Bye Bye October

Well tomorrow is the last day of Oct. Novemeber here we come!
I can't believe how time is just flying by. Guess that is how it is when you are busy.
Lance is still on 4 hour recall (DRB). Still no word on him leaving anytime.
We are in the midst of Judgement House at our church. Lance and I are having a great time being actors in the walk through drama. We will run it tonight & tomorrow. We have had about 300 people go through so far. So that is awesome!
We are gearing up for my parents and my aunt from Seattle to come for Thanksgiving. We can't wait! I have made reservations for us to stay one night on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, one of my favorite places!
No new news on the adoption. We are waiting for results from our fingerprinting and then we will send off paperwork to the State of TX and then send it all off to the Chinese Consolate.
Hope you are enjoying the fall weather. It hasn't hit Texas yet so we are patiently waiting for the weather to cool and the leaves to start changing. WAIT!!!! Texas doesn't have trees. So I guess you can let me know when fall hits.

Another week gone

Can't believe it is Friday! Where are the weeks & months going? I really need to start smelling the roses! I have been working a lot since I have to start making up some time I will be off. In Nov. Lance is doing a marriage conference on Friday Nov. 5th & Sat. Nov. 6th. I'll take that Friday off. We have to go to Dallas the next week Nov. 12 & 13 for an adoption seminary. Then my parents and Aunt Jean are coming for Thanksgiving so I won't work at all when they are here. I'll take 4 days off then.
We are preparing for Judgement House at church. It is a walk through drama. Lance is playing Jesus and I am playing a principal of the school. It should be fun. It is running 7-10pm Oct. 27-31.
No new news on the adoption stuff. We are just playing the waiting game to get all of our paperwork certified and then we send it all off to the Chinese Consolate. I'll keep you posted.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend and check back again soon for another blog.

Fingerprinting......done!!

YEAHOO! We are so excited. We left about 6:40am this morning in route to San Antonio to be fingerprinted. Going to the INS office on Saturday. We were planning on spending a few hours waiting in line. I brought adoption books to read. We get to the office at about 8:50am. Drove right up to the office because of the navigators awesome job :) (Yes that was me since Lance was driving). ANYHOW>>> we go inside and fill out our forms, which took about 2 minutes. We got our numbers, 12 & 13. They were on number 10. As soon as we sat down, Lance's number was called. Then a couple minutes later, mine was called. We were both fingerprinted and out of there by 9:15am. We were thrilled! They didn't fingerprint us using the dredded black ink. They did it all digitally. We put our prints on just a piece of glass and it was automatically converted onto the computer screen. The prints are sent directly to the FBI so hopefully we will get the results soon. We are hoping the rest of the adoption goes as smoothly as did the fingerprinting. I also called a friend's friend who adopted a girl last year from China. I talked to her for about 1 hour. She shared some great information about traveling and what and what not to take and what to expect when we get to China. It has made me more excited than ever to get our daughter! What an experience we are in for. We are just praying Lance will be here to go with me. The Army said they would work with us but we will just have to wait and see. Well I need to get dinner started and sausage balls made for tomorrow. I am taking a snack for after chapel fellowship. Take care & keep coming to read the blog!

Answered Prayers

WOW! God is so awesome! This week has been quite a busy one. We had a great Tues. evening. We had a wonderful couple over for our Supper Club. The original family who signed up had to cancel so I prayed for God to send another family. He did!
We both had Monday off but didn't do much. The weather is finally cooling off, which is a blessing and an answered prayer.
I also received my passport in record time! They said it would take 4-6 weeks and I received it in 3. I also sent off some applications for some grants. We are in prayer about them and the financial part of the adoption. We know God will provide but it is so hard to be patient and wait on Him.
Tomorrow (Sat) we may got to San Antonio to be fingerprinted. So that will be so good to get that out of the way. We are winding down on our checklist. We are going to Dallas for a seminar Nov. 12-13. It is a 2 day seminar so we will have to spend the night and we'll have to take off work on Friday the 12th.
Take care and hope you all have a great weekend!

Adoption Article

Good day to you all. It has been an exciting week in our life. Lance has been busy with work, prayer breakfast, preparing a sermon and getting a marriage conference together for Nov. So he has been keeping busy. I have been busy with work and getting documents notarized and copied. We also were interviewed yesterday for an article for Buckner International Adoption, the organization we are adopting through. When it comes out, I will post it here. I got the final paperwork notarized today. We will be able to send documents off to be certified by Texas, Maryland & Montana.
Lance has a 4 day weekend and I am not sure what our plans are. He is at home hopefully mowing the lawn. He is also probably playing XBox since he is in full swing in a Maryland football season. Tomorrow I am in in a American Heart Association heart walk. Lance will probably come & bring Simba. Hopefully it won't rain! I also have Monday off so maybe we can take a day trip to a fun town close to home. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Top of the afternoon to y'all

Hope all is well with you. Since you are reading this blog guess you have a minute to catch up on my exciting life! Well I know you are just checking to see if there is an update on the adoption.
Adoption Update:
We have but 2 (two) documents left to notarize before we can send off to the state to be certified. So we are excited! There is a notary at work, which is so convenient. Everyone has been so supportive and interested in this process. It is interesting but quite lengthy and tedious. It will be worth it at the end. We have put down we would accept siblings so if have been praying for one child, you may want to change your prayers to whatever God wants us to have. Two scares me but God won't give me what I cannot handle. I know Lance will be a huge help, especially with 2! Being married 10 years and then adding 2 more to our home??? You may ask are they crazy? No, just doing what God wants us to do. We have been so blessed and can't wait share what we have with children and to start our family.
Take care & thanks for checking in :)

The 10th Month of 2004

I know you are excited as I am that this year is just flying by. It is crazy!
We are now officially accepted to adopt a baby from China! YEAH HOO!
So we are in a mad dash to get certified copies of birth certificates, marriage license and get all of our other documents notarized. I have applied for my passport. We are still waiting on an appointment to go to San Antonio to get our fingerprinting done. We are very excited and are hoping to go to China in April, if we can get all of our paperwork finished soon.
Sat. Lance is running a mini-marathon in San Antonio. Here is the site:
http://www.cowgirlcreativegroup.com/heloteshalf/hh_home.htm
So we will be going down Fri night and coming back Sunday. There is a shrimp fest Sat. night. We are looking forward to that.
Lance is officially on 4 hour recall. He is in the Deployment Readiness Brigade (DRB) which means their Brigade could be called to go anywhere and they have to be at the office in 4 hours when they are notified. They are the "911 call" to America. If something happens, they will be there. They are only allowed to go 250 miles away. So he may be leaving again soon. Hopefully not for a year but you never know. I'll keep you updated on this. He will be in this status until probably early next year or it could be longer but that is an estimate.
Well this blog is done for now. Take care & thank you for your prayers.