I know I promised a post about ways you can help, but I’m still working on some final details for that so bear with me, it might be another couple of days.

We are currently in the middle of the homestudy. I felt last Thursday and Friday that it was moving a tad slow, but yesterday, wow! I emailed the agency to ask who I should send some notarized things to and she replied right away and also asked if we could do our first homestudy visit TODAY! I mistakenly assumed it was going to be a phone conversation, but quickly found out it would be in person! Um.. I know my family saw my house on Saturday so they can attest to the utter disrepair. It’s hard to be in busy season, changing jobs, have 2 13 months olds (who had ear tube surgery this morning), and did I mention we’re going on a little getaway this weekend? So anyway, of course I told her she could come! He and I spent a little time yesterday on the downstairs after the girls went to bed. I attempted to remove the cat hair so she wouldn’t think that we had dead animals in all our corners. I also cleaned the floor under the highchairs. Ick. Oh, and the guest toilet… it needed serious attention. Today, while I’m nursing the girls back to health, I also have to work on the upstairs. Mainly the office which looks like a paper explosion and the nursery which looks like a clothes explosion.

I’m not particularly nervous about the visit. Since the girls were born we’ve had lots of people in and out of our house and I feel like I’ve had to share intimate details a dozen times. We’re an open book at this point. I am nervous about the fact that this is one step closer to being all in. Not that we aren’t already all in, but every thing that gets checked off the list brings us closer to our sweet girl. It’s just becoming so real. Like infertility… you want to get pregnant so bad, but once you are finally pregnant you worry for months and then once the baby is finally here you worry about a whole new set of worries. I’m trying to learn to let go, ride the story and pray for God to take my worries.

I’m afraid to hope for it, but everything seems to indicate that there is a chance she could be home by Christmas. Wow. Awesome. And what a great segway to share some pics of our Christmas from last year – Cranky and Happy’s first! We tried to keep it simple. My plan was 3 gifts per girl, but I think it ended up being 4.

Here’s their Christmas Eve Lovefeast dresses. Absolutely adorable, way too expensive to only wear for 2-3 hours.

Oh, is there a kitty over there!?

Oh, bow!

Mama! She took my shaker!

Huh?

Sweet Cranky

So Pretty!

And the progression of the smile when you say “CHEESE!” to Happy.

Ah, so in love.

Wish we were sharing pics of our new sweet girl..

Anyway, we’ve stepped out in faith to try to bring her home.. now it’s our job to watch God write our next chapter. Until then, imagining what our next Christmas might look like 🙂