the one with the picture

one year and six days ago we saw our sweet girl's face for the first time. our agency sent out an inquiry email, asking if we would be interested in more info for a little girl they were about to put on the waiting child list. and of course we said yes. and then there she was. just a tiny little babe, various pictures of her crying and holding a cookie. and we were suspended in this moment between then and now, where we knew our son or daughter was out there but knew nothing about them and here was this child in an e-mail that could be our daughter but who knew because how actually do you make a decision like that? and we had exactly 12-hours to say yes or no and i just remember looking at evan and saying, "the only reason i can think to say no is money. and i don't think that's a legitimate reason for Jesus." and so we said yes.

we said yes one year and six days ago.

and yesterday was a hard day for me. watching a handful of my agency's families travel to ethiopia to bring home their daughters (of course. make it as hard as possible.) and i don't know how i can possibly wait two more months. and that is just me relying on the power of prayer and believing that Jesus will answer my pleas for an October court date.

we are currently in the middle of what is called the i-604 investigation. this process happens in ethiopia to make sure that our daughter is an abandoned or relinquished orphan (we know her story but they want to prove that it's true and she's not being trafficked). and now we are waiting on two people to be interviewed by the embassy for further proof of this. one is a police officer and he is already refusing to come in for the interview without a court order but it's not through the court so the court has nothing to do with it so there can't/won't be a court order so basically we won't get his interview (they always do that). and the other was her guardian and we haven't heard back on whether or not she will come to the embassy.

SO. praying that this will be resolved quickly. that we'll either get these interviews done or they'll write the letter excusing them (i mean, like what even is this process) and we'll be granted our PAIR approval.

one hundred billion steps for each piece of the puzzle.

we got this picture this morning from another mama whose sweet girl is also at our orphanage. i officially cannot handle it. my heart longs for her today. i've been on the fine side of things through this whole process but i can feel myself slowly starting to unravel at the edges. and the hilarious part to me is that i want her here now but we don't even have a bed for her yet. crying and laughing about that at the same time, all the time. and sweet maddox, asking all the time when we'll go get his sister. so much sweetness, i can hardly handle it.

clinging for life to all you promise

i have been one shaky, teary HOT mess today, y'all.

because we got ethiopian approval today. you read that right. the thing that was just closed (MOWA) approved us to adopt zara.

my agency called me today at 12 just as evan and i sat down for lunch. i saw her name pop up, started sweating and flapping my arms, you know, all chill things because i have no chill, and she's like, "hi larissa. do you know why i'm calling?" well now all of mccormick's knows THAT WE HAVE MOWA APPROVAL THANKS TO MY SHOUTING. 

you guys. i've been boldly praying for not quite two weeks. and with those bold prayers, i have literally been fighting off fear and it is exhausting. i did not actually know how much fear i literally carry around internally with me on the daily. my inner monologue is seriously this:

"but what if we don't get approval and then we don't get to travel?"
"we need both MOWA and PAIR approval and it's only two things but that's a lot to depend on in four-months."
"october is not that far away. is this the most ridiculous request i've ever made?"
"what if they want us to travel this weekend because we can't because we have a wedding."
"courts are closing. when do courts close? how long do they close for? what if they don't open until november for some reason? i should email CHI and ask them."

it is bad. it is constant. even just wondering the dates of court closure for rainy season could send me in a spiral down a deep hole of panic about what needs to happen before we can go. so i have to physically repeat 2 timothy 1:7 (sometimes outloud) to myself. but i am constantly fighting off a spirit of fear that i did not realized i carried around like the worst best friend in all of history. this best friend is not good to me and must go. i am constantly telling myself, my thoughts, "NO." firmly and over and over again ("take every thought captive and make it obedient to christ." 1 corinthians 10:5) and training my thoughts to not even turn to fear when something is a little hard or a little unknown. it literally is a workout for your entire soul. i dig it.

and if you would like to continue to hear about how great is our God, read on. because not only do we have MOWA approval, but our agency is working to get us a court date at the beginning of october. the courts will close for august and september for the rainy season and open right back up in october. i already knew this when i began asking for october but it is still dependent on these two approvals. so it's not cheating. 

even though God literally plucked this mountain from right in front of my face and chucked it across the whole wide world, we are not finished yet. we still need PAIR approval (3-6 months). we need to buy our tickets. i still want to travel with my two friends (and our three girls are all at the same orphanage now so if you don't think that's a promise from God, i'm sorry we can't be friends anymore.) and they need their approvals, too. we need airline miles. we need billings tickets to not be literally $10,000 + your right arm so we don't have to drive to bozeman or denver to fly out.

