This Week

So, I had this post pretty much ready to go, but then yesterday afternoon was a bit rough. Don't worry! Everything will work out. We just got some news of a slight delay with our training, and this mama does NOT like more time being put between her and her son! We talked through all of our options though, and I know we are going to be just fine. After Drew got home and talked me down, the rest of the evening was actually fairly relaxing. So anyways, that was just a little look at the emotions that come along with this process, and we will now move on to other news.

After the garage sale, Drew put several of the remaining large items on Craigslist. We had to sell off enough of the items on Monday and Tuesday to be able to return one of the box trailers on Wednesday morning. We managed to empty the trailer on time and made about $340 dollars. Not too shabby. For the most part, we just listed the furniture at the same price marked during the garage sale.

We still have several items to go, but it's nice to see progress. Once everything is out of the bonus room, we will finally get to set up Little Man's new room. The plan is to move the guest room out of the second bedroom and create a guest/game room in the bonus room. This may just be a paper pregnancy, but I have been dying to get his room all set up for him! The nesting bug has definitely hit our home.

This weekend, the plan was to meet with a family friend to try to get our required face-to-face training out of the way. She is a licensed social worker and had generously offered to put something together for us to cover this new requirement. It turns out, however, that we are going to have to wait for a different scheduled training that our agency has selected. We are not super happy about this (thus my emotional breakdown yesterday), but we will do whatever it takes. These hours are the last big item we need before we can submit to get our first trip dates. And you know what that means...we finally get to meet our Little Man!! Drew and I both cannot wait for that day to come!

And what's a post without pictures?

Seriously. How cute was he as a puppy?!

Garage Sale

So, we had our garage sale on Saturday. It was raining the WHOLE time. Pretty much the garage sale host's worst nightmare. Luckily, we live on a pretty popular street for attracting garage salers, so that helped make up for the rain. We had two big box trailers full of furniture for the sale, and we also had 4 - 10x10 tents and the bonus room was still full. Some of the stuff got a little wet, but nothing was really ruined. We set up a desk in the bonus room so that people could pay inside. It really worked out pretty well. I couldn't take photos in the dark that morning, but there were still a good number of items when I finally did get around to taking pictures.

We have a LOT of people to thank for our success! As far as donations, Mary, Drew's mom, did a fantastic job of spreading the word. A huge portion of our donations came from her friends and neighbors. Thank you Mary!! Most of the furniture came from the ranch house on my parents' property. They are getting ready to sell, and they were kind enough to donate all of the old camp house furniture to our garage sale along with items from their home and my grandmother. Several of our friends and coworkers also made generous donations from their homes.

In addition to donating items, our Life Group also volunteered an evening helping us fold and sort the clothing and begin pricing. We are so grateful to have such a great group! Jonathan and Leah helped us many times throughout the process, as they always do! (They are going to make a great fake uncle and aunt to Little Man.) They were here before, during AND after the garage sale. My mom and our friend Jordan were here to help on the day of the sale as well. Also, my dad and his friend Bruno spent a day at the ranch loading the furniture on a trailer.

And now for the two biggest thanks. First, Nate Kamphuis is a grad student at A&M who attends my parents' Thursday Night Dinner. Nate spent several hours out at the ranch helping my dad and Bruno load tons of furniture onto a trailer on Friday. He THEN drove the trailer up to Waco, because my dad couldn't make it that day, and helped us UNLOAD all of the furniture into the trailers we had set up in the yard. His sweet girlfriend, Tiffany, also generously helped us. (Sorry, Tiffany! We normally make better first impressions! Next time you come over, we promise you don't have to get sweaty!) We are so, so appreciative of Nate's willingness to serve us in such a generous way for nothing in return!

I am also very grateful to my sister, Avery. She came in on Friday afternoon and completely filled in for all of my garage sale failings. Where I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of items and the inability to ever completely organize everything, Avery stepped in and spent hours directing us in pricing and organization. Not only did she stay up until almost 3am on Saturday morning to finish, but she also woke up at 6:30am, worked alongside us all day, and then stayed for part of the afternoon to help me with the post clean-up and organization as well. I couldn't have been blessed with a better sister and best friend, and Little Man will be so blessed to have her in his family as well! Oh, and a shout-out also goes to Spencer, my brother-in-law, for loaning us his wife AND sending one of his loaves of homemade bread with her as well.

 

So, I know you really just want to know the total, right?! Sorry. Sorry. Well, rain and all, we brought in about $1,234.25! Not too bad. Drew is working to list and sell the remaining valuable items on Craigslist and eBay. Once everything is gone, I will be sure to post about that as well!

We are one step closer to bringing home our son!

August and September in a Flash

Don't worry! We're still chugging along! We've been plowing through so much, in fact, that we forgot to take time to update you all.

August:
- Leah and Jonathan, some of our best friends, got married.
- The items stored up for the garage sale doubled.
- Some friends from Estonia came to stay with us, and brought their adorable baby girl. 
- Drew turned 30! We had a great time celebrating with friends and family.
- I babysat for our friends, and Sherlock was very jealous of the sweet, tiny baby.
- We applied for our travel visas.
- We had to do extra medical check-ups to add to our home study. (We braved needles for our Little Man!)

