Thank You

I just have to say that I am really impressed and like our case worker and Adoption and Beyond. Rachel is just wonderful and working so hard with us to get our homestudy done and completed correctly! Just wanted to thank one of those 'behind the scenes' people in this process! You're amazing!!!

Dance, Dance, Dance!

Our niece Macy had her yearly dance recital today! It is always fun to go watch. The pictures are in reverse order b/c I can't get them to rearrange. So, here is the recital in reverse. This is Macy at the end with her beautiful flowers!

Macy is the little girl to the right of the boy. Isn't she just adorable.

Here Macy is again in the same dance. It was the last dance she was in. She was in three.


This is her (the one in the center). This is her second dance.

Here she is in her first dance of the day. It was her tap dance. She is the little blondie on the far left end.

I love going to the recitals. They are just so cute.

And for the evening. Dan is working on fixing our water heater. It has a valve that is leaking. Hopefully he can fix it without having to replace it. So, that is his project for the evening. Mine is to clean things up. Straighten the table, since we can't seem to keep it clean, do the dishes, all that glamorous stuff! I know you want to switch places with us!!

Our heart is in...

This is what our letter magnets on the fridge read. Well, to be honest, right now, it says 'Ethiopa'. After our weekend visit, we can't find the second 'I', but oh well. Maybe at some point we'll get a new set of letters. The magnets in these barely hold the letters... We'll have to see.
(And isn't that a cute picture of my brothers 7 kids!)

Another Slight Delay!

It seems like Satan keeps trying to get me down... We have another slight delay (hopefully not too long). Adoption and Beyond (homestudy agency) email me on Monday (thankfully the lady went in to get a little work done) and told me that they had received my VA background check back - unprocessed. In other words, there was a small error and they wouldn't touch it unless everything was just so. You want to know the error - I overpaid them by $1. That's it. Adoption and Beyond told me it was a $6 fee (you couldn't read the fine print on the form) so that's what I sent. Low and Behold - it's only a $5 fee. I could have cared less if they kept the extra dollar, but oh well, what you going to do. So, it should get back here to us hopefully today and then we can put it back int he mail with the $5 money order and hopefully they will process it quicly!!! Please Pray for quick turnover! Thanks!

Friends

We got to go to the zoo today with Dave, Kristen, and Karalyn. These are some of our best friends from Colorado Springs and we look forward to their visit every Memorial day weekend. This will probably be our main outing and we will spend the rest of the time at home playing games, watching movies, taking naps, eating and just hanging out together.

Adoption Update!

I emailed the lady at Adoption and Beyond today (our homestudy agency), and asked her what the status of things were for our homestudy. She said she was making some revisions on our homestudy based on some she had to make on a previous AGCI homestudy and then she was sending it in to AGCI this afternoon. Yeah! I know that Monday is a holiday and no one is working, but I don't care...at least it is finally there. We are still waiting on the VA and MD checks for me, but if we can get it approved and ready, hopefully the checks will come in soon and it will all be ready to go. The rest of the dossier paperwork is anxiously awaiting the homestudy so it can be sent. I am praying, praying, and praying some more that all goes smoothly and we can get the dossier sent in the first or second week of June!!

We're famous!!

Or not!!! We made the Garden City Telegram 'Neighbors' Sections. You can read the article here. Enjoy!

On the adoption front...

Our homestudy is about done. We are waiting on background checks, but our case worker from Adoption and Beyond went ahead and let us review it, so we did on Wednesday and got it back to her that same night. So, once again, we are waiting. But, that's about where we are at right now... Not much more going on.

A Relaxing Weekend!

Dan and I took it easy this weekend. It was great! We have been so busy, we just needed some rest. We went out on a date on Friday night. Also, Dan had to work on Saturday, so then we relaxed a bit on Saturday evening and did just a bit around the house yesterday. It was nice. We watched Fireproof. It is an excellent film. If you haven't watched it, it is worth your time. Here is the trailer for it :

Our Garage Sale...

