SURPRISE!!!

Well everyone, we have a surprise... We are pregnant!!! After 3 years and totally giving up, it happened. We are excited, thrilled, shocked, and a little sad because the adoption is now officially on "pause". We are almost 9 weeks along and everything is looking great. So keep us in your prayers. Thank goodness we painted the baby's room green. Life can be so funny and exciting at times. I will keep up with every one's blogs and you all are in my prayers. Have a very merry holiday season and the best to you all !!!

I just wanted to apologize for the non-posting! It has been crazy around our house for the past 2 weeks. I promise I will update more on Monday as to all the events that have transpired in the past several weeks.

Today is the Day!!

Today we are officially sending off our dossier to CSS. Could we be any happier? Once we find out everything is correct, we will be a little bit happier! We were shocked SC got our documents, apostilled our documents, and returned our documents in 48 hours. Have I mentioned I love the state of SC? This weekend is painting the baby's room. Pictures will be posted as soon as painting is completed. Thanksgiving is coming up and it is at our house, which we are excited for, except we haven't done much to get ready. So tonight we will do some food shopping in hopes of beating the weekend rush. Who shops at Walmart on a Friday evening? We do! Ok, I guess I had better get back to work!!

It's Monday...

This weekend went really well. It was so nice spending time with Nate's mom and his grandma. We got a lot done on the house as well. On Sat we picked up the baby bedding, so of course as soon as we got home we had to put the bedding with the crib. And here are the pictures! Sometimes I feel we are getting ahead of ourselves, but we are planners. Okay, I am definitely an over planner. On Sat Nate's mom also got us a couple of bibs and bottles as well. Sunday we did work outside: created a flower bed, mulched, planted pansies, new house numbers and finally Nate got his American flag for the front porch. We also got all of our pictures printed out at the store for the dossier. When we picked them up they were all cropped weird and were not what was uploaded to the store. So we had to trek home, get the memory card and go back to the store. I was rather annoyed. But in the end we got our pictures. Such a busy weekend, is it really Monday already? Today we got our final document notarized for the dossier and tomorrow it all gets shipped to the state of SC to be apostilled. We didn't realize until this morning we were missing a document. So the rest of this week we are going to be relaxing and getting ready to paint. Nate is super excited, NOT!! It has gotten so cold here lately. My mom stopped by to see the baby bedding w/ the crib, which she deemed adorable. I don't know what we are going to do with ourselves when we are waiting for "the call". Hopefully we won't have to wait too long, but patience is a virtue that we both have had to learn over the past couple of years. But you know what they say, "The best things come to those who wait". So true!!

Big Day...

Today we went to get the remainder of our documents notarized. So of course we were really excited to have all our documents collected and ready to go minus our home study. When we got home Nate checked the mail and.... our final home studies were there!!! What a great way to end a long day of work. This evening while I was cleaning downstairs and Nate was working on the upstairs, Nate had a surprise for me. When I went upstairs Nate had the crib put together! I love it, it looks wonderful. I will post a picture tomorrow. I went to take a picture tonight and the batteries were dead in the camera. Perfect timing. Tomorrow Nate's Mom and Grandma come to visit. This weekend will be really nice. We even have a coupon for USA Baby. For dinner on Sat rather than going out I am going to cook. Yes, I can cook for those of you who know we have a bad habit of going out to eat often. But in the new house we have been doing great, once a week we eat out. Wow, Monday we send everything to be apostilled for SC. Then we are DONE!!! (We hope). We can't believe how daunting the list was for the dossier and now we have it all pulled together. Now as long as Alabama keeps winning things will be perfect. Roll Tide!! Nate is a huge Penn State fan so they need to win too! Last weekend was devastating for him. I think he stared at the TV for several minutes when they lost. I felt so bad for him. This weekend will be better!!

Moving Forward

Well, we have moved forward since Friday. We picked up the crib on Saturday. We just rented a trailer. Then for the weekend we worked on the house, washed windows, removed shrubs, installed landscape lighting, etc. Our good friends Jay and Brandy came over for the game on Sunday. Go Panthers!! Monday we made it to the court house at 8:05 am and got our documents. Then after work we said goodbye to the Audi. Ok, I said goodbye to the Audi. It was a good car, just not enough room for us and our expanding family. We began our picture hunt for the dossier. We have successfully gotten most of the pictures together. Now we just have to print them out. Today Nate is sending off our NC documents to be apostilled. On Thursday we are going to the bank and getting the rest of the documents notarized in SC. We tried to do as much documentation in SC as possible. NC is $10 a document to be apostilled. SC is $2. Then we are ready to send our documents to SC to be apostilled. We have come so far, it will be nice to be able to come home from work and focus on something fun like what color to paint the baby's room. Oh and then there are those boxes to put away from the move... But hey we are moving forward!

Not 2 Productive..

Today did not go as planned at all. Nate left work early to go pick up the crib at the store. Only the box is so big we had no way to get it home. So we have to find a way to get the crib to our house. After the crib incident, we went to the county court house to get the last 2 outstanding documents for our dossier. Only we got turned around on the roads and ended up getting there after the offices we needed to visit closed. Not fun, so we drove the 45 minutes back to our house. In our original plan after the court house we were going to drop off the Audi at the dealership b/c the lease is over. By the time we got home from the court house adventure it was too late to drop off the car. So for our goals for the day we are 0 out of 3. There are some positives, the drive was beautiful with all the leaves. Our social worker got the go ahead from CSS on our home study. So we should have our notarized home studies in our hands by the end of next week. So hopefully the by the middle/end of November we can get our documents out to be apostilled!!! So the day overall did not go as planned, but you know what, Monday is right around the corner and we can try all over again!! We are getting so excited, we know there is a wait for a referral, but one day we are going to be parents. We just keep praying for all the children and families going through this process, and those families already home with their children.