So blessed you are on this earth!

Today is my sister's birthday. Not Bethany, but my other sister, Roxanne! We are not related by blood, but are sisters. I wrote this on her facebook wall, but I could not do life without her. We live in different places now, but will be "doing life" together for the next 60 years! Roxanne is my constant encourager, shoulder to cry , person to laugh hysterically with, and just all around wonderful friend who is always there for me! She is always seeking to be the best wife and mother possible and is on a never ending journey to seek the Lord and grow closer to him with everything she is and does. She has been blessed with many gifts, but what stands out the most is her ability to love othes. Jesus says all over the bible that loving others is the greatest, most important thing we can do here on earth. Rox is bursting every day with the love of Jesus and it shows. Everyday! So refreshing!! I love you Rox and am SO thankful for your 27 years on this earth. SO SO many people are blessed with your presence!!

Yipee!!

All adoption papers are now sent!! The crazy, busy part is finally over! Such a relief! And if that wasn't exciting enough my last day at work before my transition to my new job is tomorrow and I am SO looking forward to some time to myself in between jobs. I will have 3 weeks off which will give me some free time! I am looking forward to more quiet time in the mornings and afternoons, more time to cook, more time to clean, more time to work out and more time with my hubby and friends and family I need to catch up with!

I emailed our agency and asked what I needed to do next and her reply was, "Once we get your dossier, it will make its way around the US getting sealed. (UT...Washington DC-US embassy-ET embassy...UT again...then ETHIOPIA!!) At that point you will be on the wait list for a referral. YEAH! Do a happy dance! :)"

If you know me at all you know I of course did a happy dance!! I know the real hard part is still to come but I feel so accomplished knowing I completed all this craziness that they call the "paper chase". I mean, it was hard work. It was hard juggling work, buying a home, changing jobs, Lance changing jobs, and going through some emotionally and physically difficult fertility stuff. But we did it. Of course we did. Jesus told us to do it. I'm so glad we listened and let him push our faith to points farther than it has been pushed before. We are filled up to the brim with love for our precious little Jane Jordan!!

We would like our friends and family to continue praying for this adoption with us. If you could specifically pray for:

1. The health of this child's mother as she carries her. Pray that her mother continues to feel God's presence in her life and pray that she is experiencing peace.
2. Pray that Jane's mother has food to eat and a safe place to sleep.
3. Pray that Jane's mother has friends and family in her life to help her in this journey.
4. Pray that Baby Jane is getting the nourishment that she needs and is developing into the perfect little girl God is forming her to be.
5. Pray for our ability to continue to have the ability to finance this adoption. We have been floored, absolutely floored at the response we have had in this area. However, we have a ways to go and are still only 50% there as far as fundraising goes.
6. Pray for Lance and I and give us wisdom as we prepare our hearts and our home for welcoming this little one who may have lots of unknown needs.
7. Pray that we will become parents naturally and know how to transition into this role.

Thanks guys!!! We love all of you so much!!! :)

Next paperwork stop....Addis Ababa, well almost!

We got a call from our agency today telling us that we forgot to sign a form and that my employer forgot to sign something too. But hey, we sent them 38 notarized forms and 25 pgs of education, so that's not too bad. If this was school I would have gotten 96%! I am going to get the missing signatures from my employer and get our stuff all fixed and resend Monday morning. So instead of our papers heading towards Ethiopia tomorrow it will be next Wednesday. No biggie! I KNEW I would mess something up! I guess our papers needed to be in just a few days later in God's timeline! That is my new motto for this adoption. When something happens I am choosing to believe it is just lining us up with the perfect baby! :)

But we are so happy to know that we are about to be on the notorious "wait list". In the mean time we are just waiting for our fingerprinting appointments with the FBI and then I guess Lance and I will just sit and stare at each other for the next 6-7 months until they send us a picture of our baby! ;)

Other than that not much else going on. I am wrapping up my last two weeks at my job before I make the switch to my new job. In between jobs I will have 3 weeks off!

On Jan 28th I am heading to Atlanta for an adoption retreat (Created for Care). I am going to have 3 days to sit and soak up wisdom from christian women that have been at this for a long time! I am rooming with a sweet girl that I have yet to meet, but that has two little twin girls that she adopted domestically and they are SO CUTE! I am so excited to meet this new friend. God aligned our paths in a really cool way and I think we are destined to be friends.