PRAY WITH US. your prayers are being heard. HE IS THE GOD WHO SEES US. 

but dang. we are celebrating so many victories (BABIES CAME HOME ON FATHER'S DAY) and so many mountains being absolutely obliterated. i turned on my adoption playlist on spotify this morning and the first song that came on was "unstoppable God" by elevation. so if you ever wondered if God uses spotify, HE SURE DOES. "faith commanded and the mountains moved. fear is losing ground to our hope in you....impossible things in your name they shall be done."

God is SO good. i know i have a lot of words here, but i'm also speechless at this excitement. we mostly have words of THANKS for joining us on this journey. for asking and caring and praying with us. for the people who tell us they're also praying for fall with us. THANK YOU. our girl is coming home!

you move the mountains

evan and i have been listening to "do it again" by elevation worship non-stop for the past few weeks. it has become our daily prayer to cover this adoption season, this unknown. i've always given each season of life and struggle a worship song and i cannot believe how seriously perfect this song applies: "i've seen you move, you move the mountains. and i believe i'll see you do it again." because on april 21, ethiopia shut down adoptions without any explanation. the worst part of all of it has been the rumors floating around about why and how long and what it means for us as this specific part of our journey, because some of the rumors are terrible and i'm over here like, "LALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING YOU'RE SAYING BYE."

i don't do super great when there aren't a ton of details. if you cannot answer all of my questions, don't even bother coming to me with the story because i literally need all the details. all of them. so my stress level has been extreme.

but i also have surprised myself during this season. my typical control freak personality has sort of stepped aside for this open-handed personality to take over. there is absolutely nothing i can do (i've already done it all: contacting my reps, sending letters, asking my friends to do the same, etc.), so this is me: "fine God. take it. i don't even want it." AND SO. he took it and he has it and i can confidently tell you that when you let God have your problems, IT IS SO MUCH BETTER TO LIVE LIKE THAT. also, i keep reminding myself that the God who brought us through $8,000 in seven days would not have brought us through that to leave us here. (whenever something is too much for me, i just remember that. it is probably the only thing keeping me going.)

SO. here's a little timeline of what has happened since the suspension:

april 21 -- suspension announced

may 2 -- my birthday and nothing happened. 

may 5 -- our case went to the first court date. an orphanage rep appeared and if the court decided to continue our adoption case then our case would be sent to MOWA (ministry of woman and children's affairs) but because MOWA was suspended, it just stayed at the court.

june 5 -- the start of the busiest, most stressful week. i start to lose my mind and feel attacked on all sides.

june 6 -- several families receive the letters they were waiting for to get their children out of the country. possible sign that MOWA is working again. we all casually FLIP. OUT. and pray that the suspension is over.

june 8 -- i realize that if MOWA is working again, then my case should be at MOWA. we find out that OUR CASE IS INDEED SUBMITTED TO MOWA!

june 8 -- take evan lunch and receive e-mail that we've also been submitted to PAIR (pre adoption immigration request)!

june 8 -- realize why i'm having such a stressful and terrible week and why i'm feeling attacked on all sides, hello.


ethiopia has literally said NOTHING to anyone about the suspension. it's kind of like a passive aggressive friendship being rekindled. no one says anything about the fight you just had. you just pretend like nothing ever happened and get on with your business. i'm just going to keep walking around on my tip toes until zara is home.

we now get to wait some more on these two submissions to be accepted. once they're accepted we'll get a court date and we'll go get our girl! (in tears just even typing that up.) PAIR can take 3-6 months and MOWA can take just as long as they please. there's a lady from my agency who had PAIR and MOWA approval within two weeks. others are waiting over a year. MOWA is basically a matter of where your paperwork lands on the stack.

