Adoption Day!!! April 15, 2009

We are happy to announce . . . the placement order for Lena's adoption has been officially signed. And we have a date to finalize her adoption with the judge: April 15 at 8:30am.

This has been a very long road for her. Lena began this journey in May 2006 when she entered the foster care system at the age of 18 months. She joined our family on Oct. 10, 2006 after living in 2 different foster homes. We are so thankful that this is Lena's last stop and we are her forever family. We cannot imagine life without her, even on her most difficult days.

Thank you to everyone that has believed in this process, encouraged us, supported us, loved us, prayed for us and mostly importantly, made Lena an important part of your life and ours. Our family is thankful for your love and friendship.

Timber!!!

This morning we took our first major step in preparation for the addition to our house that we are hoping to start this spring. We had the huge tree in the back yard taken down. It was both exciting and sad at the same time. We hate to kill living things and Stacy loves trees. But the tree was in the way of making our living space bigger. So . . . down it came. The tree company arrived at 10:48am and were gone by 12:30pm. Less than 2 hours to fall the tree, cut it up, chip the brush, grind the stump, and do a small amount of clean up. Very impressive.

We have met with our builder several times now to go over drawings and make changes. We have finalized all the major details and the overall look of the house. We plan to push our dinette out about 8 feet. To the east we plan to add a mud room/entry-way and above both the mud room and dinette we plan to add a large room which will be on the 2nd story. The use of this room has yet to be determined. It will have an open concept to it, so we are thinking that depending on our needs, we will use it as a tv room, or a play area, or a temporary bedroom when we do weekend respite foster care.

Please pray that this huge undertaking goes smoothly. We are hoping to get this project started as soon as we are safe from frost and the spring rains.