I will need to post about the SUPER cool story about even getting into this conference some other time. But it was nothing short of miraculous! :)

I thought I would add a few pics of Jane's Christmas toys from her family for all to see! I'm thinking she already has a pretty big fan club. And of course some pics of my fav little man Max. He has been a sick little munchkin and it is SO sad! But of course, still 100% cute as can be!!!

That's all for now. I hope everyone is enjoying their week post Christmas!

So close I can taste it!!

Good news on the adoption timeline front! We are finished with our home study and have completed our dossier!! We are awaiting final approval that our dossier is correct (you hear absolute horror stories about people being delayed years due to this paperwork being wrong!), and will be getting the final copy of our home study after Christmas. This means that we can send in our immigration paperwork, and wait for our fingerprinting appointments! Once that is done we will officially be a waiting family!! So to all of you non-adoption people who may as well be reading Chinese with all this, we are hoping to be a "waiting family" by some point in January!

Once we are approved and waiting all we have to do is wait! I know this will be hard in its own way, but we will be able to focus on fun baby stuff! It's kind of like we are done "trying" to get pregnant, and can take a deep relaxing breath and just wait for the baby to come. Waits right now are approx. 6 months. So we may just have a picture of our baby girl to show off this summer!!

I hope everyone is having a great Holiday so far. I had a VERY hard time today with the oral typhoid pills we are taking. It was a very, very, very hard day at work today. I was so nauseous that at one point I could not even move without throwing up! I had to text a friend to come into my office and help me! But it seems to have passed. Whew. The bad thing is that I have 3 days left on the pills and my doctor is closed for Christmas! Hoping not to have to repeat this. :)

Love.

Ok. I love this. Kinda teared up when I saw it! I am ordering this tomorrow for her nursery! I cannot wait for the beginning of her "sweet little story" and I cannot wait until her "page meets mine"! And our story already most DEFINITELY reads LOVE! We love you soooo much little one, where ever you may be right now!! :)

A baby actually comes at the end!!

I'm not sure if this is how pregnant people feel or not, but the whole adoption thing is very surreal! It seems so far away that I have a hard time really believing that when this is all said and done we will be getting a baby! I have been following a few people's adoption blogs and they are both in Ethiopia. One for their first trip to meet their baby and the other to pick their baby up. I just got soooo excited this morning thinking about that day for us! It still doesn't really seem real, but seeing others at then end of the journey with their babies was so encouraging and exciting!!! :)

Mom Jobs

I totally have a job that you could call a "mom job". I actually switched my major from Broadcast Journalism to Speech Pathology so I could have a job that lends itself to mommy"ing". Which was also good, b/c I think I was a pretty awful journalism major. Now that motherhood is starting to finally creep in, although very slowly and in an unexpected way, I am thankful for my career choice.

Since we moved to Sugar Land I have been experiencing quite the little commute. Yesterday I left for work at 7:45 and arrived at 9:20 due to 2 wrecks! I had no intention of leaving my current job until recently and an offer literally fell into my lap. So, I will be starting a new job in the good ol suburb of Sugar Land on February 6th. It is minutes from my house, and they are in the process of creating extra space so that the therapists can bring their children to work!!

I am still unclear about what my work life is going to look like when baby J gets here, but I am SO thankful for my job, the flexibility, and the opportunity to help little cutiepatooties learn how to communicate with this big scary world! :)

Not much else is going on around here....HA, yeah right! We are now in the process of getting our 8 hours of agency required training done, 2 hour online seminar, transracial exercises, and discussion questions done. I guess I was skimming when I read this part of our adoption manual b/c I could have sworn we didn't have to do this now. But apparently it must be done before we can submit our dosseir, thus keeping us off waiting lists until it is done. Oh, and one of our exercises is to "experience ethiopian cuisine and write about the experiece". So if anyone wants a unique evening out, feel free to join us. I actually found a place on Richmond in Houston that is supposed to be yummy!

We were also told that right now in Ethiopia, waits for a referral are approx. 6-7 months and that once you get your referral you are still looking at a 6-8 month wait until you can bring the baby home. So assuming we are finally on a waiting list in 2 months or so, we are still looking at some waiting. I am continually floored that it is so darn difficult to get these babies out of the orphanages. But, it is what it is. It will just make that day even better when we fianlly load up our precious cargo into the car at IAH and drive her to her forever home!!!

That's all for now. It is definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Not so much feeling like it, it is 75 and humid today. But growing up in Houston, I have stopped wishing for the cold. 75 degree Christmas feels like Christmas to me! :)