so here's the thing: i've been saying since the beginning that the travel unknown is my worst fear. i have asked my agency no less than 15 times when i will be traveling and at this point, they just tune me out. i didn't actually realize that this was a fear until this weekend when i was discussing child birth with a mama friend of mine. (hi mary!) i pretend it's not a fear by saying, "travel stresses me out." but no. let's call it what it is: A FEAR. and so, my mama friend was telling me how she prayed for specific details before the births of her children, requests if you will, and these were incredibly specific. like down to the time of day she wanted her children to be born. AND GUESS WHAT? God delivered. so i'm like fine. i'm claiming this fear. i'm taking ownership of this stress and this fear and i'm not going to let it rule over me any more. so i have started praying for incredibly specific aspects of our travel.

+1 i'm praying that we'll travel at the beginning of october.
+2 i'm praying that our airline tickets will cost around $1,000 per person.
+3 i'm praying that we'll be able to travel with two other families (we know them, they're both adopting little girls and one of the girls is at the same orphanage as zara).
+4 that someone would gift us their airline miles.

i kept thinking about how silly #4 is. we want to fly UAE and so who is even going to have miles on UAE and can you even do that? but then God keeps reminding me that a) no mountain is ever too big and b) did he not raise us $8,000 in seven days?

we would LOVE if you would pray with us for these four specific things. we can't wait to see how God answers our prayers and to continue to watch zara's adoption story unfold.

"for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind." 2 timothy 1:7

paper pregnant

i have been waiting to write this blog post since july 20th but so much has been top secret because adoption is tricky.

i'll give you a little timeline of what has happened since the end of july to catch you all up to speed:

july 20-alicia at CHI e-mailed us about a waiting child. it was a tuesday and evan was at college age and i was probably at home dying from my parasite like i did all summer. i sent him a thousand texts FREAKING OUT about it and dying until he came home. texted our moms and my bible study girls and was like "Y'ALL BETTER PRAY RAT NAOW."

--the referral was for a little girl who matched our profile (you have to specify medical/emotional/physical needs that you're willing to accept) and was in our desired age range (younger than Maddox) and had a medical necessity that required us to say yes or no within 24hours so they could get the funds to move her to a better orphanage and get whatever medicine/tests/whatever done.

--we literally said, "the only thing holding us back is money. we're saying yes." SO WE SAID YES. we would owe over $15,000 when we accepted the referral.

--here's another part of this story: we didn't even have our homestudy done. NO HOMESTUDY. but we've got a child. i had just turned in the last piece of paperwork FIVE DAYS BEFORE this e-mail. typically this is not how this happens >>>> more on that in a minute.

july 21-we said YES!

--since our homestudy wasn't done, we couldn't officially accept so we were only given a "soft referral," which meant that she would be ours if we could get our stuff turned in quickly. it also meant they wouldn't show her profile to any other families. 

--we didn't even have our homestudy scheduled and my agency was like PLEASE DO THAT A MONTH AGO. and so my gf callie was like, "give me something specific to pray for." i'm all, "my homestudy needs to be done and i don't even have an appointment for it." within an hour, my social worker had called us and set up our homestudy for that saturday, as in two days from the phone call.

july 22-clean the entire house. buy one million stupid outlet plugs. freak out about the rugs that move too much and the book case that isn't nailed to the wall (hint: IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL).

july 23-our social worker came for a few hours and interviewed us and questioned maddox about how he shares and is he excited for a brother or sister (I DIE, SO CUTE) and toured our house. she's amazing and we love her.

