Our daughter!! Nia Hae Yeong Lipic

We are in love! What a crazy few days we have had!! I was in Wisconsin when we received "the call." It is so funny how much I anticipated that call! Every single time the phone rang I went through a whole scenario in my head of what would happen if it was our social worker. And then, wouldn't you know, Mark got the call!! :) Jill, our social worker called home but no one was here so she left me a message on my phone and then tried Mark. Luckily he answered! And the crazy thing is, I checked my phone messages at the exact time Mark was getting all of the info. As soon as Jill hung up with Mark she called me, told me everything and said she would be at our house on Saturday morning with the pictures. She then proceeded to tell me how cute she was! I hated having to wait till Saturday! But it was a wonderful day!!! We celebrated by taking the kids to dinner at Logan's. We would've like to do Korean but the closest place is an hour away. We had a fun time celebrating Nia's "arrival". When we showed Grant the picture for the first time he smile and said he wanted to hold her. So we gave him a copy and he has been sleeping with it! He puts it next to his pillow! He is so sweet! The last week has been pretty hectic to say the least. Since I was out of town for three days, the housework and laundry has piled up! And it still is not a priority because now I am determined to get the acceptance paperwork done ASAP and I am putting together a care package to send to Nia. We have some friends who are leaving for Korea on Thursday and they are going to take the care package and take it to Eastern which is Nia's agency there in Seoul. We are so grateful to have this chance because it may be the only opportunity we have to get anything to her. I have NO DOUBT that God has worked this all out. He is so GREAT! What are the chances that we would know someone going to Seoul? Ever?!! And now they are going, right after getting the referral?! We have a VERY loving and gracious God! We are incredibly blessed!

So, Nia's Korean name is Hae Yeong (pronounced Yong) Lee. In the picture on the card you see Lee first. Korean's put their last name first when writing. So we will call her Nia Hae Yeong Lipic. Nia is 5 months old and we will hopefully travel to get her in 3 to 4 months. I'm glad it is over the busiest time of the year, hopefully it will go fast!!! She is happy and healthy and we can't wait to meet her! Thank you to all of you who have helped us in this journey. Your prayers, encouragment, financial provision, help with the garage sale, there are too many to list! Thanks to all of you! We love you! Please continue to pray that Nia will stay healthy and well cared for. Her foster mother is the one holding her in one of the pictures. She has been fostering babies for 6 years and is married and has 2 teenage boys. I think she has a sweet face and I know that Nia is being loved!

Carving Pumpkins

A family tradition of carving pumpkins and then cooking up the seeds. Grant did a great job cleaning all the pumpkin goo off the seeds! We had a lot of fun and Grant loves to light up the pumpkins every night after dinner.

Lots of Pictures From Curtis Orchard and Carving Our Pumpkins

Curtis Orchard Pictures

Pictures

Pictures

Referral!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

Referral Day! I don't even know where to begin! We are so excited! We got our referral on Thursday morning, October 23rd. I have so much I want to write but I will try to post tomorrow. Jill, our social worker will be here in the morning with the paperwork and PICTURES!!! I told her she better watch out because I may just come running out the door when I see her pull up. We are so incredibly blessed!! We will tell you all about her tomorrow!

Pictures

Here are some pictures from the past week. In the second one Grant is proudly displaying a worm he found. He'll pick up just about anything. Dead or alive! The other day he brought a creepy crawly into the house to show me. You just have to love boys!! And anyone who knows our family knows that motorcylces are in the blood. (excluding myself :) The boys LOVE to get on daddy's bike and daddy loves that they do! The last one is at the park where we had a playdate with some good friends. Are these two cute or what?!

Prayers

Yeah! No rain today! Yesterday was so dreary. It either poured or drizzled all day. It is gorgeous out today. I hope I'll be able to get in a walk. I was doing so good with exercising and now it has been quite a while and I can tell! It doesn't help that we had a cookout here over the weekend. So much great food and no one wanted to take home the leftovers. It is never good to have potatoe chips and cookies laying around. I will eat them all. No self control! I tell myself, well, I'll might as well just finish it all off so it isn't around all week. What bad reasoning!!

Like I said, we had a good time with family here at our house for the cookout. That was on Saturday and on Sunday we went to church and later took a bike ride. We took the trail (which is a bike/walk trail that goes all throughout the city) and Grant loved being on his bike without having to worry about traffic. He did have a little trouble staying to the right side of the trail. He kept wondering over to the other side (too busy trying to do tricks on the bike!) And although there are no cars, there are some serious bikers who fly on that trail. Then we headed to Culvers for dinner. Yet another sabatoge for trying to eat healthy. I'll do better tommorow. That is what I tell myself! :)

This afternoon as I tucked the kids in for naps Grant said he wanted to pray. I was happy to hear him say this as usually he has no interest. So this was Grant's prayer: Dear Lord, thank you for my tent, John Deere, combines, bugs, Daddy, Aaron, bed, books, Haley, stars, Jesus (hey that's a good one) and he named a few more such as Mr. Noodle. Then I noticed he was looking around for stuff to say so I said Amen. I think it was becoming a good form of procrastination. But at least he is seeming to somewhat understand what prayer is!

Monday evening I went to my women's Bible study. I am fortunate to be with a group of very wise women who I very much admire. And one of the ladies had wonderful news! They have been in the adoption process for quite some time and have just received their referals. Yes, more than one. Three to be exact!!! They have 3 beautiful kiddos from Ethiopa! This is in addition to their three at home. Two teenage girls and a 3 year old boy. Things at their house are going to be busy! I am so excited for their family! They are truly a family who loves our Lord and it will be so neat to see all of the wonderful blessings God has in store for them. And another one of the ladies just delivered a baby boy! This group is bursting with babies! (Over half of the women in this study have adopted from various countries and domestically!) We are still waiting for our "phone call", that most important call that is anticipated every time the phone rings. I am sure that it will come when we least expect it. I was happy to find out that the furniture for the nursey will be delivered on Saturday. I can't wait to see the room come together. That will give me something to work on while we wait!