Today is the day!

Well I thought that the day that our call would come may never happen, that it was only this dream that I thought about every day, but today that dream came true! We got our call, we know our new baby girl. Let me start at the beginning, I have to paint a picture of how this day was going, forgive me if I am a little scattered as I am almost gaining the feeling back in my legs but my brain is a little farther behind. Well our day actually started off last night around 11pm when Wyatt awoke throwing up, and not just a little bit but like grown up stuff...everywhere! Ahh the joys of parenting. So we cleaned him up but I slept with him on the couch as he continued to throw up most of the night. Needless to say that we were all pretty tired by the time morning time came. And then at 5 am (notice the scattered brain!) the school called to say that school was delayed which for Wyatt meant cancelled but he wasn't going anyways. By the way it was sunny and beautiful by the time 8 am rolled arond which is when school was supposed to start, apparently there was a little bit of snow and they went a little crazy, okay enough of the tangent...so as the morning went on Wyatt continued to throw up to the point I though I may have to take him in to the doc, he wasnt drinking or eating and just laying around, so about 3 pm Owen remembered that he has went #2 on the potty yesterday and that I had forgot to give him a sucker so of course I gave one to Wyatt which somehow gave him supernatural energy and he wanted to go outside to play, mind you this is a snow day, although it wasthe most beautiful afternoon ever. So there we were outside I am sitting on a chair with the sun on my back (snow day?) watching the kids play and I get a call from Megan my social worker. Here is the conversation:
Megan: Hi is this Candace
me: Yeah whats up (I actually said that)..at this point I still didn't think that this was the call.
Megan: Hey I got your e-mail and I wanted to call you ( e-mail regarding general questions)
me:okay......
Megan: I wanted to let you know that today is going to be an exceptionally wonderful day for you
Me: heart starts to pound, legs go numb...."shut up!" (again I actually said this)
Megan: we have a little girl for you, lets get Joe on the phone

and from there on we got Joe on the conference call and she gave us all of the info about our new baby girl. She is about 4.5 months right now and is a very small 7 plus pounds. That is about all of the info that I can think of to give that is not confidential. We of course know about her past and have seen the most beuatiful pictures that I have ever seen, even more beuatiful and perfect than I had imagined. We are not at this point able to send out the pic or post it on the blog, there is a lot of legal issues we have to abide with and everything is confidential. But I just wanted to share this wonderful news. We feel truely blessed that God has put this little girl in front of us and we are praying that everything continues to go smoothly.

I know...so sad

I Know it is so sad that this is the topic of this post but it really is all consuming.....potty training! I am very excited to announce that both of my children are now in underwear!!!!!!!!!!! Wyatt is finally ready, and we are very excited, he has been wearing underwear for about 2 weeks now and the accidents are getting less and less as ne learns that the goal is to stay dry. And Owen's latest success is that he when #2 for the first time oon the potty yesterday, this had been a big stumbling block as he has been trained with #1 for a very long time now, so we are making progress. I cant believe that we could have both kids potty trained by the time Ruby comes. I though Wyatt may go to high school in diapers (not really but it seemed like it may never happen) Any was we told Owen that if he went #2 in the potty that we could go back to the place where we had their b-day party and that he could also have ice cream. So last night we took the boys the the play place where they had their party and they had a blast, well it had been like 5 hours since we had talked about the ice cream and I though myabe Owen would forget....forget ice cream I must be crazy! On the way home from the play place at about 8:30 (bedtime is 8:00pm) Owen asked for ice cream and so of course they got to come home and have ice cream (really rice ice cream but they dont know the diff) It was a very exciting day for all of us.

It has been a while

I know, I know, I havn't written in a while, just busy chasing the boys and trying to move our house around in anticipation of "the call." I fear that I wont be ready and it will just be a whirl wind of things to do all at once. The good news is that our Dossier has been accepted by our government and is currently on it way to Addis, our social worker said that it should arrive sometime next week, the bad news is that our social worker is on vacation until next friday and therefore we pretty much now that we will not be getting our refferal next week, which is okay I guess we know ultimatly this is God's timing and although we want this to happen soon rather than later, we also are content with knowing it will be the perfect time.

