Baby Sister Update

Many of you have kindly asked what we were hearing about the adoption of our little girl. We have hit a few snags along the way.



Our agency, which we love and still love, has started accepting payment for the adoption in a different way. While I think that the different way is actually a lot safer, it is a little more difficult for us.



When Reedy was on the horizon, we were able to pay little by little, a thousand here, a few thousand there. Now, though, our agency requires that all of their money be paid at the time of referral. That's about $19,000. As you might imagine, we don't have that kind of money.



For the past few weeks, we have been praying and thinking about a way that we could come up with the money and finally settled on a home equity line-of-credit. The HELOC would allow us to pay as we needed to and also have the piece of mind that we would have the money necessary when we got our referral.



Most of you probably know that the housing market is currently very poor, so our appraisal on our home, while we do have equity in it, is not enough for us to get the loan we need. Therefore, we are currently at a stand-still.

The interesting thing is today in a prayer time that the Editors in Chief in my department get together for every Monday, a coworker Rhonda, shared Psalm 46:10. You may know this verse at "Be Still and know that I am God." However, the Holman Version, which we work from for our curriculum says: "Stop your fighting, and know that I am God."

So, for now, we are stopping our fight for a little baby girl and we're going to know that He is God. It won't be easy, nor will it be fun, but as I reminded Abbey tonight, I already have more than I could ever ask for or imagine. Please continue to pray for us as we seek God's guidance in the path of our family's life.

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Okay, enough of that mushy stuff, here's my CVS haul for the day.



The flowers were some that I sent Abbey, because she wasn't having the best day when we got the news about our HELOC.

So today, I got all of the "other" stuff you see. Let me know if you need anything. Our CVS stash runneth over.

This Post Brought to You by Spam!

Tonight we had one of my favorite meals for supper. When we were in Seminary, I had this meal pretty often as Abbey was usually in night classes and I was home alone, but she did learn to "eat" Spam without much grimace. Tonight, however, it was a different story. She wasn't just thrilled with the Spam meal, but it was good to me!



After church today, Uncle Bubba met us and we ate at Catfish House. After lunch, we came home and I put Reed down for naptime. He was completely zonked, so it didn't take long for him to go to sleep. Afterwards, Uncle Bubba and I went outside to clean the van, my Jeep, and then Uncle Bubba's car. It was so HOT! Abbey stayed inside and swiffered the floors and did laundry.



Reed had a good nap and was ready to play when he woke up.



Tonight we had the honor of attending the baptism of our friend Carah. When you serve on church staff, you have the honor of knowing many families, but Carah is ultra special because I worked with her daddy. Danny and I served on staff together, so we were able to spend LOTS of time with each other's families. Carah has been such a special girl to us since we have lived in Nashvegas.



It must have been an incredible honor for Danny to be able to baptize his little girl.



We are so proud of Carah's decision to make Jesus her Lord and Savior!

Happy Independence Day! (1 Day Late!)

"Why am I up so early in the morning?"



"Mommy, I have been sitting here for 40 million hours getting pictures made. I want to run!"



"Boy, I sure do have a lot of family!"



"Aunt Molly and Uncle John sure do have a nice house!"



"Uncle John helped me make the right decision."



"I think I'd like to run now."



"Aunt Ava's lemonade is yummy!"



"Wow, cousin Sam is a big guy and he has a lot of Mississippi State stuff! I am not sure if Mississippi State is on my Mommy and Daddy's approved list of colleges."



"Hey, how did that picture get on here, this is a blog about me."



"Uh, hello?? Did anybody here me. Uncle Jason and Mommy you need to go take care of Ella."



"Pop Rox pushes this car really good."



"I think I would like to run some more now."



"Cousin Brady has a really nice beach ball."



"I agree with everything Aunt Molly has to say as long as she keeps those yummy grapes coming my way!"

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Okay, I'm going to take over for Reed now. We're back from Memphis where we celebrated the 4th with a bunch of extended family. It was good to see some cousins and relatives that we hadn't seen in a while. Many of them had never met Reed.

Reed traveled well, and we will be bringing a topic of debate to the blog this week based on our travel. Be ready to comment.

And now ... in case any of you were wondering if we were still hypermiling in an attempt to conserve gas.

