HOME

yes...we are FINALLY home. we actually got home saturday evening and have been settling in and starting a wonderful routine as a family of 3!

now that we are home I will be able to share details of our amazing journey to parenthood...so keep an eye out for those...

but for today...a picture!

Introducing Michael Lee...

Picture time...

enjoy

As most of you know....

He is finally our son!!

Unfortunately where I am staying we only have iPhone internet, but I am doing my best at an update.

As soon as I can get some WIFI for our laptop I will give a much better update and of course the beautiful pictures!!!

Thanks for all of the love & support!

well on our way!

we are in Nashville...halfway to Michigan. We are getting ready for bed and are overflowing with emotion over what is to come in the days and weeks ahead.

I just wanted to update...and I will update more when we arrive in Michigan tomorrow evening!

We were going to be looking at a 2 week hotel stay in Michigan, and with the costs from the adoption we were a little nervous about the extra cost of travel. Weeellll....my cousin is married into an awesome family that love to hike, camp, kayak...you name it they do it. Well years ago her inlaws hiked on the Appalachian trail with an older, retired couple from Michigan and have kept in touch over the years. It turns out that they live 7 miles from our agency and are welcoming us and our baby into their home!!!!!
How amazing is that!?!?!

God is so great!!!

We are really looking forward to getting to know them as we get to know our boy!

Oh by the way...his host momma said that he has been consistently sleeping through the night!! What a sweetie!

Well we have been up since 3am so it is time for lights out...we have 9 more hours of driving ahead of us tomorrow!

his daddys hands

our sweet boy has hands like his daddy...large hands, with long fingers. also the lines on his hands look very deep...just like karl's.

one week from today we will (God willing) become parents for the first time!!!

and in 6 short days we will get to hold our son in our arms. kiss his chubby cheeks. smell his sweet baby smell. and pray for him while holding him close!!!

I CANT WAIT!!!!!!!!

travel dates :)

we found out we will be traveling early next week...we are leaving either monday or tuesday, we havent decided yet. we are very excited but still the tiniest bit guarded. if everything goes as planned we will officially be parents next thursday, the 12th.

the 12th also happens to be baby boys 2 month birthday.

we are very excited for the trip, we can not wait to meet the babys birthmother, to meet the amazing host family that is taking care of him and to meet the wonderful staff of adoption associates!! also we are pretty dang excited to see michigan, we heard and keep hearing that michigan is absolutely beautiful this time of year.

we pray that God continues to provide the emotional & physical strength we need in the following weeks. we pray that He continues to provide financially as we are looking at 2 weeks or more in a hotel and also all of our fees at the agency will be due at this time. God has been so good and so faithful and has provided EVERYTHING we have needed thus far...

i will continue to update even when we are traveling...

i know its been forever...

and im sure some of you have been wondering what is going on with us and with our baby boy. well...im not 100% sure whats going on, and that hurts...so it is hard to talk about. and that is the reason i have not been blogging lately.
im about 95 percent sure that things are still moving forward towards us adopting our baby boy...but there is a 5 percent chance that maybe we are not...MAYBE--its complicated and very personal and at this point i am not comfortable sharing too many details online.

monday we should know alot more but honestly it has literally changed from day to day...

baby boy is growing and learning a nice routine for his AMAZING host family. he has gone from being a sad baby who did not quite know how to trust--to being a curious, smiling, chubby...trusting, happy baby boy.

i will update more when i know more. we are hoping to be traveling within the next week or at the most 2 weeks.

if you would like to pray for our situation, please pray that Gods will is done and that whatever is best for this baby boy is what happens.

Conference call in 1 hour

Feeling a little anxious & nervous! Praying for good news...I will update later after the call!

Update on our son and a sneak peak!!!

Thank you so much for all of the congratulations!! We are so in love!

so whats been going on you might ask?
its been a whirlwind but we are trying to soak in every second.

so the call came on monday night. it was amazing. i love Gods timing because i was absolutely positively not at all (not even a tiny bit) expecting to get the call. it was crazy wonderful!! we were watching the bachelorette (yes Karl was too) and when my phone started ringing Karl picked it up and looked at then just handed it to me...so im thinking its probably my mom....MAAAYYBE my sister but when i looked down and saw the 517 area code, I KNEW it was michigan calling!! i could hardly breathe and my heart was racing (kind of like when the jail called me!) (from the previous post) but this time i knew it was real!! so i start saying, oh my gosh oh my gosh its michigan, this is happening, its happening!!!! so karl is like, "answer it baby" but  i couldnt, i was too nervous and still could hardly breathe. so karl tried but it was too late. so we waited for a minute to see if a voicemail would pop and then karl called back and put it on speaker.
our caseworker N, asked if she could tell us about a baby boy!?! we sat there holding each other and crying our eyes out! it wasnt until almost the end of the conversation when i realized that maybe i should be taking notes, cause i was probably way to excited and emotional to remember everything!

she told us that when his birthmother saw our profile she said that the only way she could make a plan for him was if WE were going to be his parents! we cried even more.

God had heard our prayers. Our prayers for her and our prayers for our future child!! All of the details just made it so very obvious that Gods hands are ALL over this!

Right at the same month that our babys birthmother had a bad experience with one agency and was finding her way to our agency...WE found out that there was a need for families to adopt african american infants in the U.S. and so we switched from Ethiopia to domestic and switched agencies as well. Oh how God is good!!