--we then went to shoot a wedding for the rest of the day. ALL THE NERVES.

july - august-meet with our social worker two more times to fill CHI's quota. do a million hours of online training.

august-feel like we're going to get our homestudy back any day and stressed about having no money (started with about $6,000 in july). i prepare all the grant stuff.

september-feel like we're going to get our homestudy back any day and still stressed about having no money. i complete all the grant stuff but can't send it in because lack of homestudy.

october-CRAZIEST MONTH OF MY LIFE. i don't know why i thought it was a good idea to schedule everything in one month but i did: a conference at our church (well, i didn't have anything to do with that), mini session and a spa night fundraiser ALL IN THE SAME WEEK. i almost died of lack of sleep. still feeling like we're going to get our homestudy back any day. i thought that because our social worker TOLD me she was finished with it and waiting on CHI to send it back. there was some sort of miscommunication about some papers so i waited for over two weeks from the point of it being finished and actually getting it back.

november-NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH! our homestudy is approved by CHI! we can accept our referral! we accept! WE ACCEPT! we find out we have 14-days to make a payment and we've got our $15,000 ready to go! i have a weird feeling that it's not $15,000. guess what? it's not. there were two financial statements and i wasn't looking at the correct one when i was getting all excited about hitting our goal. i beat myself up, have a quick panic attack, cry to evan and FIGURE IT OUT. the actual total that we owe is almost $24,000. so we're about $8,000 away from our total THAT IS DUE IN FOURTEEN DAYS.

here are some things that i find incredible:

1. we got our referral acceptance on november 2nd because God knew i would straight up KEEL OVER if i found out that i can't read and was $8,000 wrong in my crazy stressful month. because i had a week of "rest" (it was not restful in the least) at the end of october in preparation for this new kind of crazy.

2. last year i wanted to announce our adoption during national adoption month. this year we get to accept our referral! WHO KNEW?! this year has flown by.

3. God is in the details. i know this. otherwise he wouldn't have made us do this completely backwards.

Q&A
so, we get asked all the time about what a "referral" actually is. when you apply to adopt and are eventually matched with a child, the referral is basically the child. our babe came with a bunch of papers explaining why she's an orphan and her medical needs and height and weight and the things she can do like walk and talk, etc.

we filled out several applications for grants but because we're doing this out of order (proper order: homestudy > grants > other stuff > referral. our order: child > rest of the stuff), we don't even have time to receive any grants. this is literally a test of my faith, RN.

reasons we won't get any grants (probably):
grants take a bajillion weeks to be approved.
grants won't cover anything you already paid.
grants won't cover any loans you take out.
grants won't cover travel expenses.

we have a few more payments that we'll make to our agency so we can probably get a grant for a few thousand dollars but i was reading this other blog where they broke down their financial situation after their adoption and they received like $20,000 in grants and i'm like YES! I LOVE GRANTS! FREE MONEY! and then God was like, "actually no." so we don't know where this money is coming from. but we have faith. and $8,000 is a lot of money but shoot. i serve a God of miracles. #praisehands

we can't share many details about our babe but since we accepted the referral, we did announce that it's a girl! i may have secretly, not so secretly shared that on FB already but for those that missed it, WE HAVE A DAUGHTER!!! i can't believe those words! we've known since july. her picture has been on my fridge for months. but it's real now! THIS IS REAL LIFE!

if you made it this far, THANK YOU. thanks for praying. thanks for sharing in our JOY. thanks for being a part of our tribe to bring our love home. more to come. this story isn't finished.

 ps. maddox took this picture. he was like, "okay, now just mom." click click click. "okay, now just dad." click click click. "okay, mom get back in there. okay, now kiss." WE DIE. he is literally a mini us.

a [less vague] update

I'm not good with decisions with open-ended answers. Like, maybe it would be good either road I take or maybe it wouldn't. The kind of decisions where people always add, "There's no blanket answer for this kind of thing." No. I hate those. I'm not great at making decisions anyway and then you through in the "no right or wrong, just make a decision," and I'm out. Gone. Done. Dead. Bye.

So, I'm here to tell you a story since the last time I wrote the vaguest blog post ever and begged and pleaded for prayers and insight. To all of our friends who wrote and e-mailed and left comments and personally messaged and texted me, I just want to say a giant thank you. Your words and prayers and encouragement meant so much to us and I've read over every message so many times over the past few weeks.

Earlier this month Evan and I applied with the agency that we had chosen last year. We loved them, she loved us, she was encouraging, they're a Christian organization, blah blah blah. Well. We are aware of the long wait times for adoption in Ethiopia and were expecting a couple years from now until we bring our babe home. But the response from my beloved agency was that actually we'd be waiting five-to-eight-years and she highly recommended we choose another country because that adds over $10,000 to our adoption fees.

