Happy New Year!  We had a wonderful Christmas - the boys' excitement over the holidays is contagious!  We got a ton of snow at the first of January and spent a lot of time outside playing in it.  I've found I can bundle the boys up good enough for a couple hours of play outside.  The Lord continues to bless us in so many ways.  Steve went on a missionary trip to Mexico in November to help build a church.  He has been interested in mission work for a while and was very excited to go.  We missed him terribly, but we made it. 

In October Steve quit his job of 16 years as an IT guy and went to work at our church, Fellowship Chapel, as the Administrator.  In January he was ordained as a pastor.  He loves his new job and is now working with several of his best friends. 

I am still enjoying this stay-at-home mom/wife/teacher phase of my life.  Life is crazy around here, but I love spending my days with the boys.  They are growing up so fast!  Zach is 6 1/2 and Grayson is 4 1/2.  We are now almost 3 years into our wait for our little girl.  It seems as if the weeks fly by - I can't believe it is already January.  We continue to pray for our daughter and know that in God's perfect timing He will bring her to us.  In the meantime He is blessing us daily and developing perseverance in us.  We will continue our day to day life until we receive word from Him that it is time.  We are so very thankful for many blessings in our life.

So much has happened since my last post, I don't know where to start!

For the last year the Lord has been working on my heart about homeschooling Zachary.  I pulled a "Jonah" and did my best to hide from it and avoid it, but finally gave in and turned it over to Him.  We began homeschool in mid August, and guess what?  We LOVE it!  It took months of prayer and preparation, but we are truly enjoying it.  We have nothing against public schools, but we just feel that isn't where Zachary is meant to be right now.  It's very rewarding to see his face light up when I'm teaching him and he "gets it".  What a blessing.  Never in a million years would I have believed that we would choose this route, but I've learned to never say never.  Grayson has school with us on a 4 year old level and likes it, but has trouble sitting still for more than 5 minutes or so (go figure).  About every 10 minutes I'll say, "Do you want to go jump for a few minutes?" and he'll give me a big YES! and take off to the trampoline.  When he comes back he's good for another 10 minutes or so  ;-)   Yesterday we were using play doh to make our ABC's and Zach said "I bet they don't get to do this in real school!"

Our biggest news is that our little Zachary got saved!  He said the prayer of salvation during Vacation Bible School, and was baptised on August 9th.  He's been talking about this for about 6 months and we've spent a lot of time praying about it.  We really wanted to make sure that he understood what it meant, and we feel that he does.  We're so proud of him.

Sooooooo, that's the two biggies in our lives.  We've had a great summer just hanging out, playing with friends, and going on picnics.  We went to the beach in June and had a wonderful, but exhausting, time. 

Needless to say, we are still waiting on our baby girl.  It's been 2 1/2 years now - in a way it seems like it's been forever, but in a way the time has gone by really fast.  The boys are never still and keep me pretty busy.  I've been trying to get the house organized and decorated.  We have a lot of unfinished projects that need finishing up...   I'm praying that the Lord will help us get our home ready for her before she gets here.

I'm putting the blog on my calendar so that I'll remember to update it more often.  If things aren't on the calendar, they don't get taken care of!

Thanks for reading - I hope the Lord blesses you today.

Hello from our hot and beautiful area of the country!  We have been thoroughly enjoying the summer with the kids.  The boys are getting soooooo big!  I've enjoyed having them home all summer but I haven't gotten much done around the house.  I know it will be there when I get time to get to it!

Zachary is getting to be such a big boy.  He just turned 5 and amazes us with his smarts (and his sarcasms, wonder where he got that?).  He is big into super heroes right now, Spiderman being the favorite.  He has a very nurturing soul and is a very good big brother.  He talks alot about getting his little sister.  He asked me the other day, "Mom, why is it taking so long?"  It's hard sometimes to try to explain...  I just told him that we were on God's time and that He would bring her home when He was ready.  In His time, not ours.  And that's ok with us.  It's a hard wait, but we understand that there is a reason that we don't have her yet  (not that we know what that is, of course).

