Keep Calm & Carry On

Last night as Lance and I were going to sleep on our couch (both sneezing & coughing and drugged up on allergy meds), wedged between piles of adoption paper work, half packed boxes, dismantled bed frames, mattresses leaning against the walls, and the contents of all of our kitchen cabinets piled as far as you can see, he prayed, "Dear God, please help us to keep calm and carry on with our lives as best possible". I had to chuckle at the sheer chaos of our lives right now! That picture came to mind and I think we just may need to buy it and hang it above the mantle in our new house! Everything we have going on is such a blessing. We are crazy busy with our jobs. Blessing! Crazy busy with moving into our house. Blessing! Crazy busy with our adoption. SUPER DUPER AMAZING BLESSING! But, these blessings are also making us tired! Bring it on God, this phase of our lives will definitely bring glory to you if this A.D.D girl is still standing at the end of 2012, baby in arms, still employed and with a house that actually has furniture and pictures hanging on the walls!

Baby bedding!

I know I am jumping the gun due to the fact that we are just about to start our home study (e.g., social worker comes in and checks us out) and have months ahead before we are holding our baby. BUT I just can't help but browse baby bedding! A baby girl sleeping in my house in her beautiful pink bedding has been a dream of mine for a loooooong time and I can't wait to see that little brown head poking out of her pink and white crib in the morning! Here are the ones I love! I like the soft pinks and antique looking old school stuff!! So excited! I can't wait to create a pretty room for my baby girl to come home to!! She soooo deserves some ruffles!! Who doesn't!? These are the two I like right now!

I Love My Hair

I have been doing a bit of research on how in the world I am going to do this little ones hair. I am actually going to a conference in January and they have some "just for fun" sessions and the one I signed up for is African hair care. I also have a friend from work that has been telling me about the PROCESS involved in doing African American hair. It's a far cry from the the 5 minute brush, add some curl spray, and shake with a towel I do every morning! BUT she showed me this video and I laughed so hard!! For any one who knows me well you know, biological or not, my child will be a spaz! This little spastic puppet made me laugh so hard! I can so see myself blasting this video and performing the moves along with the lyrics for our daughter on days when she "hates" her hair!
Enjoy!

A girls gotta have some clothes!

I realized I never actually posted about the gender of the child we will be adopting. We went into this with no intention of specifying a gender. However, after some prayer and other factors that I probably won't blog about, we are officially adopting a little girl!!!! When this decision became official I just had to go out and get baby girl some clothes! Aren't those little jeans and that tiny bow JUST THE CUTEST!! :)

Oh Lance, you have no idea the world you are walking into!! But, such a cute daddy already!! :)

Why Ethiopia

Why are we adopting from Ethiopia of all places? Well let me tell you!

We went into this whole thing with the intentions of adopting from Uganda. I LOVE the people there and always imagined our family consisting of a Ugandan or two (maybe someday it will). Without going into too much detail we did a lot of research about Uganda and the children and came to the conclusion that, yes, there are thousands of children without families. There are children of all ages available for adoption with the majority of the need being kids over 4. I would sit on the computer and look at waiting child postings (not just in Uganda but here in Texas) and sob looking at the little faces dressed in their best clothes hoping someone would notice them and bring them home. A literally gut wrenching painful reality that leaves a knot in my stomach just typing it. I began to slowly have my eyes opened to a real life crisis not just across the world but right here in the US! And when I say crisis I mean CRISIS!!!

This is a bad thing y'all. I learned that there are about 147 million children that do not have a mom and dad to tuck them in at night. 147 million children that have never had a hug from mommy and daddy, never had a hot meal and never had a bed to call their own. 147 million children that have no sense of security, safety, our love! 147 million little babies that would do anything to have a mommy to squeeze tight at the end of the day and a daddy to show them off to his friends. 147 million innocent lives at risk of being victimized, abused, starved or worse.