And I had a meltdown.

Which is an understatement.

Sorry, Evan.

I don't want to trash this agency but things kept happening that kept upsetting me and I kept getting question after question deflected and ignored and so I just stopped responding to all e-mails. And that's when I wrote in my daily devos that I needed to get out of the way because my humanity was causing some problems. I mean, I was seriously considering calling it all off because suddenly, even two-years sounded infinitely far away and I just suddenly felt exhausted by all of it. And I am like the most positive person about this and I just did not know what was wrong. Well, besides that everything was wrong.

Side note, I don't expect to have a meltdown and freak out and be on the verge of quitting every time something is a little hard on this journey. Sometimes all of life happens at once and the beginning of your dreams do not go as expected.

So. I searched online for an entire morning and found so many precious waiting children all over Africa. And I wanted them all. And most kids are on the waiting list because they're older or they have serious health problems and they haven't been matched with a family. But I found a little boy from Ethiopia, age three, who was on the list and I just fell in love with him right then and there. Except for that I was like, "But Maddox! But birth order! But help!" (Which is where my last blog comes in and I was basically like, "Dear God, send someone to tell me exactly what to do but don't let them know what they're telling me. Amen." And God was all, "No.") So, for a few days, Evan and I entertained this idea about adopting out of birth order. And I read 500 blog posts about it. And reasons for it. And reasons against it. And every. single. one. said, "There's no blanket yes or no. You gotta do what you need for your own family." And I'm like, "BUT I DON'T KNOW." Yelling. Yelling at all these people who can't just see into the future and know that some 27-year-old adopting mama will someday visit their blog and need a specific answer to this very issue.

And I prayed long and hard about it. But the only thing that I kept feeling over and over and over again was, "You aren't the only one who can save him." And I realized that I had this god-complex about this sweet little boy, that if I did not adopt him right this very second, he was going to die and it would be my fault. But we live in a broken world and there will be instances where the orphan will die before the chance of adoption. Or maybe a family gets a referral and has a picture of their brand new child and then something happens. Our world is broken and your good intentions and my good intentions cannot protect anyone. And so, we had a phone call with a social worker and she told us that it's incredibly hard to find a home study agency who will even allow adoptive parents to disrupt the birth order. And we knew as we ended the call that it isn't us who will be adopting this sweet boy. And he's on the waiting list and I hope and I pray and I'm begging God to send his family to him.

But meanwhile, this little boy was on the waiting list of another agency. And this agency has more options for us. And they only take a small number of families so last summer, when I was doing all that research, they were closed because they didn't have anymore spots for Ethiopian families. And now they need families and we're on the list. So, we're switching agencies and besides making decisions, telling people "no" is my least favorite activity so now I have to do that. Pray for me because I would rather eat dirt than tell someone no or that I changed my mind.

So, what's next for our journey?! We've turned in 99% of our homestudy documents. The documents alone have taken us the better part of two weeks and we still have some training to do and a home interview to complete. And then we'll move on to the immigration paperwork and submit more documents and do more training and pay more money and then we're going to check the waiting child list again. Because there are currently a few younger children on our agency's list. And we'll either move forward with a waiting child or we'll wait for our referral. If we move forward with a waiting child, we'll owe about $17,000 right off the bat. The hardest part about adopting a waiting child is the money due so insanely soon.

We'll keep you posted because who knows, maybe our child will be placed on the waiting child list in the next few weeks. We're going to just trust that God's plan is wider and bigger and better than anything we could ever imagine.

You can check out our new prayer request page if you'd like to know more specifics! I'll update that frequently. Thank you for following our journey.

a humble cry

I think that Evan likes to go out of town when decisions need to be made because he knows that I don't sleep and therefore I'll get S done. Usually the S that I get done is in terms of putting paint on things. The past three trips he's taken I have: painted our bedroom, painted our livingroom AND (bonus) drew gold triangles on one of the walls, and painted our piano. I'm sure he comes home now half-expecting, half-dreading the mess I've made and failed to clean up and sure, he pretends to look surprised ("Oh! Wow! You painted something? I would have never guessed!") and he pretends to look pleased.