When we started hypermiling, we were averaging 16-18 mpg in Abbey's van. Now, we are averaging 23-24 mpg. In my Jeep I was getting 19-20 mpg and now 22-23. I think that we're doing good!

July 3rd on July 4th!

Okay, sorry we didn't post last night. I was tired after watching two episodes of "Mobile Home Disaster." If you've never seen this show, it's like an Extreme Makeover: Trailer Edition. Pretty funny. Especially if you, like Abbey and I, have ever lived in a trailer.



Reed's best bloggy buddy, Kobi's mom has many tips on creating an awesome faux hawk. But, yesterday morning, Reed had the best faux hawk he's ever had and he got it while he slept. We're not exactly sure how it happened, but it was pretty good.



After work, we headed to Memphis to Lola and Pop Rox's house. They are having a big family gathering at cousin Molly's today.



Reed was excited to see Lola and Pop Rox.



Trivia: Guess what Reed is looking at?



Lola had to work and didn't get home until close to 8:00, so Pop Rox got to have Reed all to himself for a few hours.


I'll try to post our actual July 4th post tonight when we get home.

Happy Independence Day to all of Reed's little new citizen friends! America is a great place and we have got some great service men and women to thank for our freedom!

Whistlin' Dixie

Our little guy was quite happy with life this morning and his mom was able to catch some funny glimpses into his personality. He just cracks us up with some of the things that he does.



Earlier this week, I told you about the fact that Reed is trying to learn how to whistle. Well, apparently he has fully embraced his southern heritage and he is going to be one great whistler! Look at that perfectly O-shaped mouth!



I can hardly type, this one makes me laugh so hard!



Reed also wanted to practice his words. This word is pronounced nyamma nyamma nyamma nyamma. I wish you could hear him say it.



He is also getting really great at giving kisses.



Sometimes he just doesn't get it!



Reed loves to be happy and we are so glad!



Tonight, Reed was thrilled that Britton was able to go to church with him tonight since his parents were busy moving into their new home.



We love him.



He loves us.



We're as happy as the Partridge Family Bus.

Friends!

Tonight we had supper with our friends, Jeff, Holly, and there three beautiful daughters. We also were excited to have with us Nana and Putty Sprinkles.



Since we have been married, which is 7 years next month, we have been blessed with awesome friends. A common thread of finding our great friends have been from our Sunday School classes. In Mississippi, our best friends were from our young married Sunday School class.



In Texas, most of our friends were from our church, however, some of our best friends were Blanton and Jaime whom I went to seminary with.



Since moving to Tennessee, we have been blessed to be a part of two wonderful churches. One of the greatest blessing of our first church was the opportunity to be a part of a young married couples class led by Putty and Nana Sprinkles. Although, there was no way to know they would be so important to us at the time, they became two of our favorite people in the WHOLE world! They have been with us through every life circumstance we have faced since moving here and we love them so dearly.

(This is a picture of Britton's new house!)

Though we have many great friends from our first church, a young couple from the class that we are extremely fond of are the Wrights. We love Jeff and Holly and their girls. In fact, Raleigh is Reed's girlfriend. We love opportunities to get together with them because we have a lot of fun cutting up!



Our current church has been an amazing blessing to us. We were not really that excited about switching churches originally, but we just felt that God was showing us that we needed to leave through a series of circumstances. We were not prepared for how we would be blessed at our new church.



We found several wonderful friends in our Sunday School class. There are many but two couples in particular are the Batson's and the Oliver's. Tamara was one of the first people who reached out to us and now she and Abbey are incredible friends.

We were thrilled when we learned that their baby boy, Britton would be only 3 months younger than Reed. Reed and Britton are already great friends, they get SO excited when they see each other. I don't think that I have ever seen kiddos their age interact with each other as well as they do.



The coolest thing is that they now live less than a mile from us! The Oliver's are our newest friends, but we have really enjoyed spending time with one another. They are moving three streets over from us at the end of July. We can already picture Reed sneaking off to their house whenever he needs to be spoiled!



We love all of our friends and hopefully you have the opportunity to have some great friends too!!!



So, how about you? Where do you find your friends? How often do you hang out with your friends?