So anyway, fastforward to thursday! we got to have a phone call with our babys amazing first mother. i wont share much of that because its a pretty personal thing...but i will say that it was humbling and so special and something that we will never forget!! we even got to hear our baby cry! it was the sweetest sound!
that same day our baby boy went into host care. host care with our agency consists of a family that cares for the babies before the parental rights are terminated. our baby is lucky to have an amazing christian couple who has been doing this for 17 years with our agency!!! and i was able to talk with his host mother P several times in the last 2 days.

she emailed us pictures of him last night and he is GORGEOUS!!! we are even more in love!! we have been praying for him for the last 2 years...our first child!! and although we did not know who he was, God did!!!

he had a dr appt today and he is 21 inches (he was measured wrong the first time) and he is actually 8 pounds 7 oz!!!! i can not wait to get my arms wrapped around him and just snuggle him closely, and breathe in his sweet smell...and kiss on his cheeks! ohh, he is a handsome little boy :)

so whats next!? monday we have a conference call with our caseworker to go over all of the details of the rest of the process and then hopefully a court date will be scheduled promptly and hopefully we will be traveling this coming week to meet our baby boy and bringing him home soon! i will update monday after we know more...
while we are very aware that this adoption is not finalized, that his mother has not yet even terminated her rights before the courts...we feel like this is our son. and we are trusting that it is God who got us this far and it will be God who gets us thru the heartache if we lost him. but we will not let that fear keep us from falling head over heals in love with our son!!!

continue praying for us!!

WE GOT THE CALL!!!!!

i will post more later but i had to share!!!! at 7:30 tonight we got the call that will forever change our life!! we have a son!!!! he is 5 weeks old!!!!

i will give more details later!

please continue to pray for us, our baby and our babys amazing first mother!!!

Praise God...all glory to Him!!!!!

we are still in shock!

woke up to a phone call & blessings in the wait

first let me get to the phone call...just so no one gets excited for nothing. well just before my alarm was set to go off this morning, i hear a different sound coming from my phone. IT WAS RINGING!!! i look at the number and i do not recognize it, my heart starts racing. like big time RACING. well my sleepy brain was not quite at 100% yet and i did not realize that 866 is a toll free number...booo. i just knew it was "the call". i did not want to answer it with a groggy, just waking up voice (im crazy right!?) so i let it go to voicemail and immediately opened the internet explorer on my phone (thank you iphone) and typed in 866 area code, and then good old faithful  google let me know that 866 was indeed a toll free number. the excitement seemed to fade a little BUT i still thought it might be the call. then i listened to the voicemail...it was a collect call from a correctional facility. HA!

God had a sense of humor on that early sunday morning!! but let me just say that even though it bummed me out, it was so much fun to think that i was getting the call! it was so much fun to get that rush of emotions that i have never EVER experienced before. i felt extreme excitement, nervousness, a little fear...and MORE EXCITEMENT! i cant imagine what i will feel when i really get the call, and what i will feel as i am listening to a caseworker tell me all about my baby! ooohh...goosebumps!

So i have been wanting to talk about something a little different. i never expected to be able to talk about blessings of waiting. i mean, really- that almost seems like an oxymoron. how could waiting for the thing you have wanted for 20 years and have jumped through so many hoops for....how could there be blessings in waiting for that? the biggest blessing has been the way God used this time of waiting and is continuing to use it to draw me closer to Him. I love that even when things are so hard, when i feel so full of sadness and feel like this is never going to happen...instead of blaming God or turning away from Him, I am able to draw closer to Him!! He gives me peace when i need it most and reminds me of His promises. Reminds me that He is in control of this process, he knows when our baby will born, He knows what our baby will look like, smell like...He knows every single detail of our adoption. that is such a comfort to me! what more could i ask for then to know that my Lord, the one who knit me in my mothers womb, the one who sewed adoption deep into my heart as a young child...is currently knitting our baby together in his or her mothers womb...and preparing the birthmothers heart for the decision she will make...and putting together every detail until the day we all meet!?

*my dad keeps saying that he feels the 21st will be a very significant day for us! we will see!

moby love & a little news

hello all...
  i have been finding it hard to find things to blog about lately. it is hard to post on an adoption blog when nothing is going on in your adoption process. im not really in a funk over it...just cant think of anything interesting to talk about!

so i decided i am going to write about one of my favorite baby gifts that i have recieved so far! my MOBY wrap! my mom got it for me and i absolutely love it!!! karl is not too convinced that it is something a daddy can use too but he is warming up to it! i feel very strongly about "wearing" my baby because of all of the positives i have heard from other adoptive mommas...and biological mommas too! our sweet baby will not have spent 9 months baking in my oven, hearing our voices, listening to the lullaby of my heartbeat or just feeling snuggled up to me...so for me it is very important to have as much snuggle time once baby is placed with us. it will be perfect for attatchment and bonding, baby can be right on my chest...
hearing my voice & heartbeat...smelling momma and daddys scent, feeling us move and breathe. i can not wait to hold my little pumpkin close in my moby wrap!

i tried it out with my 1 year old niece...just for fun and i couldnt tell who loved it more, me or her!? it was adorable, she really enjoyed being snug against my chest and belly with her little legs hanging out. i even wrapped karl up in the moby and avery took a turn snuggling with uncle karl.

i took lots of great pictures of both of us with the moby but i can not find the adapter to get the pictures from my camera to my computer...so those will come on another day!

now onto the news...its tiny so dont get too excited!

last night while karl and I were falling asleep i asked him what does he think God is trying to teach us through this hard wait? we talked for a while about it...maybe he is trying to teach us to FULLY trust His timing His plan. maybe He is trying to teach us to truly turn to Him and to not try and lean on our own understanding of this. maybe he wants us to seek comfort in Him in a way we never have before. maybe He just thinks we need a refresher course on patience!? :)

well i woke up this morning feeling Gods presence so strongly. it was amazing. something i dont really feel (this strongly) hardly ever. i was loving it and soaking it in!! well i honestly just knew that if i checked my email that i would have an email from our caseworker...i could just feel it. its 7am people and i had checked it right before bed around 10pm...so it was kind of a stretch. but sure enough there it was in my inbox!! she had a crazy day yesterday that included hours of trying to get rid of  a virus on her computer and she ended up emailing me at 12:45am!!!! i was touched that after the day she had she still shot us an email before going to sleep.

anyway...her 1st email was a response to one from me. i had been curious if we should put ourselves on Adoption Associates website since we are almost at 2 months of waiting with no match. and her response is the same as before...she said she is still confident that we do NOT need the extra exposure of  being on the website...and she encouraged us to hang tight...even though she knows it is easier to say than do.

i took comfort in that and trust her judgement. well then she emailed again to say that our profile had been shown 2 more times. once on july 1st and once on last thursday july 8th!!!! am i excited!? oh yes! am i praying like a mad woman!? oh yes!
but i am also staying slightly guarded and realistic because since nothing came of our last 2 profile showings i know that there is a HUGE possibility that nothing will come of these either. so i am taking it one day at a time!

i did come to a pretty simple but very exciting realization tonight. that eventually or rather, ultimately something WILL come from our profile being shown. i mean, at some point when our profile is shown God will stir the heart of a precious pregnant woman and she will feel peace about choosing us to raise her baby. at some point our profile being presented will result in us welcoming a baby, our first child, into our lives forever!
thats an exciting thought that gives me goosebumps!

if hear anything else...i will let you all know!

please continue praying with us!

