Christmas Boutique Fundraiser

Contact info for the vendors will be posted soon for those of you who want to order but cannot come to the boutique! Many thanks to Samantha for organizing this event!

Girl Time

Isaac and I attended the LifeCare of Brandon Gala on October 14th at the Tampa Hyatt. As usual, LifeCare pulled out all the stops for a great night for an awesome cause. Isaac and I were blessed to be asked to host a table this year, and we had such a good time with our friends that joined us to support LifeCare. And yes, Tara and I wore the same dress! Great minds think (& dress) alike! The ladies did enjoy dressing up-the boys, not so much.

The next day, Katie, Sam and I attended a weekend "Women of Faith" conference. We stayed in the governor's suite at the Tampa Marriott Waterside thanks to a packed hotel and a booking mistake! I enjoyed being "sleeping beauty" Saturday morning while Sam and Katie ran a combined 15 miles along Bayshore Blvd...overachievers, these girls! My favorites from the conference were Mandisa's mini-concert, Anita Renfroe's comedy routine, and Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman's testimony. And when I came home on Saturday night, Isaac had finished his honey-do list for the weekend-awesome!

We made the Waiting List!!!

Yea!!! We made the waiting list tonight! Natalie, our caseworker with Gladney, sent us an email this evening congratulating us on finishing our dossier and completing this phase of the adoption process including our long CIS wait. Now, we get to wait some more, but this time for pictures of our sweet little babies! Baby pictures are much more exciting to wait for than an immigration document;) The current wait for a single baby under 12 months with Gladney is 8 months until referral, however, because we have requested siblings, our wait could not be estimated. Our wait may be shorter or longer than this...it all depends on our specifics matching up with our specific children at that specific time...it is going to have to be a God-thing, truly! For us, we are just excited to finally be paper-pregnant...it is becoming very real now that we will be parents next year! Praise God for answered prayers!

The Sun has Set on Immigration

Aren't sunsets so peaceful? Isn't is amazing that God created sunsets to be the grand finale on a beautiful day? Don't they give you hope for a better tomorrow and great days to come?

We are smiling because our summer slump over our immigration woes has come to a close! We are so grateful for answered prayers! The heavy weight has been lifted off of our shoulders, and the black cloud is gone with only blue skies in sight!

Last week, our caseworker at Gladney suggested that we ask for a supervisor at immigration because another Gladney family with our same situation had a supervisor expedite their paperwork for them. I called Isaac and asked him to perform his magic sales tricks on the human robots at the NBC...and he did! The supervisor told him that our paperwork is literally buried underneath more boxes, and our paperwork is physically inaccessible. However, she would accept scanned copies of our file (thank the Lord!, we made copies of everything!) via email and see what she could do for us. We could not make contact with her on Friday, and I was already losing faith in her thinking that this was just another government employee paying us lip service, yet again. But, when Isaac went to the mailbox today, our immigration approval letter (171-H) had arrived! He called me at work to give me the good news...I couldn't believe it! Tomorrow we will have the document notarized and then FedEx it to Kate of KBS dossiers who will then send our dossier to Ethiopia...then we make the waiting list!!!

"Faithful is He who calls you, and He will bring it to pass." 1 Thess. 5:24