Getting closer

We are back from a road trip this weekend to grand island for my ten year high school reunion. the kids had a fun time with grandma and grandpa and craig and i got an evening out to visit with my friends. i didn't know what to expect, but it was really good to see people again. i am finding myself very thankful for the great group of friends that the Lord surrounded me with in high school. . . the kind of friends that you can not see for a while and then when you are talking with them it doesn't seem like ten years has passed. anyway, i hope to keep in better touch with them now that i have their contact info. on the adoption homefront, craig and i conspired last night to get a little more agressive with the IRS this week - Ha! still no word on the one official paper we are waiting on in the mail. it is just a copy of a few pages of our income tax form which we forgot to copy after we had signed it and it is taking a LONG time for them to process our request. according to our timeline it could take until july 20th, but our goal this week is to at least confirm that they recieved our request and that they intend to send us the requested papers. NOTE TO SELF - never ever ever ever again overlook the importance of recordkeeping (hee hee!) i am becoming more and more impressed at how hard this whole process would be if craig or i had ever had any legal issues - the Lord has been so gracious to us to keep us out of trouble when we were younger! Hmmm...funny how if we just open our eyes there are so many things to be thankful for, not to mention the little detail that He has offered atonement for our sins that we might know and love Him.

Nervous

This morning i surrendered some pretty important papers to the United States Postal Office...i never would have thought i would have been so nervous. Did I address them correctly? (even though i quadruple checked it...after craig quadruple checked it!) Did I mix up any of the papers from the two envelopes i put together while wrestling two small ankle-biters in line at the post office? Well, my only choice now is to rest in the sovereignty of the Lord . . . a great place to be :) We mailed off two important packets of papers today - Yay! One was our homestudy and Power of Attorney documents to the Secretary of State in Lincoln to be "authenticated". The second packet was our completed I600A form along with a bunch of other documentation that goes to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Omaha. We will get the "authenticated" documents back this week to be included in our dossier. The USCIS will process our I600A form sending us back another very official form (171-H, i think?) as well as a date and time to appear at the USCIS office in Omaha for another fingerprinting session. Still no sign of our tax form...please, come soon little form!

Home again

We're home! It was a great week out at the ranch with the Merrihew family. It is so neat to have such a unique place to get away to. The Nebraska sandhills are beautiful...I will try to find a better picture to capture what the scenery looks like. Craig is in the first and third picture. He spent the first day roping calves and the next day got in on some calf wrestling action as well. The second picture is of another roper on his horse and the guys on the ground have wrestled down a calf to be branded. The last pic is of our neice and it cracks me up every time i see it : ) On the adoption homefront we will be working on a support letter and sending out thank-you's to garage sale donators. We need to learn about the I-600a form this week as well. So far I understand it is an immigration form for the baby that takes forever to process. Still waiting on the copy of our tax return. Oh yeah, Evan learned to use a spoon this week and also shakes his head no surprisingly proficiently. He is getting steadier on his feet and will be running around before we know it.

It's branding time!

It has been a few days since I have posted b/c we are out of town this week. We are currently at the Merrihew family ranch in the Nebraska sandhills for their annual branding. For those of you not familiar with ranch life, branding is where they put the brands on the calves so that the calves are identified as your own. It is quite a big get together for family and a lot of work as well. The actual branding takes place thursday and friday so i hope to put pics on soon...if you don't see them in the next few days i will get to them monday or tuesday. We are having a good time getting a break from our "ordinary" and it is so great to see the kids have fun with cousins and grandparents. Oh yeah, and the homestudy went smoothly and we anticipate no problems : )

Twas the night before homestudy...

Of course, it had to happen the night before our social worker is to come..ha ha! Evan conked his head and scratched right under his nose in an incident with the Scollard's lion scooter. I think the scooter won. It was nothing a chocolate frosting covered brownie couldn't fix anyway :) I LOVE those dimples!!!

Watch and Enjoy!

I almost forgot!

