Tuesday, January 17, 2012

The Countdown Has Begun

14 days. That's all the time we have left in Louisville before we head for our new home in Minnesota. Well, our temporary new home at least. We can't close on our new house until mid-February, so we will be staying in temporary housing for a few weeks. The mixed emotions of moving are becoming more intense as our time here grows shorter. We are so excited to finally be moving, buying a much bigger house, and living in a much better neighborhood, but with all that comes the huge sadness of leaving our beloved Immanuel Baptist Church and all our friends here.
The girls and I were given an unexpected blessing of being able to spend an extra day with one of my closest friends this week. Though the cause of this extra time was not fun- a broken furnace and a gas leak scare- we just loved spending the day with our friends. We are going to miss them SO much. My favorite baby boy gave me lots of smiles and hugs that day too-another added blessing. :)
This week will be spent packing and cleaning and trying to cram in some more time with friends. It feels like it has taken forever to get to this point, but I am pretty sure that from here on out, the time is going to FLY.
Once we are finally in our new home, we will hopefully have more to say about our Congo adoptions, but at this point, that is on the back burner as we are gearing up to move across the country. I've been following a few blogs of other people adopting from the Congo and have been encouraged by the progress in their adoptions. Lord willing, we will get things moving soon!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Moving

Steve got the job in Minnesota!!!!!!!
It's been a bit crazy over here the last little while. We finally sold our house in late November. Yay! Thankfully, the new owner is allowing us to remain on the property and rent from him until we are ready to move to Minnesota.
 In December, we finally received word that Steve had, in fact, gotten the job, so the day after Christmas, we headed for Minnesota to do some house hunting. Can I just say that house hunting is a tad stressful? For our family, the most important part of the house is the kitchen/ dining area and we are looking for a house we can comfortably live in for the foreseeable future, so we wanted to at least like that part of the house we will buy. Let me just say, WOW. Who knew so many people thought of the kitchen as an afterthought? Seriously, some of the kitchens we saw looked like they had just been thrown together after the rest of the house was finished. Yikes.
After two days of house hunting, Steve and I were both hit with an awful stomach bug. I have never been so sick in my entire life. We are still feeling the effects of the stomach bug in that food just isn't as appealing as it once was and we get full a lot faster now.
Anyways, we found a house we both love and put in an offer. In typical "Minnesota nice" fashion, instead of asking the sellers to respond in a certain time frame ("We could ask them for a specific date, but we just don't do that"), the sellers are given "reasonable time" to respond. Which could, of course, mean anything. We are definitely hoping to get this house, but have our eyes on other houses hitting the market just in case. If we get this house, we are hoping that we will be able to move in early February and I can't wait to start painting and decorating. :)
On the adoption front, DRCongo's elections are over, and while they were not perfect, things seem to be settling down. As soon as possible after we move, we will be having our home study redone and then will send in our dossier and get on the waiting list. The kids are having a hard time understanding how long it could be before we get their "brothers from Africa". Grace is convinced we are getting two boys. They seem to think that as soon as we move, Steve and I will go pick the new kids up. Sadly, it won't be quite that fast.  But I think we will finally get the ball rolling and be able to get on the waiting list. I read this article yesterday. Life in DRCongo is hard. We are praying that God would bring our babies home quickly.