Getting ready for dinner

We had a progressive dinner last night with our small group/Sunday school class. It was a great time. We hosted the main portion of the dinner. Abbey did the cooking along with some help from our friend Jillian. I volunteered to do the flowers, since I had a little training at Ava's wedding. We stayed up to midnight on Thursday working on getting ready for the party. I had the flowers and Abbey had the cooking.


The above arrangement was on our kitchen table.
This one was on the island in the kitchen.

Streams of Life

I found out first thing this morning that my friend Jay died. My mom told me that it was coming, so I wasn't that surprised. It is still sad though.

I first met Jay the summer before second grade. He was my first friend when we moved to Durant. We hung out together everyday. I would spend the night at his house a lot. He was an incredible basketball player, baseball player, and karate kid. It was unreal how athletic he was.

He was also very smart and he loved God. I'll never forget laying in the living room floor close to Christmas in fifth grade when Mrs. Glenda, Jay's mom came over. She was visibly upset and she grabbed mom and pulled her to her bedroom. A little while later, she came out and left. Mom told me later that evening that Jay had a massive brain tumor and he had to have surgery.

He had several strokes during surgery and his body was never able to fully recover. I didn't see him like I should have after that, but I did maintain some contact. I saw him last in October and he was as always glad to see me. He had to show me all of his collections and he, of course, forced me to take a pack of chewing gum (that was one of his trademarks. He always had gum.)

He was a good friend and I am grateful for the time that I was able to spend with him. I wrote a book about he and me that I plan to have published at some point. I'm leaving in the morning to drive to Durant for his funeral.

More Christmas at Molly's

My favorite part of the whole night was the time that I got to spend with my little buddy, Brady. He is the sweetest little boy. He fell asleep while I was feeding him. It was funny. I can't wait until I have my own little one that I can hold EVERYDAY. Reed and I are going to have a lot of fun. We'll let Abbey play with us too!
The Covington family was completely represented the other night. It was great to see all of them.I think this is the first photo I have posted of our new family, complete with the BIL.

Christmas at Molly's

We went to a Christmas get-together at Abbey's cousin Molly's this weekend. Don't you just love the power of the camera? Abbey was cooking for our Christmas party at Mollie's and I got to take pictures. She was not really amused, but I finally was able to get a picture of her smiling.
Mr. Roy at the party. He was having a great time.
Ava and Brookie will be a great aunt and uncle. Look how much fun they are having with Brady.
Hugh was all over the place. He and I had a lot of fun with the leftover toilet paper after we played the game.
Brady is wondering what this lady is doing? I understand Kung Maw, I love to kiss babies little cheeks.

The First Snowflake

The news talked about it and we were all excited. My alarm went off at 4:50, 4:58, and 5:06 this morning and when I finally pushed myself out of bed, I wen to the bathroom to look out of the window to see the fluffy white NOTHING! They said that it might snow last night and I was really getting my hopes up.

Anyway, I went to the gym, then to work, and then I left work to take Abbey's car to drop it off at the carwash. While I was on my way to the carwash what did I see, but tiny little snowflakes drifting to the earth. Of course, they melted on contact, but there is just something about seeing those first few flakes.

On the other hand, the wind is blowing so fiercely that it is hard to breathe when you are in it. I probably complicate matters by parking on the roof at work, which is far more windy than if I parked in the garage. However, I can handle the few "Chinese torture chamber" moments of being in the wind for the added closeness and convenience of being able to park on the roof.

Hopefully we will get some substantial snow soon. You know my local, snowdancer (school teacher wife) wants it to snow at least the as many days are allotted for snow at ther school!

Finally, some new pictures

When we were on our way to Molly and John's the other night for Thanksgiving dinner, we saw this HUGE mass of birds. They were everywhere. By the time that I realized I could take a picture of them, this is all that I could get. All of those little specks of black are birds, however, this is not even NEARLY all of them. I have never seen so many birds at one time in my life. It was almost Alfred Hitchcoxish.
The highlight of our evening was getting to hang out with Brady. He is SO cute. I got to give him his bath that night. There was a really cute picture of him, but it is not appropriate for blogging. Anyway, Brady and I have bonded, he is a super-cool kiddo. He will be a great big cousin to Reed.

We are going to see him again this weekend for the Drake Family Christmas. It will be fun, but I will have to share Brady with more people!

