Adoption, Pregnancy, Life

I'm up late and it's quiet... so I decided that I would do a little blog post. I don't have anything earth shattering to talk about, but just a few little updates on life. 

ADOPTION

I cannot believe that at the end of August we will have officially been on the waiting list for 1 year!! Geez... time has flown by and crept by all in one. 

With our 1 year "anniversary" for DTE approaching, we have lots of updates to do.

Boring, but necessary paperwork.

We filled out the paperwork a few days ago (July 22) to update our fingerprints. 

I kinda had a bad attitude filling out paperwork. I will be glad when the non-referral paperwork is complete!

After we filled out the paperwork, I grabbed Malachi's journal and flipped through the pages to see what we were doing in July of last year. Ironically, I had written in his journal on the exact same date last year - July 22. So I snapped a picture of the scripture I had written.



Love that scripture. However, that scripture reminded me of the weight of responsibility Lee and I have in raising young men. They are my boys right now, but I am not raising humans that will remain children. I am raising men to be sent out into the world.
Lee and I are the warriors.
Lord help us shoot our "arrows" in the right direction.


PREGNANCY

I am 31 weeks pregnant!
Seriously, this pregnancy has flown by! I am getting nervous as the weeks keeping coming and going!
And let me tell you... I have a wild little boy in my belly! He literally never stops moving!
We made a "small" step of progress this week! We painted his nursery!
It's grey for those of you wondering. The colors in the picture didn't really show up right.
Nope... don't have anything other than grey walls picked out. No theme. No bedding.
Yes, we do have a name picked out.
I plan to blog about that at a later time.





LIFE

I love artwork.
Why?
I don't know.
I just do.

I like to write.
Why?
I don't know.
I just do.

The past week or so I have had the "urge" to do a little art.
Lee said yesterday, "you seem yourself again."

A local artist that I was reading about made the following statement when asked why she loves to paint.

"I paint because there is something inside of me that needs to come out."

An expression.

For those of you who love to paint or write - you completely understand what she is saying. There is just something inside of me that wasn't meant to remain there.
It was meant to come out.
So... I have decided that I am going to "attempt" to not keep stories that I would love to blog about held inside.
I am also going to "attempt" to let expressions of art flow freely and TRY not be self-defeating.
I want to be myself, and ultimately be all of who God created me to be.

I will end with this precious new addition to our house.
It was a multi-person project.

I came up with the idea.
Lee, his cousin Sha, and her son, Ty, all graciously went along with my idea. They took a quick trip to Lowe's and Hobby Lobby.
Sweet Lee (and Ty) built the frame.
We painted and distressed and glued burlap.
I painted the word "BLESSED" on the bottom.
Then I sent it to my sweet and talented friend, Felicia Robbins.
I said "Felicia, just make it pretty. Add some birds or something. Oh and make that word "blessed" look better. I'm too pregnant to stress over this :))"
She did! She made the whole thing come together beautifully!!
Check her out on Facebook. Her page is Robbins Roost Designs.
She's great.

Anyway.

Felicia called and said "Abby, I'm thinking 5 birds." She went into all the details of having 2 birds one color, etc. etc.
Finally... I understood where her sweet brain was going!
5 Birds for our family of 5.

2 birds one color (me and lee)
Then she said, "tell me some other colors you have in your living room."
I spouted off some colors and she said, "okay, perfect. I will pick a few colors and get it to ya."




Isn't it pretty??
Obviously, I need to get some family pictures in it! One step at a time :)

I proudly shared this picture with my coworkers the day I was going to pick it up.
At first glance, you wouldn't think anything special about the number of birds.
But I told my coworkers that they represented our family.
My boss replied "yeah, and that's your colors too."
Me: What?
Boss: Your colors. Those are your colors.
Me: I am confused. My kids aren't yellow, green or red.
Boss: No, no. The flag. Aren't those the flag colors?

Moment of silence.

Why, yes.
Yes, those are the Ethiopia flag colors again.
Green, yellow, red - in that order.

I later told Felicia and she laughed saying that she hadn't thought of that at all, but that she had carefully considered the placement of colors.

There's so much more to life than what meets the eye.

Always.

God is an artist.

His art always has more depth and meaning than what meets the eye.