Tennessee, Here We Come!

We are off early in the morning to head down to Chattanooga, TN! My little brother is actually getting married! I can't believe it. We are so excited for him, & for us b/c we love the girl who said yes! So I won't be blogging, but once I get back I'm sure I'll have lots of interesting stories for you all! :)

Miniature Earth

Saw this link & thought I would pass it along. (thanks Pete!)

I think that it's always good to get a little perspective. Even after living over in Sri Lanka & India and seeing first hand some of the poverty people experience, I have been back in the states for less then a year & sadly barely ever think about what others might be going through in the rest of the world.

How come it's so easy to ignore, or just forget about it? Why do I get so caught up with my own life? I pray that God will continually remind us of all his children & their different needs, and also give us a heart to make things better.


Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. - Galatians 6:2

Good-byes & Hellos

My brother-in-law, Matt lived with us this summer. I had no idea how he would be as a house guest, but I have to say he was wonderful! (we miss you matt!) He was just here for an internship for the summer, but has already left to go back to Arkansas for his masters. Rachel loved having a "big" brother to play with, and she would've been devastated, but luckily only 3 days after Matt left, my parents arrived. So thankfully she's been distracted! (she's getting quite bored with me!)


We've been busy with my parents this past week. It's been great to be with them again. For those of you who don't know they live over in Carlisle, England (northern part). So it's always great to have them back on this side of the ocean. :) Rachel loves it when they come! Since she is the only grandchild on this side you can imagine how badly she gets spoiled!

We went to Mt. Vernon... the home of George Washington. It's the first time I've been, it was great! They've just added a huge museum to the property, and in one of the films you can watch, it actually snows on you! Rachel loved that.

Here's Aunt Tamara & Rachel at Mt. Vernon.


In the museum they had a whole room just for hands on stuff for kids to do. Rachel loved trying on the dresses.


Afterwards we went to eat some fish & chips in downtown Alexandria. (so my parents felt more at home) :)


We've also done a lot of shopping (mainly for my mothers dress) for my brother's upcoming wedding. This is what Rachel picked out for Uncle Brian to wear.


And since we're not together for any birthdays we celebrated all the birthdays that have happened in the past 6 months.





So I've caught you up a little :) My parents leave today to head down to Chattanooga to help out Lauren & Erik get ready for the wedding. The rest of us will head down on Thursday. Can't believe it's almost here already!

We got it!

We got our I-171H today! We are officially approved by the US government to adopt 1 or 2 children from Ethiopia. We were told that this usually takes anywhere from 3 to 9 weeks, they were right on...it took us 6 1/2.

We can now officially wait for a referral! I'm just so glad to have this step done. I've heard horror stories of things being lost, or not just coming for months & months, so I am very grateful that ours has come with no problems.

Now we continue to pray for who God has for our family, and wait for a referral. Our agency says this will take any where from 2-4 months, but sometimes it has happened even faster. So we'll wait with excitement. :)

Behind...

I'm still not caught up with life :) It's amazing how being sick for a week can get you behind in everything! My house is a mess! My parents arrive on Tuesday so we are going to have a fun weekend cleaning! I've felt better this week, but instead of cleaning I decided to paint the kitchen. (much more fun!) I know, I know, I really put this on myself.

Here are pictures of our kitchen though :) (again please excuse the mess! I promise Grandma it doesn't alaways look this way!)


Rachel even got in on the action...


The finished product...


Here is the main reason we painted...we got some great art over in Sri Lanka (done by art students over there) & needed to have the walls match our pictures better.





Next up the floors!