The Journey

Like many years, 2014 has been filled with ups and downs. We have experienced pain, strength, sorrow, joy, excitement, and many other emotions. This year, Jeffrey and I decided to keep a jar of Blessings, Answered Prayers, Can't Forget Moments, and Anything Else Worth Remembering. We kept our jar (a large mason jar with a cute sticky note describing what the jar is for) on the corner of our fireplace, so we would see it daily, and we and everyone in our home could watch it grow. We have found in past years that difficult times such as the ending of this year, we easily forgot some of the great moments that had happened because they were overshadowed by something devastating and negative. We knew we wanted to end looking at 2014 on a positive note whether it felt positive or not. Unfortunately, this hasn't been an ending we would really want to remember, but thankfully we have many reminders that these last few weeks are not the summary of the year as a whole. Today, we pulled...

In a couple days (December 28), we will officially be DTE (paperwork in Ethiopia) for two years. These past two years have been the hardest and most wonderful times of our lives. Though we have been waiting more than two years, in adoption world your true wait doesn't begin until your papers are in country. ADOPTION UPDATE: Yes, adoptions are going through! Yes, children are coming home! Thankfully over the past couple of months, referrals have picked up (not enough in my eyes), but they have been moving more than in the past few months. People are still being matched with healthy babies, but it has definitely slowed down tremendously from when we first started the process. We are slowly moving up the list to be matched with our baby. We are on several list. We are on the infant boy list, the infant girl list, the toddler boy list, and the toddler girl list. Currently, our lowest number is for the toddler boy list, but things could definitely change. The list is always changi...