I want my baby girl to come home... sigh... referral soon please! :)

changing colors countdown

So.. we are still waiting for a referral here. All, or at least most, of the families who are waiting for referrals (matches) from the Rwandan government have Oct. 12th as their referral deadline. This is the date the government sent in their approval letters... when they expected to have our child chosen for us. So... if the date is true then we will get to see a picture of our forever baby girl in less than three weeks. Oh the agony of waiting. My patients has been up and down over the last year plus during this process... This week is a hard week. The leaves are changing colors here and I so wanted to take family pictures, with our WHOLE family, in the beautiful changing colors of the outdoors. I typically do this every year and was really hoping to have another face in the pictures for this year. I never imagined that we still wouldn't have her home by now. My heart is aching for word from Rwanda... a picture... a something. I realize that this is a match made in heaven so I will wait for heaven's timing.

rainy day

The weather has been great here the last few weeks. Saturday was a rainy day and the kids had a blast playing in it!

No adoption news... I was laying in my hammock the other day thinking how great it would be to take a nap in it while holding my baby girl. In time... in time...

chip in

You'll see we've added a new widget to our blog... many people have been asking about doing a fundraiser etc. etc. for the rest of our adoption. God has blessed us tremendously to be able to cover a lot of expenses through our own hard work and generous friends and family. We have just a little bit left on our tab at the agency and then travel for three :). If you have a paypal account chip in is a really easy way to make donations that are safe and secure with funds being deposited directly into our account. (And you get a receipt! :) )
We thought this would be a nice, no pressure way for people to give if they want to.

Thanks all!!!

old news, new house, and no news

We are back in the swing of things for another fall. Kelton started school a week and a half ago and Oliver starts tomorrow. These pictures are of Kelton's first Day, Oliver's 5th Birthday Party and Buster's baptism. My husband has gone through an incredible transformation over the last year and it has been humbling to watch as God has turned him into a man that I almost cannot recognize from a year ago. He is different... in a great way... and he decided to have our church baptism him as an adult as a testimony to all God has done for him in the last year. (He was baptised as a child but decided to do this as an adult as a proclamation of his faith too.)

We also moved in the last three weeks. Actually this was our second move in the last six months but I never said anything on blog-o-sphere because I new our prior move was temporary and we wanted to wait till we were here in order to update our homestudy (which we will do this week or next and get it off to our POA in Rwanda). Our new home is a rental... and probably temporary as well. We actually own 5 acres of land close to where we are now that we will build on if we stay in Spearfish... although my husband loves it here and I don't think any of us would mind staying where we are for a while.

Our home-for-now is a turn of the 20th century farm house that was an original stage coach stop before SD was even a state. It sits on 1300 acres with a pond, creek, cows, barn, fire-pit, frogs (which the boys love) amazing views, and even a clothes line! I grew up on a farm so it kind of feels homey to me. :) The exterior could use some paint but the interior is well maintained and kept up. All in all it works! And we like it! Some friends of ours own it and were glad to have us move in till we're ready to build.








I am getting a crib from a relative soon and look forward to decorating our baby girl's room. I've been sort of waiting till we get our referral so that I can customize to some extent.

No other adoption news... we'll be working on our home study update in the next couple of weeks and will get travel vaccines next week too. Hopefully we will get a referral before my birthday Nov. 3rd! :)