Matilda Jane Clothes are Adorable!

Ted from HOGL emailed us on Tuesday night confirming that they received the hard copy of our home study. That was great news! He was also asking why we were requesting a baby girl. Greg and I have talked and prayed about adoption for years now and we both feel that the Lord wants us to adopt a baby girl from Asia. One reason being, since we have been involved with the Free Chains project through World Causes, we've felt led to adopt from Asia to help fight the injustice of sex trafficking. We realize that sex trafficking is a major issue in many areas of the world, Asia being one of the highest. We tried our best to explain that to HOGL and are praying that can see our hearts and reasoning behind our request for a daughter and realize that we aren't just being picky. We haven't been matched yet. I heard from the grape vine that they may have an unmatched baby boy at HOGL now. We are trying to be patient and continue to pray each day for our daughter.

We are currently in ATL so Greg could help out with the Do Good conference. My sister in law has introduced me the the cutest baby clothes ever! There is this lady who designs super cute and trendy baby clothes called Matilda Jane. I love almost all of them. They are a little pricey and you can't buy them online unless there is a sale. They have home shows like Pampered Chef or you could find some some of them on ebay. Here is the website to check them out. I will definitely be recommending these clothes to clients who have little girls who don't know what to wear for a photo-shoot! Here is a link to her website:

http://www.matildajaneclothing.com/

Good and Bad...

We still haven't heard much from HOGL. I recently went to Nightlight to get more original copies of our home study. I didn't realize we would need so many. I picked up four on Wednesday, 1 original and 3 that we will mail to hogl when they ask us to. Our good news was were scheduled for finger printing appointment in the mail from the department of homeland security yesterday. We go in to the Charlotte office on August 6th at 8:00 am. I am glad it was Charlotte and not Charleston because we can stay with Laura, Grae and all the nieces and nephews for the night. The bad news we found out yesterday is we will have to do an addendum to our home study since we added our new Darley member to the family. We got our pig named Pog last week. He is very sweet and active. Even though I contacted the orphanage and said we wouldn't need to change anything and our home study was fine, the adoption agency we are going through said otherwise. They said If there are any changes in our household it has to be reported by law in our home study. So...we are out $100 and Nightlight has to resend our home study to DSS, homeland security,etc. But, I don't think it will hold up the adoption process much if at all. So that is good news too! Please pray that we will hear from HOGL soon with a match. We are ready for our baby girl to come home!

Back from Vactation

We just got back a few hours ago from our Western road trip with our friends the Halls. We had a lot of laughs, made a lot of memories and experienced some crazy things. The trip was really fun but we are glad to be home. It seemed like everywhere we went in California, Utah, Houston, etc. there were adorable little Asian girls all over the place, which made us stop and smile. It's so fun to think about our baby and how she is doing, how big she's getting....

No real news as far as being matched yet. All we've heard was there had been a glitch in the computer at the Home of God's Love Orphanage and their computer crashed. As of now, they haven't been able to open up our home study on their computer yet due to all the issues. We are trying to be patient as we're waiting to be matched with our baby girl. Please keep praying.

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.