Back in their court...

Yesterday we got the news that we were accepted into AWAA's Ethiopian adoption program.  With that news came e-mails about starting our online training, contracts that needed to be signed and mailed back, and details about paying our initial program fee.  Being that it is my personality to get things done and not let them sit (when I'm anxious about something that is) I immediately printed out the papers, signed them, wrote the check, stuffed it in the envelope, loaded the boys into the car, and drove to the post office to put it all in the mail.  While doing all of this in a rush, Wyatt pulled the bucket of water catching drips from our shower repair (that's another story) off of the chair to make a huge mess and Oliver was getting frustrated that I wasn't providing his snack fast enough!  But heaven forbid I wait a day and slow down!  I HAD to get it in the mail before last pick up so it would be there on Monday instead of Tuesday!  Now the ball is back in their court and we're waiting on them to process it and assign us a family coordinator which will contact the case worker to start our home study, etc.  See the rush??  This will be my life from now until we send the entire dossier to Ethiopia and then we just sit back and wait.  Sounds easy huh??  It's like a game of hot potato...I don't want to be the reason we're waiting...if it's something we can take care of then I'll do it immediately and then wait on whoever we have to wait on to do their part.  Hopefully we'll get everything we need quickly but I'll tell you that it won't be me we're waiting on!!  Am I my father's daughter or what??  Ohhhhh...we have a LONG journey ahead don't we my dear husband? HA!

Ahhhh...freedom!

So...for some time now Josh and I have been praying about adoption.  We've both known for a while that God has been calling us to adopt.  And some of you will remember our first Christmas letter saying that we had decided to start our family through adoption.  You will also remember that right after that letter we announced our "SURPRISE" pregnancy and our sweet Oliver's birth.  Then came Wyatt before we knew it and all the while we wondered when adoption would fit in.  We continued to pray and felt God leading us to pursue adoption for our third child.  We began looking at programs that fit our needs (ages of children in home currently, years married, etc.) and were drawn to Africa due to the overwhelming need and the large numbers of orphans.  We thought we were ready in January but we soon realized that the timing was not quite right and we waited.  We also researched and to be honest became overwhelmed.  There was many a day during that time that I thought having another biological child would just be so much easier!!  But I knew in  my heart of hearts that God was calling us to adopt and many a day I did not know if we would be obedient or not.  We are not in a financial standing to commit the money it will take to adopt and we kept praying over that issue and God kept responding that all He wanted from us was faith.  Faith to step out in spite of everything we were feeling overwhelmed by and trust Him.  Finally in July we felt the calling even stronger and knew the timing was right to add another child to our family.  We've also seen God soften hearts of family around us who have volunteered to help finance parts of the adoption which we knew was a huge answer to prayer.  We applied to America World Adoption Agency and today received the amazing phone call letting us know that we have officially been approved to adopt a child from Ethiopia through their agency!  We know there is a LONG road ahead of us but we feel such freedom to be able to tell people that we are officially "paper chasing" now to bring home what will be our third child through adoption from Ethiopia!  We are thrilled to be starting this journey and will admit that we are currently overwhelmed with all that lies ahead but know that God has already laid out the path he would have us take.  We ask our friends and family to begin praying for us as we start this amazing journey.  We will definitely keep you updated through this blog and look forward to sharing this journey with you!

Still playing...

Still up playing with changing up the settings...but I have to say I'm quite proud of all I've learned in the blogging world in such a short time.  But that's me...I get on something and then I run with it.  Voila!

Signatures, playlists, links, oh my...

Yay!  Okay, so the blog wasn't necessarily on our "to do" list for the adoption but I knew I wanted to create one so we could keep friends and family up to date on this journey.  I knew this would be easier than constantly e-mailing or calling everyone and this way people can drop by and read updates when and IF they want to.  However, finding a design and getting this blog up and running has been an adventure in itself.  I know a little more about HTML than I ever wanted to know and tonight I have figured out how to insert a signature.  Yipppeeee!  SO personal, yes??  Doesn't it just add so much??  I'm kidding but I'm proud of myself nonetheless!  Oh, and we're still waiting to hear if we've been "officially" accepted into America World's Ethiopia program.  We don't expect to hear until later in the week being that needed staff to approve us is out of office until Wednesday!  So we begin the "waiting" with waiting.  Most of you won't have found this until we're well on our way but I thought I'd use this to journal about the process and figured I'd start at the beginning!

Figuring it out...

Figuring this all out in more ways than one...on the list tonight is all things related to this blog.  A bit frustrating but we're getting there!  Who knew this would consume so much of our time?