Just keep swimming..

Just keep swimming swimming swimming....As I sing Dory's little song I am wading through the mounds of paperwork for our dossier and homestudy. My advice to anyone beginning this journey is when you get the mountain of documents, read them through and put them down. Do it again the next day and then the next. It seems like a little more of what we need to do sinks in each time I read them and I am not overwhelmed.

I spent a few hours each day over Thanksgiving drafting letters and writing my autobiography for our homestudy. I have our I600 application filled out and ready to send in and our birth certificates are waiting to go to the state they came from for authentication. My references and being filled out and sent in and I just need to make doctor and fingerprint stops this week!

It will come together...steps at a time!

Paper Pregnant

Paper pregnant. That is what they call it when you are chasing down all the documents needed for your Home study and Dossier ( that's all the paperwork that is sent to Ethiopia). I am feeling it. The morning sickness and fatigue has set in! ;). After our program fee was sent, we received and email with 12 attachments and another with10 attachments. All of which had to be downloaded and printed and then organized. I was so overwhelmed the first night looking at it all.

I have read through everything about 4 times and I am finally beginning to understand it all, put it in separate files and begin to dig my way out.

I do love checklists though and I have two whopper of checklists to work on. I have already started sending out the references and making copies of everything needed. This weekend I am taking my Mac with me to the cabin and will begin drafting the letters I need and also a 2-4 page autobiography.

This morning Greg and I got up and was talking about when we go and how many diapers we will need on the plane on the way back home and he mentioned that we are really going to need to look for some better ear buds for our ipods since the plane trip is so long. That is when it hit me....this is for real. All the paperwork and money seems so business like, but diapers and ear buds. Its a real trip we are taking to get real children. That totally made this whole paper pregnancy seem worth it!

Necklace Love

I am loving these necklaces from Junk Posse. Go to the Bottomly's Blog and check them out!!

http://bottomlysandethiopia.blogspot.com/

Program acceptance form and program fee

Program acceptance form and fee...sent in!!! Yay!! Now we will get to start our online 8 hour Hague adoption course and begin our homestudy!

Our sweet Abigail

Our oldest daughter Abby is about to turn 12. She is a sweet girl, loves the Lord and her family. I have often said that if Abby was an only child, I would have been a very obnoxious parent! She did everything the baby books told us she would do at just the right time. Abby has been praying for us to adopt a baby for a long time and is excited about the prospect of babies in the house again.

Without us knowing, since August, she has been taking her $5 a week allowance and splitting it into two separate accounts in her room. One for her spending money and one for our adoption fund. Yesterday she presented her daddy and I with $52 of her own money she wants to contribute towards adoption.

I was so proud of her because she is one that keeps a pretty tight reign on her money and is not known to spend or share it! We were so proud of her and Greg told her to

keep it and keep saving it. When we get in a spot that we need it, we will let her know. I am so thankful the Lord has given me tenderhearted generous children!

Fall Festival at Auburn Baptist

This weekend , my family's home church in Virginia had a Fall Festival to raise money for their building program. My sister and mom bought us a table (thanks guys!) for us to sell tee shirts at. Nathan and I have been praying all week we would sell 10 tee shirts. Well, we sold 25! WE WERE SO EXCITED!! There were so many people who told us to keep the change off of a $20 or just gave us money as a donation. We had a good time meeting new people, eating yummy bake sale items and we were able to share our heart for adoption with many people. Here are some pics from the weekend. Thanks sooooo much to all who bought shirts and to my parents and sister who modeled their adoptions shirts Saturday!

November update

In just 22 more days we will be able to send in our first program fee!!! Then we can get rolling on the homestudy. God's timing is perfect even though I have to say I am not real thrilled about having a home visit during Christmas (CRAZY!!). Still hoping to be DTE by February, so I need to get the homestudy finished during the holidays. Just think by next Christmas we might have been to Ethiopia and back and they could be home with us!