it's going to happen ...

it's going to happen, it's going to happen, it's going to happen ...


Sorry I just needed to remind myself of that for a second.


Right now EVERYTHING is in crazy mode as we try to get everything ready for our yard sale TOMORROW. Trying to stay in a positive mood and just be excited ... and I think I'm doing a good job at that! (in my head, I am slightly freaking out, but trying to control it!)

Please please pray that it doesn't rain and that we have a successful fundraiser tmw!!!

Four Things ..

1. I FINALLY got a hold of Bundle of Hope today. *cheer!* The woman I am supposed to talk to is currently out for the whole week. *sigh* However, after I explained to the woman on the phone that I had already tried to email twice AND call twice only to not hear back from them, she assured me that she would find our home study and get back to us by tomorrow. YES!

2. Talking to people on the phone must just not be my thing ... because today the lactation consultant called and left a message for me to call her back. I tried .. and now we are just going to be playing a huge game of phone tag!

3. I'm really hoping that my doctor calls me back sometime soon. I'm still feeling some discomfort, and I am just afraid of some of the horror stories of cysts bursting might happen to me. Being a woman is just no fun sometimes!

4. I am SUPER excited for this weekends yard sale. Praying that we have a HUGE success!

Urgent Prayer Request!

Dear Blog Friends,

Please pray super hard for a sweet sweet family that I know. I just found out today that the mom (close to my age) has stage 4 colon and liver cancer. She just found out last week. She is married and they have a 4 yr. old and 6 yr old boys. She is in ICU right now with blood clots in her legs and lungs. Please, please pray for a miracle!!!!!

Donations

Hey You! Yeah you! Do you see that follow this blog button over there? ---->
You should click on it so that I can have more friends. :0) If you usually follow this blog, but don't see your pretty picture over there, you should click on the button as well! ;0) Thanks friends!

We are getting more donations for our yard sale this Saturday. Spread the word!!! We also got another very sweet donation to add to our adoption fund. We got to add another $100 today! Thank you so much for supporting us. We love you!

sonogram and other happenings

J/K ... that's not really mine. But to be honest ... as I was driving over to the doctors office (on the complete other side of town) I was thinking ... how cool would it be if instead of always having a sonogram done to always check to see what is wrong with me, we were surprised with a beautiful picture like the one above? How amazing would that be! I was just kind of off in my own dream world while I was driving ... but I was thinking that I would just laugh and cry and be in a total state of shock. But want to know what else I thought??? I would still go through with this adoption. As much as I would completely LOVE to be pregnant, I still want to adopt. I know that God put adoption on my heart when I was in middle school. Now, I never thought that my adoption story would look like it does now, however, I always knew I wanted to adopt. God told us to take care of the orphans ... whether or not you can adopt one and bring them into your own family, we are still called to take care of them. And I am one that has always wanted to be a mom of 500 million children. (no lie, ask my fab. 5 bff's from high school. It was a joke that I would be driving a school bus of my own children around town. lol) But that's me .. I have always always always wanted to be a mom with a huge family. And I still think that is something that lies deep within my heart, God is just taking me in a different direction than I thought. But that's okay, because I know that my life will be that much more sweeter and perfect. :0)

Although the technician didn't find a sweet little miracle inside of me ... she did find something. She found a cyst on my right ovary. That is why I have been having so much pain the past couple of months. Of course, she couldn't talk to me about it ... so I have to wait for my own *amazing* doctor to call me sometime this week to discuss what we need to do about it. So, please just pray that it isn't anything bad. I'm really praying that this might give us an opportunity to be able to get my tube unblocked at the same time so that that procedure doesn't cost me so much money. Stay tuned .. I'll post more as I find out something new.

In other happenings ...

We are having our first yard sale THIS Saturday! My wonderful bestest buddy Kacie thought that it would be a fabulous idea to have our yard sale in the parking lot of our church on the island because this weekend is the annual Shrimp Boat Festival. For those of you who read my blog and are not from around here ... this is a major major event that EVERYONE goes to. lol And since so many people would be traveling onto the island that weekend they might want to come and visit us at our adoption fundraiser yard sale! :0) I was so excited that we got permission to have it in the parking lot of our church .. I was kind of nervous because it was so last minute. But we got it! I am so excited! Now I'm just praying for amazing weather. I went through all the clothes that were donated yesterday. I
just wanted to put them in labeled bags with the correct sizes on them so that we could display them easier. Oh my, this was a task! It took me prob. about four hours to get everything done. Look at the pictures my husband took of me folding and sorting all of the clothes. Our whole living room floor was taken over! Poor Buddy didn't know what to do. lol





Random ...
I hate all things that may go near or in my eyes. I HATE it even when water from the shower gets on my face. So, you can imagine the fun that Alya had trying to put eye drops in my eyes when I got Buddy hair in them last night. Oh, how he loves to torture me! lol

Blessed!

