It’s been a special week at our house. On Wednesday, Wiley turned 5 months old & after a 5 minute phone call with a judge & our attorney, became “legally” ours! Not much changed in our hearts, he’s been our son since the second we laid eyes on him, but it’s nice to know there’s official paperwork out there that says so.
Nana & papa, my parents, as well as grandma & grandpa, Caleb’s parents, came for a celebration supper.
Feeling very blessed!
Let’s see if I can even figure out how to work this blog thing again, it’s been so long!
We’ve been home with our wonderful little blessing for a little over 5 weeks now & life is good. People keep asking me if life is a little different now & my response is usually, “completely!”. I really don’t know what happened to our old life but it’s all so great, (yes, even the lack of sleep) I don’t really care.
I know, I know. Those of you who are facebook friends with me are probably saying enough already with these pictures:). Just a few, I promise.
As I type this, my little Wiley man is sitting in my lap, staring up at me with his huge brown eyes & throwing random smiles my way. Yeah, I can handle this. Thank you Lord for such an amazing gift!
Thank you to all of our prayer warriors out there! Your prayers have been felt, without a doubt! We’d love continued prayers for things to go smoothly through the post-placement process. Having a finalized adoption will bring a lot of peace to this mama’s heart.
How about you? I hope you are feeling blessed & encouraged today! Please share what you are grateful for in the comments below & join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!
So, life has gotten a little crazy around here. All in a good way though.
A little over 4 weeks ago we got the call that a birth mom chose us to parent her baby boy that is due in December (as in, this December!). We have been living in a blur of preparations, excitement & maybe a little chaos ever since.
Caleb & I ask each other almost daily if this is really happening. It’s hard to grasp the whole situation when you are dealing with people you’ve only ever spoke to over the phone, a part of you wonders if they truly exist. But, it is sinking in a little more with each tiny milestone. Like yesterday, we installed the car seat…..that feels really weird. The day before that, some amazing friends threw us an awesome, couples baby show……how fun! Saturday, we arranged furniture in the nursery……..whoa, a baby is really going to live here?!
Needless to say, we are beyond excited & feeling so incredibly blessed. God has been so good to us & has put friends & family in our lives that have been so supportive.
I hope to be back to blog-land a little more often with updates, but I make no promises:). Out little guy is due to arrive in less than two weeks now but could really be here any day!
Sometimes, I don’t even know how to explain where the time goes. I’ve missed the last couple of weeks of gratituesday posts due to a tight schedule & more pressing tasks. But, I’m back today & super excited to share about some of our latest blessings!
On my last gratituesday post, I shared how grateful I was for our garage sale fundraiser & all of the fabulous help we had. Well, we got to experience that all over again a couple weeks ago at my parents’ home in Iowa.
My mom had been talking about the possibility of having a garage sale to help clear out some unused items, so after I told her about the one we were going to have to raise funds for our adoption, she immediately jumped on board & decided to make theirs a fundraiser too! How blessed are we!?
Not only did my parents put together a great garage sale with some amazing stuff to sell, they had friends, neighbors & more family donate items, as well as time, to help make the thing a huge success!
We are truly, truly blown away by everyone’s generosity & support. We have felt so loved on & blessed through both of our garage sale events & raised well over $4,000 for our adoption! Praise the Lord!
Give thanks to the Lord of lords.
His faithful love endures forever.
Give thanks to him who alone does mighty miracles.
His faithful love endures forever.
Give thanks to him who made the heavens so skillfully.
His faithful love endures forever.
Give thanks to him who placed the earth among the waters.
His faithful love endures forever.
Give thanks to him who made the heavenly lights –
His faithful love endures forever.
~Psalm 136:3-7
How about you? I hope you are feeling blessed & encouraged today! Please share what you are grateful for in the comments below & join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!
I’m breaking from my routine of listing out what I’m grateful for to focus in on our adoption fundraiser this last weekend.