This is going to be a photo commentary for the most part. Just to say, it went awesome and was a huge success! Very little of the stuff sold was ours, most was donated.

This is setting up Friday night - people were showing up to buy already - and the sale was technically only on Saturday!

Early Saturday morning - donuts and coffee to start the day!

A little play before the day begins!

A beautiful Kansas Sunrise!

We had a ton of stuff!

A somewhat 'Birds eye view'

Our early morning Saturday help!

My niece kept finding fun things she wanted and had a great time playing at the garage sale. Here she had found a Dora cash register and had a great time 'scanning' items that were for sale.

Shopping, shopping, and more shopping!

My sister and her son, still setting stuff out on Saturday mroning. He had a great time with all the bottles of smelly stuff! Let's just say he was fragrant before the day ended.

Our puppy wanted to come out and be with all the people, so we put him in the back of a trailer that was for sale. It was just funny when he stood here looking out at us, right over the 'for sale' sign.

My newphew was eating lunch and needed a place to sit, so he went out and grabbed this toilet training chair and sat at the cooler - his table - and ate lunch! It was funny to see!

At the end of the day, this is all that was left. It looks like a lot, but is about 1/4 or less than what we started with.

the sale officially opened at 7, there wasn't much business until about 8 and then it officially went until 2, but people didn't slow down and leave until 4 or so. We didn't finish cleaning up until 6:30 on Saturday evening! It was a late night.

Another excititng thing about the day. A friend of ours called the local paper and told them about what we were doing. The paper came by and took picures and then last night (Monday), a reporter came by and interviewed us to do an article about us in our local paper. I will post a link to their website when the article comes out! T

Why...

Why is it that when your social worker says it will be one week until you get your homestudy, it takes over 2 (and we still don't have it!). Why is it that when she says in a phone call (after two weeks) that you will get it any moment, five days later, you still don't have it! I just dont' understand. If it is going to take you 3-4 weeks to get it done, just tell me. Don't get my hopes up to just dash them again!!! Ok, so as you can tell I am still anxiously awaiting getting our homestudy back and reviewed. It is still the only thing we are waiting on to turn in our dossier and to be honest, I am getting really impatient. I am just relying on the fact that I know God is in control and has a perfect plan for us. T

A Long Day...or Two

We can't remember... It has been a long, long two days! Awesome, but long! I will post more later, but here is a little taste...
This is how we felt when all was said and done (unfortunately the picture was taken right at the beginning of all the work!)

And to give you a glimpse of the enormity...

This is at the start of things this morning - a view of most of the yard, but there is still more off to the left that didn't make the picture as well...so much stuff! Yeah!!!

Last Weekend of Bible Bowl

This past weekend was the last weekend of regular Round Robin Bible Bowl for the year. It was a great time in Niwot, CO (near Denver)! Now we are focusing and getting redy for a couple of college tournaments and then nationals. This year Nationals is in Indianapolis. We are really excited to be going with the kids. Here is the website for Bible Bowl if you are wandering what it is about. We love working with the kids each week in studying the Word and learning to be young people with Godly character. Here is a picture of some of the fun! - These are some of the kids during the awards ceremony. We took 60 people with kids and sponsors... It's always a blast!!

We also had a great visit that day from Dan's dad and step-mom and 'little' brother Jeremy. It was nice to see them and spend a little time with them.

Soon to be for Sale!

This will be just a quick post with some pix because I told my mom I would show her what our house/garage looked like after picking up more donations for our garage sale this coming weekend. We are tired and weary from a long/late weekend of Bible Bowl (which I will post more on later this week). We are working to get the garage sale together for this Saturday...and our house is in total disarray!!!

This is one view of our garage

And some other views...

And then the living room...

A closer look at all the stuff - and this is after going through 8 bags of items...

And a few bikes and a picknic table in the backyard (no, the bench is not for sale either...)