Happy Thanksgiving!

A day late...  We had a good time celebrating Thanksgiving at my uncle's house.  He is a chef and owns a restaurant, so the food is always incredible!  I got to meet a cousin of mine for the first time!  My aunt and uncle adopted her as an infant 3 years ago now, and we just got to meet her now!  She is such an adorable little girl!


Today is also a special day, and not because it's "black Friday"!  Dan's 24th birthday is today!  I am so incredibly blessed to be married to this man!  He is such a wonderful husband and he makes it so easy and fun to be his wife!  I didn't have to babysit today, but Dan had to work....  :(  We'll have a fun evening together though...   

On the adoption side of things...  Nothing new and exciting yet.  We were contacted by another "birth mother" last week.  I put birth mother in quotes because I highly doubt it was a a legitimate situation.  Somebody was definitely trying to scam us; there were red flags all over the place!  They were basically asking for $$, but it was so obvious, we realized it was a scam right away.  It is so sad that people prey on hopeful parents like that.  We never did heard back from the first woman, and we are beginning to think that may have been a fake situation as well.  We're remaining hopeful though!  We know that the Lord will bring us the baby He wants us to have and on His timing!  He has, and will continue to provide for all of our needs!  We have so much to be thankful for, and although we're extremely excited to become parents, we are really cherishing this continued time of just the two of us!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

"In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." 1 Thess. 5:18

"Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Eph. 5:20

Updates

Dan went deer hunting this year and we were really hoping he'd get a deer, his first, so we could enjoy the meat.  Well, he got one!  A good sized one!  He got it in the first hour of being in his stand on opener morning!  It bedded right under his stand, and he was able to get a good shot amidst the branches.  I'm so proud of him!  We cooked up some venison the other night, and we were just saying how it is so much more satisfying cooking and eating something that Dan 'slayed' for our family!  :) 

Dan with his 8 pt. buck

In other news, we were contacted by an expecting mother this week!  After being on our new profile site for less than a week!  We don't know a whole lot at this point, as she has only responded to one email.  We're not getting our hopes up yet, as there have been some adoption scams out there, but we haven't seen any red flags at this point.  It is just exciting knowing our profile is being viewed!  In only 24 hours on the new profile site, we had the same amount of views our original free profile did in 2 months!  So I guess you get what you pay for!  We're just really feeling optimistic, even if this situation doesn't work out, we feel like something will come from this new website.

Please continue to pray for us!  We know the Lord will cause this situation to fall through if this is not our child.  We also need wisdom when talking with expecting parents, as it can be a little awkward knowing what to say or not say.  We are praying that the Lord would use this new website to connect with our child's birth parents!

Scratch That

Well, things are going well around here.  We finally received our typed up home study from our social worker, so we were able to send our grant application in to Steven Curtis Chapman's, Show Hope.  We're excited to see what the Lord does with that!  We also found out last week that we will not be able to enter the agencies book due to a requirement we were not made aware of until now!  There are some things that we're not open too, post placement, and you need to be open to those things in order to be in their book.  So we were really disappointed finding that out, we wish we had known about it earlier in the process.  Oh well! The Lord wasn't surprised by this!  I also sent in our paperwork to an online profile listing site.  It is one of the most popular online adoption profile sites and they have a lot of success stories.  That should be up and running sometime next week.  We're so excited to see what happens with that!

I am part of a website that adoption agencies can post 'birth mother' situations looking for adoptive families.  There have been a few situations we probably would have sent our profile to, but the fees these agencies are charging are so high!  Many are double what we were expecting to pay!  It is so sad that adoption has turned into such an 'industry'.  It's sad.  There are children that need homes, and families that would love to adopt.  I wonder how many families considering adoption, don't, because of the high fees.  I read on an adoption blog that of the 34% of Christian families considering adopting, only 1% actually does.

Thanks everybody for your prayers and words of encouragement!  We really appreciate it!  It is good to be reminded that God is control of all of this.  I was reading in Proverbs the other day when I was feeling discouraged about the recent happenings.  This commonly used verse really gave me peace.
"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5-6

Out to eat with friends