My cousin Jessie, emailed me this wonderful link please check it out! It is a great adoption story. 

Click here

Prayer Request!

A special prayer request for one of the families from our church who are so close to getting their little guy home! Please pray that they may get answers to all their questions and requests and that they may know soon when exactly they get to go! Thanks so much!

Officially Approved!

We received our home study in the mail today! And yes it had a stamp on it

Approved!!

Here are some new pics our neighbor Lori took for our album, showing off our NC gear!

I have not posted lately because there is not much going on around here that has to do with our adoption.  We are getting ready to get some surgeries out of the way and get healthy again.  And get some Christmas shopping in.

We had a little prayer answered this week with our Taya Joy.  We have been praying about moving Taya downstairs so that the baby can have her room.  We prayed that it would go smoothly and that God would show us when to make this transition.  Well, she decided this week that she was ready to go downstairs all by herself, "we need to make room for my baby brother,"she said! How cute! We were worried all for nothing, we thought we would have to get her ready to move when actually she was ready before we were! I think it was way harder on mommy and daddy then on Taya.  Nyiah was excited to have a roommate too!

We did do a little Christmas shopping and of course picked up some North Carolina gear for our little guy, some NC onesies and booties that we couldn't resist!  How fun.

We are looking into getting the nursery painted during Christmas vacation and then we will count down the days until our family vacation the first week of January.  After that we have decided we will get our book done and get it out!

Please continue praying for us that we will continue to get ready for our little man and that God will guide us to our son.  Thanks as always for all the encouragement!

Sitting in the middle of class today, I got an email from Heidi our social worker. She let me know our Home Study is complete and is now being reviewed by our agency New Horizons. Yeah! What a big relief! We are excited to have all the paper work and running around done (or so we thought!) Heidi reminds me that we can now start the process of applying for grants/scholarships. So here we go again! But with that thought comes the thought of anticipation and excitement that we are getting closer by the minute! We just continue to pray for God's guidance and His constant presence as we decide when to put our book out. We have started working on it and I am getting the pictures ready to go...I am of course having lots of fun with that!

Please keep the prayers coming, and thank you to everyone who has been so encouraging to us throughout this process.

Especially those who are there for my little breakdowns(you know who you are!!)

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...