oh happy day

I was driving home from work at 3:30 am and I was thinking about how wonderful my life is, and how blessed I really am. My life is great, and I am really happy in it. Even more good news for today..... Craig said I can't go in the basement laundry room today because he put mouse poison down there. hooray! no more mice, and no laundry duty today! oh, and I have the day off, and get to just stay home and hang with Gabe, does it get better?

trying not to worry

well, we were denied for yet another adoption grant. Just because we pay all our bills on time and are living within our means doesn't mean that this isn't going to be a financial strain! The debt aspect of adoption is what terrified us in the first place! sorry, but it's just frustrating. We choose to drive cars that aren't new - at all - and we have chosen not to redo the bathroom right now (even though it needs it), and we choose to be responsible with the money that we have.

I'm just beginning to feel that because we've been careful and aren't in an economic crisis that we're being punished. I realize that they help those who have special needs and those who don't have jobs like ours first. and I totally agree, except that I'm starting to get scared with this debt looming on the horizon.

I would love to say that we've got it all together financially, I would love to have more than $300 in savings, but I don't. But we are working on it, and we are working on it hard. But I still feel that we're really stepping out on a limb with this adoption expense.

Oh well, the Lord will provide. He always has, and I believe that this is what He wants us to do. He's made that much plain. I will continue to trust that He will pave the way for it to happen.

profile sent!

Alright, we sent our new and improved profile to the agency. I actually added some more "scrapbooky" elements to some of the pages that were more plain before I sent it in. I tried really hard not to take the focus away from the pictures though. Christa (the one who is in contact with most of the birthmothers) said that when our profile was shown by itself to the test audience, everyone thought we were great, but when it was shown with other profiles it tended to be ignored. Too much info, not enough cool stuff on it I guess. (other than us) :o) So we made one that was even more spiffy. So, unfortunately, this means.................. that Craig was right. Now I'll never hear the end of it. :o) They don't have any birthmoms "pending" right now, so they'll have time to review it, and we'll have time to fix things. You know what I'm most excited about? I saved almost 50% on all the copies! woo!

and now it's frogs

Well, we got rid of the turtle, I mean "returned the turtle to it's natural habitat" over the summer (thank goodness). Then today Gabe made a deal with his dad. He would return the worms, that have been living in my cake container on the kitchen table for the past few days, to the flower bed. IF he could get african water frogs at Wal-Mart. So now they're living on the kitchen table in a fish bowl (with an improvised lid). It's funny, but I don't mind any of this at all. I'm actually pretty amused by it all. I love being that little boy's mommy.

grants grants baby!

At least that's the way we hope it works out! and in that order! :o) We are still waiting to hear from 2 of the grant organizations we applied to, and should know by this month or next. The others said no, so I hope we hear something soon. The looming financial burden is making me nervous. I know everything will work out no matter what, because I really feel this is what God has led us to do. And we're beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel on some of our debts (dental bills, etc.) so that's encouraging. The recycling can drive is filling our garage for now, until the aluminum prices go up. So, we have to wait and see if that's profitable, and we have had $100 in donations from people who just want to help us. Isn't that amazing? But it sure would be nice to have a big chunk of the total cost already covered! We'll see!

time to vote!

Hi,
We're doing a little experiment before we have our adoption profile expert-type person check out the new profile. If you've got the time, check out both profiles - the old one is on the top, new one is on the bottom. If you click on them it should take you to photobucket where you can do a slideshow, or whatever works best for your viewing convenience. :o)

Craig didn't think the old one was warm enough - too factual, too much info, not a whole lot of pictures of the 3 of us doing stuff. So, we revamped. We took out most of the pages of our extended family (sorry guys!) and most of the pages of Gabe and his various pets, etc. We tried to put in more pictures that show us being a family, and taking our trips and other cool stuff.

I know they don't want a whole lot of "busyness" on the pages, so I just used the patterned backgrouns mainly as frames for the pics. I hope it's not too much.

Let us know what you think!

redoing profile?

oh geez. We might have to redo our profile..... again. Craig starting worrying after we weren't chosen by the birthmother last week that there was something wrong with our profile. He thinks it might not be "warm" enough. So, to ease his mind I contacted the lady who shows the profile - and who helped us put it together. She said she's going to let some unbiased people to review it this week and give feedback, she understands that it's important to us. I'm very grateful to her, but I really don't want to redo that thing. Scrapbooking is not my thing! I really hope she won't take it out of "circulation" to show it to the unbiased people, whoever they are...... I better email her again. bye!

update

The birthmom that was looking at our profile on Monday chose another family. We're trying to be happy for them, I'm sure they're ecstatic. We, on the other hand, are back to waiting. On another note, the agency said they are contacting with 2 new birthmothers next week, one is due in October and the other is due in January. Hopefully we'll hear something next week. If not, we'll know the answer was no. There's also a birthmother in Florida, but Craig doesn't think he can get all the time off to travel and to stay. Well, I'm off to get ready for work.

waiting and waiting

Well, we had to put our first dog to sleep on Saturday - it was heartbreaking for us all. I contacted our adoption agency regarding the need to update our profile. They said, don't worry about updating the profile, just pray for the BIRTHMOM WHO WILL BE LOOKING AT IT TONIGHT! I think I sucked all the air out of the room when I read that! That was Monday, we still haven't heard anything from the agency. Tomorrow they're supposed to do their monthly phone call, so I hope we'll have some more info by then. It's driving me crazy! At first I was happy to have some hope, but now I think maybe I would have rather not known. I am a horrible waiter. God keeps trying to teach me............ and it stinks! :o)