On A Regular Wednesday...

"Nicole, this is Nicole...I have some exciting news for your family if you can give me a call back at your earliest convenience." That was the message I took from my phone at 12:53pm on Wednesday, July 22. I had been taking my phone with me everywhere and had it turned up at full volume. That day we had an inservice at work over lunch so I had turned my phone to vibrate, thus missing Nicole's (our family coordinator) call. I spent the next 5 minutes frantically trying to get her back on the phone. I was successful after what seemed like an eternity. She asked if my husband was somewhere where he could take a call. After conferencing him in on the phone call, she said "congratulations, this is your referral call." Wow, I can't describe what that felt like. To hear her describe the child that God had picked for us, I knew already I loved him. I hurried into work and as my co-workers looked at me funny (since I was crying)...through tears I said "we just got our baby." Unfortunately, I had to finish my day at work, which wasn't very successful because I was completely scatterbrained. So after months of paperchasing and waiting we have gotten our baby we have been so looking forward to adding to our family. The day was crazy and by the time John and I called our families and talked and looked over the pictures we received in an e-mail, I was worn out! It was such an emotional day. So much so, that it has taken me almost a week to post this blog. There have been so many emotions since that day, it will take another post to describe it all. For now, we wait on further news from our agency for things like a court date and travel dates. We are definitely excited to continue to prepare for our guy! He is absolutely adorable, however, we can not publicly post pictures until he is officially ours through the court documents. Oh, how we are waiting for that day...

Month 5 Down...

One more month down in the waiting process. New referrals are continuing to come in every several weeks. The last referrals were for people with DTE's of October. While we have been waiting this past month, we have been on both of our missions trips with our kids. The junior high students went to Dayton, OH for 5 days to serve at Gospel Mission doing some yard work, and cleaning up the grounds for their community night that was coming up. They also had a great time at Kings Island riding all the old stuff and the new coaster they have for the this summer. Shortly after getting back from that trip we packed up and headed south with our senior high students. We completed 2 decks for people in Tennessee in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. We camped for the week at a National Campground and tried to avoid the bears and ticks. All the kids learned how to rough it, including making all their own meals. On the last day there, we went caving in Buffalo Cave. It was a great time of crawling through tiny holes and in between huge rocks. All in all, it was a busy month. One that made the time fly by. Which is good, although John and I are no closer to having the nursery ready for Yoshi. We keep thinking we should start that, but apparently we are both better procrastinators than doers. Maybe next post I can post some progress has been made...