2nd Annual Memorial Day Bash Champions!

The Franklin Generals closed out the tournament weekend with the title of Champions under their belts.  We were 2 and 1 and first seed when the games were called this afternoon due to rain.  The boys played very hard all weekend out in the sweltering heat.  Sean had the play of the game yesterday when he stole home to score the winning run with 2 outs on the score board.  Those last few moments were way too intense!  The team rushed the field and were all over him.  It was a great proud momma moment :)

 

Here is the champ showing off his totally cool trophy

 

And of course the little brother had to have his moment to show off too.  And since I didn’t post about this a few weeks bad, Matthew closed out his soccer season with some improvement but most of all he had a great time playing.

Here he is showing off the cutest little soccer trophy I’ve ever seen

 

And I can’t end the post with out giving the littlest one a bit of face time too.

 

Big guy helping daddy mow the grass

 

Until next time…

Feeling abundantly blessed

I’m tired and it’s late so this is probably going to be a short post and may not make much sense but I have to sing out some praise!  God is moving things here and I am in utter amazement.  While to some this may seem small, to me it’s huge.

You see, things have been falling into place and happening so much lately and I have never experienced a movement like this in my life before.  I blogged a few days ago about a fundraiser yard sale that we are having next month and asked for you all to have a Clean Out Day in your homes to donate items to our sale.

Well there is a couple from our church that we know, we say hello in passing, and are friendly but I have never sat down and had a conversation with them.  I’m referring to Cory and Summer Yates.  Summer went on a mission trip to Ethiopia last year and God worked some serious stuff in her heart.  She and her family have felt called into long term missions, have sold their house, and are moving to Korah for the next year to build a center to keep the kids from having to return to living in a trash dump during the summers when school is out.  That is beyond amazing in itself that this woman would feel such a strong calling to build this center for these children and and be so dedicated to God that she would relocate her family!

How does this apply to me?  Well Cory and Summer have sold their house and the things they were going to trash ended up in my garage for the yard sale.  I just keep thinking, “Wow, God is moving their family to Korah and their things that they are living behind are going to help to bring my baby home from Nicaragua”.  It really gives me chills.

We also had another friend clean out her closet and drop off a load of things today.  Again, feeling abundantly blessed here.

But on top of that,  my blog design business that I’ve been trying to get going for the past year is actually picking up.  Four makeovers in just three weeks and 100% of that money is going to our adoption fund!

And last but not least, we have had steady work for our plumbing business since Danny has gotten back from his trip.

I am just beyond amazed by what God is doing.  It’s like we said, okay God we don’t know how this is going to happen, we are leaving that part up to You, but we are in” and He has just taken the reins from us and is doing it!

I realize we are at the extreme beginning and I’m not trying to sound presumptive.  I realize that there is going to be some difficult stuff down the road but right now all I can do is sing praises to our almighty God.  Why do we ever fool ourselves into thinking we have control?  It’s a unworldly experience when you just let go and sit back for the ride.

Thank you God for abundantly blessing my life with your unfailing love!

We need your stuff!

Hey family and friends we need your help! 
Our family is feeling called to adopt a child (hopefully from Nicaragua) and we are going to need you all to help us through this journey by supporting us in prayer, donations, and hugs.  We know it’s going to be a long road and we cannot do it without support from those close to us.
I don’t know who this child is, I found this photo on the web but isn’t she beautiful?

Most of you know that International Adoption is very costly thus we are going to be doing some fundraisers and cutting back on our expenses to afford it.  There are a lot of grants that we can apply for to help with the costs as well but the majority of those can’t be done until our home study is complete.  However, we need to raise some money before we can even get to the home study!
First we must submit our application and letter of intent to the agency, a cost of $1000.
Then the first payment of $7850 is due which covers agency fees, administrative expenses, the home study, and some education classes that are required.
So with all that said, we are planning a yard sale to help get us to that first payment amount and then we can start applying for some grants.
We are asking you all to have a Clean Out Day with your families and anything that you would be willing to contribute to the sale to bring by our house.  We will taking anything you’ve got (furniture, baby items, clothes, house wares, it doesn’t matter). Everything will be stored in our garage until the sale.
The yard sale is being held on June 18, 19, and 20th.  We will also need some hands to help man the sale.  Sean has a ball tournament that weekend so Danny won’t be here to help.
Please pass this on to anyone that you think would be willing to help out as well.  I plan to advertise the sale all over the place and the more we have to sell the more money to be made!
I also welcome any advice from anyone that has gone through this or has done some fundraising before.  It’s all new to me!
I’m also doing some blog makeovers to raise money so if you are reading this and have been wanting a new look, here’s your chance to do it AND to help a good cause.  Check out Big Nanny’s blog later tonight, she just got herself a brand new look.!
Thanks in advance for your prayers and support!  We are so excited to begin this journey and are thankful for the people in our lives that will walk along with us.  We love you all.