July is a slow month...

so our caseworker is out of the office this week and wont be back until monday...so yesterday i spoke with her supervisor for a few minutes. i guess i just needed a shoulder, some type of encouragement from someone involved in this process. and although she could not give me an update on our profile or us specifically, she was VERY sweet and very encouraging. she shared a bit of her personal story of adoption with me and how and why she became an adoption caseworker which i thought was so kind of her to share. she also encouraged me to keep praying for our babys birthmother and to continue seeking God through the ups and downs of this process and to keep remembering what the outcome of this process will be. IT WILL ALL BE WORTH IT!

so to the title of the post...she also said that in her 15+ years of working with birthmothers she always notices a pattern as the months go on each year. she said january is usually a big month for birthmothers and then the fall is very busy but she said July is usually a slow month. not many new expectant mothers...i have no idea how this stuff works but i trust what she says.

next week we should get an update on our profile from B, once she returns. of course im praying for hopeful news but we are still trusting Gods timing and believe that His hands are all over this. so please continue to pray with us as we wait. it feels like the 2 month waiting mark is fast approaching. to be quite honest we really thought we would already have our baby home by now. but our baby is obviously not ready for us yet.

on a different note, yesterday was Karls birthday!! i felt so incredibly blessed to get to share this day with him as his wife! I love my husband so much and he is such a gift to my life! i can not wait to share in the journey of parenthood with him and to see him as the father of our little ones...it brings tears to my eyes just to think about. he will be such an amazing daddy!! Happy Birthday Baby!!

butterflies

i went to bed last night with butterflies of excitement in my stomach. i woke up this morning and they were still there....i also felt overwhelming peace. i KNOW this comes from God, because without Him i know the peace would not be there on my own because this waiting is hard.

im not sure why i have these feelings...maybe because God is preparing us for the soon arrival of our baby, or maybe its because God is giving me the peace i need to get through a long hard wait!

either way i am so thankful that this peace and comfort is here with me. the butterflies of excitement are also lots of fun...i love having something so huge, beautiful & forever life changing to anticipate...that is a gift in its self.

sweet dreams of my baby tonight...

my heart is ready

i want to blog...i really do, but i just dont know what to say. we havent heard anything else, at all. im not sure if we are even being considered by these expectant women or if they just took a quick look at our profile and that was that.
i was foolish to think this was going to be easy. i thought knowing we have been shown would be enough...i thought not knowing any details about either woman or either baby would keep me from constantly thinking about it. why would i have thought that!?!

i think about them all the time...i pray for them all the time.

last night was VERY hard...i shed lots of tears in a hot bathtub of water.  I spent hours talking to God. asking Him to help me remember how much he loves me and to still sing His praises everyday...for my God is amazing! asking Him to help me to not try and lean on my own understanding but to give this FULLY to him. im a work in progress.

i found out today that i will only find out an outcome on those profile viewings if we are chosen, otherwise i just wait for my next monthly update. i will continue to pray for both of these women and the decisions that they are facing. i pray that if they dont know Christ that they will come to know Him and turn to Him and feel the comfort that only He can give.

my heart is so ready. each day that motherly ache inside of me grows stronger and stronger. the room is ready...the carseat is sitting in the babys room. the baby clothes is washed. the rocker is begging to rock. our jobs know that we could leave at any moment.

oh how i am ready to have my sweet one in my arms...but i do not know what my God has in store for us. does he have something to teach me in a long wait for our first child...or is my great joy just around the corner. i still find peace in knowing that even though i dont know the answer that question, God does...its His plan.


last night when i was spending some time in prayer...i found some letters that i wrote in december, about a month after we made the decision to adopt. i had written them to our baby to be and im so glad that i read them last night...i wrote to our sweet son or daughter and told them about the comfort i feel in my heart knowing that God already knows who they are, what they will look like...what their birthday will be...where they will be born, who their first mother is...He also knows the intense joy i will feel when i hold him/her in my arms for the first time. He knows all of those answers...and for tonight that is enough to bring a smile to my face.

First Agency Update :)

so all day i have been debating over if i wanted to share this on my blog or not. not that i believe in "jinx" (because i dont) but i just never knew how much i wanted to share before something was set in stone. but i decided that the whole reason for this blog is to keep people updated on our adoption journey and to find love and support from others in this rollercoaser towards parenthood!

so this morning, after hitting snooze a few extra times, i decided to check my email before getting ready for work and the update i had been waiting on was waiting for me in my inbox. it was not what i was hoping for. It said that as of 6/11/10 that our profile had not been shown. Our sweet caseworker tried to reassure me that ALOT is going on at the agency and that it is normal for it to take a month or 2 to be shown. so...on i went with my day!

disappointed but still hopeful

and then another email came a few hours later. it was from "B" again and she said that she was just informed that our profile had been shown at the end of last week but that the expectant mother had not made a decision yet and that we may not want to get too excited because this particular situation is very unpredictable.

we know nothing more. i took it for what it is...and honestly i was shocked that i didnt totally freak out. i had no real information on this situation and i figure if the agency is telling me not to get excited...then i probably should NOT get excited!

well around 5:30 this evening i realized that i had another email from our caseworker...she just wanted to let us know that the same day last week our profile was presented to ANOTHER expectant mother.
so that means that we were presented twice in one day!

we do not know anything else...like at all...about either family that we were presented to but it sure is exciting to know that things are happening! and it totally gives me goosebumps to know that the profile books that we glued pictures into were in the hands of 2 women who were considering us (even if only for a moment) to be the parents of their unborn babies!

tonight i am so praying for these two women and the babies that they are carrying...no matter what decision they might choose. i pray that they have love and support as they are making this decision. and i hope that they are overcome with peace when making their decisions...again, whatever choice that may be!

so im not sure yet if these ladies are even interested in us...right now i just now that we were presented to them. thats it. thats my update...

for now ;)

Guest Blogger!!