Today has been crazy! (or should I say yesterday since I am somehow awake at 3:45am typing this):0)

Alya and I went over to a yard sale fundraiser for an amazing couple that we know. Like us, they have been trying to have a sweet baby of their own for the past three years and have been unsuccessful. They are trying to raise money to go through IVF. They have been collecting donated items for the past few weeks and ended up being blessed with so many donations that they were having garage sales in two locations! They had one on Friday and Saturday this weekend and were amazed at the blessing they received. When Alya and I showed up Ashley met us coming up the driveway and told us that they wanted to donate everything that they had left over to us if we wanted to hold our own yard sale to raise money for the adoption. I was completely surprised! I never expected that! Some friends and I had already been tossing around a yard sale idea as a fundraiser, we just hadn't gotten started on planning anything yet. So them giving us all of their left over stuff was such a blessing! So at the end of the day we packed up our car, another car, a truck and a trailer and took TWO trips to our house! I cannot even describe to you how much stuff we got today ... all I can do is show you pictures! We have our two spare bedrooms packed all the way to the door and our garage full of precious items to sell to help us bring our little miracle home.

Take a look at what we were blessed with today ....

This is what it looks like from the door ....


All the way over to the closet ....


Those used to be bunk beds lol ....


and this room is pretty much only bags and bags of clothes! ...


Plus there are still more items in the garage!!!

Please pray for this sweet couple as they travel along their journey to become parents. They are so sweet and I'm so glad that the Lord brought us together to share in this amazing journey with one another. Please also pray that we can organize and plan our own yard sale soon. :0)

I was also told about another agency today that may possibly only cost us around $6-8,000 to adopt. We still need to look into it, but at this point I don't think that it will do any harm in getting our name out there to people. And if we can adopt for less than the $20,000 we've been told it will cost, then we are ALL for it! I just pray that the Lord directs us and is very clear in the way that we need to go. Ultimately, we are only trusting in him ... I'm not saying that we have decided not to work with Bundle of Hope anymore. They have just not gotten back with me after the four attempts of trying to contact them ... so I'm keeping our options open and just trying to follow the Lord's leading. Check out our new fundraiser tracker on the side of our page ... I will be very excited to see it grow towards the top! :0)

Tonight ended with me being able to cuddle and put to sleep a sweet sweet little blessing. Praying that another adoption goes through without any issues. Alya and I feel so blessed to make such great friends through being foster parents. I am so happy for this couple and their sweet baby and am just praying with my whole heart that their dream of being her forever mommy and daddy comes quickly. I am so thankful for that cuddle time, oh how I miss it so!

Ramblings & Doctor Visits

Our AC is out this week. sigh ... we have only lived in this brand new house for 2.5 years and it is already broken. Thank the Lord my husband works in this trade and can fix it in no time ... however, we still had to wait all week for a part to come in. :0( It's been hot, hot, hot down here in Florida this week.





Our dog Buddy is not enjoying it at all either.














Onto other ramblings .....
I am SUPER DUPER EXCITED about this new site that I found thanks to my addiction of reading blogs! Jenn posted this link on her blog where you can actually make your blog into a book! How awesome is that!? I can't wait until our adoption story gets going a little more so that I can print it out!

I am also very excited about two new necklaces that I want to get soon! If you know me, then you also know my addiction to fun jewelry. And if you know me very well, you also know that I have my jewelry separated according to color. lol. :0) So, if you love jewelry as much as I do ... then you must check out these sites! Thanks again to being addicted to reading blogs I have found two amazing necklaces that I can't wait to make my own! The first one is for a very good cause ... I have been addicted to reading Katie's blog and I found this necklace. You should buy one too! The second one I found reading Amy's blog and she listed an etsy page with beautiful jewelry!

