Necessary

I saw this picture this morning, and it seemed fitting for this time of year.  We have so much in America, and I am so thankful for all that the Lord has blessed us with!  I think of these children's empty bellies, and I am thankful that I have never had to experience that, but my heart hurts for those skinny arms, reaching out for help.  

One of the blogs I follow has started an organization to help give these children a voice. voices4thevoiceless.org

I hope everyone has a blessed Holiday season!

Coffee Filter Wreath

I've seen these coffee filter wreaths on many blogs and I've been wanting to make one for some time!  There weren't very many good tutorials out there, so my first one turned out poorly!  I came across a blog that showed a different way of making them, and it worked out SOOO much better!  Here's the natural coffee filter wreath in baby's room.

I absolutely love how this turned out!  It was super simple to make, and pretty cheap as well!  Here's what you'll need:

A foam wreath, coffee basket filters (white or natural), marker, and glue gun.  You may need 2 packages of filters depending on the size you're making.

Put the marker (or something similar) in the middle of the filter, and gently wrap it around...

Like so.

Next, place the hot glue on the bottom of filter, and hold to the wreath for 5 seconds.

  Repeat this all the way around, making sure to glue the filters close together.

(The second filter was glued right next to the first)

Half-way through!

It took me a couple hours to complete this wreath.  Dan couldn't believe how beautiful it turned out!  He really likes it in the baby room!

 I am definitely going to be making more of these.  Many of our walls that  have bare spots are looking like they need a wreath!  I am currently in the process of making a novel wreath for our bedroom.  It is pages of an old novel, made into flowers and then glued onto a wreath!  This one has taken more time, but I am excited to share the results once I am able to finish it!  Happy crafting!

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

Waiting List

We haven't heard a single thing regarding our outreach yet, and I am trying not to get too discouraged!  I am thankful that we've been busy, as it helps keep me distracted.  We aren't feeling too optimistic about the outreach program, so we've decided to join the waiting list for the Profile Book through our agency!  The waiting list is really long, we're 23rd on the list, so it would be a few months until we could even have our profile in there.  We were hoping we wouldn't need to spend the $$ to go into the book, but we're beginning to feel that it may be the best option for us.  We still plan on continuing our outreach while we're on the waiting list, and we're still hoping something would come up before we enter the book!  We'd appreciate your prayers for us during this time.  The unknowns are so difficult, and we need wisdom from the Lord throughout this process! 

I love autumn...

We've been pretty busy here at our house...  Dan and I have been sick with colds the past couple weeks, so we're excited to finally be feeling better!  After being home bound for so long, we decided to go for a walk last weekend to get some fresh air.  It is such a beautiful time of year to be outdoors! We've been enjoying the cooler weather (although the past few days have been pretty summer-like) and the beautiful fall colors.  We are also going camping this weekend with some friends.

 

One of the two snakes Dan caught on our walk

No news in the adoption process.  We received our adoption cards and we began handing them out and posting them on bulletin boards. We sent them to churches in the area as well.  Also, on Monday, Dan met a woman at work who had adopted a baby a few years back, and she connected with the baby's birth mother through her own outreach efforts!  She was so excited to help us out, she said she knows 'everybody' and would be talking with them about us.  She took a few of our cards and even made a phone call to someone she knew when Dan was still there.  :)  We're excited to see the Lord continue to work with all of these opportunities!