The Queen...and Penny!

A couple nights ago we had our monthly dinner at The Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian restaurant in Oklahoma City. It was great to see familiar faces and to meet new friends. I love that we are building a new community of friends that know what we are all going through. It's just really fantastic! I love seeing all the sweet Ethiopian faces too. I wanted to just eat Eli up!!
Laynie and Blake did really well. We ordered the "platter" (can't remember the exact name)..that comes with a sample of almost everything. They were terrific and tried EVERYthing on the plate! Even the green beans! We were proud of them!

So, as I mentioned before...we are proud new parents to a sweet little Yorkie! Her name is Penny and she is really a great dog! She's about 2lbs now and will grow to about 5 or 6 lbs. I wanted a non-shedding "lap" dog and Penny is perfect for that!!

Poor Penny got her first bath on Tuesday night. She was very good and still...but she was SO ready to get dried off and warm again!

This is sweet Penny at the house I bought her from. She is so little!!

On the adoption front: I got an email yesterday saying that our final copies of our homestudy have been mailed off! That's exciting news and we can't wait to get our copies so we can hurry up with this Dossier!!

We are praying that we will be able to bring our sweet baby girl home in 2011. We'll see.

We Survived!

We survived the whirlwind that was 2010...the doctors appointments, the let-downs, the roller coaster! We survived.... and only because we had God on our side and LOTS of friends and family praying for us! Looking back, 2010 was not my best year!haha. I think it will go down as my worst to date. BUT....I learned a lot about myself...about my strength and my relationship with God. It brought Clint and I closer and really opened my eyes to many things.

We all go through difficult times....it's how we choose to make it through that counts. I am excited for 2011. Hopefully we will bring our sweet baby home from Africa, but either way, it will be a year full of waiting and growing...and we can handle both of those! ;)

Now that we have the Gladney thing straightened out, we are moving forward. I almost have our Dossier (our foreign paperwork) completed. Just a few small things to wrap up. I'm very excited about that because it's the last big thing before we can be put on the wait list!

Feels great to be progressing!

We celebrated New Years with our wonderful friends, the Due's. The kids and us Mom's stayed up to ring in the new year, but the Dad's couldn't make it! haha.

Here are our unlikely BFF's....my 10 year old, Blake and our sweet friend Grace, who is 5. They play together all the time...and really enjoy each other. It's a mystery to us, but we love that they get along so wonderfully!

The kids toasting to the new year! Grace, Blake, Laynie and Lydia.

Just Dance, Wii style....the girls (and Clint) LOVED it!

Another fun thing that we have done in 2011.....we bought a sweet Yorkie puppy. Her name is Penny and she is 14 weeks old. She is super sweet and has been a very good puppy! I will post pics soon. :)

Answer

Looks like we're moving forward with Gladney! :)

I'll leave it to Kathleen to elaborate.

Tic-Toc, Tic-Toc

Today or tomorrow we should know something....either we are moving forward with Gladney or changing direction altogether. I'm ready for an answer.
Once we get an answer I will share why we have been in limbo.
Just praying. Hoping. Waiting.