Hoping, Praying, Waiting for you
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Shannon is turning FIVE!
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Finally, an answer
Well, after applying in January for Shannon to attend Adams Spanish Immersion this fall we finally have an answer to one of our unknowns. Today, on 5 de mayo, we got the official letter telling us she got in! It feels great to have an answer to SOMETHING. Now we will continue to wait to hear about the house and my job schedule next year. I am so excited she got in and am hopeful it will give her a jump start on her Spanish before we go live in the DR for up to 8+ months. Honestly, I've wanted to send her there before we started thinking about adopting from the DR, but I figure it can't hurt for her to be comfortable with the Spanish language before we move down there temporarily either. :) We will continue to pray for the house and my job. The biggest one being the house. I know I have a job next year, I just don't know what my schedule willl look like yet and full time would help to save for the adoption, but I'd miss the extra time I have with the girls. I am thankful God continues to bless our family and we will continue to trust in His timing!
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Hurry up and wait
It seems we are in the no man's land of waiting right now. Waiting to hear from Wells Fargo about the short sale on the house. Waiting to hear about where Shannon will go to kindergarten (if she gets into Adam's Spanish Immersion or not). Waiting to hear if I will be full or part-time next school year and if part-time what my schedule will be. Waiting to move forward with the house so we can move forward with the adoption home study. Overall, a lot of waiting.But, waiting can also allow for dreaming. As we wait I can't help but dream about what it will be like to temporarily move to the Dominican Republic as we adopt two or more additional blessings into our family. With the spring weather here, I've enjoyed watching the girls play at the park many an afternoon. As they play and interact I dream of what life will be like when we come home with a larger family. I love the sisterly bond Shannon and Amelia have and pray that will grow to include their future siblings as well.
More than dreaming, waiting allows for trusting - putting my trust in God that HE has a plan for our family and HIS plan is far greater than any plan I could dream up on my own.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
What a week
This has certainly been quite the week, but through it all God is good. We've had quite a few "bumps in the road" this week, but tonight I am thankful for my family and how blessed we are.
Ben has been doing a TON of side work on cars as a means to save for international adoption. However, apparently at least one of our neighbors is not too thrilled about this idea. Late last week we were notified by the city we were in violation of code for having a disabled vehicle in plain sight (ie: not hidden in our garage, but instead in our driveway). A few days later we received another letter stating one of our neighbors suspects we are running a repair shop. Ben has been working tirelessly on the repairs, but unfortunately is just has not been going so smooth with lots of unforseen complications. He has been out in that driveway working what feels like non-stop to finish the repairs and meet code with the city. The girls and I miss him. I am, however, so thankful for what a dedicated husband he is and the blessing he is to our family.
Another "bump in the road" we are praying for has to do with our renter situation which has gotten complicated. While I do not know what the outcome will be with this situation, I am choosing to cast my cares on God and know that HE sees the big picture and has great plans for our family.
On the upside, we had the inspection on the new house on Thursday. Overall, the inspection went very well and we removed our inspection contigency so we are now officially just waiting to hear if the bank accepts the offer. During the inspection, we also got to show the girls the inside of the house for the first time.
While stress has been high this week, we're still on this adventure as a family together. Shannon has been having some great questions and conversations about adopting and has enjoyed feeling "grown up" by going out and watching her dad work on cars and spending time with him. Amelia has been an amazing blessing to me this week in particular with her overall joy. She will often randomly break out into laughter and, no matter what else is going on, it is impossible not to smile along with her.
We are continuing on this Reilly adventure and our family will praise God in the good times and in the rough times as well.
Ben has been doing a TON of side work on cars as a means to save for international adoption. However, apparently at least one of our neighbors is not too thrilled about this idea. Late last week we were notified by the city we were in violation of code for having a disabled vehicle in plain sight (ie: not hidden in our garage, but instead in our driveway). A few days later we received another letter stating one of our neighbors suspects we are running a repair shop. Ben has been working tirelessly on the repairs, but unfortunately is just has not been going so smooth with lots of unforseen complications. He has been out in that driveway working what feels like non-stop to finish the repairs and meet code with the city. The girls and I miss him. I am, however, so thankful for what a dedicated husband he is and the blessing he is to our family.
Another "bump in the road" we are praying for has to do with our renter situation which has gotten complicated. While I do not know what the outcome will be with this situation, I am choosing to cast my cares on God and know that HE sees the big picture and has great plans for our family.
