how did we get here?

As I sit to write this, my home looks different than it did a few months ago.  On the surface, you might not notice anything out of the ordinary, a contained clutter of trucks and cars and photos and furniture that make up this rental house I've tried to make a home.  But a closer look reveals a stack of photocopied birth certificates on the desk, a workbook, a couple books on attachment underlined and dog-eared.  If you were to get more personal and poke around a bit more, you'd find a necklace in a dish on my dresser with an initial 'B' and a charm of Africa; within our file cabinets you'd find numerous new-but-worn files neatly labeled 'dossier in process,' 'dossier completed,' 'IFS application,' and 'homestudy.'  Sit down with us for a while, and you'd see that while we look to be a family of three, our hearts are full of the desire to be a family of four.

We are adopting.

How did we get here?  A hundred little stepping stones.  The Riches' adoption of Hope that started in while we were in Kenya.  Taking pictures for our friends' profile book in Long Island to share with birth mothers.  Numerous conversations that ended in "someday." A hand raised and Matt sliding across the pew to accept a Show Hope packet, signing up on the spot to sponsor adopting families.  Watching our friends travel to China to pick up their daughter.  An expectation that we would be expecting - but we weren't.  Reading Jen Hatmaker's book "7" over Christmas break and a twelve- hour car ride where Matt and I talked about how we could point our life towards less stuff and more Jesus.  We made a decision to volunteer with World Relief Nashville to befriend a refugee family, which is a whole different story - and Matt said, "Let's look into adopting."

And so we did.  And now we are planning for another little boy - this one from Ethiopia.  We started in February with applying to our agency, getting accepted, and starting the homestudy process.  I spent a couple months gathering paperwork, we were fingerprinted by the government, got approval from immigration to adopt, and have sent our dossier to our agency.  That is a two-sentence synopsis of six months of process that I will probably detail soon.  We hope our dossier will be on the lawyer's desk in Ethiopia sometime in July, at which point we will officially start waiting for our referral - to be matched with a child, whom we anticipate will be a boy under two.

The road is long and winding and we can't really see what's on the other side of the hills.  I don't know how long this trip will take or what curves lie ahead.  I do know that God wrote Africa on our hearts long ago, that we fell in love on the dusty roads of Kenya.  How fitting of Him to bring us a child from Africa, too. 

Homeowners!

Well, last Friday was a one of those monumental days in our family history.  Our house hunting days are over!  After an hour of signing papers, we were handed keys to our new home.  

Now, out of the three keys they gave us, only one actually works... But I feel like that's kind of how it goes for us.  We bought a house we won't be moving into for a couple more months, but boy do we have plans.

Our sweet realtor has unlocked quite a few homes for us and had to break the news two different times that "the one" was no longer available for our purchase.  And as the market has changed around here and homes started selling in days after they were listed, she's had to tell us homes were off the market before we could even see them.  

Such was the case for a house that popped up in a great spot but was under contract before we could peek inside.  The location was so appealing to us that we drove by it at least twice to gaze forlornly at the "under contract" sign in the yard.  When this house popped back up online I thought for sure it was a mistake and texted Angela to see what was going on.  A few texts later she confirmed that the deal had fallen through with the first seller and it was indeed available again! Unfortunately, all of this went down as we were driving to Matt's parents' house for the weekend.  We were over halfway there when we made the decision to turn around and drive back home to look at the house. Being a Saturday, we knew there would be other buyers out and we didn't want to risk it.  During the drive back, we were so nervous and excited.  I commented that this was "Just like a movie!" And Matt corrected that it was like aborning movie where the characters sat in the car the whole time. Angela met us there 90 minutes later, on her birthday.  Moose was in the car and Bo had just spent 3 hours driving nowhere, which were not ideal house looking conditions.  

But we liked what we saw and could envision what the house could become. 

We got back in the car and pointed West again, back to Murray!  We signed an offer on that drive (oh, technology!).  And a few (stressful) weeks later, here we are! 

We love the street of older homes and being walking distance to both downtown Franklin and a local park.  We love the stone exterior and mature trees.

We can envision the trees and bushes trimmed up, new shutters, trim painted white. 

Inside the home has the quirks of a 1940's cottage that will hopefully translate to "character." There are two living areas- this one will be our family room/play room.

Those doorways above lead to a small kitchen that we will hopefully be expanding.

Below is the wood-paneled wonder of a living room. You can bet the first thing I did was take down those heavy curtains!  We might be able to knock down some walls but we will certainly be brightening up the room with some paint. 

