That’s right….a new blog post is coming!! Finally! (give me a break…life has been busy)

Many of you know we planted a big garden this spring…and it’s now in production…and we are pumped! So, we have had some lettuce, onions and zucchini already picked and more onions and potatoes ready to pick. Then the yellow squash, green beans & tomatoes will be ready within the next 2 weeks. Corn, cucumbers and cantaloupe are all up and healthy and will be ready in early july sometime. And best of all, there’ll b okra soon too! And we have 1 measly little watermelon plant, I don’t know if it will make it. Enjoy the pics!

Can I just say how much I love spring. The last week, after the deluge of rain, was one of the prettiest weeks we’ve had in months and I was able to take full advantage of it. With the onset of spring weather means the shop gets used more…and the shop likes that. The garden planting has begun with onions and potatoes in the ground and it’ll be time to mow in less than a week! I’m so excited (I know it’s weird to be excited about mowing). So, here’s a little run down of the projects that are done, in progress, or to be done.

I kicked things off by making some baby furniture, a dresser/changing table and chest of drawers, for our good friends the Feezels. (they are my 1st paying furniture customers) The furniture turned out very nice and Tiffani is loading it up with baby gear and will forward me pictures soon.

Next, I decided to finally do something about my dust collection, or lack of, in my shop. I spend enough time woodworking that not having dust collection means a real danger to my health in the long run. My friend Scott Sutton and I tackled the task on Friday after he got through working on his kitchen doors. I then spent most of the day fitting all the runs in and making the “drops” and hooking things up. Saturday night was the inaugural run for the “octopus” as Steph calls it (you’ll see why in the pictures). It turned out great and I’ve been amazed at how well it picks the dust up so far from my big tools.

Finally, today, I began work on the adirondack benches that were promised to our mothers last mothers day. I am excited to finally complete these so our moms can begin enjoying them. (no pictures of these yet…they will follow by the end of the week hopefully).

The next projects are: working on trim in the house, building 2 more benches that my friends want to buy, planting more stuff in the garden (mom and dad are coming down for easter and dad “the garden king” is going to help me with irrigation and planting more stuff).

We are trying to find things to do to raise money for the impending adoption…and although time consuming, I thought building some furniture for “auction” might be a cool idea. This is where we need some INPUT from the BLOG READERS! Let us know what you think about me making a few pieces of furniture for auction and what pieces you think would be best and appeal to the largest crowd.

Below is a picture of the “octopus” and a shop tour! Enjoy!

You should all go check out our friend’s webpage that are in kaZ right now getting their little boy Sam.

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A little synopsis of the Pokes going to the tourney!

Man, I can’t tell you how much I love daylight saving time. Today, after church, we came home and took a 2 hour nap…and still had time to plant in the garden today. Ayan was such a big helper planting potatoes. He would go to the bag and get me one at a time and bring it to me and say “Here nudder tato daddy”. Seriously, I love living in the country. It was SUCH a beautiful day today and it made me so excited about spring. New garden…woodworking…oh daylight is great!

Like a scene from the office, my coworkers and I travel to the local wings joint every Wednesday for lunch for discount wings. Today will be no different, and I wanted to share my affection for wings with you, my faithful blog followers. Please feel free to express your wing love here as well.

Our good friend Lauren Brand (lwnphotography.com) took our family portraits recently and we just got them back yesterday.  They turned out GREAT!  We were all a bit amazed at Ayan and his smiling antics which makes it appear that we have him well-trained for potraits…(we’ll let you believe that if you want to).

Thanks so much Lauren.  I’m a very proud husband of a gorgeous wife and father of the cutest little boy ever!

(this is my favorite) – the rest are below…enjoy.

It was quite an eventful weekend at the Hamilton Acres.  It all started with me taking Friday off to do a little work around the place.  Little did I know that a 50 MPH wind and a cold front were rollin’ in and it would make my day not so fun working outside.  But, I prevailed.  I tilled up a garden spot about 80ft X 80ft out in the old corral area beside the barn.  Tillin’ this black ground was not too easy, but I bought a tiller at a farm sale about 2 years ago that wasn’t running.  It is a big 6 HP rear-tine tiller and it took me about an hour of work to get it up and running like a beast.  So, we have onion sets and potatoes to plant this week and we plan on planting corn, tomatoes, green beans, peas, okra, yellow squash, lettuce & zucchini so we need all the space we can get.  (pics will follow when plants are in the ground)

The next big event…was on saturday.  I got up at 7am to go to Ft Worth and pick up a load of lumber that I’m using to make my friend’s baby furniture.  As soon as I got back, my friend Brian Weir and his father-in-law, Mark, were here to help me chop out the mammoth hackberry stump that had grown for years right up against the foundation where we will be adding the add-on.  The stump measured about 24″ in diameter and was SOLID.  So, we took at it with chainsaws and 2 axes and a whole lot of manliness.  After almost 3 hours of work, we had the tree about 70% chopped out to 4″ below ground level.  And that is where it sits now…I will finish it this week (because the foundation goes in in 2 weeks!).  Below is a pic of Brian in what I like to call his “axe murderer stance”.  Brian is holding his prized wood chunk of the day.  With one powerful blow, a 6″ chunk of wood flew off and Brian was pleased.  (note the giant tree stump by his left foot)

We went to our 2 hour orientation today in Waco.  It was really cool to hear about how the process works at this agency.  It is a Christian agency and they work very closely with the birth mothers to allow them to chose the adoptive families.  We are now rushing to fill out our “formal app” and return it and write our “letter to the birth mom” that the mothers will see to choose who adopt their baby.  