On the upside, we had the inspection on the new house on Thursday. Overall, the inspection went very well and we removed our inspection contigency so we are now officially just waiting to hear if the bank accepts the offer. During the inspection, we also got to show the girls the inside of the house for the first time.
While stress has been high this week, we're still on this adventure as a family together. Shannon has been having some great questions and conversations about adopting and has enjoyed feeling "grown up" by going out and watching her dad work on cars and spending time with him. Amelia has been an amazing blessing to me this week in particular with her overall joy. She will often randomly break out into laughter and, no matter what else is going on, it is impossible not to smile along with her.
We are continuing on this Reilly adventure and our family will praise God in the good times and in the rough times as well.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Learning Patience
So last Saturday, the sellers on the new house verbally accepted the offer and said they would sign it Monday. Monday morning came and we were then told there were 3 offers being considered and we had until noon Tuesday to change our offer or keep it "as is".
We decided to keep it as we originally offered and endure the wait, praying God would hold it for us if it was our house. All day Tuesday we were anxiously waiting an answer, but were at peace with whatever the decision would be. After quite a bit of back-and-forth phone calls between our realtor and theirs we learned there were now a total of 5 offers and ours was in the top two.
We talked with our realtor at 6:30pm and decided to up our offer by roughly $4,000 to match the other offer. At 9:00 we received a call saying they had once again accepted our offer and were in the process of signing our offer. It was hard to wait it out, but perhaps God is teaching us patience for the road ahead as we await a placement for adoption.
We are praising God for a house we LOVE and is more than we could have asked for. We look forward to filling it with our growing family!
We decided to keep it as we originally offered and endure the wait, praying God would hold it for us if it was our house. All day Tuesday we were anxiously waiting an answer, but were at peace with whatever the decision would be. After quite a bit of back-and-forth phone calls between our realtor and theirs we learned there were now a total of 5 offers and ours was in the top two.
We talked with our realtor at 6:30pm and decided to up our offer by roughly $4,000 to match the other offer. At 9:00 we received a call saying they had once again accepted our offer and were in the process of signing our offer. It was hard to wait it out, but perhaps God is teaching us patience for the road ahead as we await a placement for adoption.
We are praising God for a house we LOVE and is more than we could have asked for. We look forward to filling it with our growing family!
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Here we go...
So I've thought for a while I should start a blog to document all the many things that are happening in our family. Maybe I should have started a while ago, but currently our little family is preparing for some amazing changes and I don't want to forget the details as we begin our adoption adventure.
Ben and I have always known we wanted to adopt. We've talked about wanting to since before we were even married. Our shared experience of growing up in families with adopted siblings is perhaps one of the things that brought us together. For the longest time this was all we knew: We want to adopt, but we don't know from where or when.
While the "when" is still somewhat uncertain the where has definitely been put on our hearts. It was New Year's Eve 2011 and Ben and I were debating whether or not we were going to stay up until midnight. (You know you're a parent when sleep becomes more important than staying up to watch the ball drop) Somewhere in the discussion Ben brought up to adoption topic.
Little did Ben know I had been praying (and praying hard) for a few months by then that God would reveal to Ben when we should begin our adoption adventure and where we should adopt from. He may not have known my prayers, but God definitely answered them. Ben told me the Dominican Republic was put on his heart and from here we began to research how to adopt from the D.R.
A lot more conversations were sparked from our New Year's Eve discussion and we quickly learned adoptions from the Dominican Republic are rare in the U.S., in fact there were only 5 in 2011. We also quickly learned why. The Dominican Republic requires you to stay in the D.R. until the adoption is finalized, which can be up to 8 months. Both parents must be there for the first 60 days and one must stay the entire time and the second parent must return for the final court date.
We continued to pray that God open doors for us and affirm our desire to adopt a sibling group from the Dominican Republic. While we still don't exactly know the when, we are anticipating this to be a 2-4 year journey until we can add to our (current) family of four. We know it's not going to be easy, but we have already seen so many blessings and affirmations.
Here are just a few:
A few days into January, without having brought up the topic of adopting to Shannon, she asked me on the way to preschool if our family was ever going to adopt. I asked her how she felt about that idea and she responded "I think it is what our family needs to do," and "I would really like a brother and maybe another sister."
While brainstorming ideas to come up with the money necessary for international adoption we thought maybe Ben could use his automotive background to do some side work. The following Sunday in our small group at church a sidework opportunity practically fell into our laps and since then Ben has done 3 major car repairs in a little over a month.