Hello all!! My name is Avery and I am taking over my Aunt Tina's blog...just for today! In case you havent heard...Aunt Tina and Uncle Karl are going to have a BABY!!! Isnt that great!?! Im finally going to be a big cousin, I mean sure...it is great being the baby cousin...but I am ready to have someone to boss around :-)

Well, being the sweetie that I am, I decided to give my aunt & uncle a trial run of parenthood! Lets call it Parenting 101

I had lots of fun with them! They are great and love to spoil me with love and kisses!! Aunt Tina and I had a great time...she took me swimming and I was a natural! Plus I look so cute in my swimsuit, dont believe me?? Here is a picture...

Lets see...after we went swimming it was time for supper and aunt tina let me feed myself! It was so much fun and she didnt even get mad when I threw some on the floor :-)

Next came bath time! I LOVE BATH TIME!!

Wheww! Im getting tired just thinking about all of the fun we had...I think its time for a bottle and then it will be lights out for me! I think I miiiight wake up during the night...just to see my favorite aunt of course! I dont think she will mind one bit!

             So baby cousin...wherever you might be! Your parents are ready for you...and I am too!

P.S. today is Fathers Day...and my daddy is serving our country overseas...Happy Fathers Day DAD!!!

one month closer!

so i just realized that our profiles were recieved at our agency on may 17th...and today is june 17th. one month of waiting is behind us...some days are very hard. i think im struggling because we were told by many that this would happen fast and what is considered "fast" in my eyes and what is "fast" for the world of adoption are two very different things! im realizing that i had unrealistic timelines on our adoption and that despite me truely believing that our baby will only come on Gods precious timing...to trust His timing day to day is not so easy, its hard.
i KNOW one month of waiting is not a long time, lots of people wait several months...some even wait multiple years waiting for that call that will forever change their lives. i feel selfish sometimes for being sad at the end of day when i know today wont be the day that we get "the call". i spend my days trying to talk with God whenever i feel down and thanking Him for all of the ways that he has blessed us so far in this journey. so please continue to pray for us as we wait.

i am trying out a new perspective as we wait...actually it is my sweet mom that started saying this to me and i think its beautiful and it really does help me (most days...)   :-)
she always says tomorrow is one day closer to meeting your baby...and you know what? she is very right! sure i desperately wanted my phone to ring for the past month...but guess what, now we are one month closer to our sweet sweet baby!! for the first time, maybe ever, i now look forward to mondays!!!
each monday is the start of a new week, a week that just might hold the phone call that will bless our socks off. and if friday comes...and then saturday & sunday and my phone is still silent, then guess what...its ok because that just means that we are one week closer and it also means a new week, with new possibilities is starting...i could go on & on.
NO this wont be easy. YES somedays i will still be in a funk and just cry out to Jesus but i want this time of waiting to be filled with excitement, love...and anticipation for our first child, i dont want to look back and know that i moped around the whole time! (not that i have been)

anyways...WE ARE ONE MONTH CLOSER!!!!!! we could not get to our baby without going through this past month!

p.s. monday, our wonderful caseworker "B" is going to be giving us our first big update, so i am VERY excited. praying for good news! Adoption Associates Inc has been so kind and helpful as we are starting this journey...they are a blessing in our lives.

i cant sing this enough...

if you have not heard this song, i say go...right now...and listen to it! its absolutely beautiful and it describes so perfectly the cry of my heart. each day that my phone doesnt ring, each day that our precious baby is not placed into our arms...each day that passes with no news is because God is still weaving His plan together. He is preparing us, preparing our baby, preparing our babys first parents...

i love in the song when Josh Wilson sings, "the pain that you've been feeling cant compare to the joy thats coming"
like i said before, i just do not for one second believe that God has led us this far to leave us now!

I hope you have a blessed weekend! Please continue to pray for us...we are quickly approaching the 1 month mark of officially waiting...hoping there arent many more months to go!

Josh Wilson - Before the Morning


From the album Life is Not A Snapshot



Do you wonder why you have to
Feel the things that hurt you
If there's a God who loves you

Where is He now

Maybe there are things you can't see
And all those things are happening
To bring a better ending
Someday somehow you'll see you'll see

Would you dare would you dare to believe
That you still have a reason to sing
Cause the pain that you've been feeling
It can’t compare to the joy that’s coming

So hold on you gotta wait for the light
Press on and just fight the good fight
Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It’s just the dark before the morning

My friend you know how this all ends
And You know where you’re going
You just don’t know how you’ll get there
So say a prayer

And hold on cause there’s good for those who love God

But life is not a snapshot
It might take a little time but you’ll see the bigger picture

Would you dare would you dare to believe
That you still have a reason to sing
Cause the pain that you've been feeling
It can’t compare to the joy that’s coming

So hold on you gotta wait for the light
Press on and just fight the good fight
Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It’s just the dark before the morning

Once you feel the weight of glory
All your pain will fade to memory
Once you feel the weight of glory
All your pain will fade to memory, memory, memory

Would you dare would you dare to believe
That you still got a reason to sing
Cause the pain that you've been feeling
It can’t compare to the joy that’s coming

Would you dare would you dare to believe
That you still got a reason to sing
Cause the pain that you've been feeling
It can’t compare to the joy that’s coming

