God's Gracious Gift

Creative juices are flowing and who better to spend the time on! This weeks  project,sweet wall hangers for a special room in the Anderson house. How fitting that his sweet name means "God's gracious gift". The hardest part of the process (other than deciding on a name) was picking out fabric in Jo Ann's (I get lost in there every time)..lol

This was a pretty simple task- I purchased 4 8x10 canvases and fabric that I thought would be super cute with the new bedding.

After a few snips of fabric and some spray adhesive- voi la- the canvas is covered. Clearly, I forgot to take a few pictures in this process, but with hot glue, adhesive, and staples the extra fabric is trimmed and tucked.

Final product! Sweet wall hangers for this sweet little boy.I purchased the letters from Ebay and there you have it.

Walking in faith all along our Anderson Adventure!


  



 





Oh the Joys of July!

Well there seems to be so much to catch up with so I apologize for the length of this post. As you know we have been in full swing with our home study. We will actually have our final interview and home visit this week. We are excited to welcome Mrs. K to our house and are confident everything will go smoothly. We also got the call from DHR and will have our home visit with them this week as well. It will be a busy week in our house! The steam mop and vacuum are going to be pooped before it’s all done.

What a weekend we’ve had! The hubs and I decided a few weeks ago that we wanted to head down for Mardi Gras this weekend, but after searching for a hotel and trying to make plans we realized that it didn’t look all that feasible. Well, after spending some time in email convo with one of the attorneys we had been working with we actually made plans to travel to Mobile this coming weekend to meet for the first time and get to know a little more about her and what her nonprofit does. We spoke on last Tuesday, I mailed off a profile book on Wednesday and we made arrangements and were set to travel this weekend, the 25th.

Well, things changed and they changed very quickly! On Thursday I got an enthusiastic email from the attorney inquiring about our profile book and if it had been mailed- I replied and indicated that it was on its way and should arrive on Friday. Well, as it would all work out; she had a birth mom come to her office and knew that we would be a perfect fit (even before meeting us)! After squealing for a while, I emailed her back and reminded her that I had attached our “Dear birth mom” letter and a picture to my original email. She sent that to the prospective mother who indicated she wanted to meet us…this weekend! We scrambled and were able to book the last room in a hotel not far from the meeting location. Excitement was an understatement.

Of course the weather was HORRIBLE this weekend, but soaked and all we went and met at the restaurant. It was really like a first date- you don’t know what to say, you hope you look ok, you hope you make a good impression- all the normal first date stuff times 10 is what we were feeling! Well the attorney got there shortly after we did which gave us time to meet and chat - we were so glad she was there. Well the mom comes, we’ll start calling her Momma B, and she is as wonderful as the attorney told us she would be. We chatted for nearly 4 hours and at the end of the night walked away with a sweet gift that still makes me smile!

We knew that she still had another family to meet and that her parents knew she was pregnant, but didn’t know she was looking to adoption, but that was a wild card that we had to accept. From that night, it would be a waiting game to see if she picked us. We’ll that call came Sunday evening with the attorney simply saying “She picked you! She said there was no need to see anyone else because in her heart she knew she couldn’t find anyone else better for her baby”.  Well world, this is our baby- a precious little BOY that is due July 2! We couldn’t be more thrilled!

We do ask for everyone to continue to lift us in prayer and specifically lift Momma B and her parents up before Christ. We don’t know yet how her parents will take the news or if they will support her decision of adoption or try to change her mind, but we do know we serve an awesome God who with confidence would not lead us to this place and leave us on our own.

We are beyond excitement and soon to be expanding all along our Anderson Adventure

Let the fun begin!

We started the much anticipated home study this week. We heard so many things about what to expect and how to prepare, but in actuality it- thus far- wasn’t that bad.  We met with our social worker; we’ll refer to her as Mrs. K., on Tuesday. The hubs and I had talked just briefly the days before the meeting about the study because we wanted to be as open and genuine as we could. Mrs. K was super nice and very easy to talk to. She explained everything to us which included her saying “now be aware that we are going to get personal and I’m going to get all in your business” and shortly thereafter we started “the study”.

Now, if you have never done a home study-the process would remind you of pre-marriage counseling. A lot of “how would you explain him”, “how would you describe yourself”, “what are your thoughts on___________” …type questions. I must say that if nothing else, I was almost in tears (which we know doesn’t take much for me) when I listened to the hubby talk about me. It was almost hard to follow describing myself after he had made me sound so wonderful!

We got a lot accomplished and created our timeline for the remainder of our sessions. Our next meeting will be Feb 13 and the last, our in home visit will be on Feb 23^rd! From there, Mrs. K will take over and write up our 8-10 page report giving us (hopefully) our recommendation to adopt. Of course during that time we have to wait on our references to be returned and for our ABI/FBI clearance updates to come back. We are looking to hopefully be completed by the end of the month or first of next month! From there the fun begins! We will legally be able to adopt and begin to search (via the attorney and our agency) to find a birthmother.

Keep spreading the word of our T-Shirt fundraiser or visiting the PayPal link above to donate. Of course we’ll keep everyone updated all along our Anderson Adventure!

Another way to show support

Many have asked how they can show support without purchasing a t-shirt- well,we've heard you and we've responded. Located in the right pane of our blog is our new Pay Pal donate button. The great news is you dont have to have a PayPal account to donate (because we linked it to Grayscale). So thanks again for all your support along our Anderson Adventure!

Support for the Adoption

While searching for various grant and funding options we were introduced to a great adoption ministry, Show Hope, which was founded by Christian recording artist Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife Beth as well as an affiliate, Adoption Bug, to create a t-shirt fund raiser. We are asking our friends and family to purchase a tshirt from our site to help us raise money to bring our sweet bundle of joy home. With each shirt purchased a portion of the proceeds will come directly to us and support Show Hope in their continued ministry. (www.showhope.org)

To purchase just visit our site, www.adoptionbug.com/andersonadventure

 Or just click on the link to the right

If you cant purchase, thats perfectly fine! We just ask that you spread the word to your coworkers, your church members, neighbors and friends!