some of the most important sentences I've ever read

"America wrestles with its obesity crisis to such an extent that Americans forget there are worse weight problems on earth than obesity."

"For every orphan turning up in a northern-hemisphere household--winning the spelling bee, winning the cross-country race, joining the Boy Scouts, learning to rollerblade, playing the trumpet or the violin--ten thousand African children remain behind alone."

- Melissa Fay Greene, There Is No Me Without You

Swimming....

in a sea of paperwork!

Whew! I am finally starting to make heads and tails of all there is to do. And I think I have sent off for everything there is to send off for. Now we just have to get a letter from our employers, and a letter about life insurance, and a letter from the bank, and reference letters, and....and...and...

But the upside is that last night I sat down with the Gladney checklist and realized we have everything done for the first of three sets of paperwork. Yea! It was nice to see that we are actually making progress.

Here's to having another set of paperwork done the next time I check in!

We're Adopting!

We are excited to announce that we are adopting! For quite a while now, we have talked about adding to our family through adoption. At times we thought we would have another biological child first, but a few months ago that changed.

Around the middle of August, God really started working in my heart that our next child should join our family through adoption. I started quietly researching agencies, and after lots of prayer, and a few weeks, I brought it up to Chris. He listened to everything I had to say and began to pray about it himself.

In the meantime, we went ahead and requested information from various agencies, talked about different countries, and participated in various webinars to get more information.

We finally decided that we wanted to adopt from Ethiopia and we narrowed it down to two agencies.

And then ... we waited. We kept praying about it waiting for specific guidance.

One morning Chris was listening to the radio and they were discussing a new show on TV. They asked the question if you could flash forward six months from now what would the perfect scenario be? Chris realized that for himself and our family that included a son or daughter from Ethiopia.

A few days later we officially decided on Gladney as our agency and requested an application. Since then we have been busy filling out forms!

We are so excited to start this process. We will be requesting a child of either gender between the ages of 0 and 18 months (and we are open to siblings if they become available). We feel like God has really prepared our hearts and our family to begin this process. We know there will be ups and downs, but eventually our child will be with us.

Please be in prayer for us, and for our child (who is probably already born, and could be nearing his or her first birthday!) We are looking forward to this lifechanging journey!