Trip to LBL

This past weekend, we took a trip to LBL with my parents and my brother and his girlfriend, Katie. Since Mom is a teacher, thus a state employee, she gets a discount to state resort parks each year and we got to come, too! It was a great time. Kilee had a blast being the center of attention and she constantly said things that made everyone smile and laugh. Here are some pictures our our time together. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Dying eggs with Nana

Swimming with Nana and Papaw

Kilee and Mommy

Swimming lessons with Daddy

Pretty Katie

Yea Uncle J!

So cute in her wrap around towel!

Hunting eggs behind the cabin!

Family Picture

Our Adoption "Ticker"

Just a brief note about our adoption ticker to the right. You'll notice it has been changed to the amount of time we have been waiting with our current agency, not our overall wait time. We wanted to be able to keep track of how long it's been with this agency, because if we set it for our overall wait time, it would be 11 months today!

This may seem silly, but it's a little bit more encouraging to me to remember that it hasn't been that long with our current agency. So, I'm mostly doing this for my own encouragement more than anything else! ;) Please keep praying!

This is a brief timeline of our adoption:

March 2008 - God leads us to attend "Considering Adoption" class at church

April 2008 - God completely changes my heart about adoption and Scott and I move forward!

May 2008 - We choose our first agency and send in pre-application approval form. Began home study.

June 2008 - We're pre-approved with agency and begin work on 60 page application! Finish home study. Send in initial payment.

August 2008 - Receive full-approval from agency board. Make reservations to attend orientation in October.

October 2008 - Attend orientation at agency. Competely horrified to learn about policies within the agency that we cannot live with. Choose to withdraw application and go home.

Mid-October 2008 - Heartbroken over failed attempt with first agency, we receive a call from our home study agency that a local agency, Adoption Bridges of KY, needs profiles to show to specific demographics of birthmoms. We want to move forward, but we know that we cannot afford their fees. We pray about what we should do and . . .

God totally blows us AWAY with His complete faithfulness. We learn that a very substantial amount of money is anonymously donated to our adoption fund. And the next day, we learn that we are approved for the matching grant we had been praying for.

We cry. :o)

And praise God for what He has done!!!!

November 2008 - Our family profile is in circulation at ABOK. We attend orientation there and are certified as foster parents so that we can adopt in KY. (Not the same thing as foster-to-adopt, but we will be foster parents for the first 30-60 days of our child's life.)

Begin our monthly training sessions/support groups with the agency.

February 2009 - Take Infant CPR class as a part of training.

March 2009 - The wait continues!

March Pics

March has been another busy month for us! Scott has had a lot going on at work as he's trying to finish the computer program he's been working on since August. In additon to this, he and the other program staff at the office have been out at Cedarmore all week trying to finish the ziplines for camp this summer. Kilee and I went out to camp tonight to visit Scott and check out the zipline progress. It looks like SO much fun!

Kilee continues to grow like a weed. She is still loving school on Tuesdays and her teacher Mrs. Beth ("Mz. Buff" as Kilee calls her.) We are still in the process of waiting for baby. Our agency continues to tell us they think our match will be coming soon -- we are hopeful. It's hard to wait this long. We haven't been with our current agency for an incredibly long time, but we started the process with our former agency almost 11 months ago before we switched to ABOK in October. It's starting to feel like a really long time! We know that the Lord will bring us our baby when He sees fit and we try to keep this in mind when we get frustrated. Please continue to pray for our baby and for birthmom as there may be someone out there considering us right now!

Here are a few pictures from our March adventures. Kilee continues to wear her eyepatch 2-3 hours a day, alternating eyes. I think that it's helping, but we still see her eyes drift from time to time. She was so funny in this first picture. I was installing a carbon monoxide detector in our hallway and she was "reading" the instruction manual and telling me that the "book" was all about Elmo. So cute!

Kilee also decided to try out the old tricycle since we've had such nice weather this week. Each night, we took the tricycle out on the sidewalk and let her go. She's getting pretty good at it!



In addition to becoming a tricycle-rider, Kilee is trying out her culinary skills. Last Friday, it was my turn to host Bunko for our ladies' Bunko group and I needed to make brownies for the occasion. Kilee asked if she could help and we had so much fun! She is a GREAT egg-cracker and she loves to stir!

More posts to come!

Painting Pots

A couple of weeks ago, my 9th grade girls' group from church came over to bring in the spring season by painting flower pots! We had SO much fun! I was floored by their artistic abilities. They're just gifted girls all-around. I LOVE each and every one of them! Here are some pictures of our fun.

Our Little Gymnast!

Here are a few pictures from Kilee's Gymnastics Graduation Day. She does such a great job! Her teacher's name is Mrs. Sandie and we LOVE her. On Thursdays, Kilee wakes up and says, "It's a Miss Sannie Day!" Enjoy the pics of our little gymnast!

Small Group Time

Mommy and Kilee during Small Group Time

Daddy's up there taking pictures!

Before the backwards flip.

Kilee just kicks her legs over, sometimes before Mrs. Sandie is ready! Ha.

Almost done!

Good flip!

Jumping on the spring board

Doing a backwards bear crawl on 2 balance beams!

The rings!

Getting her ribbon with Mrs. Sandie!

Wearing the ribbon on her head. So, she's way cute, huh? :o)

The "Sticker"

Not long ago, I started to notice that Kilee's eyes seemed to drift outward when she got tired or looked like she was daydreaming. Not thinking it was anything serious, I put off asking her doctor. Then after a couple of months of seeing it a few times a day, we went to our pediatrician and she referred us to a pediatric opthamologist. Turns out, Kilee has exotropia. Exotropia is an eye muscle condition in which her outer eye muscles are stronger than her inner eye muscles and when her eyes are tired, they drift toward the stronger eye muscles. We are doing eyepatch therapy on her left eye, since her right eye is drifting more often. She just wears her eyepatch 3 hours a day to make her right eye muscles stronger. She does such a great job! Kilee calls the patch her "sticker." She's such a trooper! :o)

Kilee and her "sticker"

Watching Toy Story

Family Down Time