As I looked at my precious little nephew and so many of my friends children I began to get angry at the harshness of this world. While these babies are being rocked to sleep in snugglie blankets and watching baby Einstein, 147 million others are starved for love and affection not to mention literally starving for their basic needs to be met. Just not fair!! So how could we help!? We don't really have much extra money. We don't have a big house. I drive a beetle, I couldn't even fit 1 baby in that car! Those were just a few of the things I was dwelling on. In reality we are rich compared to most of the world, we have a bigger house than most people in the world and we own two cars free of debt while the majority if the world doesn't even own one car! Not sure how I got so out of touch with reality but I'm glad God was able to bust through my shallowness!

So we are officially adopting but don't know for sure from where. We learn that it will be rather hard to get an infant from Uganda right around the time that we learn we are having some fertility issues of our own. I selfishly want to experience raising a baby and want Lance and I to go through that together. This is a very hard thing for me to admit b/c I often still feel like I am turning my back on the precious 8 year old girl in the red dress with matching red bows. If I wont be her mommy who will?! These things still leave me laying up at night. We learned that there are millions of orphans in Ethiopia as well, and that there are often young babies available for adoption. We did the initial interview with the Ethiopia people and I asked her if there was a bigger need in Ethiopia or Uganda and she said, "Where there is one orphan there is a need". So true! This was so good to hear and reinforced that it doesn't matter where of how you are helping as long as you are helping. We prayed for about a month about it and decided Ethiopia it was.

We are not changing the world by any means and aren't even putting a dent in the orphan crisis, but at least we know one baby will have a chance to know Jesus and feel like they belong! Ohhh sooo excited just thinking about squishing this little one!!! So there you have it. So excited to finally see the family that God has planned for us! So glad He has opened our eyes!! :)

If you say, "But we knew nothing about this," does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?"
Proverbs 24:12

New Job!!

I know I said I would do a post on "why Ethiopia" and I will be doing that soon! Hopefully tomorrow. We have been SO incredibly busy moving into the house and dealing with what we have learned is called the adoption "paper chase" and a "paper chase" it is!!! You would not believe the amount of documents required and it seems like each group we are working with (e.g., social worker, agency....) need the exact same things. I feel like I am repeating the same forms over and over. BUT it's ok!! We are HAPPY to do it! :)

The real reason for today's post is to share the exciting news that Lance got a new job. I haven't posted all that much about Lance's job journey on here, but in a nutshell, he has pretty much been looking for a job since he graduated with his Master's last May. He has been working as a fitness manager/personal trainer at 24 hour fitness for over a year and we are so grateful that he was able to do that. However, it was a highly commission based job with pretty bad hours, ok awful hours. We never saw each other and it was just not great.

Last week after a LONG year 1/2 of interiews he accepted a management position with the YMCA in Katy and will be overseeing all of their fitness programs. It is a fixed income type of thing so we won't have to deal with the unknowns of a commission based job anymore. This is particularly exciting for me b/c although I will still have to work a bit, it will give me a better idea of how much (or little hehe) I will be working once baby girl comes!

We are also working working working trying to fix up our new casa! We love the house, but it really needed some help to make "home". Without a lot of extra money to spend I will be hitting up pinterest a lot to see other peoples CUTE decoration ideas. Speaking of Pinterest, it won't let me on and I have to use Betho's account. I think they are full or something. Wierd!

So as you can probably see we are keeping ourselves pretty busy around here. Hoping we still have a few friends by the end of this year b/c we haven't had a while lot of time for socializing lately! Bear with us guys!! :)

Until next time.......

Our coffee site!!!!

Lance and I just set up our coffee site to raise money to bring little baby Agan home!!! The organization we are working with is called "Just Love Coffee" and they are awesome. They help support not only adoptive families, but also help to support the economy of third world countries where coffee is one of their main exports. We will be given $5 from every coffee sale and are hoping to raise enough money to pay our first agency fee of $2,900. This is yummy, good quality stuff! So, if you are a lover of coffee then stop by our page and grab a bag!! If you like it don't forget to tell a friend! Click here to go to our site.

Much love,

Kayla, Lance & Baby A :-)