Thanksgiving 2014

Wednesday night we celebrated Thanksgiving with Andrew's family.  We were blessed to get host again this year.  We LOVE hosting.  It is so much fun to fill our house with family.  

It's always loud and busy and a bit crazy. 

This is the only picture I took all night.  Andrew's brother Cary, our nephew Tyler, and me.  Love these guys!

And then the minute they all leave it is quiet and sad.  It always makes me a little weepy.

We love having everyone here.  The adults visiting downstairs while the kids run around playing upstairs.

Everyone spent the night Wednesday night.  After breakfast Thursday morning we all went our separate ways to celebrate Thanksgiving with more family.

Andrew and I spent the day with my family at my Mommom's house.

No one was stepping up to carve the turkey so I did it this year.  First time for everything.

My favorite part of Thanksgiving this year was that the secret was finally out.

I'm going to be an aunt again!!

I could not be more excited.

My brother and his wife are expecting their first baby in June.  

I began crafting as soon as I found out.

I cannot wait to love on and spoil him or her rotten.  June can't get here fast enough.

Cheering in the Rain

It's good to be a Razorback fan!!

Yesterday Andrew and I along with my parents headed to Fayetteville to watch the Hogs take on #8 Ole Miss.

It rained on us pretty much the entire time.  I've never been so thankful for hideous rain suits.  We stayed nice and dry under those rain suits.

It was such a fun and exciting game!

Chick-Fil-A at Half Time

It was a Razorback Victory.

30-0

We had a such a fun time.  I can't tell you how happy it made me that this guy wanted to take my parents to a game.  He knew how much my daddy would love it.

The First Step

First let me just say THANK YOU!  Thank you for your kind words of encouragement and for your prayers as we begin this journey to bring our children home.  We are so thankful that you are coming along beside us as we start this process.  We are so excited and blessed to be answering this calling that God has placed on our lives.  There is joy in obedience.

Tonight we attended an information meeting with The Call, an organization that helps recruit Christian families to become foster families.  Their desire is that there be no waiting children in Arkansas Foster Care.  We are working with them to go through the training and become an approved home.  This is a faster route than going directly through the state.

At tonight's meeting we learned a little background information about The Call and then we met with a sweet lady, L, who works in a neighboring county DHS office.  She went over some of the rules of fostering/adopting with us.  She also went over A LOT of paperwork.  It was a lot of information in a short amount of time. We had read or heard a lot of what was shared with us tonight through our research which helped.

We filled out our paper work for background checks and turned that in tonight.  Now we just wait on L to call us and schedule our first home visit.  During this visit she will check to make sure our home meets certain requirements such as smoke detectors, windows in bedrooms, and things like this.  If they find anything that needs to be done or changed we will have until our final home visit to take care of those things.

The next training class that is offered will be in January.  It is 30 hours packed into two full weekends.  That will be our next step before our final home study.

We are just praying and trusting God to lead us through this journey.

I believe my children are out there waiting on me and I cannot wait to bring them home and love them for the rest of their lives.

A New Path

A few weeks ago I shared with my sister-in-law some thoughts I had been having about the struggle to get pregnant.   They were ugly thoughts, thoughts that I hadn't even shared with Andrew at that point. They were thoughts that made me feel ashamed.

 She was so sweet to offer encouragement and not an ounce of judgement for my ugly thoughts.  She very wisely reminded me that the thoughts I was having were from Satan.

He is real.  The battle is real.

And on that particular day I needed to be reminded of that.

Fast forward a couple of days...Andrew and I went to church for the first time in a while.  Our lack of attendance...well that's another blog post for another time.  That morning at church there was a special guest from an organization called The Call who spoke about becoming a foster parent and adoption.  At the time I didn't really think anything of it.  He was there because November is national adoption month.

He couldn't possibly have been there because God was in the process of doing something HUGE in my life.  Or so I thought....

A few more days go by and then Andrew decides he is ready for us to do a round of IUI with my next cycle which would be sometime next month.  I wanted to be excited about this possibility, but something about it just didn't feel right.  I didn't have any peace about it.

The very next day a family friend sends me a text message about a baby boy who was born at the beginning of last month and would soon be up for adoption.  I shared the information with Andrew.

We talked about it and prayed about it.

It was clear to both of us that adoption was the path we were supposed to take.

Not IUI.

Andrew started doing some research.  He was looking at photos of kids available for adoption when he found a sibling group of 5.

God's plan all of a sudden seemed a little clearer.

The next day Andrew called DHS to inquire about the five siblings and the baby boy.

The siblings are very close to having their adoption finalized and the baby boy hasn't been green lighted yet so they could not discuss his case with us.

Through those phone calls we learned that we need to go through several classes and have a home study done to be an open home.  We cannot be considered available to adopt until we have done those steps.

It seems like the decision to take this path was sudden and out of nowhere but God knew all along.  We believe without a doubt that this is how God is going to grow our family.  We believe that God is calling us to adopt a sibling group.

Next Tuesday we are attending an informational meeting with The Call to learn more about the process of becoming an open home.  We hope to sign up for classes and get the ball rolling.

We've talked about adoption before even before we started trying to conceive, but I never really believed that this would be a part of our story.

I'm thankful this is a part of our story.

We could not be more excited to start this part of our journey.

We ask that you join us in prayer for wisdom and guidance as we began walking down the path of adoption.

We love you all.