A few weeks back, we decided we’d like to have a garage sale to help raise some funds for our adoption {you can read more about it all here, if you’d like}. Since we didn’t have a ton of stuff to sell of our own, we asked for donations from friends, through Facebook pages & in our church bulletin. And wow, were we ever showered with generosity!! I tried to keep track as the donations poured in, and from what I jotted down, over 30 families donated items for our sale! What blessings!
In addition to awesome donations, we had some amazing friends that were willing to sacrifice time from their days to help us sort, price & sell at the garage sale. It ended up being about as icky of weather as you can get for a garage sale, (who knew the first snowflakes of the season would fall just for us!:)) but people still came, & for that I am so grateful!
I hope to get a chance to thank my dear friends again on a more personal level, but if you’re here (you know who you are), thank you, thank you, thank you! I don’t know what I would have done without your help & support!
This adoption thing isn’t easy. But feeling the love & support of our family, friends & community means the world to us.
How about you? What are you grateful for today? Join in at Heavenly Homemakers!
Well, today as I sit here & think about all that I have to be grateful for, I’m overwhelmed. Our adoption fundraiser garage sale is this weekend, & for the past 2 weeks we have been collecting donations from friends, relatives, our church family & complete strangers. Everyone has been extremely generous & so sweet! I don’t think I could ever thank everyone enough for their support. Our garage is filling up fast & we have more stuff coming in everyday, such blessings.
In my bible study today (I’m currently doing Beth Moore’s James study), I came across such a fitting verse for today…
Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. James 1:17 (NASB)
Obviously, this applies to so much more than just our garage sale donations, but it was such a great reminder that all good things come from our Heavenly Father.
I’m also in the middle of reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts with a couple dear friends. In her book, she encourages us to give thanks for every thing, big & small. The chapter we just finished reading this week goes so far as to say that by giving thanks for the small things, time can actually slow down. Now, this isn’t some magical thing that happens. It’s just that when we take time to notice the small things, to give thanks, we live in the present, not rushing on to the next thing or looking ahead for something better. Such a powerful message & one I need reminded of daily each & every minute of the day.
My sweet sister’s in Christ & I have challenged each other to begin making that list of one thousand gifts. We didn’t set a timeframe on it, yet anyhow, but we are making the first step towards living a life of thankfulness for each & every gift from our Heavenly Father & living in the here & now instead of looking off to tomorrow for something greater.
So, here’s just few things I’ve jotted down the past few days. I won’t even try to post each of the one thousand gifts here but I hope to share just a few each week. If you’ve read my Gratituesday posts before, you may notice that I’m focusing in a bit more than usual.
I’m grateful for…
I’m somewhat sad that it seems like I’ve only had time to post once a week lately. However, life just happens & prioritizing became essential for me. So, if I can only make it here once a week for this hopefully, short-lived & somewhat overwhelming crazy time in my life, I’m glad I can at least get here for Gratituesday. 
Today I’m grateful that…
1. It’s a gorgeous day outside
2. & that the Fall weather seems to be here to stay….that is, until Winter
3. I LOVE Fall!
4. God made such perfect seasons
5. we finally made it to one of our nephew’s football games Friday night
6. our small group has started up for the year again
7. we have such awesome people in our small group
8. I have an amazing hubby that works so hard, every day
9. we have such a great church family & community that has been, & continues to be, so supportive of our adoption plans
10. our adoption fundraiser garage sale preparations are underway
11. & we have already received some awesome donations for the sale & have many more on the way
12. God continues to show me that His ways are not my ways
13. His ways are ALWAYS better
14. God is in control
He is your constant source of stability; he abundantly provides safety and great wisdom; he gives all this to those who fear him. Isaiah 33:6 (NET)
It’s your turn! What are you grateful for today? Join in at Heavenly Homemakers!
