Provision

Tomorrow will be two years since my sweet grandmother, Conk, went to Heaven. I miss her so much. She was such a blessing to me growing up. Since my mom was a single mom and drove an hour to get to work, Conk was like my mom. She taught me so much about life- eventhough at the time I just thought she was teaching me spelling words and multiplication facts. It is crazy how as our girls get older, I see more and more of her in me. She taught me how to be a mom, but since she was a grandmother, she really taught me to be a grandmother. :) (a young grandmother!) God always provides abudantly- and he sure did with her.
Here is a link to a blog I wrote a while back...
http://katescupcakes.blogspot.com/2009/04/missed.html

Homestudy!!!!

Wow, it came fast! On Friday I got a fun e-mail that said our agency would be assigning us a staff memeber to do our homestudy soon. Well, I thought soon meant like in the next couple of weeks. This morning I got an e-mail saying Leslie will do our homestudy and she will call us soon to schedule. Again, I thought soon meant later this week. She called this afternoon to schedule, so I went to my calendar, flipped to the next month and said, "So are we looking at the end of Sept or Oct?" She said, "What about next Wed?" Wow! I thought it would be a month or two away. So we will add this to our craziness! The next 8 days are going to the busiest they have been in a while. I have a dr appt, Olivia's birthday party is this weekend, we have our fire inspection next Tues, our homestudy next Wed., and we are headed to LR after that.

Travis was awesome this weekend. He did a HUGE list of things I needed done, but couldn't do on my own. He spent over 3 hours installing these "Tot Locks" we have to have and he hung pictures, changed the really tall air filter upstairs, and did some other stuff. So thankful for his hard work- esp. since we need it now! We need to put a locking door knob on our office door to lock away things we aren't allowed to have out- so he isn't totally in the clear yet!

Today we had to go through a list of behaviors, etc of kids and say what we are comfortable with taking. I guess this is real. And soon (I don't have any idea what soon means- just sooner than later!) we will have another sweet little girl in our home and family. I can't wait! I can't wait to see her sweet face. Although I don't want to be anxious, so I am working really hard to enjoy the time I have with our girls and get as much school in as we can. Although we did take a day off to go play with some friends at the mall today. And while at the playground I was getting some hand cleaner out of my purse...and there was a gecko in my purse! It was a cute little one. Now there is one living at the mall playground. Sorry mall. But he was really cute. He got quite a ride too. We went to have our TB tests read at the dr and waited almost 30 minutes. What if he had climbed up my arm in there? There would have been a crazy loud scream!

Tomorrow my mom has to go get fingerprinted. She's headed to the police station to get "rolled" as they call it. I wish they'd take a mug shot just for fun. :) We had to get one when we got fingerprinted and we weren't supposed to smile. Hopefully that is my parent's last step to being free to come and stay with us! Crazy what it takes to be on the court approved list.

"And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me." Matt. 18:5

Happy Hour

Today was the big TB test day. I woke up with a groggy mind to Annika asking me where we were going today. She hardly ever asks that. So later in the morning I told her. She was not happy. To say the least. This little one worries like you can't imagine. I did distract for a little with the funny dream I had this morning- I was in line waiting to see the dr. where they made us bite the inside of our arm really hard. I guess I had the test on my mind, too.

The lady told me it was pretty much painless. Annika went first- involved some crying and yelling I don't want to do this. Then Olivia came in from the hallway. Every muscle in her body tensed up and as the nurse did it she was crying and screaming- looking surprised- it IS hurting! it is STILL hurting! And it hurt her for a while. Oh, I feel sorry for her when it is time for her to have a baby. She has a fraction of a pain tolerance.

We left to go to Babies R Us to get some Tot Locks for our cabinets. On the way Annika said, "Is it happy hour?" This makes me smile. I think it is funny my girls talk about happy hour. This of course, refers to Sonic's happy hour. It wasn't, but today we made a special exception. It seemed like the only right thing to do.

Tonight at bedtime Annika read a book to me. At the end the character asks her what she did today. She said (in the sweetest little voice ever)- "Well...we got lollipops and Sonic. It was a good day."

Love it! Don't you wish we could end our day like that- with thoughts of only the good things that happened?

Another success story for today- Olivia and I successfully moved the baby bed (which we had set up like a toddler bed in our playroom to use as a couch) into "the little girl's room" without having to take it all the way apart! Yea! I was very pleased! It now has the little side back on it and the padding off (to follow state rules). Olivia said, "Don't you think the little girl will want the padding? It feels so much better." I totally agree, but we have to see how old she is first. Now we just need to get a big bed for Annika's room and move her full sized bed into "the little girl's room" and we'll be set. It is kind of hard to plan for everything since we have no idea how old she'll be. Well, four or under, but that is quite an age range when you think of things they might need/use.

We also got fire extinguishers so we can pass our fire inspection. It is week after next. Next weekend is Olivia's birthday party. We are having it early to make sure it is still hot enough because she wants to have a water slide birthday. I really should be doing some things to get ready for that. I guess if we get bored we could have a fire extinguisher fight.

Off to watch Date Night with Travis. Hopefully it is good! (It has to be better than preseason NFL!)