Come on you've gotta wait for the light
Press on and just fight the good fight
Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It’s just the hurt before the healing
Oh the pain that you’ve been feeling
It’s just the dark before the morning
Before the morning

fun weekend and pictures to prove it!

i just got the delightful treat of a VERY long weekend. last week i got off of work on wednesday and did not have to be back at work until tuesday...today. my weekend was so full and so fun and exactly what i needed! we got to spend tons of time with our family and it was AWESOME. i felt really blessed to be able to just relax, enjoy the sunshine and spend some much needed quality time with karl and our family!
the past 2 weeks of being officially waiting had started to take a toll on me and this long weekend helped to relax and rejuvenate me. i was able to focus on something other than my phone ringing (or not ringing) and i finally feel at peace with the wait. i realized today at work that i only checked my phone maybe 10 times instead of 50 times a day like i did last week :)  God is so good and i know and believe that He has not led us this far in this journey to leave us now...i KNOW he has plan, i KNOW he already knows who our baby is and that He planned for this baby to be ours long before i was even born. this gives me the warm fuzzies!!

i feel hopeful and excited about the weeks to come!

ok...now some pictures!!
friday night my neice spent the night at our house!!! it was beyond fun to have a baby in the house and she is such a doll...i mean really, she was great!

we went swimming :)

then Karl and i headed to New Orleans to visit some more neices and our nephew!

at the botanical gardens...it was BEAUTIFUL

out at the lake with the kiddos...i love these kids!

my love!

God's perfect timing

 

so we have been officially waiting since last monday afternoon...so about 5 days. this type of waiting is hard. so hard that it makes me wish i had never complained about the other times we were waiting on things...like fingerprints and such!
i think the reason im finding it so hard is because at some point we know that our phone will ring and someone on the other line will tell us all about our baby girl or baby boy....they will let us know if they have already been born or if they are still waiting to be born...they will tell us when to hop in the car and make that 18 hour drive to michigan. BUT WE HAVE NO CLUE WHEN THEY WILL CALL. :)
so every morning the FIRST thought in my head is..."will today be THE day???" and then throughout the day i check my phone and then check it again...blahhh

even though its crazy hard, it is also very exciting and i know that this will be a time in my life that i will always remember. its fun to have something so huge & life changing to anticipate! and i have been praying for God to use this time to teach me patience and to trust that this will all happen in his perfect timing!! and just to be honest this has to be a constant prayer...because my mind really would love for it to happen on MY TIME...but i know that wont happen. there is a reason behind each day that passes that my phone doesnt ring...!  (ouch, that was almost hard to type...no just kidding, i really believe that)

so far now we will continue to wait...we are ready for that magical call to come at any time! we have (most) of the essentials for the baby, we have a list made of things we will need to bring for our stay in michigan, our jobs know that we could leave at ANY time, the carseat is ready....

please continue for us (me) to have peace and patience as we wait for our first born child!!!


***here is a picture of the 2 youngest grandbabies playing at lovey & poppas house last week...cant wait to see our precious baby playing with his/her cousins!!***

it smells like a baby in our house...!

as I announced in my last post, starting tomorrow our family profiles will be being shown to expectant mothers...so that means starting tomorrow we could get "the call" to head up to Michigan and meet our baby for the first time...   since we may be traveling without much or any notice we decided it is best to be as prepared as we can be so we gathered a few essentials and are preparing ourselves the best we can!

so tonight, after i bought some Dreft :)... I washed the first batch of the baby's laundry, i actually had a blast folding & washing clothes! as i folded it, i held each sweet piece up to my nose...there is NO better smell than the smell of a baby!

here are a few of the precious pieces of clothing just waiting for our baby boy or baby girl...

i already know that i will be jumping EVERY time my phone rings from now on! and if i see a michigan area code i might pass out...im just being honest!

im also very excited because we have saved enough money for me to take my full 6 weeks of maternity leave!!! this was very important to us and we feel very blessed to be able to take that time with the baby!

PROFILES ARE DONE!!!!

today at exactly 5 o'clock the UPS man knocked on our door and delivered a box that held our 25 family profiles...just waiting to be filled with pictures!!! karl and I quickly headed to my mothers house where my sister was waiting to help us with the profiles! it took a couple of hours but i am so happy to say that they are done!!!! first thing in the morning i wll go to the UPS shipping center and see if I can get them there by monday :)

it is starting to feel real that these precious books we made could be in the hands of expectant mothers who are considering us to adopt their baby!! gives me goosebumps!

so now we have done EVERYTHING that we can do...and now we must sit and wait. i have heard from other adoptive families that this part of the waiting is the hardest...i guess we will see!

now here are a few pictures from our night of picture gluing!

below is my sister holding one of the completed profiles

(thanks for all of your help)

and my nephew who wanted so badly to help with the profiles!

even the my sisters baby was offering support :)

and finally...here is the completed profile

we can't wait to see what is in store for us in the coming weeks! maybe a tiny bundle of joy!?!

it must be christmas eve...

because I feel like a child who is waiting for santa to arrive :)

tomorrow our profiles are scheduled to arrive sometime before 4 pm!! my mom and one of my sisters already cut all of the pictures and they put them in stacks...so tomorrow night everything will be ready for our picture gluing party tomorrow night!!

and then my other sister and her husband are treating us to an overnight return delivery of our profiles to our agency!!

so that means that starting monday our profiles could be shown to expectant mothers :)

oh my oh my...

mother's day

last year on mother's day my cheeks were flushed and my eyes were red from tears. i went to church and my husband held my hand as our pastor recognized all of the mother's in the crowd, i sat in my seat trying to stop the tears as they flowed down my cheeks. another failed fertility treatment was all that i could think of that day, another pregnancy test with only 1 line. my heart was so full and so sad. i felt hopeless and that was an awful feeling. all i ever wanted in life was to be a wife and a mother and last year i wasnt sure when that was going to happen...it felt like it never would but i knew God had a plan for my journey to motherhood.