Grayson is growing quickly as well and just turned 3.  I need to get new pictures of them on the site but as I mentioned, we've been oh so busy this summer swimming, hopping from playground to playground, and picnicing (is that a word?).  The boys go back to preschool part time in 2 weeks so I should be able to get back to working on the web site.  We have so much we need to get done that I hate to even make a list.  It will just depress me!  We want to get several home projects complete and obviously finish the nursery before our little girl gets here.  That way we can just concentrate on bonding and spending a lot of time together as a family instead of painting, stripping wallpaper, etc.

So, in a nutshell, summer has been a little crazy.  I've enjoyed the time with the boys but I'm glad to get them back to school.  A little sad too...

We had a conference call last week with our agency and several other waiting families about the adoption and things that are going on in China.  Not really much new information.  The Olympics have sort of stymied everything up for a few months.  It looks like it may be another year before we get our referral.  Again, we just have to remember, it's in His perfect time, not ours.  As Steve and I wait we spend our time praying and working on being the best parents we can be to our sweet little boys.  We know that the Lord has a plan for our family, and are very excited to see when He reveals that to us. 

Ok, so you can see that my weekly blog idea didn't get so far...  Oh well, I had good intentions!  We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We enjoy the boys so much.  We visited both extended families for Thanksgiving and the boys were really good.  Although I thought I was well prepared in early December, Christmas kinda snuck up on me.  This seems to happen every year - there's one point where I sit and think, "Hey, I'm doing pretty good.  I've got most of my shopping done."  And then it hits me - I realize there are four more people that I have yet to shop for, nothing is wrapped, school is about to end and I have NOTHING prepared for Zach's teachers, etc., etc.  Maybe this coming Christmas I'll have it all together (HA!)

Anyhoo, we had such a blessed Christmas.  The boys' excitement about Christmas and Santa is contagious.  I don't look at the Christmas tree, Santa Claus, or Jesus' birthday the way I did before kids. 

Zachary sang with his 4 and 5 year old buddies in Choir for the Church.  They named them The Little Treble Makers.  Too funny!  He did really well, kept grabbing the microphone and singing louder than the other kids.  Being his Mom, I thought it was slightly obnoxious, but terribly cute!   He played Joseph in his school play a week later, but apparently all of the hooplah of Christmas got to him by that point.  He was supposed to sing "Away in a Manger" with the little girl who played Mary, but he got really scared and started crying.  I had to get him off the stage   ;-(  Poor boy! 

Christmas was a blast, we took as many opportunities as we could to talk with the boys about the true meaning of Christmas and that we should be focused on Jesus instead of Santa and the presents.  Zach gets it, Grayson?  Not so much.  "Santa Claus" called the boys two weeks before Christmas and it thrilled them to death to talk with him on the phone.  He was a good Santa and got the boys the backpacks that roll on the ground that they were dying for.  They love them.  We have WAY too many toys and I had to buy more toy bins. 

All in all we had a wonderful time in November and December.  The Lord continues to bless us in our fundraising efforts.  When we least expect it He places a small amount of money in our laps, ever increasing our faith that He will provide every dime we need to bring our little girl home.  We thought of her a lot during the holidays.  I wanted so much to buy something for her for Christmas, but resisted the urge because I felt it would hurt to see it continually.  Besides, what do you buy for your daughter when you're not sure how old she is or will be when you meet her?  ;-) 

Over the last few weeks we have been fighting strep throat (Daddy), an ear infection (Zach) and strep butt (Grayson - don't ask).  God has been good to Mommy and has kept her safe and healthy ;-)  They are all slowly getting better and are about to finish the antibiotics, so hopefully we'll get back to good health.

I have time for a quick shower while the boys are down for their nap so I'd better seize the opportunity.  I'll try to write again before February  ;-)