How different it is the second time around

   So I think it's safe to say I am not a very good blogger :) But really there's not been a lot to report. We are still waiting to be selected by a birth mother and just as excited as ever. It is so different the second time around though! Last time I knew the exact date we got approved and precisely how long we had been waiting. This time I honestly couldn't remember for sure what month it was! When I saw my approval post was almost 3 months ago I was a little shocked :) That was about how long it was when we got the call about our little man joining our family. I have so much more faith this time around though, because I have seen just how great God is and realize that I need to just let Him be in control. He chose the absolute perfect child and birth family for us!! I can't imagine my life without him, and honestly he has made me a much better person. I guess that is part of it too. I'm not counting the days till a new baby arrives because we are enjoying every moment with him. He is growing so fast and amazing me every day! However, I would be lying if I said we didn't miss the days of holding a tiny baby in our arms :) That time will be here before we know it though. Thanks again to all those who have helped us get to this point and that are continuing to pray for us!!

We've got the stamp of APPROVAL!!

    This week we got what we have been working towards for the past couple months. We got our approval from our placement agency. So we are officially being shown to potential birth mothers and could be selected any time from here on out. I have already been thinking about how we are gonna decorate the bedrooms and rearrange to hold a family of four. Another thing on the list is baby names. It's a whole lot of pressure to pick out your child's name in just two weeks, so this time we will be thinking about that directly. Our yard sales are over but some wonderful friends are having one for us this weekend. If that doesn't say true friends I don't know what does :) We love you Wilkerson's!! Our little man is getting big so fast and I just know he will be the sweetest big brother, and definitely good entertainment! It's been a great week and we're glad to share it all with you. Please keep praying for our family!

The time is here!

  Well the time has finally come. The BIG yard sale is this week! Thursday, Friday, & Saturday we are going to brave the heat and try our best to close the gap on our adoption expenses. Once again we have a LOT of stuff. We hope to have several tents set up to help our shoppers be a little more comfortable while they are treasure hunting. This time it will be at our house to make things a little easier for the little one. So everyone pray for the rain that was forecast to pass us by and for hoarders! We will have lots of things for under $2.00 and be highly motivated to negotiate! We really want our garage back :) If all goes as we hope this will be our last yard sale for this adoption fundraising (& maybe ever). This isn't because we will meet our goal but because we want to be sane when we meet our new addition. So if you get the chance come on down and send all your friends too!
   As far as the adoption process goes, we are moving right along! We have finished our home study and it has been sent to our placement agency. YAY!! And our paperwork is done, YAY!! All I have to do is make some copies and mail some checks and we will be ready for approval. YAY!! Which means we will be able to be shown to birth mothers and possibly selected!! It is all moving along pretty well. As always keep us in your prayers :)

Nearing a Milestone

    I have not been very good at updating you on our progress, but we have been pretty busy. As I  said before, we have had a hundred  eight yard sales, and we are planning to have one more HUGE one. I think the date for that will be June 26th & 27th, but that is tentative. Even though I say that's the last one it will probably depend on how much we make and how much stuff we have left over. On a more enjoyable note, we should have all our paperwork in and our home study done by the end of next week!!! YAAAAYYY!! Talk about major accomplishment :) Although it was much easier the second time it's still really time consuming, and a little aggravating. For example, do ya'll know anyone who when they got pregnant had to take their pets to the vet and have a $50 exam so you could get a note saying it's ok to give you a child and your pet is up to date on vaccines and not a threat to a child? But anyways, that's a whole other story:) I'm really just glad I've already done most all of it! So what this all means is starting sometime in July we will be approved and eligible to be selected by a birth mother! Just think we could be possible be parents to two children by Christmas! They did say it takes longer usually the second time around though, so we will just have to wait and see. After all, we do want this to happen all in God time. Our little boy is now walking so my life got a lot easier and a little more difficult too:) I guess I just can't handle not being insanely busy because I just took on another endeavor. I have started to work for a home based wellness company:) My main reason for doing this is because our little boy has eczema and possibly asthma and is just super sensitive to a lot of things. I have been using this company's body wash and shampoo on him and it has been the only thing that hasn't bothered him (probably cause it doesn't have formaldehyde and who knows what else in it). So we are about to convert the whole house to these products and get rid of all the unnecessary chemicals. I am very excited about it and if anyone else has these similar issues I'd love to try to help you figure out if this would help you too. I know how frustrating it is trying to determine what will help or worsen their eczema! So anyways, that's the latest news around here :) Please keep praying for our family and that we will receive our next child according to God's great plan. Have a blessed day!

