Home study mailed...

Yippee! The home study has been e-mailed to Home of God's Love as of 3:00pm this afternoon. We are soooo excited!! Now more waiting and praying to be officially placed on the HOGL waiting list and matched with our baby. All the home study corrections have been made. Next a copy of the home study will be mailed to DSS and we will mail a hard copy to HOGL to be translated into Mandarin Chinese. We are still in the process of waiting for the Department of Homeland Security to mail us our fingerprinting appointment. Waiting and praying, praying and waiting.

Closer...

We had our final home study review yesterday at 4:00 at the Nightlight Office. We had to read over our final home study and edit it for mistakes. It only took about an hour. Now all we have to do is wait for a few things to be changed and then we will be emailed and mailed the final home study. I am so ready!!! I spoke with Mandee from HOGL through an email yesterday and she said I could email them the home study. That should speed things up and on being put on the official waiting list. Wahoo! So as soon as we get the home study emailed to us, it will be mailed to DSS and we will mail a email and mail a hard copy to the orphanage. I heard that the 17 babies who are currently at HOGL are matched but they may be getting 1 to 6 more babies in the next week or so. It is crazy to think that one of them may be ours. It makes me excited to think about it.

Kim and the kids came over today and dropped off the glider chair cover. It looks awesome! I love it. Isn't it cute?!

Finsished the Mirror...

Okay, here is what the updated button mirror looks like. The picture didn't turn out too amazing but I think the mirror turned out cute. We now own a hot glue gun thanks to my great mother in law. Otherwise the mirror would have been buttonless. I am excited about finalizing the Home study tomorrow. Wahoo!!

Things are Coming Together

So we have the final home study meeting Monday at 4:00! I am so thankful God hears and answers prayers.

This weekend has been nice and relaxing. I started the reading a new adoption book called Adopted for Life. It's been pretty good so far. I also started the final Twilight book which I automatically got sucked into. I am sure I will have it done in a few days. Greg and I rented the Book of Eli which we will probably watch a little later tonight. I worked hard on the nursery for a few hours today and made some improvements. We went to Michaels today. I decided that I like Hobby Lobby WAY better because it's bigger and they have fabric. I got a few more embroidery hooks to put different fabrics in and hang on the wall. I also bought the first letter of our baby girl's name to hang on the wall. I painted it yellow and it will hang in between all the different embroidery hooks. I love how it looks. I also painted the wood frame around a yellow mirror that I hung on the wall. I am thinking about gluing colorful buttons on it or somehow adding fabric to it to make it look even cuter. I also painted a bunch of letter blocks with bright colors, hung lanterns from the ceiling to see how they'd look and cleaned the room up a little bit. I can't wait to see what the recovered chair will look like. I know I will love it! I am glad I switched from the elephant bedding. I feel like this room is much more personal than a bedding "set." Greg and I have both worked hard on making this room as perfect as we can for our baby girl.

Here are some pictures of the room improvement. Try to picture it without the office furniture and the clutter. It will look even better when that gets moved out.

Home Study Almost Done...

Greg and I both had to go to our doctor's offices to get our physicals done as part our home study process. Our doctors had to type up a letter saying we both mentally, physically and emotional sound and able to adopt. When Greg went to his appointment two Thursdays ago the printers were down at the doctor's office so Greg's sweet doctor wrote a handwritten letter for us to fax over to Nightlight. It turned out to be undated and a little hard to read so I had to go back to the doctor's office today and kindly ask for another one with the date and request that it be typed up this time. They were great about it though. Kelley was with me and we only had to wait about 15 minutes. So we did the word jumble and attempted a crossword puzzle while we waited. For some liability reason the doctor's office wasn't able to fax the letter to our adoption agency so I had to drive to my school to fax a copy. But, since there is all this crazy construction going on at my school, the landlines were down which meant...no fax machine. Sigh...it worked out well though because I went over to the Goforth's house for a quick visit and fabric drop off and they had a fax machine which they let me use. Side note: Kim, you're the greatest. Thanks again for agreeing to recover our glider chair! I can't wait to see it! So thanks to Chad, we were able to get the typed out letter to Nightlight's office today. When I got home from errands and meeting Boston's dog Cocoa, I checked my email to find out that we can come in for our final home study meeting on Monday or Tuesday of next week. That's what we were praying for before I have to go out of town!!! God is awesome! So yay...we're getting closer. Thanks Lisa and Erin for all your hard work and help on getting the home study done quickly.

Praying for our baby girl...

