Thank You April Secret Pal

This past months theme with the Winter Blossoms, our CCAI LID group, was books. Thank you so much Secret Pal! I know who you are, but I am not allowed to reveal your name just yet! We cannot wait to read these books with our child(ren)! They are some of our favorite!

Projects and Obsessions!

We are finally done with the front of our house makeover. We added some new and brighter shutters, changed our white outdoor lights to black, added some new bark to our flowerbeds, painted our front door black and added two potted pine trees to frame our front door. Our house looks so much better! Now we just need to landscape the flowerbed in our back yard and we will be done with most of our spring projects.

My new obsession has been birds! We bought a bird feeder a couple of weeks ago and the birds have gone wild eating the seed. It has been so much fun and very relaxing to watch them play, eat and sing! Since then, I have bought another bird feeder, hummingbird feeder, the deck hook to hang a feeder on, a birdbath that later broke, and various types of seed!

4 Months Down...

and hopefully only 12 more or less to go...that is our prayer. The wait is getting harder at this point, especially since the CCAA only matched 2 days worth of LID this last month. Lately, it has been taking them ~2 months to get through one months worth of LID. They are only at 10/27/05, I believe. YIKES! We continue to remind ourselves that God's time is perfect and we will have our child(ren) when He is ready! This has been a very hard concept for me to understand lately, especially when I work with teen moms who continue to have children! Working with them has not bothered me until lately. It is not fair! I had one mom considering making an adoption plan and wanted Troy and I to adopt her baby. She changed her mind after pressure from her family who said they would help out, but do you think they are helping....NO! They are "trying to teach her a lesson"! AAAGGGHHHH! They wouldn't even pick her up from the hospital! Enough ranting and raving. I do have SO MUCH to be grateful for...my husband, Jackson (ruff, ruff), great friends and a warm house and so much more!

Rachel, Giada, Rural King and Travel Packet 1

OK, so I am homesick for some real city action. On Friday, Troy and I went to Bennigans and then explored the new Rural King that opened up in the old KMart in our area. We had no idea what to expect and it is foreign territory for me in many ways. If you live or were raised on a farm, PERFECT, but it was interesting to see. We did pick up a bird feeder and hummingbird feeder to go in our backyard which is a plus. They did have nice plants and I wouldn't mind supporting them instead of WALMART. Anywase, we do not have these type of stores in Austin. It was kind of making us miss the big city life and options. Never in a millions years would we think we would end up in Decatur, but God knows.... Seatle, Denver, Boulder, Ft. Collins, Madison, Chicago etc. were more the type of the areas we thought we would settle. There still is time, but God has us here which is OK for now, but we need a vacation. Back to being homesick, after Rural King, we turned on the Food Network and Rachel Ray did $40 a Day in Austin! It was so depressing to watch all the cool places to eat, Whole Foods, Waterloo Records, Amy's Ice Cream, the Salt Lick.... I was ready to go home! On top of that, Giada was next and explored Chicago!!! I LOVE taking the train and spending a day in Downtown Chicago! It feels like civalization again! Troy and I decided we need to get away more often! We imagined it would be fun to fly to Austin and stay in a hotel and not tell our family/friends that we are in town so we can do what we want to do.

On a more positive note, we got to download Travel Packet 1 for our adoption to China. This is given to you 3-4 months after your Log-In Date. We haven't read through all of it, but skimmed through the part about how much $$$ to bring with you. Time to start saving more $$$, do some fundraising and filling out applications for grant $$$. Jack is also enjoying the warmer weather and his ability to chase bunnies and birds! Spring is here and trees are blooming. I am ready to plant some flowers, but a freeze is expected this weekend!