Thank You!!

Thanks so much to everyone who ordered candles for our travel money fundraiser! We were humbled by your notes of encouragement and your support. We love you guys!

We are so excited about things that have been happening with grants and fundraising opportunities. Will you please join us in prayer for God's favor in the funding? We are committed to bringing Peyton and Emilia along with us to Uganda for lots of different reasons, but mainly because we want them to be there to experience the first moments of us becoming a family of five.

Adoption is not for the faint of heart. But, I know that the joy that will follow the process is priceless. I had been struggling with the lack of activity while we were waiting for our USCIS fingerprinting date and felt that God had been urging me to pray for the other families that are also waiting. I'm holding fast to the hope that we'll soon be holding our sweet boy.

Faith Creek Candles!!!

UPDATE: Due to the problems with the commenting section please email me with your order! jenn@alleganycomputer.net You can still use paypal when paying by clicking the paypal button at the bottom of the post! THANK YOU!!!

Hi, all! I'm so excited that my favorite candle

company has partnered with us to do a fundraiser for our travel costs to Uganda. You can find out more about them here and also see the candles that I'm talking about. The candles available for sale are:

16 oz. Jar Candle-$14.00

(this is my fave! I stock up on these to give as last minute gifts...they're great!)

Scents available are:

Hansel & Gretel Maple Syrup

Cinnamon French Toast Grandma's Kitchen

Pecan Pralines Raspberry Cobbler

Harvest Orange Chiffon

Gingerbread Cookie Banana Nut Bread

Blueberry Muffin Pumpkin Pie

Bag of 5 Tarts-$4.00

Scents available are:

Hansel & Gretel Maple Syrup

Cinnamon French Toast Grandma's Kitchen

Pecan Pralines Raspberry Cobbler

Harvest Orange Chiffon

Gingerbread Cookie Banana Nut Bread

Blueberry Muffin Pumpkin Pie

Flameless Candles-$18.00

A yummy smelling electric, yet primitive, grubby candle. In various scents and colors, it has white icing dripping down the outside of the shell and comes with a homespun ribbon tied around it. The shell warms when the candle is lit, which releases the scent! The shell does not melt, so no more worrying about running wax or burns. The flameless candle comes with an on/off electric cord plus a 5 watt silicone dipped bulb. Makes for a great gift! Fluted tin dish included.

Scents available:

Grandmas's Kitchen Red in color

Cinnamon French Toast Brown in color

Pecan Pralines Brown in color

Hansel & Gretel Brown in color

Gingerbread Cookie Brown in color

Scented Bears with Light-$30.00

Scents available:

Hansel & Gretel

Cinnamon French Toast

Pecan Pralines

Blueberry Muffin

(For my local friends, you can add a school hoodie-Allegany, Bishop Walsh, Fort Hill, Frankfort, Keyser or Mountain Ridge)

As you may (or may not) know, travel costs are huge and we're just trying to find ways to come up with the costs of lodging, airfare, and necessities that are required of such a long stay in country. Our little guy turned 3 last month and we want to make sure that another birthday doesn't pass without us. I would show you his sweet face, but we aren't able to until he's legally ours. But, I can tell you....HE'S SO HANDSOME!!! And, he's got the sweetest little cheeks that you just want to kiss on!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

To make it easy, you can comment your order and just click on the donate button to pay. I'll contact you as I receive orders and will either ship or deliver to you in approximately 3 weeks!!

New look!!

My new friend Mary from Bright Sunshine Designs hooked me up with this fabulous blog design. The moment I saw it I knew that it fit 'us' perfectly. I'm so excited about it and I just log on to look at it! Please, check her out!!

On the adoption front: Our home study finally arrived! Currently we are waiting for another piece of the puzzle to fall into place along with some potentially really great opportunities to raise funds for our adoption.

I took a break from paperwork today and went to the mall in search of Valentine's day goodies for Wayne and the kids. I am a sucker for Hallmark cards! I want my kids to remember the little cards that I taped to the bathroom mirror, the notes in their lunchboxes and the small gestures that I made regularly to make them feel special. One of the fondest childhood memories involves a gesture like that made by my mom. She would come home from work sometimes with little treats and surprises for us, nothing grandiose. We were always so excited for her to come home anyway, and the prospect of some neat little trinket was an added bonus. I vividly remember her holding out each of her hands to my brother and I so that we could pick the surprise. She slowly opened her hand to reveal a tiny cube that when placed in water became a washcloth with the picture of a dinosaur on the front. At some point in my life I decided that I wanted to be that kind of mom. The one with spontaneous little things that said 'I thought of you today'. So, I write notes and I leave dollar store prizes outside their bedroom door. What's one thing that you want your children to remember about you?

Udates!

Author's note: I'm pretty sure that no one actually reads this thing anymore, but I thought that I'd update it simply because I feel that I need to do a better job at documenting things that are going on around here. Other friends of mine have blogs and I'm so envious at their super great posts and their little adoption time lines running along the side! Readers of this blog will get neither super great nor timelines, but I think that's okay!

