Blessings

You know, sometimes you receive something from the Lord, that you never expected and you don't deserve. One blessing that I have received is that God loved me enough to die on the cross for me many years ago. He died for my sins, everything I do wrong, and so that I can spend my life living for him and telling others about what he has done in my life. Also so I can spend my afterlife with him in Heaven. God has really blessed me in this life here on earth. I have never done anything to deserve anything he gives me! I don't tell others about God enough, I worry about things too much, I complain about too many things, and so much more.

God has given me the blessing of wonderful parents & siblings, an adoring husband, finances for everything we need, and recently..the finances to continue on our adoption journey. I have been trying to be content with waiting on God's timing for the next step in our adoption. We have been patiently waiting for our Home Study to be finished. I talked with the agency today and they said it should be done by the end of next week. I originally didn't think we could move on until after our vacation in July. Thanks to God, it looks as if we can start as soon as the agency finishes our Home Study. I know I need to be patient for another week or so, but that is only a little time compared to the rest of my life.

On another note, the nursery is coming along. We put up the shelves and all the Mickey & Minnie toys that will be part of the decor. I also bought some childrens book today at a book sale. I need to get a basket, or something to put them in. The nursery is starting to look more like a room for a baby.

I know its been a couple days since I've written. Time has gone by quickly. I had a friend from college here for a couple days, she brought her 2 kids. It was nice to have some noise in the house. After havig the kids here, I am ready to have one of my own in the house. I've noticed the house seems so much quieter and I have more time to myself. I am enjoying it while I can. I am so glad that we have waited 5 years before we started adoption. From talking to some of my friends who didn't wait long at all, I realized that Justin & I know each other well and we are best friends. I also know we will be able to hold a good front when we dicipline and deal with our future children.

As for an adoption update, we are still waiting on the agency to finish our Home Study. We have all our parts finished. They are going to let us know when they have everything together and when we can move on. It will be a little bit before we can move on because we are still waiting on the Lord to provide the finances for the next step. We are almost there, but we have a wedding to attend in July in South Carolina, so we are saving all our extra for that. God has done amazing things and has provided everything we need so far.

I have part of my nursery put together, the shelves are up and they have the Mickey & Minnie's on them. It will be so adorable when we get the crib and the rest of the furnature in there and put it all together. I will show you pictures when we get it finished.

Update

Sorry guys.. it has been a while since I've written! I have been busy trying to clean my house I have a college friend & her 2 kids coming to stay with us for a couple days and I am trying to make my house look nice. We have also been cleaning out the nursery, because that is where they will be sleeping. Anyway.. We have finished our Parent training and are just waiting on the agency to finish up their end of the homestudy. We are excited now that we know what the next step is.

I am still working on my picture profiles, I haven't had much time to work on them lately either. I have been collecting sets of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse for the nursery. I currently have 7 sets. I think once we get them up with the bedding it will all look cute. I will post a couple pictures when everything is put together. I have also been looking up cribs, strollers, swings, just getting an idea of what everything might cost and what I like the best. I have wish lists created, but they will probably change.

We were told that once the homestudy is done, the average wait time for a baby will be 6-12 months. Justin and I are both faithfully praying that we will have a baby by the end of the year. We know that God can do that, but he may also have plans for us to wait a little longer. Which we are willing to do because we know his will is best!!!

Bored

As of today we are still waiting for our agent to send us the rest of our training to work on. I have emailed her and she said she would look to see what we needed & email us the training. I know that she is busy and has all kinds of other people she is working with, but we are almost finished and I want to get these done. I am trying to wait on God because he has a better plan than I do. But it is hard. Justin really wants to get these done, I think he is more impatient than I am.

God is in control and I am trying to be content with his plan on this adoption journey. He knows exactly where and when we will receive our baby. I almost have our profile finished. I need to go get about 4 copies of it & have them bounded together to make books. I will then take the books and add the final touches.

I got our crib bedding today. I can't wait to open the package, but I am going to wait till Justin get home so he can join me when we open the first peice of baby stuff. I know it will be adorable and I know it will be exactly what I wanted. Now I want to get the nursery put together. I wish I could find a crib for cheap. I don't want to pay $200-$300 for a crib. The restrictions we have on the crib is crazy because we are adopting we can't have just any crib. The crib must have the railing close enough together so that a pop can cannot get through. My mom has a crib, but it is too old to work for us..so I guess she will use it for when the baby is there.

Hot Summer Day

We had our safety audit and we passed.. YEA!!! I spoke with our agent today and she will be sending the last trainings to us. I am going to get them done over the weekend & then we will be done with those!! The agent also said how much our assessor, the lady who did our audit, liked us. Which is also wonderful to hear! I was told that we should have everything done with in 7-10 days. I'm giving it 2 weeks! I ordered the baby bedding and it will be here by Monday. We picked up some shelving and are ready to start getting the nursery put together. It still has boxes and junk all over from the rest of the house. We will be moving most of that into the shed, everything but the junk..it will go in the trash!

I am almost finished with our picture profile. I have been spending a couple hours on it the past couple days. I am in need of a few more pictures and other designs to help it not be so boring looking. I know it will come. So as soon as the agency is done with our homestudy we will be sending in our profile and getting the adoption moving along. We are both very excited and thrilled to be going through this process.

God has really blessed us so much so far. He has made this process simple. I know that it may not be simple as we continue further into the process and I know there will be times of stress and looking to God to strengthen us. Thanks for all your prayers.

updates

Here are a few updates on our process. We have been working on these crazy questions that have to be written out for the homestudy. We found out the homestudy will be like 40 pages of stuff for the birth parents to read. It's like a book telling all about our lives and how we cope with different things. We are answering these questions the best we can, but some of them are repetitive and sound exactly the same as others. Its hard not to write the same thing. There are also questions that I have not experienced yet. To those I just write whatever I can think of as the best answer.

We have our second and last house visit tomorrow, 6/4. This will be the safety audit. This will tell us if our house is safe enough to have a child living in it. Some of the safety things are nuts, but I am sure someone has done it in the past & has hurt a child that is why it is on the list. We had our fire inspection and everything went well there. Of course it had better since Justin is a firefighter :) I am so tired of all the inspections that need to be done. There are sooooo many!!

I am going to start working on our picture profile books for the birth parents in the next couple days. Probably Thursday since our visit is tom. I need to make sure the house is clean and presentable. Not that it normally isn't, but I want it to be better than normal.