This week seems to be the week of doctor visits. Its been a long time since I've had to go, so it seemed kind of weird to make so many appointments all in the same week. So I finally made it to the doctor to get my foot looked at. I have several planters warts on the bottom of my heel and I really really hate them. I have never ever in my life had a wart, and they definitely gross me out lol. I have to come back several times to get them frozen off. I've had it done before, but my God this time hurt soooo much worse than the first. I have never in my life been in such pain after having something done to me. It's been three days now, and I still look like a gimp as I walk around. I have been walking around on my tip-toes all week and now my calf is screaming "I HATE YOU!" at me lol. One of my students stepped on my foot today, and I nearly lost it! It's so hard to hold in screams and not so nice words when you are in major pain and in the presence of a child haha. It was a total accident, and I know she felt bad ... she was only trying to give me a hug. :0)

My second appointment was to the OBGYN. It's been a couple of years since I've been (bad me) but I figured that I had been poked and prodded enough while we were looking into fertility treatment that I didn't need to go. Honestly the only real reason why I wanted to go was to ask her about the possibility of breast feeding our adopted baby. I had seen this occur on "The Baby Story" and have also read up on it online a little bit. She gave me the number to a lactation consultant to give me more information in this area. I called her this evening and left a message, so hopefully she will call me back soon. I know that some people might think that it's odd for me to want to breastfeed a child that I didn't actually birth. But, you know ... I don't really care what other people might think about it. To me, it's something beautiful. I'm not doing it just because it is healthier for my baby, I'm doing it more for the bonding time I will have with our baby. I have always wanted to breast feed my own children. You can even ask my mom ... I used to walk around pretending to breast feed my baby dolls when I was a little girl. lol. I didn't get to choose whether or not I wanted to have my own child ... but I can choose to do this. I am excited about being able to share this special time with my baby. I am pretty sure that it is going to be a lot of work, and may even be hard ... but I am really praying that I will get to share this special time with our little miracle.

I have been thinking lately about how Alya and I just kind of quit mid stream of fertility treatments. I think that I was at a very fragile stage when we decided to go that route, and I just simply couldn't go any further. I mean they told us that the reason we weren't getting pregnant was because of Alya ... but we never went the next step further to see why that was. I mean, what if there is just a blockage and a simple procedure that can fix that? In a way I kind of wish that we would have kept going a little bit more, but in reality I think that we made the right decision. There was no way that I would have survived if we would have kept pushing. God wasn't leading us that way yet, I was trying to do things my way ... and we all know how well that works out! Throughout that whole process I did discover that my left tube is completely blocked. I will forever hate the procedure I had to have done to tell us that ... however at least we know. I really want to get it unblocked, but I still have to pay $1,000 after my insurance is done paying for what they cover. YUCK! So ... I asked my OBGYN if she thought that having it done without an infertility label would be cheaper. I have been having pains midway through the month that I have never felt before. The pain is so bad it takes my breath away and brings me down to the ground. I am supposed to go in for a sonogram on Monday morning to see if there might be a cyst there causing me pain. If there is, and if it needs to be taken care of she said that they might be able to take care of the blocked tube at the same time. Now, I'm not wanting something else to be wrong with me but I would like to get my tube unblocked without costing an arm and a leg! I will post more after my appointment on Monday.

I feel really happy. I haven't said that in a long long long time ... but it's true. I just feel so much peace and that is the BEST feeling ever! It's funny because nothing is really even going on right now. We are not any further in our adoption journey than we have already been .. but I just feel so much peace about this situation right now that I'm just sitting back enjoying the ride. I think God has been waiting on me to do that for a long time. I still get so many emails and comments encouraging us along this journey, and I am so thankful for the love and support we have gotten so far. Those little comments mean more than you can ever imagine. So thank you for the love and encouragement! Keep it coming ... those words help us out on the days that are tough. :0)

songs

Stole these beautiful songs from ---> Jenn's blog :0)

I have to believe that He sees my darkness
I have to believe that He knows my pain
I have to lift up my hands to worship
Worship His name

I have to declare that He is my refuge
I have to deny that I am alone
I have to lift up my eyes to the mountains
It’s where my help comes from

He said that He’s forever faithful
He said that He’s forever true
He said that He can move mountains
And if He can move mountains
He can move my mountain
He can move Your mountain too

I have to stand tall when the wind blows me over
I have to stand strong when I’m weak and afraid
I have to grab hold, hold of the garments
Garments of praise

I have to sing praise when the hour is midnight
He unlocks these chains that bind up my soul
My sin and my shame, He has forgiven, and made me whole

I have to believe...

and this one ...

