Merry Christmas. Celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Merry Christmas. It is a great day, and we should focus on the birth of Christ and the gift of eternal life that he provided through his birth and death.

We focus on faith, but as with all families, it is a celebration for the children, and while we love our time with Austin, we also pray for our daughter who is not with us yet, hoping that she is being loved wherever she is today. At Christmas Eve service last night we had the opportunity to light a candle and pray, and we as a family prayed "to Jesus" (Austin) for Emily. Though she isn't with us physically, she is with us in our hearts.

Our Christmas morning was the normal 5:30 wake up call from Austin. We made it until 6:30 until we had to get out of bed, and had a great morning. Sometimes we as parents make great decisions, and sometime we make 'bad' decisions, and sometimes it is all just perspective. Austin views his present as great, and Dad may view it as 'bad'... but sometimes we as parents need to make sacrifices. You decide if we made a good decision or not.




Austin's quote to Grandmommy and Grandaddy for Christmas: "Thank you for the Gator and just Thank you"

Back home from Texas.

We spent the weekend in Texas with the Stanley Family and celebrated an early Christmas. Unfortunately, the 80 degree temperatures that had been hanging around for the last month decided to evacuate upon our arrival. Still 50 and some sun wasn't so bad compared to 9 degrees and freezing rain. It's amazing how much perspective can affect our view on the world.... Christmas, as it should be, focused around the young, and for us that meant Austin. As always, he got more gifts than a kid deserves, but was very appreciative. We were planning on driving, but at the last minute used priceline to purchase some tickets. With all of the snow and ice that had been flying, it only seemed to make sense. We had a great time, but it's fun to be home as we have already napped and Austin, Dad and Fred went outside to sled, something we are quite accomplished at if I do say so myself (matt).

On the adoption front, I guess that we haven't really provided a timeline to let you know where we are. Here is where we are at..

We have selected the agency that we are going to work with, Children's Home and Family Services out of St. Paul, MN. We learned of them through Troy Nesbitt as their family used them to adopt their two boys from Ethiopia. Once we decided we were going to work with CHSFS, we had to complete our application, which was pretty thorough, including the fingerprints for the FBI ( which we might have to do again??). After that we attended a Pre-Adoptive Class in St. Paul that lasted two days. Now we are working on our homework, basically a self-evaluation report, and hope to have that completed in the next week or so. Next will be the home-study with our assigned social worker, more paper work, and then our information is submitted to the officials in Ethiopia. A child will be selected based on our requested criteria, we accept, wait.. most likely wait some more, and then travel to Addis for the great day.

FAQ: No, we don't know who she is yet, but we know she is out there, somewhere... Yes, we do plan to travel to Addis Ababa, we think that is pretty critical. Those are some of the easy ones to answer. We'll try to answer some of the harder ones later.

Go Cyclones!!

As I hear this being "pronounced loudly" through the new megaphone that we recieved at the ISU Womens game vs. Iowa. This is the coolest new toy, and something that the ladies who sat in front of us at the game weren't quite sure was the best idea.

Before we get too far, there is a video that you must see. As we explore for more information via the web, I found this video the other night on youtube, and you have to watch it.....Neat video about a wonderful adventure.

Here is a video we took of Austin the other night. His latest treat for us is singing to the pamphlet with a picture of an adopted girl from Ethiopia.. he is calling her Emily. He loves his drums, and he will play the drums, while holding the picture of emily, and singing to her.



We are getting ready for Christmas, and will be visiting Grandmommy and Granddaddy in Texas shortly.. and dad will get to play some golf!!

Here is a picture of the class of 2023 at Baylor...Mr's Randall, Brantley and Fatheree... Our only hope is that they all remain this cute and well behaved.

Call this a start....

We hope to keep you updated on our progress of adoption on this site.. We'll see how it goes.