Another week of waiting and praying. It still blows me away to think that our baby girl is growing and developing a little more each day. We're assuming that she is still in her birth mom's tummy. We are so ready to see her sweet face.

We worked more on the nursery this week. I have been feeling so crafty lately. I got my hands on a staple gun and decided to go ahead and recover the footstool to the glider last night. I searched online for about an hour last night and found an awesome adoption resources website with a bunch of adorable Asian baby dolls, decorations, books, etc you can purchase for a relatively cheap price. Plus if you spend $25 or more it's free shipping! I put a bunch of these cultural items on my Amazon wish list. We will definitely be getting her one of these dolls when we send her care package to HOGL. Thoughts on which doll we should get her? Greg likes the first one the best. I think I like the second one.





I like this one for when she gets a little bit older.



Please pray that our home study papers will be finalized and all our paperwork will be sent off by the end of this week.

The Joys of the Jockey Lot...

We had our first fund raising attempt yesterday at the Anderson Jockey Lot. If you have never been there, it is definitely an experience. Our friends Wesley, Caroline, Laura and Ryan donated some unwanted items from their house for us to sell to raise money to bring home our future baby girl. It's crazy to think she may not even have been born yet. Greg was such a trooper making it from 6am-2pm in the blazing heat and sun without a complaint. I was impressed. We met a nice lady at the booth across from us selling fruit and lingerie. It was an interesting combination I thought but, she couldn't have been nicer. She ended up giving us some of her fruit and if you were wondering....no we were not offered any lingerie. We ended up making about $260 fro our sales towards our adoption fund. Not too bad!

We haven't heard back about when the final home study meeting will be. I am really hoping it will be this week though. We did hear that our background checks came back clear and the only thing they are missing is Greg's doctor letter which I will fax in the morning. Thanks for all your prayers and support!

Blog attempt number 2

I just tried to post about the super cute fabric I bought from Hobby Lobby the other day, how we we painted an accent wall in the nursery brown, how we got a good deal got on some adorable clothes at Target since the sign was marked wrong and my new summer hobbies since I don't have 24 kids, teaching and the after school program filling up my time. It doesn't look like it saved though...

Oh well, here is attempt #2: I have enjoyed finding crafty projects to do around the house. I know I am jumping the gun with the nursery but it has been a fun time filler looking for fabrics, decorating, painting and finding nursery ideas. To clarify, neither of the posts on the blog are actually our nursery. They are just ideas I found of other nurseries that I liked. Ours will end up looking more like the second one though. I like all the colors. I bought 12 different miss-matchy fabrics from Hobby Lobby the other day that I am working together to go in the room. I am excited that Kim agreed to make pillow, a dust ruffle and recover this glider chair that I bought from a Pace Island yard sale 6 years ago. Sorry mom for stealing it back from you. I know you got pretty attached.



I am working on repainting this black end table we had in the room. Since there is no black in the room anymore we decided to go with yellow and a antique looking knob for the front. I have one more coat to do and I will post some pictures.

These are the cute Target outfits we got a deal on. I love them!

Bedding Change of Mind...

I may have changed my mind on the bedding now. I was searching a bunch of different blogs this morning and found this nursery I really like. I may like it more than the elephant bedding that I already bought. This is though... Maybe I could take a poll on which one is cuter. Feel free to comment on which you like better. Here are the two choices:

I have decided either way I go I want to incorporate elephants. ;)

Home study part one completed...check!

We finished the first part of the home study on June 1st. I think it went pretty well. We were asked a bunch of questions about our family, values, beliefs, etc. After a little over 3 hours, we were finished. Lisa and Erin were super great at making the process fun and comfortable. Now we are waiting for our home study report to be typed up to have our final meeting at the Nightlight office and then the papers will be sent to DSS and from there, Taiwan.

Greg and I drove to Orange Park today to surprise my parents. They got back from their Trafalgar trip (Italy, Austria, France, Switzerland and Germany)around midnight. Even with 30 plus hours of no sleep and they were still excited to see us.

We went yard saling in OP. Greg got the new google phone on Friday and it has this amazing garage sale ap that maps out all the yard sales in the area and gives you gps directions to each one. I love it! We hit about 40 yard sales in a fe hours. I found a really cute skirts, shirt, tights and pair of sandals I got for our baby girl. I will try to post picture of my fun finds tomorrow when we get back to SC.

Oh, we justed checked our banking statement and the check from our I-600A form was deposited. That's good news, now we know The Department of Homeland Security got our check. Just waiting on our letter to tell us to come to Charlotte or Charleston to get our fingerprints done. Still praying!