Happy Easter!!

Happy Birthday to Gramps!

Happy birthday to Gramps!  (One day early, tomorrow is his actual birthday!)

Wish we could be there to celebrate in person!  But thankful that we live in the age of Skype, blogs and camera phones :)

Happy Spring!

We spent a good part of our weekend building garden boxes and working in the yard.  I love that the kids are old enough to enjoy being "helpers" and that we can have whole family days just being together outside.  Luke loved finding worms and playing with them (and naming each worm "Bob" after Bob the Builder :))  Amelia loved "decorating" the new boxes with chalk and reorganizing her dad's tools.  They are such little scientists at this age -- testing and retesting ideas -- so full of curiosity and the joy of discovering new things.  Sometimes I watch them playing and just feel overwhelmed with thankfulness for who they are and who they are becoming and for the incredible gift of getting to be their mama.

We also got to hang out with Auntie and Caroline and Kylee was also out visiting for her Spring break!
It's always so fun to see the four cousins together (plus one on the way for Joe and Michala!!  Woohoo!)  I'm so excited to have another tiny babe in the family soon.  September will be a great month to welcome Baby Hally!

What a ham!

One of my children runs away from the camera while the other happily takes the opportunity to show off their voice :)  ... Any guesses?

Some fun pictures :)

Just a few recent pics ...

Oh I love this girl!

We spend a LOT of time here these days.  Not actually DOING anything
but we like to TALK about the potty and sit on it just for kicks :)
Amelia mostly just likes to wash her hands!

Elmo packs!  A birthday gift from my sister and a huge hit around here!

Luke LOVES to give hugs.  Aven tolerated them ...

Henri did too :)

Lunch date!  They thought this was hilarious!

What a fun weekend!

If you live in the area, you know that it was high 50s and sunny on Friday and Saturday!  Which meant lots of time outside :)  We had such a fun weekend together -- Saturday we went to a friend's 7th birthday party (the kids started asking about pizza and cake in the car which I think means that they remember of their own birthday party).  They LOVED Evan's party and have been talking about it since!  Today I got to spend the day with some of my favorite women celebrating the upcoming birth of Baby Girl Freeman :)  Such a joy to get to anticipate and celebrate her arrival!
When we weren't celebrating with friends this weekend we were hammering out LOTS of documents.  Friday we turned in 9 background checks (every county we've lived in, plus FBI).  It felt good to get those done!  We're working our way down the list of required documents.  Our agency says that the home study/dossier/paperwork process takes 4-6 months ... We're hoping for four!

Celebrating with Danielle -- the beautiful mama-to-be!

Two beautiful pregnant mamas:  Danielle is 37 weeks and Heather is 30 weeks with twins!

Gretchen!!!

Can't wait to meet baby girl!

How all of our evenings look these days!

We were told to make it VERY clear that our  FBI check
was for an adoption ... I think they got the message :)

Coyle Baby #3!

First, a disclaimer, NO! we are not pregnant!  But we ARE up to our eyeballs in adoption paperwork!!!  We've taken one of the greatest leaps of our lives and definitely of our marriage!  We may not be a perfect family (clarification: are most definitely NOT a perfect family) but we are a willing and excited family.  We are parents that LOVE children and had difficulty getting pregnant and even more trouble staying pregnant.  We are parents that ACHE at the thought of an estimated 147 million babes going to sleep around the world without people to call parents.  There are so many quotes, scriptures, statistics, I could write about why we're pursuing adoption.  But the bottom line is that we believe it's where we've been led as a family.  We believe that He will write a story of redemption -- of beauty from ashes -- both for the parents who longed for children and for the child who longs for a family.  A story that will be difficult and painful but deeply full of His grace for us.  Oh, I have my fears, the kind that keep you up at night.  How will this impact Luke and Amelia?  How will we come up with the estimated $30,000?  What will it practically look like to have an interracial family?  These questions are valid and important and must be handled with honesty and grace (and humor too!!)  One day at a time.  But for tonight, I believe that He is hard at work writing a story that will have difficult chapters but a beautifully redemptive theme.  We learned a thing or two about patience through infertility and bed rest.  Our journey in learning how to wait will continue because right now, adoptions from Ethiopia take an estimated 2-3 years.  So we will wait and pray and hope and dream of our new little one ... meanwhile we'll notarize more forms than I can count, get dozens of references and background checks, get busy on our education requirements and try to complete our dossier (legal documents that go to the Ethiopian government) as quickly as humanly possible.