But this time, I'm not painting anything. That's a promise and not a lie so hopefully he's not disappointed that I didn't repaint our kitchen cabinets or begin to demo this obnoxious thing attached to a wall in our family room. Even though I thought about it.

This time I've got lots of praying to do. I've got home study paperwork for DAYZ. I didn't even know what a home study was and then I started doing it and I'm answering questions about every single thing you could possibly ever think of. And the forms I have to print off and write on and get notarized and the people I have to ask to be references for us and the list goes on and on AND ON and I'm here and I'm doing it.

But really, what I really need tonight, this weekend, is major prayer warriors. We sent off our application last week and then some things happened. I had about ten panic attacks in the course of two-days and then I wrote in my devos: "Larissa Jane, move aside and let the Lord of Lords move mountains. Let his miracles abound and stun and shake the ground." And then I wrote, "Help my unbelief." I can't go into everything right now but I wrote that and the very next day (which is today, April 8) something happened. I'm the type of person who needs results immediately or I'm out. This trait of mine is going to be very problematic in this waiting season.

But back to the prayers. Evan and I have some very intense, crazy, amazing, wild decisions to make in the next few weeks. Don't ask me, because I'm not ready to tell the world yet. We'll tell everything or we won't, but this is part of our story and it's messy and crazy and beautiful and it's just the beginning. But anyway. I also get sidetracked easily. I'm working on it. These decisions. I'm the worst at making decisions. Have you seen that (I think it's a .gif?) from The Notebook where what's his face is saying to Rachel McAdam's, "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" He's actually screaming it at her and she can't decide. Evan sends me that weekly because that is our life. I can't make decisions to save my life. I mean, I could. But I also can't. So, please just pray that I could make a decision. And that Evan and I would come to the same decision without speaking to each other about it. I've always wanted that to happen to us. And for basic guidance and patience. Pray that we wouldn't rush into anything without prayerful, prayerful consideration. And also, pray for our finances. We could very possibly find ourselves in a situation where almost $20,000 of fees is due in a one-month-period.

Adoption is pretty vague unless you're the people in it. And even then I'm like, "What's happening?" I'm pretty okay to just roll with it but in this moment, in this right now, we need your prayers and your support and encouragement. So maybe, maybe you have a favorite verse or quote or piece of encouragement you want to bestow on us (leave it in the comments? E-mail us [youandusforever@gmail.com]? THANK YOU.) or maybe you have five quick seconds to lift us up in prayer. THANK YOU. Oh my gosh, we love when people tell us, "We've been praying for you!" Our hearts melt and I almost cry every single time because we know that people are praying for us when things like these 4025 things happen.

That's it. So vague. More to come, I promise.

[a cute picture of our little love, just because]

UPDATE

I've been planning out this blog post since this afternoon and I still don't have adequate words to describe this past month in our adoption process.

So, here's a little update/refresh: We made a couple hundred dollars from our strawberry fundraiser + got to eat some delicious strawberries made by our friend Kira PLUS got to see people in person and thank them for donating to our adoption cause. That was so cool and so humbling. Then, a sweet friend of ours offered to match donations up to $2,000. If that goal was met, we'd raise $4,000 this month, which is just month two of our journey. And we did it. We made over $4,000 this month ALONE because today someone asked how much we had left in our match goal and then gave us the exact donation.

YEAH, THAT HAPPENED TODAY.

!!!!!!!!!!!

heart eyes and praise hands!

//I have to back up a second and tell one quick story about this because God is good. Last week we were just under $900 away from our match and I posted a quick something about that on my Facebook and we received a few extra donations but I didn't recheck our funds. I knew we were quite a bit away and as I was going to bed last night I just prayed over our adoption, over our funds, over this entire process. I felt from the initial correspondence with my girlfriend that we would meet this $4,000 goal but being a couple hundred dollars away on the second-to-last-day, I was like, "OKAY GOD. You're up!" I prayed against discouragement, as I knew I would be sad if we didn't meet our goal, but that he has greater things in mind for us. So, I prayed. And today I got that text asking how much we needed. He brings me to my knees again and again.

