Through lots of prayer we have decided to go through a North Carolina agency that sister's with our New Horizons agency.  We are thrilled that God has led us to know that is where our little guy will come from! Here is the link to their blog and website, great sites, if you have time check them out!

Christian Adoption Agency Blog- this blog includes pictures of matched families!

I have to apologize that it has been so long since I posted last...it has been a little crazy at our house!!  The girls have started back to school and I am about a month into my classes at WITCC in Sioux City.  It is going well and we all have adjusted to the new schedule, even Tim who has to get everyone ready in the morning!!

We attended our orientation at Blue Earth, Minnesota today while the girls got to have some special time with Grandma Letti and Grandpa Kevin! 

(Let the spoilin' begin!) 

It was a great day filled with lots of info about what lies ahead for our family.  The director of our agency, New Horizons talked a lot about policies, parenting and support. She shared a lot of info with us that was very beneficial.  

We talked a lot about how to include your adopted child into your family and how to make that transition.  We also talked a lot about how to share and talk with your adopted child about their birth mom.  She gave some great tips that we will remember when we bring our little guy home.  

The director of the agency also reminded us of the expense of the adoption process and recommended that we post on our blog or write a letter informing friends and family that if they would like to help with the cost of our adoption they could send a check to New Horizons Agency with our name written in the memo. If you feel lead to assist us with this cost click on this site for the agency address information. http://www.nhadoptionagency.com/

Our favorite part of the day was when we got to hear testimonies from other families that had adopted. It was so neat because one of the families was from our church! It brought tears to our eyes listening to how evident God's hand was in each and every adoption.  It was truly amazing to hear the circumstances in which God brought these families together.  We even heard how some adoption situations didn't work out and though it was a hard situation to be in at the time these families could now see why these situations didn't work out.  In each situation God had intervened and made His plan very evident to the family. It was so awesome how God had found the perfect family for that child and the perfect child for that family. The testimonies of these families were truly inspiring.

The theme of the entire day was God's perfect timing.  Did God know this is exactly what we needed to hear?  I think He did.  Over and over by all the speakers we continually heard,"you need to let God take this...you need to give it over to God...God is in control (those of you who know me know this is a hard one for me!)...also God knows what He is doing."  It was constantly stressed God will not put the wrong child in the wrong family, He already has the right child picked out for you and in His perfect timing.  Hearing all this made me take a deep breath, being the control freak that I am.  

Let me back up a little to about 2 weeks ago when our social worker called one day inquiring whether or not we were ready to go, because they had a little guy needing placement and she wondered if we would consider being considered. WOW, was that ever surprising.  We realized we weren't done with the process yet, we still hadn't even heard about our fingerprints and they can sometimes take a couple months to get done!!  Yeah, and then she called back 10 minutes later and said she had just gotten a call that our fingerprints just came in. We had two days to decide and let me tell you those were two very agonizing days.  Tim and I went back and forth with what to do, we questioned, we cried and we prayed.

We felt God's hand on us telling us with all the circumstances surrounding this situation that we needed to wait. We know for our family we made the decision that was best for us.  But that still didn't make it any easier to make the call to Heidi our social worker.

Anyway, back to God's timing.  We are asking for your prayers right now and if it is ok we would like to specifically ask for prayer for a few things...

1. For us to finish and wrap up all the little things that 

go along with this process...
2. For the little guy that God has already picked out to 

join our family and for his mother...
3. But mostly for God to make it evidently clear to us
(like a smack in the face would be nice or we will take 

writing on the wall too)
when His perfect timing for our family is...

Thank you so much all of you for your prayers and support already.  We are so thankful for all the encouragement and love.  We covet your prayers as we continue on this journey to bring home blue!

Heidi our social worker reminded us when we do put our book out we need to be ready to go get a little guy so we thought we better buy some clothes for him.  The girls loved helping pick stuff out even though it felt kinda funny shopping on the different side of the store than what we are used to.  Here is some of our favorite purchases...

Here are some pictures that we took on vacation for our family book!