We're expecting...

this to take a while. We have some exciting news to share- we are adopting! I haven't said anything because this is a crazy road, and you just don't know what will happen. But not saying anything is killing me and it feels very lonely here. So, I'll say this...we are planning to adopt. That is our hope and our every intention at this point. Trust me, we wouldn't spend this much time going to class and filling out paperwork! And preparing our house to meet some really crazy rules set by the state.

This is our notebook. It is totally crammed now. You can't fit anything else in it. It is full of notes from our classes and paperwork we've filled out.

Here I am with what we had gotten filled out so far. You should understand something about me. I am weird- I love paperwork. I love filling out information and can do it quickly. I had our first packet done in one night and most of the second in a day. It nags at me begging to be done...now! There were a few things lingering that are now pretty much done. Anyone who has adopted internationally is laughing at what I have to fill out. It is a drop in the bucket to what they face. I think we each only had to have 2 things notarized! :) And our fingerprints get done right here in Fort Worth. We do all have to get TB tests. I am not at all excited about this. But the lady at our pediatric clinic promised me they have the best nurse that will do all four of us. Still... how do you explain to a 4 and 6 year old that they are getting a needle put under their skin so we can bring another sister into our house? There will be ice cream after that appointment for sure!

We are planning to adopt domestically through the state. We would like to just do matched adoption, but most young girls end up staying with their foster parents...so we may foster to adopt. This does carry with it the risk of the child going back to their biological parent or family member. So it is actually pretty stressful to swallow all of this! These kids are coming from all kinds of really horrible situations and TX is actually pretty slow to remove children from their parents, so when they do get removed it isn't good.

We have been amazingly blessed by God. Crazy blessed. He has been continually putting adoption on our hearts-starting about two years ago when we were in OH. We would stick our toe in the water and then take off running. (well, that was mostly me) Each time we'd get a little bit farther in, but each time it always ended the same. As we learned more about domestic adoption and all of the rules we ran even faster. But God is funny- he won't let you get too far from where he wants you. He made it ABUNDANTLY clear that we are to be involved in adoption in some way. We decided it was time to do more than just find out more information. So in our kitchen we decided it was time. It was surreal. A huge decision made in a matter of minutes- but really over a couple of years.

Take a look at this picture, do you see what I see? I see two things. 1. An extremely blessed, happy family. Looking a little too relaxed huh? 2. See that space next to Travis. It's the perfect spot for another sweet little girl! :)

I would like to say that hopefully soon we'll have a picture up of our child, but we aren't allowed to put pics up until they are legally ours and the age group we desire is the most desired, so we will probably be waiting a while. We are praying for wisdom and guidance during all of this. We know God will bring us the child he has for our family. We aren't in a hurry.

I still have two all day Sat. classes to do and we have our homestudy. After that we are put on the list until we get matched with either a child that is up for adoption or needing a foster home. I will be totally honest- this has been an emotional roller coaster. With so many questions, doubts and FEARS. And the classes and books we are required to read do not help with fears! We have had to, over the past couple of days, step back from all of that and pray for God to fill our hearts with hope and joy and remember why we are wanting to do this. - Which can and will totally fill up another post!

Thanks for joining us on the newest journey in our lives!

VACATION!

We went on vacation in June. We had planned to go to Destin, but with the oil spill we decided to go to Galveston, TX. It worked out well because it only took us 5 hours to get there! Much better than 12-13 to FL. There was a lot I missed about FL, but our condos were awesome! Here is the super fun slide. We found if you went down on a tube that you could fly! I loved that the most! It is so great because Olivia recently learned to swim and could swim all over the place.



The beach was really yucky because of all of the seaweed, but our condo had an area with white sand. It was great because the shower was right by it. We made sand castles and other funny sand things.



We also went to Moody Gardens Aquarium. It was really great. Annika loves sharks, so she had a great time. Here we are in a shark cage. This is as close as you will ever catch me to one of these!



Our condo had 4 pools that had waterfalls that led into the next one. They were so pretty. The girls had so much fun swimming all over. There was also an indoor heated pool we used to get out of the sun one day. Annika likes to pretend she can swim, so it is a little stressful to swim with her. It was a lot better when we could keep her floatie on her.



We ate at an awesome restaurant called Rudy and Paco's while we were there. I wish it was here! We also played putt putt and played down on the beach one afternoon. The girls didn't care about the seaweed like I did. I am not a fan! They loved finding shells.

Swim Lessons!

We've done nothing since New Years. Just been waitin' around for these swim lessons! :) Olivia had her first swim lesson last weekend. She LOVED it! Here she is with Ms. Katie.



Since we liked Ms. Katie so much, I decided to sign Annika up too! Here she is waiting for Olivia's lesson to be over and for her's to start.




She loved it too! She smiled the entire time!

I can't think of a title

Many exciting things have happened since my last post, but I have no time to write about them. I will just post some pics from Christmas time.Here we are after the Christmas Eve candlelight service. I am super happy to report we did not catch Annika's hair on fire this year.





Travis and I on New Year's Eve. This is the kind of joy that can only be brought by almost ten years of marriage (and a couple of glasses of champagne.) This year's party at my mom's was the best. The whole holiday season flew by too quickly for my liking! With the move, everything just snuck right up on us!




Olivia lost her first tooth. She was so excited! She had made a box for it at my mom's. She wanted to be sure the tooth fairy looked there! : ) Seriously, you can't imagine her joy and how proud she was. To be honest, it made me sad. The girls are growing up way too fast.