Coffee + Love = Adoption!! :)

Coffee + Love = Adoption
That's the premise of our adoption fund-raiser..

An amazing friend a coworker has encouraged me to open an online store to help fund our adoption. So we did!!
www.justlovecoffee.com/StuartandSummer
Please visit it!!! :)

An amazing company called "Just Love Coffee" allows families to have online coffee stores to raise funds for their adoptions. The idea is.. Organic, Fair-Trade Coffees and helping orphans and their forever families. Incredible :)

Thanks so much for your help and support!!

and thanks again, Melissa :)

paperwork hysteria!

our formal application has been submitted...
:) woohoo!!!!!


we're spending this weekend signing many, many, many papers, filling out forms, and writing our new autobiographies for Bethany... the questions are different than with HSC.. bummer!
anywho, that's our weekend...
putting that pen to paper! yeah, its kind of a pain in the *** but its for a really good cause!...
our baby :)
yay!

the scoop??

tomorrow is our next meeting with the adoption agency!
we are set to discuss the official-filling-out-of-the-formal-application (sounds like a big build-up for a lot of paper signing ;) but its an enormous decision to do it because that means we are in route to our homestudy and in contract (financially and emotionally) to this agency. but we have done a lot of praying through this and believe that bethany is the agency for us :)

and so, the next part (also to be discussed tomorrow) is the homestudy process... i've read a lot of books and blogs and i feel like i have a good idea of what the "homestudy" entails but still... i'm scared! ;)

any advice from those of you that have been there?? pleeeeeeease!!!

snow!!

what-what??

Holy moley!! Could we actually be moving forward?!?!?!?

Yes, it appears to be so....

woop woop!! :)

We had our official "Informal Meeting" on Monday with Bethany (aka Adoption Agency).

All went amazingly well. I didn't spazz out or embarrass myself once, although I did tear up at one point but that's because I'm just too darn emotional when it comes to all of this baby jazz! :)

Stuart and I have been around the world and back again with our hearts leading the way, trying to find the country our baby is pulling us to.. Honestly, we still don't know where God is taking us but we have the utmost Faith that He knows better than us. And He will bring our family together, if we have to travel to the ends of the earth to find them..

Our hearts are pulling us in one specific direction, one that is so different than where we started but that's part of the adventure, I suppose! You never know where life will take you.

For us, we started in China and who knows?... maybe China still, only God knows, right?.. then we were led to Korea and now after all of this time and energy and love that we've developed for that country... well now our hearts have moved us toward Africa, specifically Ethiopia.

I know... what??!?

Honestly, I don't know where this came from any more than you.  We do support a little girl in an S.O.S. Children's Village in Zambia. But other than that, we have no ties to Africa... and yet, how immense is the love that we suddenly and overwhelmingly have for a place we never dreamed of even traveling to.. Its crazy and unplanned, and yet unexpectedly perfect.

We don't know if Ethiopia is where our baby will be born but in this journey of building our family, as we've set out on a somewhat selfish endeavor.. well, our lives have forever changed.. truly. The world has suddenly become so much bigger and yet so much smaller..

I believe, wholeheartedly, that there is a reason and a purpose for everything.

Stuart and I have always thought that this adventure was simply a quest for our baby... now it seems as though God has additional plans for our family. Whatever that may be, I don't know. The research that I've done on the different countries we've been led to for adoption has opened a world of need and questions that I simply cannot forget about once we have our baby in our arms.. We will have that moment but then what?... Everything that we've learned and the deep places of my heart that have been touched cannot have only been for us. There just has to be something more...

What is that scripture??

"...once our eyes are opened,

we can't pretend we don't know what to do.

God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls,

knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act."
(Proverbs 24:12)

And I guess, we will do our best.. wherever that leads..

       

As we stand right now, we are meeting with Bethany again next Thursday, the 4th. This meeting is really to prep us for the formal application process and the homestudy-extravaganza.. haha. After Thursday, I guess we'll officially have the ball rolling!

We'll keep you posted on any happenings as they occur!!

Thanks so much for checking in and for still caring! ;) lol

 

cute finds from etsy!!

so this will be the new wall art in our bathroom... cute, huh??
i found this awesome artist called matte art... click on http://www.etsy.com/shop/matteart
to see all of his super cool stuff! i loooove it. everything is so sort of retro and quirky, its perfect!

anywho, that's about it from here.... not really doing much else except waiting and wishing and hoping and praying ;) oh, and playing on the internet, clearly!
another cool find is this:

kinda neat to have a "waiting" announcement to explain and celebrate your process.. this one is by j queenan and she has lots of artwork as well. her site is @ http://www.etsy.com/shop/jqueenan


Still waiting for our big day next Monday... our official meet and greet with the new agency! Happy thoughts and prayers, pleeeeeeease!! :)

blogger! boo!!!!!!

so clearly i have been a complete slacker in the blogging department... sorry :(
i've not really had much to say on the adoption front, so i haven't really been babbling on nonsensically as usual.
i do plan to continue with my typical rants and craziness after we have our formal meeting in a week and a half with the bethany christian services adoption agency.
our appointment is on monday, the 25th. if you could please keep us in your thoughts and prayers that day, that would be awesome!!! :)

but just because i haven't been posting lately, doesn't mean that i haven't been checking on all of my fellow bloggers' progress and updates!!
which leads me to the problem i am having...
for some reason, "blogger" has deleted all of the blogs that i was following!!!!!! so now i have no way of checking on any of you and keeping in touch! boo.
if you would please send me your web address, that would be awesome. i know some of you are in the crucial times of your journey and i am devastated that i might miss some of it!!

love,
summer

**literally 2 seconds after posting this, all of my "followed blogs" popped back up on my dashboard...
so i have no idea what happened but since its been so long since i've posted, i'm leaving the post as is!! its better than nothing, right?!
yeah, probably not but its all i have time for today. sorry!! :)