We quickly realized our current 3 bedroom house would probably be a bit too cozy for a family of 6 and began praying for a way to move into a larger house. We found a house above and beyond what we could have asked for in our price range this past Friday and the sellers accepted our offer yesterday (Saturday). Now we are continuing to pray the bank also approves the offer (it is a short sale) and we are able to find reliable renters for our current house.
We've shared our desire to adopt with many people at our church and today the praise for finding the house. After service the mom sitting in front of us shared her story of adopting a sibling group from Guatemala and offered lots of encouragement.
Another mom from our church shared with us a small pouch of coins her daughter gave her for her birthday. She told us it has sat on her dresser since her birthday, but this morning she felt like God wanted her to bring it with her to church. After she tried to drop it into the offering box and couldn't because the slot wasn't big enough for the pouch, she hung on to it during service. She shared with us that while we were sharing our story of our desire to adopt and finding the house, God told her to give us the pouch of coins as a reminder to us that God will provide for us as we prepare to adopt.
It's only been a little less than two months since that unforgettable New Year's Eve and yet we have been able to witness so many affirmations. We are so thankful for all of these and can't wait to see what else is in store for our family.
Ben and I have always known we wanted to adopt. We've talked about wanting to since before we were even married. Our shared experience of growing up in families with adopted siblings is perhaps one of the things that brought us together. For the longest time this was all we knew: We want to adopt, but we don't know from where or when.
While the "when" is still somewhat uncertain the where has definitely been put on our hearts. It was New Year's Eve 2011 and Ben and I were debating whether or not we were going to stay up until midnight. (You know you're a parent when sleep becomes more important than staying up to watch the ball drop) Somewhere in the discussion Ben brought up to adoption topic.
Little did Ben know I had been praying (and praying hard) for a few months by then that God would reveal to Ben when we should begin our adoption adventure and where we should adopt from. He may not have known my prayers, but God definitely answered them. Ben told me the Dominican Republic was put on his heart and from here we began to research how to adopt from the D.R.
A lot more conversations were sparked from our New Year's Eve discussion and we quickly learned adoptions from the Dominican Republic are rare in the U.S., in fact there were only 5 in 2011. We also quickly learned why. The Dominican Republic requires you to stay in the D.R. until the adoption is finalized, which can be up to 8 months. Both parents must be there for the first 60 days and one must stay the entire time and the second parent must return for the final court date.
We continued to pray that God open doors for us and affirm our desire to adopt a sibling group from the Dominican Republic. While we still don't exactly know the when, we are anticipating this to be a 2-4 year journey until we can add to our (current) family of four. We know it's not going to be easy, but we have already seen so many blessings and affirmations.
Here are just a few:
A few days into January, without having brought up the topic of adopting to Shannon, she asked me on the way to preschool if our family was ever going to adopt. I asked her how she felt about that idea and she responded "I think it is what our family needs to do," and "I would really like a brother and maybe another sister."
While brainstorming ideas to come up with the money necessary for international adoption we thought maybe Ben could use his automotive background to do some side work. The following Sunday in our small group at church a sidework opportunity practically fell into our laps and since then Ben has done 3 major car repairs in a little over a month.
We quickly realized our current 3 bedroom house would probably be a bit too cozy for a family of 6 and began praying for a way to move into a larger house. We found a house above and beyond what we could have asked for in our price range this past Friday and the sellers accepted our offer yesterday (Saturday). Now we are continuing to pray the bank also approves the offer (it is a short sale) and we are able to find reliable renters for our current house.
We've shared our desire to adopt with many people at our church and today the praise for finding the house. After service the mom sitting in front of us shared her story of adopting a sibling group from Guatemala and offered lots of encouragement.
Another mom from our church shared with us a small pouch of coins her daughter gave her for her birthday. She told us it has sat on her dresser since her birthday, but this morning she felt like God wanted her to bring it with her to church. After she tried to drop it into the offering box and couldn't because the slot wasn't big enough for the pouch, she hung on to it during service. She shared with us that while we were sharing our story of our desire to adopt and finding the house, God told her to give us the pouch of coins as a reminder to us that God will provide for us as we prepare to adopt.
It's only been a little less than two months since that unforgettable New Year's Eve and yet we have been able to witness so many affirmations. We are so thankful for all of these and can't wait to see what else is in store for our family.
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