There you go changing my plans again
There you go shifting my sands again
For reasons I don't understand again
Lately I don't have a clue

Just when I start liking what I see
There you go changing my scenery
I never know where you're taking me
But I'm trying just to follow you

It's out of my hands
It's out of my reach
It's over my head
And it's out of my league
There's too many things
That I don't understand
So it's into your will
And it's out of my hands

There you go healing these scars again
Showing me right where you are again
I'm helpless, and that's where I start again
I'm giving it all up to you

It's out of my hands
It's out of my reach
It's over my head
And it's out of my league
There's too many things
That I don't understand
So it's into your will
And it's out of my hands

Move me, make me
Choose me, change me
Send me, shake me
Find me, remind me
The past is behind me
Take it all away
Take it all from me, I pray

It's out of my hands
It's out of my reach
It's over my head
And it's out of my league
There's too many things
That I don't understand
So it's into your will
And it's out of my hands

Being Real ...

okay .. so here's the 2nd post and more back onto the subject of adoption :0)


This post is just me being real. I've been doing a lot of reflection since my last post. Re-reading old journal posts that I have written throughout this LONG journey of ours. Remembering where I used to be and reflecting on where I am now. I just wanted to be vulnerable in this post ... wanted to share some of those deep dark moments I had to go through. The following are parts of journal entries I have written over the last three years ...

12/31/07

I'm sitting in a room that is supposed to belong to my baby. The sweet small child that I have dreamed of having my whole entire life. All that I have ever wanted was to be a mom. That's all I have ever wanted. And now I sit in this room ... a room waiting to hold a sleeping child .. a child you won't give me. I can be honest in saying that I don't understand you. I can be honest in saying that I am so very angry. I can be honest and say that my faith is incredibly weak right now. Honest in saying that every month another piece of my heart is stripped away. Honest in saying that as each day slips by I feel more and more of me die. I know that I'm not "supposed" to blame you, or get angry with you, or tell you it's not fair. But I am anyways. It isn't fair that we can't have the child we have been dreaming of. It's not fair that people who don't even want kids can get pregnant multiple times while month after month I cry myself to sleep. And I am angry at you. What is it that you want from me? Why is everything I do have to be so damn hard? God I don't even know what to do. I seriously don't even know who I am anymore. I feel so depressed all of the time. I feel like I am slowly dieing. I know that it's because I don't spend time with you anymore. I know that I need you, but to be honest, it's so hard to find even a little bit of faith in you. Like it's easier to be pissed off at you because I just don't understand than to have faith and trust in you. It seems easier to be pissed ... but it also seems to make me more and more depressed because I feel all alone.

2/18/08
I don't cry as much these days for my baby. Some days are still hard. I catch myself starring at little babies and their mothers, or starring at a young girl at Taco Bell who's pregnant and wondering how old she is. Thinking wouldn't it have been better if I could have been the one pregnant so that she could go on living her childhood? It's still hard ... but I seem to have a little more peace as each day passes. I'll catch myself counting the days ... like I'm supposed to start today, even though I usually start two days early. Thinking/telling myself to just hold on ... keep holing on. one more day. maybe this time. I end up only crushing myself each time. But how can I stop thinking like this? How can I stop realizing what the date is?

6/13/08
(after looking into fertility treatments)
I am not doing very well. I feel so low, so depressed. I'm just so tired ... so over this. What hoop are we going to have to jump through now? I'm just so tired of trying something new only to have my heart crushed every time. All I want to be is a mom. Why is that so hard? I'm tired of crying. I just don't understand why this is happening to us. Why would I have the desire to be a mother burn so deep inside my heart only for it to never happen? If God is trying to teach me something .. I sure would like to know what it is. Lord, Why won't you let me be a mommy? Why won't you allow me to pour my love into a child of my own?

8/25/08
It all feels like a dream ... an unreachable dream ... So I just turn off the switch and stop caring, stop feeling.

10-6-08
I'm tired of the tears. I'm tried of a broken heart and lost hope. I'm tired of forcing a fake smile. Of pretending that everything is okay when it's not. I'm tired of asking why and never receiving an answer.