It’s a bit nerve-racking, but we’ve been through similar paperwork crunches before.  After the paperwork is in and they run our background checks, we’ll have to do an 8 hour orientation and a homestudy.  All of this feels so oddly familiar it’s just crazy.  We got a list of organizations that do interest free loans and grants to look in to.  

We also got a time frame.  Most likely, if a birth mom chooses us, we would have a baby, if it is one of the 5 babies that are in the womb now, by August of this year.  Folks…that is comin’ right up.  How quickly life changes!

Thank you all for your prayers and we ask that you continue to pray for the following,

• pray for the birthmom as she is walking through these tough decisions
• pray for the unborn baby and the birth mom’s health
• pray for our family as we continue to seek God’s will for us in this
• pray for our patience as we seek out God’s provision in the funding
• pray for us as we consider the huge changes a newborn would bring at short notice

Thank you for walking through this with us…

Aaron

Some of you may have already heard our news, but for those who haven’t…prepare yourself….

As most of you know, we want alot of little adopted kiddos.  God has called us to adopt! We haven’t decided how many and we don’t know what the Lord has in store, but we know that we are not planning to have biological children.  Ayan’s adoption was final in Jan 2008 and we weren’t expecting to start another adoption until Jan 2010.  But, (big pause), something came up this week….

We found out through a friend at church about some babies that will become available for adoption over the next 6 months.  The birthmothers are all African American and the agency had difficulty finding families that were willing to take African American or biracial children.  

After we heard the news, we came home and prayed about it and decided that if God wants us to have a little baby (I mean like itty bitty days-old baby), that He will provide the means for it to happen.  We have NO money saved up, we have NO baby stuff, we have not planned at all for a little baby, but we know that we are ready for another child and that God will provide if it’s in the plan.  The entire process costs $15,000 and will be pretty fast paced if one of these mothers select us as the parents. 

So, we sent our application in this week and have an orientation meeting set-up with the adoption agency next week already.  We would appreciate all your prayers. We know that there is no limit to how God can provide…we saw that with Ayan.  

We can’t wait to see what’s next!

The Hamiltons 3

Possibly soon to be 4…

Friday night we went out with our good friends jake and Steph Huck to mideival times for a little v-day fun. We had a blast and had some nice grown up conversation without the kiddos! Thanks to Steve and Lorie Roberts for keeping all 4 kids for the night!

Many of you know about our labor of love that we’ve been toiling over for almost 2 years now at our little house in the country. It’s been a long hard road to where we are now, but the payoffs have been great. We are able to make it now on one income, Steph is able to stay home with Ayan, and then there’s the fact that much of us getting Ayan relied on making some big financial changes and this house was a true God thing. So, for those of you who haven’t seen the old before pics…you HAVE to look at these!  (click the icon in the bottom right of the slideshow w/ 4 arrows to view the show in full screen)

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So that brings us to now.  The house is almost done.  The trim is almost done, the cabinets are ridiculously close to being done.  And now we are about to start the add-on.  I promised Greg Amerson that I would put the floorplan and rendering up on the blog…so here it is.  It’s a 2 story add-on, 600 sq ft on both floors and we should start the foundation in about a month.  Don’t worry, I’m contracting 80% of the work out.  I’ll be involved much less on the work on this one.  We are very excited to expand our little 900 sq ft, 2 bedroom house to a 4 bedroom house to make way for more kiddos!  

And…the layout for the floors.  (click on the pdf to view it…must have Adobe Acrobat Reader)

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The old house is the short, 1 story part on the left of the picture.  Let us know what you think!

After 2.5 weeks of no internet…we finally got it back…and it’s twice as fast as it used to be.  Do you know what that means?  MORE PICTURES! I am not tooting my own horn, but the pictures from Ayan & Luke’s party turned out incredible, mainly because of all the cute little gap kids running around.  Remember, they are ALL on Flickr (link to the slideshow at the very bottom) and you can click on any of the pics below to link to a high-res version.  Enjoy!

Yes, that’s ALOT of pics, but that’s only 1/2 the entire album…click below to see the whole thing!

We still have no Internet but I thought I would post a weight loss update…I have lost about 32 pounds since i started. I’m starting to really feel better and have opened up a new area in the closet.