Lately, I've been struggling with the lack of happening in our adoption. In November (11.17.10) we received a call from our agency stating that we were matched with the sweetest little guy. Our prayers had been answered. I kept telling Wayne that I'd feel better and that it'd be easier for me to wait once we'd know for sure if we were able to adopt him or not. NOT. TRUE. The fact is that it's been excruciating at times. Two weeks ago he turned 3 years old. So, on bad days I think about the fact that my child was 8,000 miles away from me. He doesn't know any different, but I do. That kind of waiting is hard. Not to say I'm the only one that has ever felt this way before or had to deal with it...but it still is yucky sometimes. We are also waiting on our home study to be sent to us so that we can start waiting on other things to get finished. God is using this down time to really draw me closer to Him and that's time well spent.

Merida and Louboutins...

Processing every experience that we had while in Merida, Mexico has been so daunting. God's hands were all over this trip. I saw my children have compassion for those less fortunate than us or probably anyone they've ever met before. I saw my five-year old make friends with a little girl that we spent time with despite the language barrier. Love transcends everything! I wanted to share an experience that I had while there.

My 30th birthday is quickly approaching and unlike most of my friends I actually LOVE my birthday!! I can not wait to turn 30; the whole idea excites me. I had been hinting around about a certain pair of black patent pumps with those signature red lacquer bottoms. And, knowing my husband, I actually would've gotten them! Anyway, it's hot, like 115* with 90% humidity hot, and we're at a building site where a house was starting to take shape. A family of five was going to have the opportunity to live in their very first home. Until this time, they had been living with several relatives. They are young parents with 3 small children. This house was roughly the size of our dining room. They visited the site the day that we were there and the mother was so grateful that she was crying and thanking us. Earlier we had been talking with a great guy that we met named Tim and he was talking to me about clean water and how wells there could be built (do you built a well? or access?) for roughly $300 dollars. So, there we are, sweating, raking rocks around to make a foundation and I felt convicted immediately about these shoes. Running the numbers in my head as I did a sad price comparison made me feel so ashamed. I would wear 4 times the cost of a well in Mexico...on my feet. I knew at once that I wasn't going to get the shoes because I didn't want them. Wayne and I have been praying and praying about being good stewards over what God has given us. And something as subtle as a birthday present had ended up with a good, long reevaluation of myself. Those shoes are still at Neiman Marcus, where they belong. But that money, it's sponsoring orphans and missionaries just like He planned. God can use anything in your life in order to help you grow and I'm so glad that He's not finished with me, yet.

Yikes!

I just laughed at the fact that the previous post was written on June 1 after I had not written anything for 3 months and now my next post followed over one month later. I guess I'm just not going to be a super blogger-and that's okay with me. So many things are going on or have gone on and I'd just like life to slow down a little bit. Tomorrow we (Wayne, the kids and me, along with 10 others from our church) leave for our mission trip to Merida, Mexico and I am so excited to finally be heading out somewhere with a mission team!! Three years ago Pastor Alan and I started talking about missions and making plans for a summer trip that just didn't come together, because it wasn't our time to go. I'm so super excited about what God's planning to do with us and how He's going to use us in Mexico.

I'm holding off on writing down other things that have gone on these past few weeks. I have a million things swirling around in my head that I want to write, I'm just not ready yet. :(

Staving off a migraine and looking at a pile of laundry...

xoxo~Jenn

3 month hiatus...

I can't believe it's been almost 3 months since I've last posted anything! My Project Life crashed and burned, sadly. I'll have to take it up again next year! So much has gone on since the last time I was on here and the one person that reads is the first person I call (after my husband) usually so this is all old news to her. I have so much that I want to write down here about how God has been working in our lives, but I'll probably never remember it all!

So, as of last week all of our initial paperwork that we needed to submit to Holt International went through and they were just waiting on us to select a home study agency. We were really discouraged to find out that there were only two places in MD that were listed as cooperating agencies. One agency had a phone that just rang and rang, no answer ever with no means to leave a message. So, it looked like we were going to be (I hate to say stuck-but that's how I felt) with an agency that required the full amount for the study and incidentals ($5,000!!!!) up front.
Add that on top of other things that we have going on (trying to landscape our home and get together money for the four of us to go on a mission trip in July) it was just an overwhelming cost. Even without anything else going on the cost still would overwhelm me! Anyway, a lot has been happening and Friday night in desperation Wayne prayed for our finances, the mission trip and most of all, about our adoption. The next day I felt like I should check Holt's website again for cooperating agencies in surrounding states but I clicked on MD instead and saw that a third agency had been added. I quickly downloaded their application and saw that they offer a sort of pay as you go plan which is great! Better yet, the home study is $1,3oo!! I was so overcome with emotion, God had met us where we were and blessed us yet again. What an answer to our prayers!! Our application for the new agency will go in the mail tomorrow and we'll be on our way! Please continue to be in prayer for us as we walk this path that will lead to another child!

So, although I have few readers, I hope to be better about journaling our adoption experience and also just life in general. Be blessed.