All In A Weeks Time

September 26 was No Match Monday...So I went a few days throwing myself a pity party. Questioning how much I truly trust God in this process. Not understanding why we started our adoption process soooo long ago and still didn't have our daughter. Watching friends get their daughters, and here I still sat. Pity party of 1, right here. And a friend sent me a devotional that rocked my world. Do I really trust God? Do I truly believe his plans are way better and way bigger than mine? Do I believe he REALLY has my best interest at heart? After a few days of praying and seeking, I decided... YES, I do believe this. Is it easy? NO. Is it the way I would do it? NO. But thank goodness I'm not God. So I let go of my control and moved along my sort of merry way. October 24,a good guess for the day of the next China list , already circled on my calendar. (now this process was not nearly as easy as it reads mind you.)

AND THEN...

Monday morning, October 3, I woke up to an email from 10:00 pm (way past my bedtime) the night before that read... "Are you up? Call me!" from our social worker. My heart started going a mile a minute while I debated if 6:30 am was too early to call her? I managed to wait until 8:30 then called. And I hear the precious words "We have a file for you to look at. Would you like to look?" Um... YES PLEASE! Now the next 2 days of this process I will have to tell over time because it's a whole whole whole lot of God and a whole little of me. But to wrap this up for now, at 5:30pm on Tuesday October 4, we accepted this referral as our daughter! Pictures to come hopefully next week.

Drumroll please....

MAMIE KOWN
AUGUST 6, 2010
GUIPING CITY, GUANGXI PROVENCE, CHINA
Praying for her to become a part of our family in Spring 2012

And let me tell you... God is faithful!

Not This Time...

Well no match for us this month. I'm most definitely sad, but am learning more each day how to fully trust in God's timing and faithfulness. No one ever said this journey was easy! So we are now 10 months and counting... but when we get our little girl's picture, I feel certain it will be worth the wait :) And with this wait, she is going to be pretty stinking fabulous!

LID!

We are officially logged into China's system as of today... And the monthly referral list comes out tonight...Deep breath! ...so guess who won't be sleeping tonight? Praying for a match and that it would be our daughter. Not gonna lie, if it doesn't happen I will most definitely be disappointed. But trusting God's timing all the same!

Happy Anniversary and DTC!

Wednesday was Happy 8th Anniversary to us! It was so very romantic ;) I'm on a very particular diet, so there was no dining out; and a very close friend was getting married in Nashville, so we spent our anniversary in separate cars driving to Nashville for the wedding weekend! But we will celebrate in a few weeks, when Charles has recovered from his jaw surgery (this upcoming Thursday) and my diet is over... but celebration or no, we had a WONDERFUL weekend in Nashville by ourselves, celebrating the wedding of some very dear friends. That's the second best way to spend an anniversary.

But we also got a pretty excellent gift, we found out Thursday we are DTC! For you non-adoption folks, that means Dossier To China! We are now waiting to be logged in to China's system and will soon see the precious face of our little girl! We would love for you to join us in prayer over the next few weeks, that God would have all things running smoothly with paperwork, timing, etc... and that we would see her face sooner rather than later!

Last Day of Summer... First Day Of School

Maxwell had been begging all summer to see the dinosaur exhibit at the Space Center all summer. And as many times as we went to Nashville this summer, we never stopped! Well the exhibit ended on Labor Day, soooo... the day before school started, I loaded up the boys and off the 3 of us went. And we arrived to be the only people there, at 10:00 am on a random Tuesday after all real school had started.  It was great! And I must say, the dinosaur "museum" as Maxwell called it, didn't disappoint! Yes, only a few dinosaurs, but Sue the T-Rex is the most important of all dinosaurs, as any good paleontologist (or mom of a paleontologist) knows... so we were in luck because it was all about Sue! And all in all, we had a great little day trip to wrap up our summer :)

Sue the T-Rex!

Digging for bones

And they had fossils you could take home! And since we were THE LAST people to visit this exhibit, we got to take home TONS of TINY fossil pieces (that Charles and I think could be gerbil bones? ha!)

If you can't tell, a portion of Elliott's face is in there ;)

First morning of 5K and 2K for the boys!

Maxwell and Mrs. Harris

Elliott and Mrs. Poss... and yes he wasn't all that happy day 1. He is much happier now!