Our front living room and dining room.

While I'm practically living at the computer doing various adoption stuff I might as well upload a few pictures of our house. These are of the front living room and dining room. All the other rooms were too messy at the time to share. Another day...


From the front door looking to your left.

Front door and coat closet on the right.

From the dining room. Window at the front of the house and cute dog relaxing. Don't you just love my old lady couch? I do!

From the kitchen into the dining room.  Eventually we will have the big table that I grew up with. It's huge and has lots of room on the benches for lots of big and little bums! :)

From the hallway/family room into the front living room.

I am so pleased with myself. The majority of my decorating is either things giving to us and just updated with spray paint or stuff from second hand stores or stuff from the side of the road or old family items. Lots of little nuggets of family history all through out our house and I love that!

Adoption update!

GREAT NEWS! We have received a referral for our son!!! I wish I could share a picture with you, but because of security reason I will not be able to post any pictures until he is home. He is a cutie that is for sure! Stop either Jason or I at church or where ever you see us and I'm sure we will have a picture with us!

God works is mysterious ways. Even as I think about the on goings of the last few days I am blown away at how He sees the big picture. We thought that we were not close to being able to accept a referral because in our heads we needed to wait to have the money to accept referrals for BOTH our son and our daughter. A picture was sent...somewhat early and after figuring all the numbers we realized that we at least had enough to accept the referral being offered to us. Our son is beautiful and I can't wait to hold him in my arms and be his momma. I can't wait to watch Caedmon have a brother and "teach him how to pick on the sisters" as he puts it.  Uh oh!

Two days ago I got a phone call from one of the organizations that we are receiving a grant from. Originally this organization only gave out grants once your child is home, but recently the board members had decided to change that and they now give out grants at time of referral! I told her that that was so great but that we did not have a referral yet. An hour later I went to check my email and there in my inbox was a email from our agency asking if we wanted to accept a referral of a little boy, picture attached. After crunching numbers and included this specific grant, then YES we would be able to accept the referral for our son!

Now we get our butts in gear sending in our dossier and praying for God to provide the money we need to be able to accept a referral for our daughter and money to get them both home fast! I wish I had time to tell every story since then. Jason has had some great response from his "second family" at work and many desire to help us raise the money! This is such a great opportunity to share the whole reason why we are adopting and to also open eyes to the orphan crisis in our world.

We ask you all to keeping praying! The adoption road is long with many highs and lows. God has brought us further in this process then we ever could have on our own strength. There have been SO many times that we have selfishly doubted Him or been ready to quit. I am ashamed that I often questioned His leading but just like THE loving Father that He is, He continues to guide us and correct us and show us His power. I am SO grateful that He gave us the picture of our son. I know that He could easily take our boy away from us just like He could do with our other children. But just like my heart is invested in our biological children, I am already invested in our son who we have one picture of. God knew that we needed a face to put with this process. It's like our ultrasound picture. :) And any hurdle we must jump through is like labor pains. Labor pains are good and bring us closer to meeting our babies.

My friend, Jen Lee, who has three kiddos adopted from the same country we are was praying this verse over us as she was waiting to hear whether we could actually accept our referral or not.
Romans 8:32
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

God loves us enough to temporarily turn away from His own son, Jesus, and allow Him to die in order to save us. I can imagine that this was maybe the saddest time of God's infinite existence and yet He still allowed it to happen in order to save us nasty sinners. So happy that He has not left us without a Father and graciously delights in us enough to give us much more then we deserve!

More of the chick chickies.

We are having lots of fun with our chicks! They all have names and yes, I can tell the difference. :)
They are growing fast and even some different characteristics are emerging.
Here's some cuties from the last few days.

Here's Marty McFly, one of our Gold Stars, exhausted from time traveling.

Bert, one of our Silver Laced, and Rocky, our Americana, coming to say hi to Reagan. (yes, I'm aware that our chicks are girls. We really don't care that some of them have boy names.)

Princess Chick, our Buff Orpington, likes Toms too. Probably cause they smell like Payton's VERY stinky feet.

She LOVES to sit in the tulle on Reagan's ballerina dress.  Very fitting.

Mary Poppins, our other Silver Laced, practically perfect in every way.

Making my own Chicken Soup for the Soul. These gals do way more for me then reading someones fuzzy story.

I don't have any pictures of our Rhode Island Reds, Miss Hannigan and Annie. Oh, and my favorite, Doc Brown, the other Gold Star. Next time.:)

Baby chicks!!!

On Tuesday we got our baby chicks. We picked up our 8 and Eric's 15 (brave boy!) at once. The hatchery gave us two extra. It was a TON of excitement for one day...just a few days after the big move. Crazy week!
A few hours after we got them the power went out and I couldn't use the heat lamp. Fortunately the temp outside was just perfect for our little ladies and they got fresh air the rest of the day! 
Eric picked up his 15 when he got off work that night.
The next day we had a chick die from what I believe to be "pasting." That's what one of my books calls it at least. It's when their poop accumulates on their butts instead of shooting out. Sorry, that's the best way to describe it. It was also the runt of the bunch. About a third of the size of the rest. I tried very carefully to clean it and then held it for a long time to keep it warm but it just didn't get well. It was sad, but that's part of living on the "farm." :/
So since the hatchery had given us two extra, Eric then gave us his extra to replace the runt. So now we're back to 8 again! There is actually one other chick with "pasting" but she seems to still be growing and will occasionally try to clean herself. I'm not to worried but we are keeping an eye on her.

We have two Silver Laced, two Rhode Island Reds, two Gold Stars, one Buff Orpington, and One Americana. Eric got the same and more! 

From our first day...

The move.

So we've been in our new house for a week. The move went well...for people who hate the process of moving. It's exhausting, but we are SO glad to be in this house. We feel completely spoiled with what God has given us! Everyday I put things away and enjoy the space and just think how perfect this house is for us! Praise God!

A few from the night before the move and a few days after.

All the kids beds were taken apart and so on the last night at our first house we made a mattress room for the kids. They were excited!

Have I said that moving is exhausting? I'll say it again. MOVING IS EXHAUSTING!

Hopefully in the next few weeks I will post pictures of the new house after I've gotten things where I want them.

May in pictures

May totally flew by and I haven't kept up with blogging. Big surprise. So here's May in pictures.

the fart gallery. I mean the ART gallery.

More masterpieces from Payton this week.

This is Mom in a dress. Payton says that this dress has a picture on it of a sad person in a cage. Huh. Interesting. I DO so love to carry around small angry men in cages on my skirt. She nailed it!

This next one is Jason driving a truck. Payton says that he's honking the horn. BEEP BEEP.  In reality he is on a BEER run. One little line makes a pretty big difference sissy. Makes me think of the song, B double E, double R U N BEER RUN! I think I'm probably in the back seat with my $10 and my $5 and my fake id and SO happy to be on a beer run!