Thankful Thursday

Thankful for babies! The closer we get – the cuter they get! I have been checking other people’s blogs in the last couple days and it’s so exciting to see all these new families.

And young babies….my non-scientific count after reading referral posts on just the lists I am a part of is 15 babies referred that are 5-6 months old. For you not in the IA world…that is pretty rare. WOW- how fun would that be?? We have been thinking about a year old for so long that it would be a surprise to get such a young baby. But it would be a shocker to get referred a toddler too.

Good thing that we know God is sovereign and that He has the perfect baby for us….no matter what daydreams I am having. HA!

For the success of the KIDS HOPE luncheon that we hosted. It was nice to see people from KIDS HOPE USA main office and to finally meet some directors in my area. The real blessing was to see so many people that care for hurting children and want to do what they can to help.

For the little man I mentor getting good grades last week so he was rewarded with a Happy Meal and me as a guest for lunch. I am very popular with elementary school kids ya know. **It was probably the Spider Man toy**

For my Grammie. She is just the best and should be on my list every week.

For the protection of our house through these last 3 weeks of crazy tornado weather. Mike saw A TORNADO right by our house coming home from work and he could see the power lines exploding as it turned. He got into the house safely and we didn’t get any damage at our house, but lots of things were damaged around us. I wasn’t home at the time and am grateful for Mike’s safety.

Referral cut-off is November 1st! WOO HOO!

Okay it was so exciting to wake up this morning to information about the May batch of referrals. The CCAA is not going to update their public web page anymore and have changed over to a pay for information set up. The agencies that are willing can now pay for access to a private site to get referral updates. This morning agencies from around the world updated their clients and websites to show that the CCAA has matched 10/27 – 11/1/05.

Now that leaves us as the 4th day in the next batch. Soooooooooooooooooooooooo we should be NEXT!!! I told Mike that it’s just a psychological boost that they have gotten to our month after this wait extending so far. So if we are in the June batch we will have waited 19 months to referral after 6 months of paperwork, after 2.5 years of waiting to be 30. LOL.

****Here’s the fine print that a lawyer would require me to say. International Adoption is an uncertain thing to be a part of. It could happen that they would only match 2 days next month like they did last month. Don’t get your hopes to high because anything can happen. Once again anything can happen. I repeat anything can happen.******

But it’s still exciting!!!!

China Update- for what it’s worth

China has a national holiday May 1-7th and the CCAA will be closed. The adoption community is praying for the next batch to be mailed before they go on holiday. (Get their desks clean and all that before vacation). It has been posted that they will be working this weekend to make up for being off the next week, so they could possibly send a DHL package Monday. That would have early calls to families coming through as early as Wed the 2nd. If not, the next set of referrals will not come until after their holiday.

I have no idea how far they might get and I am not guessing. Rumors are flying and feet are stomping on all the adoption groups and message boards. I am just keeping busy with the end of the school year events for KIDS HOPE. That is more than enough to keep anyone distracted. Hee hee. If you ever need to be cheered up, spend some time with elementary school kids.

Thankful Thursday

I am taking the title of this blog from my friend Terri who does this every week.

All right, for those who were worried about me, it’s cool. I was in shock over the 2 day matches, but I know that God is taking care of everything. This has been a great week and I have been comforted by the fact that we “know” that whenever we get matched with Nadia she will be the perfect baby. This week Mike and I picked out the cake for the baby shower – YUM! We made up a sample baby announcement that is SO cute. I am going to hand make them all and we are going to mail them after we are home from China. We are going to pick a great shot from the trip and include that in the mailing. Why are we waiting until we get home to announce her? Because all her referral photos will be 3-4 months old and we think it will be much better to send out a new one and include our “forever family” date on the announcement.

The ladies retreat for church last week was a great blessing. I got to know some women in the church that I have not spent much time with in the past. The speaker was great and she spoke on brokenness and how God uses those things in our life for His good. There isn’t enough room here to talk about all the good stuff, but I can sum it up by saying that I am really glad that I went.

We sold the van in 36 hours through a free listing on Craigslist! That was cool and easy and I highly recommend it if you have a car to sell and don’t want to take the cheap offer they give you at the dealership for a trade. By the way I am loving my new RED RAV4. It’s the cutest thing and makes Mike very happy because it has all the latest safety features for when Nadia and I are tooling around town. Did I mention that it’s red and so cute? It also gets better gas mileage than the van and the car which is awesome!

Good News Club ended last week and it was a great blessing for me to teach the kids the final lesson. All semester we have been teaching them the miracles of Jesus and I ended the semester by telling them about the greatest miracle ever – the Resurrection. The kids asked some amazing questions at the end. We are having a picnic at the church this week for the Good News Kids, the KIDS HOPE kids and the whole church. It’s going to be great fun to see the kids all having fun together.

Okay, that’s all for now.