It has been a long while since we have posted so I thought an update was in order. We did have our second home visit on August 6.  We thought it again went really well.  Lots more questions were answered as well as more questions arose.  We are getting more and more excited and the girls are getting more and more annoyed with this adoption process.  In their little minds they expect our little guy to come any day and mention a lot, to anyone who will listen, that we are getting a baby brother...along with the question, when is he coming again mom?  We are still praying God will give us the right timing since my school year begins on Wednesday.  I am getting excited about putting a book about our family together to show to the birth moms.  I anxiously plan layouts, take pictures, get ideas, take more pictures, rearrange ideas and then again take more pictures for our book.  I am starting to realize it is a lot more fun to plan for our little guy and work on this book and let God do all the worrying about timing and the stressful stuff.  Maybe I will give all that stressful stuff up and let Him take care of it.  (Yah, right!!)  I wanted to post some pictures we took as a family on vacation that I thought would be good to open our family book with. Let me know what you think!!

We ask for your prayers as we anticipate the 3rd and final home visit where our Social Worker will be given a name to our girls instead of "that lady"! She will have time alone with each of them and have to see the house.  (Any volunteers to help clean?) I am a little nervous about my girls time alone with her because you never know with little ones what they might say!  We also pray that God will bring wisdom as we decide when to put our family book out to be seen, which means we could get chosen and get our little guy at any time!! 

Our time on vacation just reassured me of what a wonderful extended family we have to share with a little guy.  Seeing Tim with his nephews and how much love he shares with them (they also share wrestling, wedgies and lots of laughs) just makes me realize what a great dad he is and how neat a relationship he will have with our little guy.  One memorable memory from our vacation I have to share was when he was showing a little neighbor boy there how to "properly" hold and throw the football...he is always a coach...I cannot wait to see him coach a little guy of our own!! I love you Tim.

Checking out some adoption blogs I came across this interview of Steven Curtis Chapman and his family talking about the loss of their adopted daughter from China. Click on this link to check it out...it is amazing to witness the faith of their family.

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerindex?id=5524419

there is a commercial first and then the interview comes on.

Throughout the years we have collected a few clothing essentials along the way...we just had to share a picture!

We had our first home visit last night and all in all we think it went pretty well.  Lots of questions were answered and as those questions were answered more questions arose.  One big question we had was about adopting internationally or domestically (from the United States).  Starting on this journey we had heard that international adoption was probably the way our family would need to go because of the number of children we already had.  As we heard this and did some research we still felt a big pull in our hearts for children from the United States, but prepared our selves and our hearts for making a trip over seas.  We just prayed God would lead us in the right direction and bring us to the place He wanted our little guy to come from, no matter where that might be. Then our social worker asked us what we thought of North Carolina...she was kidding right?  North Carolina? The thought of bringing our own little Tarheel home was amazing!!  We felt like God answered so many prayers and questions with that idea, and even though we are bathing it in prayer we feel God may be leading us to bring home our very own little Tarheel in North Carolina.  

As we reflect on the visit last night we realize we have a lot of preparing to do and a lot of decisions to make as far as open or closed adoption, race of the child, what birth issues we will accept, and financially how we will support another child and this adoption.  Our social worker also suggested we make sure we have baby things ready to go and buy a little at a time so when we get the call we aren't overwhelmed with purchasing baby equipment.  The girls were particularly excited about buying stuff for their baby brother, although Taya just wants to save her clothes for him!!

We ask for your prayers now as our family prepares for our next home visit.  We feel a bit overwhelmed and ask more than anything that God will give us wisdom.  We want this journey to be completely blessed by Him and just pray for Him to guide us.

Psalm 48:14 says, For this God is our God for ever and ever; 

he will be our GUIDE even to the end.

May you be safe and sleep soundly through the night

and safe as you wake to the morning's light

May you feel our love from so far away

May it comfort and protect you throughout the day

We will pray for you our little one

until our time of waiting is done

We will pray the Lord will keep you from harm,

until you become the child in our arms.

Working through this journey I often wonder,"is our little guy born yet?" and "what will he look like?" and "where will he be from?" so many questions and so many what ifs. I pray again for guidance especially as we anticipate and get ready for our first home visit. I laugh as I think about explaining this home visit with our girls.  Taya excitedly exclaims, "we need to get the house ready mom, she will bring our baby brother!" As I explain that our social worker will not be actually bringing our baby boy to our house, Sydney and Nyiah let out a cranky sigh, "Augh, mom" they say, "how much longer do we have to wait for him?" I chuckle, wondering how many times they will ask us that question.  I sit and think about when I will ask God that same question along the way, and remind myself of God's perfect timing.