Adoption Update

Since we don't have a picture of our baby yet, considering he or she has not been born, I found this one. He's a cutey, eh?

We have turned in all of our homestudy papers and have heard from several of our references that they have received the papers. If you did not receive a reference form, it is not because we don't love you, it's just we could only pick three. If you didn't receive one you can pray for the people who are filling them out. You may pray for their clarity and that they will have time to fill the forms out and return them. Thankfully, I believe they all know that this is important and we need this done before we can go any further.

Don't forget to pray for the birthmother, pray for her health and pray that she will have peace about her decision.

Finally, pray for our social worker doing the homestudy. I won't tell you her name, but God knows who she is. Pray that she will have time to complete our study in a timely manner and that she will have a clear understanding of Abbey and me. You know that will be hard. Who can understand me?

Have a great day!

70 Degrees?

Apparently God has figured out that he can help us with the adoption fund if he will keep it warm. Why's that? Because when it is 70 degrees outside, Abbey and I both have a hard time thinking, Starbucks. It is during this time of year with the festive red cups and ever-changing hot huggies that we crave Starbucks the most. However, with the weather being so warm, we have not had that temptation.

Things are going pretty smoothly in our adoption process so far. We have turned in our homestudy paperwork and our check, so now all we have to do is wait on the social worker.

Abbey and I had a great Thanksgiving. We had dinner with Abbey's aunt, uncle and cousins. There will be a picture of Brady and me soon!

If you have been checking the blog over the past few days and didn't see any updates, it is not because I have not tried. The IL's computer and blogger seem to disagree when it comes to uploading pictures.

Making Ourselves at Home

It's always amazing to me how quickly Abbey and I can mess up a completely place. It's a talent that we both perfected before we got married and now is one of our greatest ... um ... strengths. Anyway, we arrived here at the IL's last night around 9:30.

On the agenda for today is going to D-burg to see Abbey's granny. Abbey's cousins Matt and Laura will be there, along with her Aunt and Uncle. We haven't had much opportunity to see them, in fact, we really haven't seen them much at all since we have been married.

I went ahead and took a picture of Ava and Brookie's room. Hopefully, we can do a comparison and see if they have the same ability to mess up a room quickly or not. It will be interesting to see, don't you think? Ava is going to get a head start on Brookie because he won't be here until Friday night. He, unfortunately, has to work on Friday. Boy, do I remember those days.

As I type here, I am getting into the Thanksgiving spirit. For instance, I am so thankful for the picasa program, because it is taking FOREVER for me to upload these pictures as I am using the IL's computer. I am also thankful that I am not at work today, and I am especially thankful that I don't have to work on Friday or Saturday. If you can't tell, I am just rambling, because I am waiting on the pictures to upload. I might have to download Picasa while I am here!

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Home Alone!

Abbey! AAAHHHH! Abbey has gone to Junior Beta convention and I am home alone. I really shouldn't be blogging, I should be getting the house straight, because I have to finish the packing for us to get ready to go to Memphis for Thanksgiving. I decided to post some pictures of our outside decorations. We are not completely done with this view yet. We are putting lighted garland around the door.
You can barely see it, but check out the tree in the window. It's a very well-lit tree. Thank goodness for the advent of pre-lit trees.
The gazebo is lighted again this year. It looks a lot prettier in person, so you will just have to come and see it. I turned the timer on, so it will be going while we are gone.
We decorated the banisters the other night. While I was getting the Christmas boxes from the garage, I came face to face with the largest opposum I have ever seen in my life. I won't go into detail, but the opposum is no longer among the living.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas III

This has got to be one of my favorite Christmas trees ever. It has over 100 crosses on it. The tree is literally covered with different crosses. Most people know that Abbey and I have crosses all over our house. It is neat that we have a Christmas tree with crosses on it now. The birth of Christ was an important time for all Christians, but it it was His death on the cross and resurrection that made the eternal difference for those who believe.

The traditional tree is now decorated as well. It has many ornaments on it. Many of them came from Abbey's parents that she has been given all of her life. The other ones have been collected over the past 7 Christmases that Abbey and I have been together. We always get each other at least one ornament a piece. Most of the time, we end up getting a lot more than that.
The table is set. We have 7 Lenox Holiday collector's plates in addition to all of the stuff you see here. We don't know where we are going to display them this year!

