9 months waiting!

I wrote down the date during my quiet time this morning.
9 MONTHS we have officially been on the waiting list with our adoption agency!
I can't decide if it's flown by or seems like it's taking forever. I guess both.

So what does that mean? How much longer do we have to wait?
I wish we knew the answer to that.
Although we don't have an exact answer, we can at least give you guys an idea of where we are in the waiting.

Currently our agency estimates an average wait time of 24-30 months from DTE (Dossier to Ethiopia) until Referral (being matched with a child).

Our DTE date was August 31, 2012.

That's where I am getting 9 months officially waiting (even though we've been in the process over a year).

Let's use out agency's estimates to calculate.

30 - 9 = 21 months.

So for today, "approximately" 21 more months of waiting until we get a referral (match).

I put quotations around "approximately" because those wait times are always subject to change. International adoption is unpredictable.

Hope that helps answer some questions.

Keep praying for us and Malachi in the wait. It seems like forever, but he will be so worth it!

Oh yeah. In the craziness of life I forgot to post that we officially became a "concurrent family" on May 3rd.
Concurrent family just means that we are cleared to continue pursuing adoption even though I am pregnant. We keep our spot on the waiting list.
For those of you who didn't see my blog on concurrent family, it was basically just paperwork and updates with our social worker to get approved.
The letter was written in our favor. Our agency reviewed it, our whole case, and on May 3rd I received an email saying "congratulations, you're officially a concurrent family."

3 Year Anniversary

Lee and I celebrated our 3rd Wedding Anniversary yesterday, May 29th. 

I will try not to write a bunch of mushy stuff on here :) 

But I will say....

I love him so much more today than I did three years ago.

Don't get me wrong. I loved him then.

But in three short years we have experienced a lot.

God has used different seasons to draw us closer to each other.

God has taken the ugly, the sad, and the happy and graciously weaved it all together to increase our love for Him and for each other. 

HE is teaching us how to dance together through this crazy thing we call LIFE.

And I am thankful for my dancing partner.

We have a lot left to learn. A lot of growing left to do.

I'm not crazy. Three years is but a blink.

However, in ten more I hope I write the same thing.

"I love him more today than I did then."

We spent our anniversary at the beach. In the condo because we were exhausted. 

Ate spaghetti.

With Great Value Ice Cream for dessert. 

One wild toddler running around. 

Another tiny baby kicking inside my belly. 

Life :) 

So, tonight I was browsing for wedding pictures to put in this post and instead I came across honeymoon pictures. 

They made me smile.

So I decided to share.

Three years ago I laid on a beach in Costa Rica with my new husband with no idea what life held.

Three years later... we know that life for us holds THREE sons. 

Honeymoon Costa Rica - May 2010

Our private 3 bedroom villa - mountainside overlooking ocean

kayaking on the beach

There were literally probably 5 people on this beach. 

Our private chef, Ernesto.

He was an AMAZING chef.

Spoke no English :) but he could cook!! 

We seriously took pictures of every meal because we were so amazed.

Above is stuffed lobster and fish, homemade strawberry cheesecake and a typical breakfast.

Yes we had LOTS of left overs. 

We visited Nicaragua for a day. Too many pics to post.

Horseback Riding on 3 different beaches - all empty but beautiful.

It was Me, Lee and our non-English speaking guide :) 

Mud Bath

Ernesto heard that we were going on top of the mountain to watch the sunset one evening.

So he sent us a surprise delivered by golf cart.

Wine and snacks before dinner.

There are so many pics I could post from that trip, but I'm probably boring you by now :) 

I love this last picture. 

I look at it and smile.

Because in the moment it was snapped, it was just 2 of us. 

We had no idea what God had in store for our lives.

Still don't :) 

Hoping by our 10 year anniversary we can afford to take another trip like that!

For now... I'm gonna enjoy the Alabama coast.

Grabbing cookies and milk for dessert tonight! 

And yes.. I will let my toddler dip in the same milk glass as me. And when his cookie gets too soggy, I will just give him a new one!

Happy 3 years LEE! 

Garage Sale & Sweet Kiss

We had our garage sale fundraiser last Saturday (May 4th).

It went so good!

A special thanks to all of our family for helping us last Friday and Saturday! We couldn't have done it without y'all. And thanks to everyone who donated to the sale!! You guys are awesome!

We raised approximately....

$ 2,000

Seriously... Once again we stand amazed at God's continued provision for our adoption. 

We stand amazed at the overwhelming amount of support we have.

Thank You!

I have a sweet, sweet story to share from the garage sale.

My "sweet kiss" from God. 

I guess the story can begin on Thursday evening of last week.

This nasty little emotion called "doubt" began to creep in. It raised it's head as the garage sale neared. 

Doubt over what? Tons of things. 

It began to engulf me. 