I hate to admit this, but today is one of those days when writing this post isn’t necessarily easy. It’s not that the world is collapsing or anything, it’s just one of those days. One of those days where all I’d really like to do is go crawl back into bed & sleep! I’d like to tell you I’ve got this “living in a spirit of gratitude” thing figured out & it just comes easily, or even naturally. I’m working on it, truly, but I’m not entirely sure it ever comes easily. It’s a choice, every day. And, I do believe doing this exercise {sitting down to ponder on the things I have to be grateful for, that is} helps.
So, for the record, today I’m grateful that…
1. my migraine didn’t last ALL day
2. God loves me where I’m at, despite my imperfections
3. our first face-to-face home study meeting wasn’t nearly as scary as I was worried at one time it might be
4. we have a fridge stocked with leftovers for this busy week
5. I get to work out with some fun & crazy boot campers Tuesday & Thursday mornings at 5:30 a.m.!
6. by “work out” I actually mean, tell them what to do, since I’m one of the instructors:)
7. I have some amazing sisters in Christ to go through Beth Moore’s James study with
8. God is our ultimate provider
9. I’ve had this song in my head for the past 2 weeks now. Normally that would really drive me nutty but this one’s a good one. If you haven’t heard it, or even if you have, check it out, I think you’ll be glad you did.
So, how about you? What are you grateful for today? Any advice on cultivating a grateful heart?
Join in at Heavenly Homemakers!
A little adoption update for you today! {If you haven’t read our story of how we came to this adoption journey, read here}
This week started out a little rough. For the past couple of weeks, we’ve had two birthmothers looking over our profile, & on Monday, our agency called to let us know neither of the birthmothers chose us. Obviously, we knew that was a very real possibility, but it is so hard not to get your hopes up. After continually reminding ourselves that God is in control & has this journey all mapped out for us & knows exactly what baby He will miraculously place into our family, we realized after a couple of days, we needed to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off & continue on.
We are still in the middle of completing our home-study which includes paperwork, physicals {exciting, right?}, fingerprinting {kind of makes you feel like a criminal}, begging friends to say nice things about you in referral letters, lots & lots of reading & this coming week, our first of four face-to-face meetings with our social worker. We also continue to wait & pray for a birthmother to choose us through our agency.
One of the most daunting parts of adopting is of course, the cost. There are several factors that cause some adoptions to be pricier than others {for example: domestic vs. international, infant vs. older child}. In our case, we have our agency fees, home-study costs, birthmother expenses {not all states allow adoptive families to pay birthmother expenses, but the state in which our agency is located does} & attorney fees, which will bring us up to $28,000 – $34,000, not including our travel expenses once the baby is born. It’s a little shocking I’m sure, I know it was for me when we first started looking into adopting a couple years ago.
God has definitely blessed us greatly & we have been able to save up a good chunk for this over the past two years in addition to being overwhelmingly blessed by a couple of unexpected gifts recently. But, I believe God has many, many lessons He is teaching us through this process & one of them is humility. Asking for help, financial or otherwise, is extremely difficult for both Caleb & myself, as I’m sure it is for a lot of people. After crunching the numbers for what seems like the hundredth time, we need to raise about $5,000.
One of my first thoughts when I realized we didn’t have quite enough cash lying around for this adoption was that we needed to have a garage sale! Honestly, I know it’s little odd, but I really enjoy having garage sales. I always have a pile of items we no longer need or want & can certainly dig through the house & find many more items to add to it.
So, here’s how you can help. If you are in the Holdrege vicinity and you have some things you would like to part with, we’re taking donations to sell at our garage sale, October 5th & 6th. {weather permitting}. We’d be more than happy to pick up your donations or you can drop them off at our house. Just comment on this post, email me at a_o_wright@yahoo(dot)com or call/text 4zero2-65eight-3361 to arrange a time to pick up or drop off. We’d like to have the items here by September 30th if at all possible in order to have time to prepare. If you’d like to spread the word through your own blog, Facebook or email, we would be forever grateful!
