Reagan's First School Play

Thursday night, Reagan got to be in her first play at her school. It was ADORABLE! And the best part was that they sang to Evie's "C'mon Ring Those Bells!" Growing up, my dad would wake us up on Christmas morning by BLASTING the Hallelujah Chorus followed by C'mon Ring Those Bells by Evie. It was so sweet to hear my little girl singing that song from my childhood! Here are a couple pictures from the night:

Merry Christmas From The Fishers

Each year we do a funny Christmas Card. This year, we were inspired by The Office..

Pax & Colt

Remember when I took maternity shots of April? Then I posted some brief pictures of them about an hour after birth? Well here are some of my favorites from their official newborn shoot!

Thank you Shell!!

If you'll notice, I have a new header for our blog. This is due to the wonderful work of my amazing business partner and friend, Shelly Young. Shelly and I often joke how, though we've only met within the last couple of years, we feel like we have known each other all our lives. She is such a blessing to me. She has 2 kids and one more on the way too! So we both are very much on the same page re: family/work time and balancing all of that out. The best part about Shelly, in my opinion, (and there are soooo many 'best things' about her to choose from) is her love for Jesus and others. She spurs me on in my faith every time we meet. She is encouraging, thoughtful and giving. I have been with Shelly working late one night when a homeless woman just wanted conversation. Shelly got her a coffee and food, put our work aside, and focused on this woman to make her feel like a million bucks. She is exceptionally compassionate and full of grace. She encourages me to be a better Christian in and out of business and I am forever grateful for my friendship with her. Thank you Shelly!! I love ya!

New Friends

A little over a week ago, we got to meet another family in our adoption program that was visiting LA. We had such a blast hanging out with Marc, Kayan and their sweet little girl Adalae. She's a couple years older than Reagan and came with gifts in hand for the girls; it was very thoughtful and the girls LOVE them! We had such a great time getting to know each other a little bit better and meeting face to face. Here are a couple pictures we snapped of the girls together:

These guys have been such a blessing to us in this process and we're so thankful to be in it with them. Our best friends are moving to Austin, where Marc and Kayan live, so when we visit them, we're definitely going to stop by and see our new friends:) Thanks for making the trek down the 405 guys!

Quick Post (I think)

So much is going on right now I don't even know where to start. All good things, but just so many things! We received our medicals today on Judah. Unfortunately I can't read a whole lot as it's written in french, so we're just waiting for translation from our agency. As soon as it's translated and we understand it, we will accept our referral. Here is a list that our POA sent us that includes the order of events that will happen in the coming weeks:

Send medicals
Act of Adoption
Notarize all the papers
Ask for court date
Go to court
Get court ruling
Notarize second rounds of papers
Request for travel letter
Translations
Plan travel
Passport
Embassy appointment

Some of this stuff, I'm not even sure what it will be like. But, we're extremely confident in our POA and she is clearly getting the ball rolling! We're anticipating a January travel date, but hey, it could be Christmas, right?! There are SO many things that need to take place before travel can happen, and the biggest one right now is passing court. Before that though, we need to get through the Act of Adoption, which will hopefully take place on Monday then we can find out on when our court date is. We've been told it can take about 2 weeks to travel after a successful day in court.

Today I feel like I did a million and one things and have felt this way for the past 3 days. I have at least one more day of this. I am working on about 15 shoots, which are nearing completion; orders and all. I'm so tired, but can't stop working because I know that things could go to the next step in the blink of an eye. Nick is totally getting ready. How, you ask? Well, I caught him with a drywall knife, hammer and crow bar ripping into Judah's closet to make an opening in the living room to install a fireplace. Awesome. Then last night he installed 4 canned lights in the kitchen. He's getting ready for Judah in his own way too.

Speaking of Judah, he is the most precious little thing.... or I should probably say the most precious healthy thing. We're not allowed by law, to show his picture until he's legally ours. He's 6 1/2 months and looks like he's ready for the Niners to recruit him for their defensive line. He has exceptionally kissable lips and a full belly. I wake up in the morning and look at his picture. It's on my phone and I look at him all day. He and I have eaten lunch together every day this week while I work at my computer. I look at him before I got to bed like I'm about to now, and then I go look at my little girls sleeping and realize we're a family of 5 now! YIKES! And on the note of 3 kids... 1 of them tonight decided it would be fun to rip off her diaper, poop, roll around in her crib for a little bit, climb out of her crib, drag her poopster-self across the carpet over to her sister's bed to roll around in it for a while. I was editing in my office when I heard, "POOOOOOOOP!!! MOMMY POOOOOOP!!" I laughed to myself while I was cleaning, thinking, "I better get used to this. I'll have a 3 year old, a 2 year old and a near-one-year-old under this roof next month."

I can't wait for next month...

APPROVAL & REFERRAL: all in one weekend!?!?!

I'll start in order from recent to latest:

1. Friday morning approvals start coming in. Ours wasn't with it... UGH. That feeling in my stomach was unbearable. I cannot describe it, but for those reading who are, or have been in these shoes, you know exactly what I'm talking about. UGH!

2. Friday night we got word that we had APPROVAL! But I can't read the date on the actual approval letter, and think it says something about October 21st. Plan of attack: reset expectations. By Saturday my expectations are for a travel date in March.

3. Monday morning at 7 am I roll over in bed to check my phone for emails (with 7 other families in our program) to find that we received our REFERRAL!!!

What happened in 3 days normally takes 3 months to accomplish and we are forever grateful to the good Lord and to our POA in Rwanda working so hard for all of us! Oh my...I feel like today I returned about 60 emails and probably 40 calls. I'm tired, but blessed. I honestly thought this blog post would be the greatest day of my life, and believe me it's been amazing, but I feel like everyone in the city of HB and the surrounding areas knows now that we got our referral so I'm good! One of the greatest joys we had today though, was calling my sister and mom on skype and sharing the good news with them. That felt so good to have them so excited for us! I wish I could share a picture on here, but until court when he legally becomes ours, we're not allowed to post any pictures of him.

So what's next?! We're just waiting for all the medical reports to formally accept the referral. Then we wait (typically) about 3-4 weeks to go to court, then 1-2 weeks to travel. We don't know what the story is with Rwandan courts in December, but God does, and I can rest in that! Either way, we're going to Rwanda to get our little boy after 11 long months of dreaming about him!