Yard Sale Mania

        We are getting there slowly but surely. We have had 8 yard sales so far (although it feels like 20). A lot of stuff has passed through our garage and yard in the past month! Thank you again to all of those who have donated to our sale. We do have one more item I wanted to tell ya'll about. It is a brand new king size bed frame. It originally costs around $900 and we are selling it for $400. It is from the Wilshire collection by Lifestyle Solutions. It has three minor "dings" from being shipped, but they would not be that noticeable once it was set up (and one could be easily repaired). Check out the LINK to get a better idea about it.  Hope to post more on how we are moving through the process soon :)

NEW King Size Bed for sale - Wilshire Collection

Time to Study and Sell

  This is a busy week for us. We are going to have our yard sale Thursday, Friday, & Saturday! This is the first time we have done 3 days in a row. Wish us luck! And pray for no rain. We would really like to sell about 70% of what we have, so come on by we might make you a great deal :) Also, this week we are having our first home study visit. I had forgotten how crazy this all gets when you are trying to do paperwork, home study, and fund raise at the same time :) But it's exciting too and for some reason I do kinda like organizing it all :) Thank you to all my sister's church family (esp you Fancy's mom:) who donated so many items to us!! You all have been great. Well just wanted to catch you all up on the progress. We're moving on towards application completion! And don't forget to check out the previous post on some of the items we have for sale. We are all about moving some stuff so if you are at all interested please leave me a comment :)

I'm starting to have deja vu !

   Well the adoption yard sale collection is officially off and running! We just picked up our first non-family load, and it was AWESOME! It kinda felt like Christmas looking through it all. So first I want to thank my friend Ashley SOOO much! She is awesome for helping connect us with her very generous friend who happened to be moving (I hope your move goes great! And thank you!!). So because it's late and my little man will get up early regardless of when I go to bed, I am gonna post some quick snap shots of some of the things we have for sale (I'll try to update it as I go with prices, sizes, etc). If you are at all interested in anything please contact me and I will be glad to answer any questions. If we have a buyer we will go ahead and sell it. If we don't, it will be available at the next yard sale. This time we will probably have many decent sized sales instead of a few gigantic sales. As I look out onto my garage tonight I can't help but have flashbacks! It's kinda chaotic and a little overwhelming, but it is so awesome! Jon and I were saying how both adoptions have shown us just how caring people still are and how generous people can be. It really is humbling and encouraging :) Some without further ado here are some of our awesome items!

Three piece office desk & shelf ($300 without chair))

Shelf that matches. All shelves are adjustable.

another angle of desk

Nice Leather office chair- can be sold with desk set or seperately- SOLD

Large Framed Art

More nice decor

Large Framed Canvas

Decorative clock

,. -*

Belleville 690V Military Boots size 10.5 - they don't appear to have ever been worn
Check out the link http://belleville-boots.com/airforce.htm - asking $75 obo

Beautiful Indiana Scout guitar with Terrapin case- $75 obo

Shop Vac/ leaf blower in great shape. If there wasn't some dirt in it I wouldn't know it was used :) Lots of attachments.- SOLD!
http://shopvac.com/wet-dry-vacs/vac-details.aspx?vacId=223&vacSKU=931-17-11

Comfy couch for the man cave! - $50

Large Box Frame Decor

Vanity Bar light still in the box

Remodeling a bathroom? We have everything you need! TP holder, robe hook, towel rod, drain stopper, and vanity light- All in original boxes, never opened

Foyer Bench with storage under seat- Top of armrest is missing on one side

 
   If you have any questions about any of the items, please ask! You can do so in the comments section or text me if you have my number. I will do my best to get back to you quickly. Please share our blog if you know someone who may be interested in anything or who may have a goodwill stash sitting around that they would want to donate :) Thanks!