this year was different. there is no baby growing in my belly and there is no baby in my arms...but there is a baby growing inside of his/her first mothers womb. there is a baby who is so loved by his/her first mother and she will want the very best for him that she will one day soon make a plan for her child...a plan that involves me. a plan that will forever join two families together...a birth family and an adoptive family. two mothers...one that gets to feel this baby grow in her womb, kicking and moving as the months go on...one that will see the baby moving on a screen and hear its a boy or its girl...one that has to make the most difficult decision of their lives as she decides that she can not parent this child she is carrying...one that even after making this hard hard decision she still has to endure labor and then experience the loss of a child.

and then the other mother...me. though i had no baby growing and moving in my tummy i get to be a mom. this year i will get the blessing of becoming a first time mom. while one mother will be grieving the loss of her child, we will be celebrating the life of our first child. this is hard for me to think about. i pray for her so much. that she will have loads of support as she makes this choice.

so today as i celebrated my mother, and all other mothers...i was also thinking alot about our babys first mother. i wonder what this day was like for her. i wondered if she has other children that were able to celebrate her today? i wonder if this baby in her womb is her first child? i wonder if she cried today...i wonder if she doubted her decision of adoption today? my heart literally aches to think of the possible heartache she could be feeling. i hope someone made her feel special today, i hope someone lifted her up and told her happy mothers day! i hope someone wrapped their arms around her neck and hugged her tightly.  i hope that someone offered reassurance and support of her plans of adoption for her child. i hope that someone showed her how much they love her today.

EVERY mother deserves to feel special today. no matter if you are a mother who gave birth, a mother through adoption, a first mother...a mother who lost a child...or a mother who is still waiting to concieve or to give birth...HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO YOU!!!

family profile sneak peak :)

well, we were told by our agency today that our first draft of our family profile book is in the mail!! so i am hoping that we get it thursday or friday! once we recieve it and review it...we have to let them know if everything is ok, and once they get the ok they will print the profiles and mail them all to us!

so it is LOOKING like we should get our completed profiles early next week...so if that happens next we will be an official waiting family :)

this would mean that starting next week i will officially become a crazy person who keeps her phone on her 24 hours a day! ive been dreaming of "the call" for the past 5 1/2 months and it is hard to believe that it could be right around the corner!

our agency, Adoption Associates Inc, has been wonderful so far! we feel blessed to be working with them. we have been doing a little research on the costs of flights to michigan as we have to be prepared to travel with NO notice :)

i decided that i would share what our family profile will be like, except of course it will be much nicer on the real thing!

(the close up picture will be on the front cover and the "jumping" picture will be the last picture and will be by the paragraph about our promises to the expectant mother)

(this picture will be on the inside)

(the top picture didnt make the cut but i couldnt figure out how to delete it :) and the one of me and our beautiful neices will go by the section about me)

(these are our other 2 pictures!!)

Dear Expectant Mother,


Thank you so much for taking the time to get to know us! Although we have not met you yet and we don’t even know your name, we have been praying for you and the life that you are carrying since the day we decided to adopt. We believe that God brings people and families together and that He brought us to you…and you to us! We admire your strength and respect your choice as you are faced with this difficult decision for you and your child.

Ever since we met we knew that adoption would be in our future. Even as a little girl, Christina’s heart was burdened for children without a home of their own. She often urged her parents to adopt children. Karl says that he believes God was preparing Christina’s heart so that she could prepare his heart for the day that we would get an infertility diagnosis that would lead us to adopting our first child. Adoption has never felt like our second best option…it came with lots of joy and excitement, trusting that God has a big beautiful plan for our life and our family.

About Us

We are excited to share a glimpse into our lives!

We met working for the same company and immediately fell for each other. It did not take long for our friendship to progress into something deeper and a few months later we were inseparable. Our first date was spent watching home videos at Christina’s parent’s house. As soon as we met each others’ families both of our mothers knew that their children had met the person they would marry! And they were right, only 9 months later we were engaged! We were married in the spring of the next year in a beautiful outdoor ceremony surrounded by our family and friends! We love to spend our time together cooking, fishing, going for walks, swimming, traveling, and spending time with our families.

Our Home and Extended Families

We share a two bedroom apartment with our dog Sammie. He is a 2 year old Shih Tzu and he loves everyone, he is very laid back and friendly. We live in a fun and diverse city that is known for its “Cajun” food and friendly people! We live near parks, great schools, and by lots of family! Family is very important to both of us and we feel blessed to live so close to so much of our family. We live fifteen minutes away from Christina’s parents as well as one of her sisters and brother-in-law and their three kids. Christina has another sister who currently lives out of state because her husband is in the military, but we still see her very often. Karl’s parents live only 2 hours away and we visit them every couple of months! His two sisters live out of state with their families, but we still see them as often as we can throughout the year. Together we have six nieces and four nephews ranging in age from nine months to age 16. They are a huge part of our lives. All of the kids cannot wait to welcome their new cousin! We often spend Sundays going to church as a family and then cooking at Christina’s parent’s house while the kids ride bikes, swim or fish!



Christina (written by Karl)

Christina has the biggest heart of anyone I know. Second to her big brown eyes it’s what drew me to her. She is compassionate and will always take an opportunity to help someone. Christina is funny and fun loving and loves to try new things. She loves children and I know her patient and nurturing way will make her an amazing mother. I can’t wait to see how great a mother Christina will be and how much joy and happiness our family will share when we welcome a baby boy or girl into our lives.



Karl (written by Christina)

Karl is my best friend. I was drawn to his handsome face, his gentle spirit and his amazing sense of humor. He is uplifting and encouraging and can always make me smile even when I’m feeling down. He is kind and forgiving and his faith in God is beautiful. When he loves someone, he loves with his whole heart and will stop at nothing to demonstrate that love. The same passion that he has for me spills over into every other aspect of his life. He is a dedicated and hard worker, a devoted son and friend, and a motivated student. I know with all my heart that he will be an amazing father and I cannot wait to see him take on that role!

Our Promise

We know that we are not perfect but we promise to love your baby with all our hearts. We will give your baby a life of love, happiness, family, and faith. We will raise your baby to know he or she is loved simply for who they are and to know that they may become anything they want to be. We will want your baby to always know that your heartbeat was the first lullaby that they ever heard. And that your decision was made with love, courage, and faith.

