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!