November: National Adoption Month

In honor of National Adoption Month:

6 and 30

I neglected my six month post so this is it. Six months on the wait list, not much more to say :)

Today is my 30^th birthday, ugh. I feel officially old. I have been dreading this day for a while now, mostly because I am not where I wanted to be at this time in my life. My plan was to be done having kids at 30; but, for a variety of reasons I am not yet a mother. I expected to at least have a referral by the time I turned 30. Even as I write these words I am not discouraged. I know there is something amazing and beautiful at work. When I gaze into the sweet face of our child I will know that all this waiting was meant to be. If we had done things any differently we would never have the little girl who is waiting for us. If you pray would you please lift her up in your prayers, specifically her health and the transitions in her care.

Waiting

"Waiting is one of God's most powerful tools of grace. God doesn't just give us grace for the wait. The wait itself is a gift of grace. You see, waiting is not only about what you will receive at the end of the wait. Waiting is about what you will become as you wait." -Paul David Tripp

I am in awe of His ways.

The Current Stars of Our Household

Can you guess the song? (he actually does know more but won't perform for the camera, I think I've tried a dozen times)

This is what happens when we leave a chip bag unattended.

Travel Ban Lifted

This is great news in the adoption world as well as for many others.

Five Months

The call did not come last week while we were on our yearly mini vacation to the North Shore. I thought for sure we would be celebrating our referral on this trip. I'm sure I didn't enjoy our hiking as much as I should have. One day we spent several hours out of cell phone range. The whole time I anxiously awaited our arrival back to cell phone land, in fact, I planned that we had to leave our location by 2:30 so that we could be back to our villa by 4:30 in case we did get a call. This kind of planning happens every day in my world these days.

Today we have officially been waiting for 5 months. I thought last month would surely be our month, but hopefully October will bring us the news for which we've been eagerly anticipating!

Here are a few pictures from our last (hopefully) vacation sans kids. This year we didn't hit the fall colors at their peak but it was still beautiful as always!

Wisconsin side of Lake Superior looking at Duluth, MN. I never knew Lake Superior had sand dunes until this trip!

St. Louis River

An overlook from up high, you can see Lake Superior in the back of the photo

Shovel Point

A large cargo ship that came into port as we were walking along the canal one evening

No News Yet...Maybe Today?

For all the blog stalkers out there, I just wanted to let you know that no we have not received our referral yet. Rest assured I will update this blog the moment I get a chance after we get our call :) I am still hoping that maybe we will get some news today and hopefully not next Monday or Tuesday when we will be in the middle of nowhere in Northern Minnesota (meaning possibly no phone/internet access as we will be hiking around the shore of Lake Superior). How awful would that be if we returned to civilization only to find out we missed the call and had to wait until the next day to meet our daughter?

Truthfully I thought we would have a referral long before this, and funny as it seems, now that we should be getting closer the waiting is getting easier. I'm not allowing myself to think about it all day every day, maybe that's just a coping mechanism. I do however think about all the different calling scenarios every morning and figure out how that works with our schedules. Sometimes I feel like it's never really going to happen and somehow they forgot to put us on the wait list. I know, strange fear since we've only been waiting 4 months 2 weeks and 5 days, but that is what is going around in my head these days.