April: We have always talked about adopting once the kids were in school full time. Suddenly we realized that time of our life had arrived! We started praying and talking in earnest about adding to our family.

May: Lots of prayer, talking to adoptive parents, researching adoption agencies and orphanages, realize how much it cost and hope to win the lottery. (especially hard when you don't play!)

June: Lord willing, we are going to adopt from Haiti! We are so excited and also scared. How in the world is this all going to come together! We choose an agency (A Love Beyond Borders) and start brainstorming for fundraising ideas.

July: We are planning a Garage sale fundraise for the 26th with donations of gently used items from friends, family, and neighbors. Others have volunteered to donate a bounce house and tables as well. We are going door to door passing out fliers, making donation jars, and trimming our budget to the bone. We are excited to see how God will bring everything together.

August: The Garage sale was a great success raising over $1000.00! We are humbled by the generosity of all our friends, neighbors, and even complete strangers who donated items and services for the sale, and even came to help out.

It feels like we are finally on our way and it is so exciting! We took the money from the sale along with our savings and were able to start on the first step of the adoption - the home study. Up to this point, everything has been tons of forms and paperwork. It was so great to start on something more concrete. This week we met with the social worker who will be doing our home study. She seems very nice and I think the meeting went well. We will have four more visits with her and then she will submit her report on our family to the adoption agency. We would appreciate your prayers that it will be an easy experience and God will protect us from satan's attacks.

September: Big steps after so much waiting. Our homestudy is finished and approved! It was a lot less tramamatic than we expected.Our social worker was gracious and friendly. we loved her!