A sweet gift...

My amazing hubby turns 29 on Christmas Eve. In an effort to make his Birthday special and not get lost in the regular Christmas Eve activities we normally have a small family 'something' weeks before the actual day. This year we celebrated by having breakfast at our house with his family and mine. It was such a fun time and we are so thankful that our families enjoy spending time together to celebrate such an amazing man.

Among the mounds of new camping gear for Ricky's 9 day hike this summer, he also was given a journal. Now normally these don't get written in for him... it takes time and lets be honest, he doesn't get a lot of alone time. But this one, I know will be different. Here is what was taped to the inside cover of this new journal.

Journey For Grace

What an amazing journey you have begun.

And someday when your Grace has grown up, she will be blessed to know the adventure as well.

This is really a gift for Grace. But you will be creating it along the way....

Journal your prayers, thoughts, desires for Grace, how you long for her, how you pray for her, how God has inspired you to reach for her.

Include family and friends as well- we too are on this adventure with you and are supporting you in it.

God will orchestrate what is composed and someday, when the timing is perfect, you can give this gift to your precious Grace so that she may know how God has amazingly brought her to our family.

What a blessing right? We have already started to write to her and are looking forward to adding to it. Last night I was able to tell a story to Grace that I might forget if I had not written it down. This story will one day show her how much her brother Jake loves her and was so excited to meet her. So thankful for the thoughtful gift of memory and love.

If you would like to write something one day in the journal for Grace, we would love that!

Drum Roll PLEASE!!!

Tonight I got the rough draft of our home study report. Let me explain a little more. Over the last two months, all of the meetings with the social worker, the forms to fill out, the finger prints to get done have come together for this final report. This is the report that will be filed with both the Ethiopian government and the United States Government. It basically tells about our lives in 8 pages or less... which I thought she did a great job of doing since I know when we had to write it ourselves, it was over 10 pages for me and 9 for Ricky... lol! So anyway, there were a few little things here and there but for the very most part, she really did an amazing job. I would highly recommend working with Bethany Christian Services, specifically Eleanor Young, if you are interested in international adoption or even domestic adoption. She is great!

Reading the home study draft for me was emotional in a way I was not expecting. Along this journey we had to choose 4 references that would stand behind our character and abilities to parent and raise happy, healthy children. To read what these people, whom we already love so much, wrote about our family was touching. A gift that I think God knew I needed right now. Thank you, our 4, for taking the time out of your incredibly busy lives to help us get one step closer to bringing home Grace.

Some Prayer Requests now: My heart has been filled with sadness the last couple weeks and I know part of that is coming from me feeling like my daughter (whom we have yet to know anything about) is somewhere with us on Christmas. I can't hold her on Christmas morning. I know that seems weird, to love someone so much you feel loss, but you haven't met them yet??! But that is how I am feeling, and I am praying for the Lord to give me peace as we wait.

Also if you could be praying now, that it would work out for Ricky to go with me to Ethiopia. There are several factors that would play into this: Time off work, the extra funds for his plane ticket and in country costs, and also for extended child care for the boys while we are gone. It will be about 8 days and I don't have any idea what time of year it will be when we go get her. Pray for the Lords perfect timing and provisions for this part of the process. I really want him to travel with me to get Grace, and I think it would be amazing for him to be able to be apart of that experience.

Thank you all again for your love and support, you mean so much to us!

Ahhh... and its done...

Gosh, I really thought it would be more complicated than that. Wednesday, we had our in home visit for the completion of our Home Study process. In my head I was thinking she was really going to be searching through our house for a reason why we could not adopt our little girl. But in reality, she really walked through and compliment us on how beautiful our house was and how clean it was (hahahaha). Here is a little back ground on how clean it really was...

Every cabinet and closet in the entire house was emptied cleaned and put back. I threw away so much junk that I didn't even know we had that our garbage can was to full on Monday. I cleaned out under every one's beds and moved every piece of furniture to vacuum or steam mop. Every picture frame was dusted and as straight as possible. I cleaned the front door, the sliding glass door, and every other door in the house. I cleaned and vacuumed (yes, vacuumed) the garage! All for her to be here less than 40 min and most of the time just sat on the couch talking about Victorville, hospitals, doctors offices, and what kind of recreational activities we had here. Seriously? I was so so stressed, so wigged out that someone was coming to make sure I did a good enough job cleaning and keeping house that forgot what she was really doing here. She was coming to make sure we had a safe home for another child to come into. Why did I get so worked up?

Well, at least now I feel like I have set the reset button on the house. It feels clean, super clean, actually and I really like that.

So now, as it stands, we have a massive list of things to get done before Christmas. My finger prints came back "bad quality". So I need to get them redone. Ricky still needs to get his done. We need to file our I600A forms with Immigration to be approved to bring a non US citizen into the country (adding another set of finger prints in there too). Then we have a list of about 30 things that need to be written and notarized. We are so blessed to have wonderful friends who have offered to help us get all this done. People who are helping get the notary services for free, who are helping get our letters of clearance from the Police Department, helping us draw up our living wills, etc. The overwhelming offer of support and assistance to bring our Baby Grace home has been such a blessing and you can bet we will take each of you up on your offer!

On a side note- We got our coffee yesterday, Fair Trade Ethiopian Coffee, and I had some this morning! Let me just say, WOW!!! I LOVE IT!!! Here is the link if you are interested =) Thanks for the support that so many of you have offered financially as we make this leap of faith!