12-23-08
I'm tired of sitting in the pit. I want to start walking again. I want to start breathing again. I'm tired of holding my breath every waking day. Daryl said something last Sunday that really struck something in my heart. He said, "If you will believe what you know to believe in spite of your circumstances - and trust I'm good even when it doesn't look like I'm good. Understand I'm doing things you cannot see for reasons you do not know." I need to write that on my bathroom mirror at home. There have been so many times through this whole journey we've been on that I have questioned God. Wondered why or where He was, or even if He were real. Questioned my marriage and wondered if I had made the right decision. Wondered why I was being punished. Wondered if my heart would ever stop aching, or if I could even continue on with my life. Wondered where my comfort was. I just need to keep reminding myself of that quote so that each day I can take another step in knowing that He's got this in his hands.

9/3/09
(after losing Hope)
I haven't journaled in a long time ... so much has changed in our lives. So much time has gone by ... so many heartbreaking moments. I went through experiencing the most amazing things in my life to wanting life to just be over. Sometimes I forget how to breathe, or to find the desire to even go on with this miserable life on earth. I am just so ready for the moment where my heart doesn't shatter into pieces. They took our Hope away from us the Friday before Mothers Day. It took a long time before a day would go by without shedding any tears. It's been 4 1/2 months since our baby girl was taken from us. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about her. I am so tired of people telling me it will get easier with time, or that God has the perfect child for us we just have to wait on his timing. That I just need to move on with my life. What the **** do they know? No one gets what it's like to live through this hell. I finally accepted the fact that I can't have my own babies, although I still think its a bunch of b.s. I finally have a baby of my own, love her with everything within me only to have her taken away. I have been so bitter towards God over these last four months ... never understood before how people could become bitter towards him, but now I'm one of them.

Re-reading these journal entries brought back a lot of emotions. I remember exactly what I was feeling and thinking while writing each one ... some were written three years ago, but the emotions that seeped through the words seemed like they could have been written yesterday. I am happy to say that I am not the same Lindsay that wrote those journal entries now. Those emotions are still very real to me ... I still have bad days, but I am so much stronger now. And my faith, well that isn't a question anymore. I feel like I have never relied on God more than I do now. And it's because of that, that I feel so strong. It has been quite the ride that's for sure. And I'm sad that I had to go through those deep valley's for as long as I did. I am so glad that I am climbing up towards the mountaintop now though. Alya and I's marriage is stronger now than it's ever been and I am so happy that God has brought us through this journey together.

I'm not going to lie, I still have rough days. This past week has been kind of rough. Just dealing with like a bazillion friends exciting news of becoming pregnant. I am so excited for them ... but I won't lie and say that it doesn't cause a little heartache at the same time. I just wonder when our time will come ... but until then I am still staying strong and 100% trusting in HIM! Sometimes I'll catch myself saying "I will trust in YOU, I will trust in YOU, I will trust in YOU" over and over again just to keep me sane. :0) Something Random: So, Alya showed me his fortune from his fortune cookie the other day. This is what it said: "You will be happy to receive good news." How amazing that would be. :0)

So tonight was special ... we went to church as usual, but what happened afterwards was the special part. Our crazy loving friend Dave came running up telling us that he really felt like God had laid something on his heart to tell us. He was like did you see me grinning up there on stage at you? (he plays the guitar during worship) He was like I was so excited that I wanted to run down and tell you right then but I didn't think that Chris (worship leader) would like that too much ... so I have been waiting here in the back until church was over. He was like I really feel like God wanted me to tell you that "it will happen". I don't know if that means anything to you, but I just really felt like I needed to tell you. Dave, you have no idea what that short little sentence means to me. You have no idea how much you touched my heart tonight. So thank you for being obedient and coming to share what God placed on your heart tonight. Sometimes no matter how strong I try to be, doubt comes crawling in ... and that was exactly what I needed to hear to chase that doubt away. So thank you from the bottom of my heart.

So tonight ... I go to bed with a heart that is full. We have amazing friends who have walked side by side throughout every single high and low, I have an amazing husband who I cherish so much, and I have a God that never quits on me. Sorry this one was so long ... there was much on my heart tonight.

Soap Box

So I feel the need to have two posts today. It's been a few days since I last posted and I've had a lot running through my mind. I could write one really long post, but I feel like I have two very separate things to post ... so just hang in there with me. :0)

This is something that has just been weighing heavy on my heart. Something that makes me angry and sad all at the same time. To caution you, this may offend you .. so you might not want to read it ... but if you choose to, please keep in mind that this is from my heart and I would like you to take it to yours.