I told Lee about it. Told him that satan's attacks were full on.

He prayed over me. Prayed for our family. Prayed for our garage sale. Then prayed for me again.

Friday evening I rushed in from work, greeting family members and finishing up all the last minute garage sale stuff. Lee had picked up our Africa cookies that sweet Rhiannon Bethea made for us to sell. I immediately looked for them when I got home and was SO thankful to see that she already had them arranged in a basket, because I wasn't sure what I was going to put them in to make them look cute.

I snapped a picture of these precious cookies.



Saturday was the garage sale.

God met me there. He met me in small ways throughout the day.
He exceeded my expectations for the sale.
And then in the perfect moment He grabbed my attention.

The sale was over. All of our family had gone home except Lee's cousin, Sha.
We were standing in the kitchen talking.
As I listened to Lee and Sha talking, I glanced over and saw the basket of cookies sitting on our bench.

"That's strange" I thought. I stared a moment longer at the cookies before speaking out loud.
"Look at that cookie basket. The tissue paper is red, green and yellow. Those are Ethiopia's flag colors."
Lee and Sha turned to look.
"It sure is" replied Lee.
"Do you think Rhiannon meant to do that?" I asked.
Lee replied, "Abby, probably! Creative people always do stuff like that."

True, I thought to myself. But that is REAL creative, especially not to mention it and assume I would notice.

I dropped it.

For a few hours.

But I couldn't let it go. There was something "more" to me about the 3 colors she had decorated the basket with. So around 8 o'clock that night I wrote Rhiannon a text and asked if she knew that those 3 colors were Ethiopian colors.

Her response?

"No way!?!?!"
"Totally God... :)"

She proceeded to tell me the "story" behind selecting those colors for the basket.
She said she had left over green paper from Christmas, but wanted to make the basket "stand out" so she ran to the dollar store for more paper. The only colors they had were red, yellow and lime green. Since she already had green, she just bought the red and yellow :)

Mmmm... my heart was filled.
God was the creative one.
He always is.
If you don't know about God's crazy, excessive attention to detail - read the Bible cover to cover.
In fact, He is so detail oriented that we miss most of it!
I even have to skip some chapters in the Bible because of all the details God desired for the temple, the sacrifices, etc.
And He cares about the details of my life.

On Sunday, I realized that God had invited me to enter into the doubt I was having earlier in the week.
He allowed me to enter in to the emotions... because He desired to meet me there.
He desired to prove Himself faithful to me.
He desired to remind me of His ever constant presence in our lives.
He desired to confirm His call for us to adopt once again (for the millionth time) because He knows I need it.
I was thankful He had allowed me to enter in.


Here are the pictures of the Ethiopian flag, the cookie basket after the garage sale, and the cookie basket during the garage sale.
No, I did not rearrange the tissue paper to match the flag! That just happened to be how Rhiannon laid it :)
Oh and the cookies were blue in the middle (just like the blue in the flag).
It was in front of our face all day and we didn't notice :)




Pretty neat, huh?


This is one of the only pictures I snapped during the sale.

God is pretty great :))

I did not take any pictures at the sale (yes I regret this), but some family members snapped at least a few.
Here is a side by side of Miller and Blakely (our niece) last year and this year at the garage sale!
They've grown so much :((



Thanks for following us!

APRIL 2013

Better late than never huh??!

Our April Collage from top left to right.

Miller's First Mississippi State Baseball Game (we beat Ole Miss :))

Asher Grace came to visit

Miller loves to "brush your teeeff"

We planted a small above ground garden (our first ever)

Number 33 on waiting list for a toddler

Number 68 for an infant

We found out that Baby Blackburn is a...

BOY!!

Baby Blackburn 17 weeks old in that sono pic 

I'm working on a blog post from our garage sale ;) 

Stay tuned! I will hopefully get it typed tonight/tomorrow! 

Got some G.O.O.D, sweet stuff to share!! 

Since you're pregnant with a boy...

Since Lee and I found out that I am pregnant with another boy, we have been getting lots of questions. If you have asked any of these questions, please do not think they offend me :) I think they are completely appropriate and I understand the reasoning behind them.
But for those of you who have not seen me face-to-face, I decided to answer some of these common questions in a blog post.

1) Since you already have one son and are pregnant with another, why don't you just adopt a girl? Can you switch your gender request in adoption? 
           Yes, you can switch your gender request. However, Lee and I feel strongly that when God first called us to adopt, He was specific about the gender being a boy. That was in 2010. Now 3 years later, God has blessed us with 2 biological sons. God knew in 2010 what our future looked like - including a house full of boy. Yet, He still called us to adopt a boy. So for us - we will continue along that path until He changes it.
I must insert here that this isn't the case for all families. I know plenty of people who switch their gender request for various reasons, and I think it is completely appropriate for each individual situation.