Looks like we have a trumpet player!

I received a call a few weeks back about a day to come and check out all the instruments available to be played if your child wanted to play in the middle school band.  Sean was pretty against it because “none of his friends were doing it”.  We’ve been trying to talk to him about all the opportunities that come with playing in the band as well as how much fun it is too.

Well I was able to get him to go to the tryout session and to his amazement, some of his friends were there!  I know, crazy right?  And he thought they were all too cool.  I hate that stigma about the band.

Anyway, once he realized that his friends would be playing too he loosened up and had fun trying out the instruments.  He tried the trombone and trumpet first, then the sax which he did fine with too, then he tried the clarinet but that didn’t go so well.  He said he liked the trumpet best so that’s what he went with.  Now we have to find us a nice trumpet that won’t break the bank! We are excited for him to start learning and playing though.

K, we are off to ball games and a birthday party!  The fun never ends!

It’s been a very long time..(long post)

Wow, I have not blogged since the middle of March!  Where has the time gone?  It seems like our days are filled with so much pointless non-sense and they just flying by in the blink of an eye.
We’ve spent the past few months watching the boys playing ball.  Matthew just wrapped up his 2nd soccer season but Sean still has a few weeks to go of recreation ball.  He also made the Franklin Generals tournament team so he will be playing for them through the summer.

Danny went with a team down to Nicaragua a few weeks back.  They left the day that Nashville flooded so he missed seeing first hand the mess here.   Big things were happening in Nicaragua too though.  The guys built a church in just THREE DAYS and twenty-seven people accepted Christ as their savior! Such amazing stuff.  Here is a video of the men singing “Do It Lord” at the church’s first service.

But while I was here worrying about the rain and being shocked by all the flooding, God was working on Danny and setting into place a life changing plan for us.  You see, when Danny lost his job back in December we decided to put our adoption plans on hold before they ever really got started.  It’s something that I have been struggling with because my heart is yearning for a little girl that I know is out there needing a loving family and I just so badly want to bring her home.  I don’t even care about the financial aspect of it (this is where we weren’t seeing eye to eye), I just want to jump in feet first and go for it.  Well God intervened and brought Danny a little closer to the level that I’m on.  You see, while in Nicaragua he was able to speak with some of the men that were on the trip with him as well as a man that lives in Nicaragua who told Danny that he wished more people would adopt from there.  Danny also had the opportunity to minister to and speak with some teenage girls down there about changes they are going through in their lives and their bodies.  That shows that God does have a sense of humor since he is a father of three boys, lol.  The advice he received while on the trip and the opportunities he had confirmed that sitting by idly isn’t what we are supposed to be doing.
So as soon as the words were out of his mouth I was on the phone with the agency!  It just so happened that this past Monday there was a seminar on adoption fundraising in Indiana that was being put on by a client/speaker for the agency.  My mom is still here visiting so we were able to get away (talk about timing right?) for the day/night to drive to Indiana where we met the with the director of the Nicaragua program and attended the seminar.  Camie, the lady that was doing the seminar, called us on our way down and invited us to spend the night in their home instead of in a hotel room.  We were blown away by the kindness and hospitality so we went out on a limb and accepted the offer.  Boy were we blessed!  Turns out her husband is the pastor at the church where the seminar was held.  They have adopted two children from Vietnam themselves and were a well of information.  It was so generous of them to open up their home for us and we feel that we made some friends to walk through this journey with us.  God is so good all the time!  More details to come on our adoption process in a later post.
I also want to give a big congratulations to Sean.  He graduated from the 5th grade and I officially am the mom to a middle schooler!!!  I don’t know whether to smile because of how proud I am or to cry because of how fast he’s growing up.  Remember to cherish the moments and hold your children when you can and smother them in your love, they grow up too fast not to.