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.

Many of you have asked where the pics from ayans birthday party are. Here’s the deal. Our local Internet provider went under with no warning so we are without Internet for at least a week until we switch providers. I have 167 great pics to post but they are all on the laptop. So, to hold you over, I’ll post a couple via my iphone.