Officially freakin out!!!!!

Okay so we got our fingerprint clearence in the mail today and I immediatly called WACAP, our social worker said that she had also received these and that she was shocked becasue ours only took like 3 weeks and normally it takes like 2-3 months. SO.....long stroy short we are officially on the waiting list and our number is 4! She said that they have been reffering a lot of children out lately and that we shouldbe ready for a refferal on the low end of the wait times which is like 1-2 months!!!!! So that is the news we have today, we are short one document on the Dossier ( a small oversite on my part) and other than that we are pretty much done with our part and are just now in waiting mode. God bless to all!

Wonderful Chritmas

I have been wanting to post but I havnt had any pics yet and part of me hates posting without a pic but I just wanted to share my wonderful Christmas! Our hearts are full right now with the love of family and time shared together when we were a little nervous that we wouldn't be able to travel. Late on Tuesday we decided if we were going to make it down for Christmas to Salem/Portland than that was our opportunity so we headed out at 5pm and finally made it to Salem at 12:30 at night! It was a rough travel day but our boys were the best travelors any parents could ask for. Christmas was so much fun this year, the boys are at a great age and we just had so much fun watching them open presents. Owen does this very cute hyperventalating thing when he is unwrapping a present and realizes it is something he really wants, I believe that flapping hands and jumping up and down are involved as well. Wyatt was so sweet and was very content with the new books and trains that he got. It was like he would open one thing and then be totally distracted and into it that he didn't really want to unwrap anything else. Owen on the other hand loved the idea of helping brother unwrap! I never knew how fun it was until this year (they just weren't aware enough in past years) to get ready for Christmas for young children, they are in awe of everything like lights and decorations and presents of course! We hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas also and that there weren't to many mishaps with the snow and ruining plans. God bless to all!

Craft fair success

Hi everyone just wanted to let you all know that I did my first craft fair this last weekend. I sold my bows, with all of the money going towards Ruby! It was a tone of fun and neat to see people excited about something I made. I rasied about $140.oo at the craft fair but the cool thing is the amount of money (about $350.00) that I have raised through just friends and families and co-workers of Joe (Daphne!) Thank you so much to people who have purchased some on these, it touches my heart beyond measure (ooh good Jeremy Camp song...heheh) that so many of you have wanetd to support us in this journey. We are so excited for our future with our new daughter and we cant wait to share it with all of you. We have our fingerprints taken for immigration paperwork on friday and as soon as that comes backs cleared to our agency we will be getting onto the waiting list so maybe by the end of the month or so! It is cool to think that next Christmas we will have our new daughter, maybe even next 4th of July....ehhh, better start painting a room pink! Blessing to all.

How to say thank you?

So okay I didnt post a blog about the outcome of our car but I did end up telling our friends about it, the Buchanans. End result approx $3000 for a whole new transmission! So.....today after church as Owen was sleeping, Wyatt and I jumped on to the computer (Wyatt likes to watch Thomas the Train and Singing Times videos on Youtube) well after his turn mommy had her turn to check e-mail. Well what did I find but and e-mail explaining that these dear, dear friends of ours are sending us $2500 to help fix our car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you is just not enough. Joe and I just keep walking around the house and every few minutes stopping to say "can you believe this? or "God is just SO good!" As you know we are saving for our adoption and this potentially large stumbling block has just been lifted off of our backs, there are just no words within me to say what that means right now. It has strengthed our faith, as we have been praying very hard about how this was going to work out, we believe without a doubt that we were meant to get Ruby and we knew that God was going to take care of this! We just hope that when it is our turn to help that person in need that we will be so obedient to answer the call as this amazing family! Thank you from the bottom of our heart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!