2) Will you have more children? I love this question. My answer is always the same. TODAY, Lee and I both agree that we will have more children. HOWEVER, we only have ONE child at home right now. So ask me again when I have THREE little boys running around and you might get a more accurate answer :)

3) Are you going to name your next child with a name that begins with "M?" 
    Highly unlikely. The whole "M" thing was a complete coincidence. I did not intend for all my kids names to start with the same letter, so this little man's name will probably not start with "M."

4) What are you going to name your son? We actually DO have a name in mind, but are kind of waiting until we are 100% certain before we announce. YES, we are going to tell the name before he is born :)


We are busy doing final preparations for our garage sale THIS SATURDAY!
Please, please keep us in your prayers. Pray specifically that above all else, God's name will be glorified. It's easy to lose focus in all the busyness.

Happy Monday!

Around the house

Random blog tonight.

Just some different things we've been doing around the house today.
I am constantly working hard to try and figure out ways to save money or make our household function more efficiently.
There are TONS of amazing blogs by moms who are much wiser than me when it comes to running a household and saving money. So I do what any rookie wife/mom would do - I copy them :))
Moneysavingmom.com is where I got the following PB & J idea.
#brilliant

So around our house today we focused on lunches for the next 2 weeks. Work lunches that is.
Now, I can't tell you penny for penny how much we will save because that wasn't technically the goal.
The goal is to make lunches easier to fix in the mornings (during crunch time) because if we don't feel like dealing with the hassle, we usually just say "oh well, I will just buy something at work."

So. We made PB&J sandwiches, placed them in freezer bags, and popped them into the freezer. I did this last week and it worked beautifully. You just pull them out of the freezer in the morning, put them in your lunch box and they are easily thawed out by lunch.
Hassle of making sandwiches = eliminated.

We also went ahead and placed chips, fruit, and things such as trail mix into snack size ziplock bags.
Hassle of side items = eliminated.

The next thing I did today was make homemade sugar cookies for the first time!
Why? Because I need to learn how! I'm going to have 3 hungry boys in my home who will want to make cookies and I gotta head up the project :))

Thanks cousin Jill for teaching me the family recipe!

Homemade icing! Miller and I liked it. Lee says it could use some tweaking :))

Fish and dinosaurs were the cutouts of choice today!

"slapping" on the icing :))
We kept it white today.
Sorry if the sloppiness makes you OCD people cringe.

Cookies = success.

Thanks for joining my randomness.

Oh and feel free to share blogs you love that focus on saving money and home management. Im a fan.

Baby Blackburn Is A....

I went to the doctor for my monthly check-up yesterday.

The baby looked great! I even got an unexpected sonogram secondary to my doc checking my fluid levels (which were good!)

I am 17 weeks pregnant so she knew she would be able to tell me the gender.

Lee wasn't with me so I asked her to please not show me the gender, but to instead write it down and place it in a "sealed" envelope. She did a great job.

We had around 10 minutes to just look at the baby while we waited on my doctor.

So Fun! Here's a pic.

That sweet little child is growing!!

We had planned to do a "reveal party" but since this sono wasn't scheduled, our plans were altered.
Seriously. Once she handed me that envelope... I was completely anxious. I couldn't have waited another day! But I did wait until Lee got off work!!
So we called our family that lives in town and invited them over.
We had an impromtu gender reveal last night.

I ran by Wal-Mart to grab something sweet and was blessed by the bakery ladies saying "oh hunny, we will make you some cupcakes right now!"

P.S. They informed me that Wal-Mart gives free sugar cookies daily to kids.

Miller L.O.V.E.D his cookie.

Check with your wal-mart! They may give cookies too!

Oh and these cupcakes were economical and delicious!!

My sweet friend, Alicia, took the envelope and filled some boxes with balloons for us!
We had to have 2 boxes because our boxes were sort of small :)

Pink or Blue Balloons?!?

Family pic before we opened the boxes!

Lee wore pink because he thought "girl."

I wore blue for "boy."

Miller was just big brother :)

P.S. I was like the ONLY person guessing boy.

We were so anxious!! The suspense was c.r.a.z.y.

Opening the Boxes!
This picture captures mine and Lee's reaction to seeing what color the balloons were.
Both boxes were open and we could see down in the box, but the balloons hadn't flown up yet :)
Miller is like "what in the world??"

A son! 

Feeling very blessed :) and maybe a tiny bit overwhelmed at the thought of 3 BOYS!!! 

The impromptu party was a success and a lot of fun! 

We spent the rest of the night eating cupcakes, watching Miller run wild, and texting/emailing the video to our family/friends (fighting cellphone technical issues!)

Big Brother enjoying a BLUE cupcake!

Baby Boy's first gifts! Thanks Alicia and Kelli!

Thankful to have a growing family!! 

I am officially a "boy mom."