We Love To COLOR!

Ellie and Ainsley have taken a LOVE to coloring! Either on paper or the sidewalk, they both will color for at least 30 minutes at a time. I also highly enjoy coloring, so this is a treat for me as well.

The other day Ellie drew a picture of herself:

Pretty impressive, but I think we have a little bit more work to do...

WAITLIST!

We're on the waitlist! This means that all we do now is wait, wait for the day we will receive a call/e-mail/picture of our little boy. Right now the waiting period has averaged to be 13 months for a referral, but that doesn't mean we will be waiting 13 months. We could be waiting less or more, sounds so nice to have NO clue. It is nice to finally have it out of our hands, and all we have to do is just WAIT.

I am excited to be a little closer to bringing home our son, to have the relief that there is nothing waiting on my side and it's all in God's hands now. I also am excited to enjoy my two little girls and spend the next year or so just enjoying them. With the slow down in Ethiopian adoptions, it really has been somewhat of a relief. We thought we were ready, but life has been CRAZY the past 6 months and we feel that we need some more time before welcoming another child in our family. It's funny how God works. If we hadn't chosen adoption, we would have most likely gotten pregnant and there's no turning that back. But God led us to adoption, which ended up being slower than planned... which ended up being exactly what we needed. I now feel free to work on being a better wife and mother, improving myself before I bring home my son. I feel like this timing is perfect, but I will say that if it lasts longer than 2 years I'm not sure if I will be saying the same thing.

Now I am just sitting back and enjoying/improving the life I have in the present, yet still praying and dreaming about the son who is waiting to be in my arms. I ask that you pray for our family as well, pray for our son to be an orphan whose last hope is our family (I would much rather him be with his family or in his culture, but know that this won't be solved anytime soon). Pray for our hearts and his, for our marriage to be strong and deep, for our children to feel loved and belonged, for our son to welcome us as his family and us to welcome him in ours.

I patiently wait for the day I finally see his face...

Change Your Words. Change Your World.

I've always had a big heart towards the needy/homeless, second to orphans. For some reason, their lives and stories always get to me and I see the helplessness in their eyes. I want to show them hope, give them hope, or just hope that they will find it. I saw this video on the girltalk blog and wanted to share.



It is very interesting, most of us don't realize other's pain and suffering and just a few words can help others or ourselves understand it. Words have a huge impact on people and this video demonstrates how we can help others by the words we choose. If we change our words, we could change our world. I think there is much more to helping those in need, but our words do play a part in it. Great video.

UCIS APPROVED!

We finally have received our UCIS approval!! I cannot tell you how excited this makes me. When Zach opened the letter and read it to me (me having no idea what was in his hands), I just screamed with delight... several times.



We have been waiting over 5 months for this. We took our fingerprints on January 6, waited and waited, then found out I needed to redo mine. I had to wait for my appointment time because I couldn't ever get over there, so I finally got my fingerprints done a second time in March. After a few days, we confirmed that my fingerprints were good and cleared, they just needed to process our information. In April we opened up a letter from the UCIS, thinking it would be our approval, but found out instead that Zach needed to supply some more information. Our homestudy wasn't very clear of how he dealt with some issues in his past that define him as a victim, so they needed more. This is VERY frustrating because this rarely happens, and it's somewhat outside of the boundaries of the UCIS. We happened to get a caseworker that wanted to make sure she approved qualified parents, which is a good thing but frustrating for us since we have to do more work. We eventually got our homestudy rewritten and then FINALLY received our letter of approval!

What a relief! Our dossier is now complete and we will be authenticating the documents and then hopefully on the waitlist NEXT WEEK! One step closer to bringing home our son...

God's Not Dead

Dinner time singing:

Ainsley's Dance Moves

It is the cutest thing ever to see Ainsley dance, we had to share :)



I think she wants to be a hula dancer, daddy will not approve. I'm not sure where she learned to move her hips like that, I try very hard not to move my hips any which way when we dance at home. Ellie doesn't do hip movements either. Maybe it's just natural?? haha, it sure is cute though.

Beach!

We took a trip to Ocean Isle for Mother's Day. We had so much fun, it was such a relaxing time. Zach made the few days absolutely relaxing and refreshing by trying to make sure I didn't have to do hardly anything.

It definitely was a little rough trip going down there. Ainsley was a trouper, but Ellie not so much. Here is Ainsley smiling after about 2.5 hours.
Ellie not so much. She didn't even want her picture taken.


They LOVED the beach. It's amazing how entertained a 16 month old and 3 year old are by sand. They would just sit there and dig in the sand.

Ainsley and Ellie both would lay out with me on the beach. It's just so peaceful out there!
Styling in her sunglasses.

We tried to get a picture of us one night at dinner. It was a little blury.
One I took of Zach and the girls:
One Ellie took of me and Zach:
It was so nice having family time at the beach. It was our first time renting a house and relaxing on the beach just us. Zach and I did get burned, we just couldn't prevent it even with all the reapplying and covering we could do, kids just rub it off. At least we didn't peel, although we suffered a few days. The girls didn't even get red, it's funny how that happens.

I love, love, love the beach! Maybe this will become a tradition??