you all have a great weekend! My parents are in town visiting this weekend so we're going to enjoy time with them!

Beach Getaway!

After 7 long months of paperwork, my hubby planned a getaway for us to celebrate getting on the waitlist.  He surprised me with a 2 day trip to the Outer Banks here in NC.  The Outer Banks are quickly becoming one of our favorite places to go, and it's only 3 hours from us!  Love that we can now get to the beach so quickly!  So we got up super early Thursday morning and set out for the beach.  We got there around 9 and spent the rest of the day on the beach, enjoying the sunshine and the ocean.  We even got to see some dolphins swim by!! There is just something about the beach that does my heart good, it's so calming and relaxing and I think it's one of God's most beautiful creations.  We definitely enjoyed ourselves and celebrated finally getting on the waitlist!  We kept asking each other, "can you believe we actually on the list? We're closer now than we've ever been!"  Such a great feeling!  Here's some pictures from our little getaway.

Sporting my awesome new  Got Love? beach bag from Minus 1 Project!

Our amazing view for the day!

Beautiful Currituck Lighthouse





This is the 2nd oldest working lighthouse in the country, and the oldest working in NC

so beautiful!!

Bodie Island Lighthouse

(this was my fav!)

Such a beautiful place!  So nice to get away with my sweet hubby for a few days and relax without thinking about paperwork :)  Ready to enjoy the rest of the wait!