Thank you again for considering us and remember that you are still in our prayers.

6 weeks and 1 day :)

Our fingerprints arrived in the mail early this morning...only 6 weeks and 1 day since we mailed them out! God is SO good! 2 weeks ago we were told this was not possible and that we should have them sometime in June. We are blown away and a sweet lady at the FBI can be expecting a thankyou note in the mail :)
   Also we printed all 150 pictures for our profile books (25 books with 6 pictures in each one) and once those come in we will have a picture gluing party and get them back in the mail to Michigan the next day!

things are moving full speed :)

a guessing game...and other sweet stuff

so this weekend my sweet sweet momma and proud "lovey" to all of her grandkids wanted to do a little shopping for her soon to be newest grandbaby, so off we went! we picked out 6 outfits, 3 for a boy and 3 for a girl (it was WAY more fun buying gender specific clothes rather than gender neutral clothes) and the great thing is we got them from Target and target has a 90 day return policy, so hopefully *God willing* we will already have our baby or at least know the gender within 90 days and we will be able to return the ones we dont need :) 

**unless of course we end up with twins, my 3 year old neice is convinced that we are getting a girl baby for me and a boy baby for uncle karl. anytime we talk about the baby, she brings up BOTH babies. we have also been told by several aunts and relatives that they are praying that we get twins...yikes!!! we know of course its possible but im sure its not likely**

so now for the GUESSING GAME!!
      the ladies i work with thought it would be very fun to play a guess the gender game (since we are open to either) so EVERYONE at work has put in their guess! i love that they are so involved and its funny because they are serious about their guesses...like they really put thought into why they think whichever one they think! im trying to think of some type of really simple but really cute gift that the winners could get! so if anyone has any ideas please let me know!!!

so here goes...here are the guesses so far! (and the outfits my mom got the baby)   enjoy!

Boys are in the lead...with 9 guesses!!!

And 7 people have guessed a girl!!

And 2 guessed boy/girl

if anyone would like to join in on the fun, feel free to leave your guess in a comment!!

p.s. our prints should be here thursday! we are thinking our profiles should be in our hands next week and once we glue in the pictures and mail them back to Michigan then they will be in the hands of the expectant mothers! please pray for us, the expectant mother & the baby that God has for us!!!

beautiful blessings

im feeling beyond blessed right now. last week we found out that we had a 13 week wait to get our FBI clearances back...and that we could not move forward to become a waiting family until we got them back. that would have put it at the middle of June before we could even move forward again.
well today we are 5 weeks and 1 day into that wait, and the lady on the FBI customer service line this morning told Karl that we can expect to recieve our clearances early next week!!!!!!!!!
our wait time is more than cut in half and i feel so blessed and we are so excited!

persistence pays off (i called everyday for a week) but also i think God lined us up with the "right" woman on the customer service line to help us. i was honest and shared our story with her, i told her how important it was that we get these back as soon as possible because we are adopting our first child...and she helped us! it was beautiful and we definitely plan on sending her a thank you card.

so J our social worker for our homestudy should recieve those fingerprints early next week and then she will be able to finish our homestudy! also this week we will be recieving our family profiles so that we can glue in all of the pictures into each book and then we will mail them back to our agency in michigan and then they will be shown to expectant mothers.

so of course i cant say for sure but it is looking like our baby might be born pretty soon...could be in may, june, july...who knows!?! God does! and that makes my heart smile!

our caseworker for our agency thinks we will be traveling to pick up our baby in the spring or summer...and its looking like she might just be right!!

oh my, im going to be a momma!!!

two years ago today!

two years ago today i woke up with a smile on my face and butterflies in my stomach.
two years ago today i sat in a chair in a salon while my cousin fixed my hair so beautifully!
two years ago today my mom helped me put on a gorgeous white dress and veil.
two years ago today i rode around in the car with my dad until it was time & then he walked me down an aisle.
two years ago today i stood under oak trees with my best friend and said "i do"
two years ago today i made a promise and gained a life long partner through the good, bad & best!
two years ago today i married the love of my life!

struggling...and some garage sale treasures!

im in a funk right now. im struggling with writing our "dear expectant mother letter" and the rest of our family profile. should be relatively easy right!? just write about who we are, what we like to do, what our families are like...should be a piece of cake. well its not. this is by far the hardest thing that ive ever had to write. how do i express me and karl in such a way that it really portrays who we are...i mean REALLY shows who we are? so much so that a woman is drawn to us as she is contemplating adoption for the child she is carrying, the child she loves, the child she feels moving in her womb...and then this same letter will lead her to choosing our family to raise her child, i mean really - this is huge.
im having to examine myself in ways that ive never had to before. my imperfections surface oh so quickly...the fears and the doubts are trying to get the best of me. im praying that God will give me peace. that He will help me to speak from my heart. i know He loves me, He loves the woman that is carrying our child...he loves our child.

for those of you that were reading because the title promised talk of garage sale finds...now is the time to talk about that :)
friday night i slept at my moms house because saturday morning her neighborhood was having a neighborhood wide garage sale!! it was SO much fun. late friday night we drove around the neighborhood, mapping out where we would go in the morning. our alarms went off at 5:15am and we were up and off! our first stop was the biggest hit. i scored some awesome baby items and ill show you them to you...

first was a highchair for 10 bucks...

next was a pack n play for 20 bucks

and lastly was the cutest mini swing. for 25 bucks. it honestly looks like it was never used. i love it.

ill throw one more picture in just for fun, i am blessed to get to use this beautiful chair in my nursery and i am so excited. thanks sis!

waiting for the waiting list

Yep thats right, we are waiting to wait. waiting for the chance to be officially waiting. adoption is teaching me a lot about having patience and about Gods timing. it is not always easy to wait and its really HARD to not be able to control umm...any part of this at all...but the great thing is that Gods timing has been so perfect and so beautiful in every single part of this.

