What God Has Been Up To...Our BIG News (Part 2)

So where was I? Oh yes, leaving you hanging... :)

Our adoption worker started the wheels turning by telling us that it might be possible to use our home study with our current agency to adopt a waiting child who was listed with a different agency. From my understanding, our agency only does home studies for families adopting from their agency.

Something within me got so excited at that moment. We walked out of that meeting, and Brad started laughing when he looked at me and he said, "I know what you're thinking!" I asked him if he wanted to pursue this, and he said yes! I got in the car, called a friend to get me the number of the other adoption agency, called them and felt my heart pounding as I asked if Nathan had been matched with a family yet. They said he had not, and that they could send us some updates and a video if we wanted. I tried not to get too excited as I said that would be great.

So here we are, a week and a half later, and I am thrilled and amazed to announce that

It's a boy!!!!!!!!

Brad and I have decided to pursue Nathan's adoption and we are overjoyed at what the Lord has done for us! It has been a crazy week, which is why I couldn't blog :) I just knew I would not be able to keep from saying anything about it. But we have told the agency that we want to move forward with adopting Nathan, and we have now told our friends and family the wonderful news, so I feel free to share it here!

We are going to keep his name Nathan (which means, "God has given"), and we have not decided on a middle name just yet. This has all been such a whirlwind and I think I'm still in shock! We have not "officially" accepted his referral as that will take a bit of time and paperwork, so sadly I cannot share a picture yet of our adorable son! We still have to finish our homestudy, and the agency Nathan is listed with has to get permission to place him in our state (apparently this is just a formality). I cannot believe I am going to be the mother of two little boys!!!!

But here's what you need to know about our little man. He is adorable to the max! We look at his picture all the time and cannot wait to get our hands on him! We have been blessed to have a video of him, and we hope to have another one in just a few weeks time!

Nathan is now 9 months old, which makes him 13 months younger than Matthew. I am so thrilled that Matthew will have a little brother! I know the age difference may be challenging at times (oh who am I kidding, I have no idea what it will be like!), but we hope and pray that they will be best buds. We do not know how long it will be until he is home, but we are anticipating about a year long wait. Sigh. That sounds so long right now. We are praying that it is sooner for sure!!!! Nathan was a waiting child because he was born with malformed ears and has some pretty significant hearing loss. We know that there will be many new things for us to learn and challenges that may be ahead, but we are confident that the Lord will give us the strength and the grace to handle each and every challenge that will arise. We are so blessed to be able to be this little boy's mom and dad and we cannot wait to have him home with us!!!!

So....it's been a crazy week :) And God is so good!!!!!