Snow and new numbers

We woke up to about 2 inches of snow yesterday - practically a blizzard here in the south LOL - so the kids headed outside to play. They managed to attach a sled to the back of a four wheeler using a tow rope, and they had a blast! I only got a couple of pictures of Daddy and Gigi ready to head outside and then playing on the trampoline.

There was not a lot of movement for our adoption numbers this month - boy #17, girl #35, and siblings #14.

Numbers

Oh man, I am so bad about giving updates. But, since this will be a part of Gary's baby book, I will try to do better. We received our I171H in the mail about two weeks ago, so that is one more step out of the way. We got this one much faster than the first time around with Gigi. Also, our agency - AGCI - gave us our waitlist numbers. We are #18 for a boy, #40 for a girl, and #14 for siblings. They told us that the referral for a boy would be the quickest - maybe 5 or 6 months; about 8-12 months for a girl; and, they don't give time frames for siblings because it is so hard to determine. We will get new numbers the first week of December, but I don't expect to move too much as this is a slow time of year for referrals.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Garys

During our last adoption, we called the baby a silly little name when we talked about her until we knew that she was really going to be ours. I realize that this sounds crazy, but early in our last process, we received a referral, flew to Guatemala and visited her, named her, prayed for her, loved her . . . Well, her birth mother returned to the orphanage for her, so little Caroline never came to live with us. Once we accepted another referral, we did not really "name" Gigi until much further into the process. This was a small way of protecting our hearts. Fast forward to this adoption, and we have been calling this child "Gary". Only, we are not sure if we will adopt a boy or a girl, so sometimes the kids refer to the child as "Garina". Lately, we feel like the Lord might have siblings for us (??), so this morning one of my kids decided to simplify things and just prayed for "The Garys". Little one(s), whoever you are, we are excited about you and are praying for you (all)!

Oops, I forgot

These sweet faces help with the wait!

I forgot how BAD I am at waiting! We have not had our home study officially approved by All God's Children (our agency), so we are not technically "waiting" for a referral, yet. I am praying that we will get the approval this week, and the clock can start ticking. One would think that I might have learned a little something during our last adoption about waiting, but apparently not.

If you think about it, please pray for a speedy approval of our home study.

Hallelujah!

Gigi is excited too!

Cue the hallelujah chorus - our dossier is in the mail! I sent it out last night, and I am so excited!! This means that we will officially be "in line" once it has been received and reviewed. I am certain that there will be a few corrections to make - such as I forgot to inlude a check :) But, this is a HUGE step.

Fingerprints

Today is the day that we will drive 3 hours each way to get fingerprinted. We laugh about this because my husband has done work for the FBI and been fingerprinted, and has taken hunter's safety classes and been fingerprinted; so, he figures that "they" could just access some of his fingerprints on file. But, alas, we must make the trek to Nashville for another set of prints. Oh well, it's okay because it is one more step that brings us closer to #5.

Ethiopia Bound...

Well, our big news is that we are heading to Ethiopia for our fifth child! Since we used a blog for our adoption of Gigi, we thought that it would be fun to start a blog for this child. We would love to have you follow our journey and pray this baby home, too. We are only at the beginning of this process, so you will have to hang around for a while :) Here are a couple of photos with Gigi getting excited about being a big sister.