September:
- Our visas arrived in the mail.
- Drew survived the first football game of the season.
- Our home study was finally completed and approved.
- Our church held a special service at a local water park, and we had a great time. We can't wait to bring Little Man along for the next one!
- The adoption law changed in Little Man's country, so we now have to jump through some extra hoops before we can wrap up. (This was a great source of stress for me, while we waited to try to figure out what the new law would mean for our process. Things have settled down now, and we have a plan for how to proceed. I love a good plan.)
- I traveled for work again.
- We have been sorting and purging through our own home in preparation for the garage sale.
- Little Man's room is slowly coming together.
- Our garage sale is set to take place Saturday, September 29. We still need to sort, prep, price and then beg some of our friends to come help us out that morning!

Welcome

If you're new to the blog, welcome! We are glad to share our journey with you! I'm sure you are here to find out the big news...So, without further ado:

WE ARE ADOPTING!

We hope to wrap up the adoption at the beginning of next year. We made a commitment to a precious little boy on a waiting child list. We can't share too many details on the internet yet, so for now we just refer to our son as Little Man.

Please feel free to check out the rest of the blog for more of the details! The blog is still fairly new, so it shouldn't take long to read through everything!

Want to Help?

(1) Pray for us! We are excited for all God has in store for us through this journey, but we know that some times won't be as easy as others. More than anything else we need your prayers and words of encouragement to sustain us through this process.

(2) Our yard sale. We are planning a yard sale for sometime in September. We've already collected a lot of really great stuff, but we still need more. We would be happy to come pick up things from your house for the sale. Also, we could really use some help on the date of the sale. Stay tuned for yard sale updates.

(3) Donate. Simply put, this is expensive. We've begun fundraising, but we still have a long way to go. There are three ways to donate: you can either mail a check (email for address), you can make a gift directly to our personal fundraising account by clicking on the Chip In (using paypal) link, or you can make a tax deductible gift through our family sponsorship grant by clicking the RR button below.   

 

(4) Want an easy way to help us raise money to bring Little Man home?! We have one! Simply scroll down to the bottom of this blog and use our link to make your Amazon purchases (or use the link in this post). Every time you purchase an item on Amazon using the search box on our blog, we are given a portion of the proceeds (which will go directly toward our fundraising). The price for you is the same as if you had gone directly to Amazon.com. You can download movies and TV shows, buy music, clothes, food, books, DVDs, toys, furniture, tools, electronics, and more.

Now is a good time to get a jump on your Christmas shopping!

July in a Flash

We have been staying pretty busy around here. Where did the time go?? Here's some of what has happened during the month of July:

- We celebrated July 4th with friends (our neighborhood has it's own little parade).
- My extremely generous mother and grandmother drove up to Waco to work in my yard for a whole afternoon and donated plants from their own yards.
- We (mostly Drew and Jonathan) tore out a wall in the bonus room and rebuilt a new one to create a laundry/storage area and a new separate guest room/game room.
- We had our first homestudy visit (and it went really well).
- I traveled for work (twice!).
- We visited Drew's mom and her husband.
- Drew rode in a 39 mile bike race with his best friend (Jonathan), my dad, two of my uncles and my brother-in-law.
- We went to the peach festival while they raced.
- I was invited to three different showers to help my friend Leah (marrying the aforementioned Jonathan) celebrate her upcoming wedding.
- My sweet sister planned and put together a surprise party for my birthday.
- We have almost completely filled up the bonus room with donations for our yard sale (don't worry though, we're still happy to take more items!).
- Our status as future parents is slowly becoming more public!!

Now for a few pictures:

Working hard on a really hot day. -- The yard looks so much better!

Taking out the old to bring in the new.



Oh, and my sweet husband got me a mixer for my birthday, so of course I had to make Kornegay Cookies!

Productive Saturday

We had a very productive day on Saturday. We woke up early, as always, and started off the day by taking a family bike ride. This is always our furry family member's favorite part of the day. I was also excited for the ride because it was my second with my "clipless" pedals and it went really well. (I disagree with the term for describing this type of bike pedal, but that's a post for another day.)

After our bike ride, I wrapped up my first art project for Little Man's room, which just needed a coat of varnish. Drew then went to get his hair cut while I cleaned out/organized the hall closet and tidied up our room. Our next project was shifting the furniture in the front room to make way for our bookcase. As I attempted to fit all of our books on the shelves, Drew started sorting through the storage in the garage.  After a brief lunch break, we worked a little more in the garage, and wrapped up the first session with a pretty significant pile started for our future garage sale. We feel like we've made significant progress today toward being ready for our Home Study visit!

It looks full, but trust me - it's much better now.



We got a bigger bookshelf, and we still had to box up books for the attic...

Sherlock was helping me check out the boxes of stuff gathered for the yard sale.

After some resting, we worked up a grocery list and menu plan for the week and headed over to HEB. Our final project for the day (as set forth by Drew) was to start on Sherlock's second hair cut of the summer. With only half of his hair shaved, he looks really funny right now, but he is well on his way to a "cool" new haircut.

It feels so good to be making progress and to feel as though we are actually in control of something during this process!