The Second Time Around

   This time around the paperwork has been so much easier! There is still a fair amount to do, but we probably have 75% of it in to our placement agency. Of course we still have the hard stuff like our autobiographies and our photo album, but we are not starting from scratch this time. This is one time I really love technology :) I got our flash drive in the mail today (which I almost don't need anymore since it's been somewhere in the mail for about 20 days) and it is so cute! Made it feel like a very high tech process. We did have our first fundraiser last weekend. We had a yard sale and sold items from our spring cleaning at home and stuff from each of our parents and a couple good friends (Thank you Brown's & Smith's). It was pretty successful and got the ball rolling. I have been saying it is fine if it takes a while this time around, but after holding a sweet little one week old today and seeing pictures of our little guy as a newborn Jonathan & I are both really looking forward to a tiny baby again. Although I am all for baby Hall #1 to be walking before that happens :) We are hoping to get our application in to our home study agency next week, so who knows we may have a visit in the books two weeks from now! So that's the news for now. Nothing earth shattering, but forward progress all the same. We should be able to pick up yard sale items next week so if you have any goodwill piles give us a call :)

Number 2....?

     It's hard to know when is "the right" time to take the leap, but we feel ready to start working towards bringing home our next little bundle of joy. If it happened quickly we feel like we could handle it, at this point (no more bottles and full nights of sleep!). If it takes awhile, for once I actually feel like there is time for that too. But more than ever I feel like it will all happen All In God Time. I could not have picked a better child for our family than the one the Lord blessed us with. So I'm completely letting go and saying Lord, please do it again (when doesn't matter so much).
    We just started the paperwork last week, but let me tell ya, the paperwork is so much easier the second time around (plus it helps when you haven't changed jobs or moved). Now that being said we haven't done the super time consuming areas like our autobiographies, photo albums, or home study. I feel much more comfortable this time around. All the great folks that helped us through our first adoption now feel like old friends. I have kept communication open with most of them since our first adoption, so it's not changed that much except I'm emailing them more frequently :) 
     This time around I think we will focus most of our fundraising on having yard sales. That helped us a lot last time and it does not put anyone under pressure to help. However, we are still so thankful for those of you who did help last time! I have thought before if so many people hadn't of helped us raise the money so fast, we might not have been to the point of matching when G was born! That kinda gives me palpitations. But anyways, back to the topic, if anyone does any spring cleaning or moving and is planning on hauling a load off to goodwill we would be glad to come pick it up for our yard sales. We do ask that you only give us stuff that you do not want back (stuff, containers, etc.) When you collect that much junk  treasures, it's hard to remember what went back where in those situations. Plus, we will probably do this ongoing through the summer. Our first one will be this weekend!
    Well I just wanted to send out the great news :) It's not major news, but it's pretty exciting to us.

My Oh My! How Time Does Fly!

   I CANNOT believe how fast the past year has gone by! Our little man had his first birthday in February. However, it does not seem possible that he could be any older than 6 months :) He has grown and changed so much, and we have cheered and swelled with pride at every single milestone he has met. I didn't know I could get so excited about such simple things, but the first times he covered his ears to play peek-a-boo, figured out how to clap, or said biii-ble I'm pretty sure I thought, "my child is a genius". Motherhood is everything I thought it would be. Grocery shopping (or any shopping) is not quite how it used to be, but that's nothing compared to the love and joy he has brought us. 
   When I think about all the fundraising we did I cannot get over that all that was almost two years ago! It was a lot of work but looking back it really was so much fun. I didn't think I would feel that way at the time because it was so chaotic, but it was so worth it all. I still am amazed at all the support we got from our friends and family. If I ever need to see how blessed I am, I will just look back to that time. So a little over one year later, I want to say THANK YOU again :)