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) :)