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!

Hello again...

I've been horrible at blogging as of late!  Life has been busy.  Dan and I celebrated 4 years of marriage September 8th!  It's a bit scary how fast life is going!  Dan had the week off of work, and we had a fun time hanging out, going to the zoo, mini golfing, and working on a 1,000 piece puzzle.  Dan had some health scare issues come up, but praise God, he is okay.  We haven't heard anything yet in the area of adoption.  We've had our profile up for about a month now...  I ordered some adoption cards yesterday (almost like business cards) to pass around and post on bulletin boards around town and in churches etc.  A lot of people have had success with those.  I've also been working on adoption grant applications, which are actually quite a bit of work.  We're hoping we could receive a grant to help with the second leg of the adoption, or if need be, to go into our agency's waiting family book! 
  I'd really appreciate your prayers, that God would give me the patience needed for this process.  I didn't realize that the waiting would be so hard.   It is so far out of my hands, I need to rest on the Lord!  I am thankful I have plenty of things to keep me busy though!   Also, please pray for the Lord's continued provision, for these grant applications we're sending out soon, and for the birth family that must be dealing with some tough situations.  I try to imagine what the woman considering adoption for her child must feel, and I honestly can't imagine it, so I just pray for her, whoever she may be.  I really appreciate your prayers!

Nearly Finished...

We're nearly finished with the baby's room!  We're so happy with how it has turned out! It was so much fun ordering the crib, and it is so beautiful in the room!  The changing table was a desk I had refinished a while back and I was using it as a sewing desk.  I realized the other day that it would be perfect for a changing table, and diaper storage!   Here's a few pictures...

Setting up the crib (My sister Rachael helped me set it up, but Dan came in for the pose!)

(My bird mobile turned into a wall decoration)

Our friends found us a brand new crib mattress at a garage sale.  I am excited to get the crib set up with bedding!

The butterfly mobile could finally get hung! 

Changing table (without the pad)

Also, Dan and I have finished our adoption profile and we're now viewable online!  We're excited to see how God writes the rest of this adoption story!  Please pray for us during this waiting phase.  I can already tell that a long wait would be difficult, but the Lord has His perfect timing, and we know that He has a particular little someone in mind for us!