A lot has been happening lately

I know it's been about three weeks since I last posted, and my apologies for those of you who are following us. Thing have been pretty hectic here.

First, Chris got really sick. We thought at first that it was just a cold turned into a sinus infection. But after a trip to Urgent Care and a trip to our doctor's office a few days later, we found he actually had the respiratory flu and pneumonia. Although it was too late for Tamaflu for Chris, the doctor put me and Nick on it as a preventative meaure. Poor Chris was sick for almost two weeks. He is better, but it will take him some time to not be exhausted at the end of the day.

Then work got really busy for me so that I was working several nights from home. My role is changing at work and there are some growing pains with the changes. One of my new responsibilities is being the proposal manager for our office. At the start of these changes, we had a couple of major proposals that required some long hours on my behalf. However, it felt good to be given this higher responsibility and get these accomplished.

So, because of the long hours and flu being in our house, I am now sick. I'm no where near as bad as Chris, but still feeling quite blah!.

Between all this, a few exciting things have happened. Chris got nominated for employee of the year at the hospital. Thursday night was the dinner to recognize the nominees, and Chris was one of 25 people who got employee of the year! I'm so proud of him.

On Monday, we finally hit the "Order" button for our portfolios. We kept reviewing the portfolio over and over, and we were so nervous as this book is basically showing us, our life, and how we will raise a child should we be selected by birth parents. We ordered five of them, as the adoption agency needs four, and we wanted an extra one of us and our family.  They should arrive sometime this week.

On Thursday, we had our final meeting with the adoption agency, and we signed our home study. The home study is done, and we are officially approved to be adoptive parents!!! Yea and whew! What a process, but we are done. Once we turn in our portfolio, we will be available for selection by birth parents. It is so exciting!

So now the hard part... the wait. Unforunately, we have no idea when we will be selected.  Although it will be difficult, one thing we will keep in our minds and hearts is that it is all in God's timing. That being said, there may be extended periods of time when we are not posting anything on the blog or site. One of things that our case workers emphasize is to maintain our normal lifes. Go on vacations, go camping, continue doing the things we normally would. So we will. If we didn't, we would go crazy during the wait.

In the meantime, we ask all our friends and family to continue to pray for patience and hope for us.

We've also updated our "For Birth Parents" link on the site. Here we posted our letter that is in our portfolio.