The first time Evan and I were going to Ethiopia, Evan was exactly $1,000 short of the required funds and the deadline was the following day. Evan got a $1,000 check in the mail that day and we all cried because raising money is stressful and challenging and humbling. I have never had something like that happen to me until this very week and I'm humbled again and again, every time I check my e-mail and see a donation.

Once again, my current verse (Gen 16:13) still applies, and now even more than ever. He is the God who sees us on this journey. We know this and we believe it, whole heartedly.

Maddox is also as cute as ever when it comes to talking about adoption. He asks where his brother or sister is all the day long. "Where are they?" He asks. He calls it "E-fee-oh-p-ia" or "E-p-oh-pyuh" and whenever I do anything from buying food to making something he asks, "Is that to bring my brother or sister home?" We talk about it all day long and he's totally on board and so ready to meet his brother or sister, we can't help but love and feed off his energy and encouragement. We love having this two-year-old perspective; it keeps things fresh and real and happy.

I've got big things planned for the next few months and something I'm super excited about for March, so keep your eyes peeled! We're one month (and so close to my first goal of $10,000) away from our application and once that's in, things will really get rolling. Please continue to pray for our family and especially this week as Evan and I are headed to SoCal and Maddox is staying with his grandparents. Protection all around as well as less worry from this mama bear ;]

Peace and blessings and love and heart eyes and kindness and unending things,
>>L

Just a little update

Well, we're one month and a week into this and we've been blown away so many times, I can't even keep track of all of the blessings that have been poured out on us. So many people have blessed us with their talents and finances and prayers and encouragement and we've been overwhelmed in the best way. It's always a struggle for me to ask for help because I'm independent and hate the thought that I'm burdening another person. So yes, this has been incredibly humbling and has been a lesson in not doing everything myself, even when I'm able. My bible study girls, my tribe, they always say to me, "Let's bring our baby home," and I fight back tears every time I hear it because that is exactly what Evan and I wanted when we started this and envisioned our adoption journey. We want to use this as a ministry to change lives and we want people to partner with us because how lonely life is when it's not lived together?

We've got about a month and a half left to raise the rest of our first goal and we're close, but we're still a couple thousand away. If you'd like to donate, you can through our youcaring website. We had some incredibly generous friends offer to match up to $2,000 through the month of February (again, more tears) and this brings us so, so close to our goal. So, we'll get there, I know it! And, Billings friends! If you donate in February, I'll throw you in a drawing for a free family/couple/selfie/whatever photoshoot!

Also, our (first) t-shirt fundraiser ended in mid-January and we raised over $1,000 and we were definitely blown away by that! We loveee love love seeing pictures of everyone in their shirts AND a friend of ours even was wearing her shirt when she got engaged! (heart explosion) We'll have another one in a few months, but we don't have anymore of these. So, if you wanted to get in on this, so sorry that you missed it, but I promise the next design will be even better! Pinky swear.

I still need to create a prayer request page, but I also have a sink full of dishes, loads of laundry and a sneaky two-year-old who refuses to nap unless I cuddle him, among about 50 more pages of things to do. So, it's coming. For now, we would love prayer for our health! I've personally been battling a never-ending sinus infection since the beginning of January (which seems to be on the out, so pray that it stays out!) and Evan and Maddox have had a handful of other things and we're just over it all. I always joke that when you live with other people, you just pass your sicknesses back and forth BUT IT'S SO TRUE. We passed pink eye around for an entire weekend and after I bleached my entire house I must have missed a spot because Evan woke up with it (again) a few weeks later. Winter is always rough when there's no vitamin D to help boost that immune system, but please just pray that our health would return (and stay). Exhaustion is a huge struggle for me when I'm sick and I've found myself with low energy and no motivation, which means I've had so many things I want to do and have yet to do them. We covet your prayers and thank you so much for partnering with us and covering us with them.

Peace and blessings and love and heart eyes and kindness and unending thanks,
>>larissa