The shock has warn off...

now the panic is setting in...I have so much to do!! I am praying that after this week my job slows down and no more 50-55 hour weeks for awhile. My class is a lot of work but will be done right before we leave so that is good. Anyway, we have a lot of awesome people in our lives who have offered to help us which is a true blessing!! We have friends who are going to take Nicky and some other friends who are taking the dogs...what a relief to have that figured out! Simon's last day at the bank is next Tuesday so he will be home with Nicky and has a lot of projects around the house to knock out.

Praying for peace as we wait for travel dates!!

We PASSED!!

We are parents again...baby David is ours. We are praising God right now...thank you for all of the prayers!!

My new strategy...

I have it figured out, I am going to proceed with our life as if we are leaving to go get baby David on July 25th. Our coordinator did say that if we passed last week that would be the most likely travel date. I am packing and buying the last things we need for him: car seat, double stroller, diapers, and crib sheets. I think this will work to get things moving and hear next week that the adoption is final. I am actually really busy with work (Lord help me we go live with our new finance software July 6th) and my class for grad school. We are reading over 250 pages a week! Somehow with all of that, I still find time to obsess over the boys. I am also focusing my time on Nicky. He is missing Bella terribly and this will be his last summer as an "only child".

Please pray that God will move mountains (again!) and get the last paperwork early this week so we can get our embassy date scheduled.

Happy father's day to all of the daddy's out there. I am blessed with a great dad and miss him a lot.

Here are some photos of the dad's in my life:

My Dad, Bella & Nicky

No news....

No news on baby David's case but we did receive this cute picture of Bella today. We miss her so much...

Yes, that is a real Tiger cub!!

Court update

Well, we did not technically pass court today. The letter of recommendation from the government agency that approves the adoptions was missing. The good news is that they did not schedule another court date because they will be able to finish the adoption once they receive the letter. Our agency coordinator thought it may be in a couple of days. Still waiting, but we are closer than we were yesterday! God is so good to us!

We have a court date!

We just found out that our court date for baby David is Wednesday!!! Yes, this Wednesday and since ET is 9 hours ahead of us we should know Wednsday morning if we passed or not. Please pray for our court date over the next couple of days.

Discouraged: how much longer must we wait??

Simon and I were talking last night and decided that Friday is the hardest day of the week for us...you are asking, "Why, you guys are crazy, who doesn't LOVE Friday?"

To us, it means another week has gone by with no court date; our baby boys are another week old; we have missed out on another week of our babies lives; our babies have had to go to sleep another 7 more times without hearing their mommy and daddy tell them they love them. That's why we hate Fridays.

Pretty depressing isn't it? Well, as only God can do, He brought me out of the dumps through the message of our wonderful Pastor Alan tonight.

Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand
When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, "Where shall we buy bread for those people to eat?" He asked this only
to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Philip answered
him, "Eight months' wages would not buy enough bread for each one to have
a bite!" Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up. Here
is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they
go among so many?" John 6:5-9

We all know the rest of the story...Jesus takes the five loaves of bread and two small fish and feeds the entire group of 5,000. What about that little boy who gave
his food to Jesus, he may have given his entire families food for the day to
Jesus.

Do we give Jesus all of our resources so that He can multiply in ministering to
others?

This message reminded me of how Simon and I gave our resources (our money, our hearts, the hearts of our kids) to Jesus in order to step out in faith to adopt a baby from Africa. We have seen how our choice has allowed us to minister to others about adoption. I feel more a peace now after the gentle reminder from our loving Father that He will deliver our baby boy to us. We gave Jesus our resources and we will see Him use them to multiply!!!

Is this MY kid or what?

We asked Nicky to pick up his toys in the kitchen and this is what we got...

He lined them all up perfectly!! I never remember Bella being that organized. I think we have an engineer or an accountant on our hands!!

Flowers and Adoption Update

I received some Iris bulbs from a friend a few years ago. She gave me two bags, one labeled white and the other purple. Well, we planted them with the thought that they would be the front row in our flower bed in front of our house. The third summer is here and this is what they look like:

They are GIANT and not purple or white, but yellow! I love them but they have taken over the entire flower bed!!

Many of you have been asking and praying (thank you so much) for our adoption and the boys. I talked to our coordinator yesterday and although she did not have a court date for baby David, she did say they were confident they would get all kids referred so far this year through court before the closure in August & September. What wonderful news!!! We have been discouraged the last week or so because it has been 4 weeks now since we officially accepted the referral and no court date. We were told they anticipated the date would come faster for us this time because we had already been through the process with baby "T". "Faster" to us meant 2 weeks, tops!! Anyway we are praising God as it seems that we will still be able to go get baby David yet this summer. No news on baby "T".