I was thinking last night about the web name for our blog...Ready for His will.   A couple months back when i was starting my blog, I was trying to think of the perfect name for it. we thought that our first child was going to be born in Ethiopia...Karl and I considered several cutesy blog names such as "grown in our hearts, born in Ethiopia" or other things kind of like that. well none of them seemed to be right and we just kept going back to Gods will. we decided on Ready for His will and last night I realized that it was Gods will that kept us from choosing one of those names, God already knew that our first born child would be born in the United States. I thought it was pretty neat :) God is good!

today was a really great day, we went to my mom and dads and my sister and brother in law were there too with their kiddos. the little ones dyed easter eggs and my brother in law cooked a delicious meal. it was a great evening and lots of fun but for some reason i just couldnt shake a sad feeling that was lingering inside of me. i think part of it is because im so ready to see my childs hands covered in dye from the easter egg fun, im ready to see my sweet baby smiling and laughing with their cousins, im ready to be leaning over the bathtub at my moms bathing my little one. my heart yearns for my child. i love him or her already and i pray for them all time.

another reason i was stuck in a funk is because i am already greiving for my childs birthmother, though i dont even know who she is. i just cant imagine the roles being reversed and me having to make that kind of decision for my child. i think of her growing belly and how hard it must be to feel the life that she created moving and growing inside of her, knowing that she wont be the one to raise them. Karl and I are blessed with tons of support as we plan to adopt our first child, love and support from our parents, siblings, friends, and coworkers...EVERY night i pray that our birthmother has the same support from her family when facing this tremendous, hard decision. my heart breaks for her.

On a happier note...things are still moving right along! :)
   we were assigned our official caseworker with our agency in Michigan and she seems awesome! For the sake of the blog I will call her B! it is looking like we will be an official waiting family within 2 or 3 weeks!!!!! i can hardly believe that i just typed that. remember back to when we were thinking we would be adopting from ethiopia...july 7 was our START date. God is so good. im blown away.

I am expecting 2 very exciting things in the mail. 1) the sweetest package from Amanda (my sister) she got us our baby bag and loaded it with all of the essentials so that when we get "the call" it will all be ready to go!!! and 2) our client package from our agency...a binder full of info that I can not wait to get my hands on!!!!

this was quite a scattered post...if you made it this far thank you for sticking it out!

my april goal is to be a better blogger (no! HONESTLY, i mean it this time)
if you are reading, hold me accountable please!!!!

so much going on!!

I vowed to be a better blogger, but once again I have fallen short... :)
  
I always had this terrible vision and idea of what the homestudy would be like...I pictured it to be quite awful I must admit, it has (so far) proven me wrong again & again!!


Last week we had our first homestudy visit, which I was INCREDIBLY nervous about, and it was amazing! Our social worker, Ill call her J, is the sweetest lady. Honestly she was incredible, she helped us to fee at ease and made the whole thing quite pleasant. She seems so sweet & sincere and I couldnt have asked for anyone better to work with. So that night we wrote our first "big check" and signed lots of papers! It was so fun, it really felt real after that night!


Next up was getting our 5 references, getting fingerprinted for FBI checks and getting physicals. Well we have 2 out of 3 completed only a week later, so Id say thats not too bad!
I wont mention what happened last friday when Karl & I tried to go and get our fingerprints done, because we went back tonight and it was honestly to perfect of an evening to even begin to complain about the first time :)
We drove to the Opelousas Police Dept because "supposedly" due to the fact that they have digital scan for fingerprinting, that it only takes 2-3 weeks to get the results back, compared at most times it taking 6 weeks back. My fingers are tightly crossed that it will only take a couple of weeks, but Gods timing hasnt failed us yet...and I know He hasnt brought us this far to leave us now!


Today was also really incredible because we got to have a 1 hour conference call with our agency in Michigan and it was AWESOME!!! Usually families have to travel to Michigan for this "orientation, informational type conference" but the trip and the fees were both waived! Many thank you prayers for that!!We got loads of information and everything we found out reassured us even more that we are on the right path.


So hear is what is next...TOMORROW is our LAST homestudy visit and tomorrow we will turn in our last documents to J. Friday Karl and I are going get our physicals done and giving that paperwork to J. After that we are done with the paperchase and we just have to wait for the FBI checks to come in!! Assuming (hoping) that will be in about 3 weeks. Once we get that we will be homestudy approved and we can submit our official application with the agency and we will be an official waiting couple!!!!!!!!


YES YES you read that right...in a month (or less) we could be officially waiting. birthmothers could be flipping through our family profiles...considering us as part of one of the most important decisions of their life! it totally gives me goosebumps.

please continue praying for us, pray for our babys birthmother and pray for our unborn baby!

P.S. we painted the nursery this weekend, it still isnt set up like a nursey (like no crib or anything yet) but it is super cute so I will post a pic!!! enjoy :)

Its really hard to tell from the pictures, but the color is called Classic Key Lime...its a beautiful, soft greenish yellow color!! perfect for a baby boy or a baby girl!

Homestudy started!!!

xciting things have been going on!!



WOW!! less than 1 week ago we were still looking at around 4 1/2 month wait to submit our application and start our homestudy, then at least another 2 or 3 months to complete our homestudy and get on the waitlist...and then another 6-11 months on the waitlist until we got our referral...well here we are today, preliminary app with Adoption Associates Inc was faxed this morning, homestudy app was placed in the mail this morning with our first payment and Karl & I started working on our autobiographies for the homestudy last night. it was fun! so now our timeline looks like this:::


~2 months (give or take a week or so) and then we should be homestudy approved and on the waitlist!!!

~right now our agency is estimating an average wait time of 6 months or less to be matched or placed!

so of course i know that nothing is certain and every adoption plan is different but just for the fun of it, lets say it does take 2 months for the homestudy and then 6 months to be matched...that means that by november we should be matched or placed with a baby! but like i said, our wait could be much shorter or much longer.

so here are a few pictures of karl & I signing our papers for the applications last night!
(please ignore the gunshow in Ks picture) :)