Weekend Plans

Thank goodness it's Friday. Was anyone like me and thought that it would never get here? I think Abbey and I have just been trying to catch up all week. Since the wedding was last weekend, we never really took a break. It's Friday now and we can do some fun stuff, and hopefully get a little sleep in the process.

This afternoon we are having supper with our dear friend Abbie. She is flying in from Arizona and will be in Nashville this evening. We're going to go to Opry Mills to eat supper with her. We might attempt another Christmas tree this weekend, but I am not sure if it will happen. It needs to, but I am just not sure!



Tomorrow morning, our small group along with a bunch of other people will put together Thanksgiving boxes for needy people in downtown Nashville. Then we will deliver them. We are doing this with On the Go Ministries. Our friend Jimmy Earle (in case you are wondering, Earle is his last name) works for On the Go Ministries.

Saturday night, we are really excited about going to our old Sunday School class party. It's going to be good to see people from our old church.

Church is Sunday morning. We have a Community Thanksgiving service on Sunday night and then we have a choir shindig. We'll be busy this weekend, but hopefully we can get some rest.

Near, Far, Wherever you are...

I know, I know. We promised an update on the land in which we will get our baby. The problem is we have two options currently. Option one, which is really more of a "friend of a friend, told a friend" option is a girl in Louisiana who is pregnant and might give her baby up for adoption. We really have no other details than that, so it doesn't really look that promising. We do know she is pregnant with a little girl.

The next option, which is the one that we are doing all of the homestudy stuff for, is the international adoption that we are going for. We are going through a company called Journeys of the Heart (www.journeysoftheheart.net). Below is a picture of a baby boy who is the nationality of the country we will be adopting from. See if you can guess?







Have you figured it out yet?





Okay, so you might have guessed China, you wouldn't be completely wrong. You have to think critically though. This is a little BOY, and we all know adopting a Chinese boy is close to impossible. So how do you adopt a Chinese looking boy? You go to.... ARE YOU READY....

TAIWAN!!!!

That's right, we're pursuing adoption in Taiwan. Isn't he the cutest little boy? What can you do?

1. Pray! Pray for the girl in Louisiana and pray for the birthmom in Taiwan who is probably 4-5 months pregnant right now. (Pray for the baby as well. If we have a boy, his name will be Reed (by the way, if we adopt from Taiwan, it will be a boy). If we have a girl, her name will be Ava. You can pray specifically for our baby by name.

2. Pray for Abbey and me to be able to finish all of our paperwork for our homestudy before our social worker leaves for Kosovo for three weeks to adopt her child.

3. Pray that God will give Abbey and I peace as we travel down this journey and that we will continue to trust God for His will to be done in our lives.

11,000

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BLUR!

The past few days have been a blur. I bet this is the way Brookie and Ava remember their wedding. The MIL heard from Ava today. They got into their hotel room in Boston at 3:00 AM yesterday and then they have a flight at 5:00 AM to New York tomorrow. They really are packing in the travel on their honeymoon.

Abbey and I have been busy working on adoption stuff. We have not released the country yet on the blog, so their is still time to guess. There has been one interesting development in the past couple of days, we will let you know when we know anything more solid.

We are playing catch-up tonight. We, of course, went to CFA and Target tonight. I had to get some things. Now, Abbey is working on grading and I am working on the laundry which seems insurmountable. Hopefully, tomorrow's post will be a little more interesting.

We're Home

On our trip home, we decided to swing by Starbucks, where we knew that our brew would be in the famous Christmas Red Cups. You may recall from last year, that the "Red" cups make Abbey really happy. There is always a special bonding time when Abbey and I get to enjoy our first "red" cup of Starbucks each year.

The wedding was fabulous. It was such an honor to be able to perform the wedding ceremony of one of the people I love most in this world. Brookie better take really good care of her. I am sure that he will. They are off to Boston and New York. I hope that they make it there safely. I heard from Ava this afternoon and their flight had been canceled. They are not to arrive in Boston until midnight!

Happy Couples

Molly and John, parent's of the handsome Brady.
The couple toasting one another.
Going in for a kiss...
Jason and Leslie, you may recall their wedding a few months back.

Reception Pictures

This the focal arrangement from the reception. It is in an ICE vase. It was really beautiful.
The wedding cake.
The groom's table.
Another picture of the ice sculpture and arrangement. 

Some more Bridal Pics

A thoughtful gaze.
My FIL got to hold my MIL's flowers for a few minutes.
Happy, indeed.
The picture of love.