Yet another extension of grace during garage sale weekend...My friends Andrea, Makayla, and Cassie had come to help us set up Saturday morning. By time they arrived things were pretty well underway. Instead of wishing us well and going home, they stayed and helped me clean the whole house while Craig manned the front porch pay table! This was such a HUGE blessing! My house was in complete disorder when they arrived and when they left I had not one dirty dish, my floors were all vacuumed, the loads of empty boxes and trash were hauled out of my basement and my kitchen sink was beautifully bleached shiny sparkling white! Yay! I had so not been looking forward to tackling the aftermath of the sale and what a blessing it was to sink into bed that evening at a decent hour without having to shut out the chaos of a house out of order. Thank you girls - i will be looking for ways to return the favor!

Homestudy

We were scheduled to have our homestudy this thursday, but I recieved a call from the social worker tonight asking to reschedule it for friday. We are looking forward to getting that step of the process done. I'll let you all know how it goes soon, hopefully. Still no sign of the tax form from the IRS...that might be the paper that will be last in coming as we get our dossier wrapped up. Please continue praying that it comes soon! We started looking at the applications for grants and assistance again. We have done really well in recent months with the barbecue, selling our grand-am, and the garage sale. We have raised approximately $6,500 in the past 2 months! Added to our savings that puts us about 2/3 of the way to where we need to be in total. Without crunching actual numbers I think we are still $6-8,000 away from the $24,000 needed. I take comfort in the fact that the Lord is faithful and as we continue to walk in obedience to His will, He will provide all that we need to glorify His name.

Garage sale details

So, for the first picture...the clock says 5:08 am. We made it to bed at 2 am and planned on waking at 4 am. Craig accidentally set the alarm wrong and i just happened to wake at 5:00! It had taken us about 5 hours to set up friday morning so we thought that we would have to get up at 4 to even be close to ready for the start of the sale at 8. It turns out we were wrong. We had a few people come at 7 to help us (and bring us donuts!) and everything was actually set out and ready to go before 8. The Lord, in His sovereignty, granted us an extra hour of sleep that we desperately needed! Saturday was a much slower day than Friday and by lunchtime it was looking like we would have stuff left at the end. While going to get lunch for us I remember a short prayer to the tune of "please Lord, could there just be nothing left at the end of our sale. I know you CAN do it, so please will you make it all go somehow." I kind of forgot that quick little prayer and the day went on. We drastically cut prices at noon and told people if they would like to come back at 5 the leftovers would all be free. 5:00 came and we didn't have anyone come back...but one lady and her three girls showed up. Craig let her know that she was free to take what she wanted and she quickly got on her phone and called for back-up! She started packing boxes and her three girls were packing and hauling as much as they could. Then her boyfriend came with a pickup and the rest is history. I could hardly keep from laughing out loud as I watched our leftovers disappear before my eyes. They took EVERYTHING! There really was not much worth keeping anyway, but what a blessing it was to not have to pack up, store, and get rid of what was left! I genuinely hope that it will be a blessing to that family. I assume they will be garage sale-ing their new loot. All we had to do was clean and fold up tables. Thanks Tollivers for help in cleaning up tables! It was quite comical to watch the loading process as the gentleman standing by the truck did absolutely 0% of the work. The load in the pickup ended up about 8ft tall above the pickup bed. What a crazy answer to prayer! Afterwards we had some friends recommend a show that was at the Fox theater here in town at 7:30 that evening. We couldn't decide whether we should splurge on the tickets after just having a sale to raise money, but then decided it would feel really good to get cleaned up and that it would fit in our budget. So, on our way walking in to the theater we ran into some good friends...without us asking, they paid for our tickets! I seriously was in tears a few times b/c I could not believe how the Lord extended His grace to us in such a compassionate way this last weekend.

A weekend of sufficient grace and MORE!

I wish I had time to post the recap of saturday's sale right now, but it might have to wait a day or two. The plans for today are to go get the kids right after lunch - Yay! I can't wait to see them! So playing with kids is on the agenda today as well as a nice relaxing viewing of National Treasure 2 tonight with Craig in our nearly empty basement - Yay! I have posted some pictures to peak you interest...you won't believe it until you read it! Oh yeah, we made in total $1,944.86. Have you ever heard of making that much in a garage sale?!? Isn't that crazy?!? The title for this post is the best way i can describe the weekend in full. Stay tuned for the details in the days to come.