I am so sick of racism. I hate prejudiced comments and I am so unbelievably frustrated by the ignorance of people. The amount of racist comments I hear baffles me. And what hurts even more is that these comments come from people that I really love and care about. It comes from people that I respect (or used to respect). It comes from people that I would never in a million years expect them to say. I guess I just don't understand. I feel like my mom did a damn fine job in raising me to love and respect anyone of any race. She raised me to be a woman who appreciates different cultures. So this is a shout out to you mom, for helping to make me into the woman I am today. You taught me not to see or judge a person by color but by their personality a values. And I never realized until I left for college that some people must have missed out on being raised by a mom like you.

I'm sorry that this post is just me mostly venting my frustrations, but this topic is one that hits directly home for my husband and I. I don't understand why it would be a surprise for me to fall in love with a black man. Why would you have to question if it is okay for me to date or marry a man of a different race? How does his skin color change who he is on the inside? Does it stop him from being the most humble man I have ever met? Does it stop him from wanting to do anything and everything he can to make me happy? Does it stop him from taking the shirt off his back if he knew it would help someone? Does it stop him from loving Jesus with his whole heart and soul? No!!!! It just makes me so sad to see how people judge each other. What went wrong??? Some people might think that things have changed for the better when it comes to racism. And to a point I might agree with that ... yes, there is more freedom for people of different races .... but those once outward racist actions are now harboring deep within, and that almost scares me more. I want so badly for my children to grow up in a society where their culture is embraced. I want them to be loved for who they are, not judged because of their skin color. I want them to grow up in a community of lots of different cultures so that they can learn to appreciate and love cultures different from their own. And that will happen ... I want to do as good of a job as my mom did raising me. It just makes me so sad that people still think the racist things that they do. And what surprises me the most is that they don't even realize that they truly think this way. I don't believe that they would ever in a million years say something to Alya intentionally trying to hurt him ... but it's been done. I'm just praying that God opens some eyes .. big time!



Okay, off my soap box ... sorry I have just been holding in a lot of frustration in this area for some time, and needed to get it out.

glad I listened to him ...

I just read an email that I got today from the Georgia Adoption Agency ... so so so so glad that I listened to Alya's heart as we made the decision to stay with Bundle of Hope. Here's the email:

Dear Prospective Adoptive Family,

Thank you for your interest in adopting through Covenant Care Services. Recently there has been additional publicity (blogs and couple referrals) for Covenant Care’s need for families to adopt African American children. Although this has been effective in helping us recruit families, it has presented some additional challenges for our agency.

We have found that only about 40% of our African American birth mothers are open to considering placing their child in an adoptive family of a different race. Unfortunately this means CCS now has a longer list of families willing to adopt African American babies. In fact, the response has been so great that it has presented complications for our staff. Because of the response, we do not have time to manage all the requests.

In light of this growing number, we are temporarily unable to accept any more out of state families. If you are in process of a home assessment, please go ahead and explore other avenues of adoption. Many of you are likely working with other agencies across the country or you may even be exploring an international adoptive placement for your family and if that is the case, please follow through with those avenues.

If you have completed your Home Assessment process, you can send us a copy and we will update you when we re-open our list and began processing out of state families again.

If you haven’t begun working through the Home Assessment process then I would advise you to make sure of your prospective path of adopting before proceeding any further. If God is truly calling you to adopt a child of a different race, then He has a plan for your family.

Please know that we did not anticipate the overwhelming response we received from so many families across the country who are willing to adopt trans-racially. I am truly sorry that we had to close our list, but again I do hope it is temporary. Meanwhile, please pray that more African American birth mothers would be open to placing their child trans-racially.

Serving in Him,
Iris

We could have screwed ourselves over big time if we would have sent in our grant applications using their agency as the place where our money would go. sigh ... I'm so glad that I didn't try to take control over this and just want to go the cheaper route. I'm so thankful to be married to a man who doesn't dive into things drastically. I know that I can get frustrated with that part of him sometimes, but he just saved us big time. :0)

I still can't send in our grants yet. I emailed Bundle of Hope ... slightly annoyed that they haven't gotten back to me since it's been over a week now. I guess I just need to call them and see what's up with our homestudy and what we need to do next. We really need to send in those grants.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately ... reading old journal entries I've written throughout this long journey to be parents. I'll post more on this soon ... until then, just keep praying that we have wide open doors to walk through throughout the remainder of our adoption journey. :0)