Outside the house has a large carport, which is typically not my favorite but it does the trick and I really don't mind it.  The garden is overgrown but we've identified some great plants- hydrangea, peonies, and lavender among them. It's a wild jungle now but give us a year.

This little garage is homely but the perfect dimensions for Matt's work needs. Of course we've got plans for cutesing that up someday.

The yard is a big wild dream.  I never thought we'd have this much space.  Of course now that it's ours  the reality of caring for it sinks in! But there is a spot for a garden and anything else we could dream up. 

Possibly a zipline.

Bo has been at grandparent camp in Oklahoma this week.  I miss him terribly but the timing was great.  We shopped appliance sales, hit up the hardware store, and have spent hours at the new house.  We are waiting on approval from the city before our contractor can start the big demo but we can plink around a bit ourselves.  I've tried to rescue the magnolia from death by vine strangling: 

And Matt's been framing out a storage space in the garage.

So it's scary and a bit stressful as we step into this but after months of looking, we know what we want!  It is surreal to actually own a house.  

the pals

Well, I know Bo considers Moose a pal.  

I'm pretty sure Moose thinks Bo is more of a nuisance BUT just this morning Moose sat by Bo's door and whined a second before I chased him away (the cardinal sin in our house is barking during Bo's sleeping hours).  So I guess Moose knows that behind every too-rough hug is just a little boy loving on his brother.  

Watching trucks.

Feeding Moose a "carrot" aka an earplug.

 Just some kisses for "Moosey Goosey" as Bo calls him. 

Sleeping Beauty.

I am a lucky lady- check out my Mother's Day breakfast in bed. 

Beautiful. 

These pictures from a road trip made me laugh.  We might be outgrowing our car. 

Are you going to eat all of that? 

And then Bo crying because Moose ate it. 

Scrub a Dub. 

Bo's 2nd Birthday

Exactly a month ago our little buddy boy turned TWO years old.  It has taken me 30 days to get the pictures off my camera but I am so glad we have them.  It is sweet to celebrate his life and the wonderful gift of being parents.  My parents were in town that week and I'm thankful they were able to stay for his little party.  

After looking at party ideas on Pinterest I got totally burned out on themes and just felt overwhelmed... so we went with a classic 'birthday party' theme and I still got to get a little creative with some banners and the piece de resistance... my homemade pinata.  

Little B-O cookies were a hit with our buddy.  Thanks to my mom for the help! 

 

The pinata was a lot of fun for the buddies and it survived enough to be sent to NC for another special 2 year old's birthday!  I was happy to see my hard work reused.  

Oh my goodness, after hours of sugar and rolling around with cousins and the spider man bubble blower . . . an hour after bedtime and dirty dirty dirty.

We still managed to get this photo with Coco and Poppy.  I'll have to get more pictures from their visit up here soon.

more sweet friends

Right after the Mulandis visited, another one of our Kenyan connections came out for a visit!  The Nagles live in Atlanta now and it had been almost a year since I'd seen them.  Even though they have 3 kids to our 1, they made the drive to our house and we enjoyed having their sweet family in Franklin for the weekend!

We started off our weekend with an Easter egg hunt at a local park. 

Bo did not like waiting for the hunt to start.

Ty was enthusiastic about the visiting Chik-Fil-A cow. 

Since it was a cold day, we spent the afternoon at an indoor play place.  This particular one was a great place for them to run, climb, and burn off energy.  Unfortunately, we had an 'incident' with Bo that will go down in our family folklore.  He was playing on some equipment and was crawling through a tunnel when I heard him scream.  I was standing right there but on the outside of the tunnel, so I couldn't see what had happened.  A chubby toddler was perched smugly inside and my little lamb was bawling in terror.  As I tried to calm him down, I noticed a raised circle on Bo's face and thought at first he had been kicked, but it soon seemed too pronounced and circular for a shoe print - it was definitely a BITE.  The offender's mom came over and apologized but as the day went on, the mark got more pronounced.  By the next day it had faded so that it looked more like ringworm - we definitely were questioned by the nursery staff at church, which was awesome.  Anyway, he's fine and it will be a funny story, but of course I felt so bad for him being assaulted by that ruffian.  He still pats his cheek and says "my bite" when you ask him about it. 

After naps we visited a nearby horse farm turned public park for some family picture time.  Allyson recently got a new camera and I wanted to take advantage of her skills.  We had a lot of fun corralling the little ones and trying to get all of them looking in the right direction and smiling at the same time.  

 

Thanks for coming, buddies!! We love you!