While We Wait: Praying

I am linking up with Mattie from Bring Hope Home for her "While We Wait" series. This week's topic is "Praying." We are sharing any prayer requests on our hearts, things we need prayers for or sharing any answered prayers. I'm normally pretty private about my prayers, but I will share, because we could all use some extra prayer warriors on our side.

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As a family, with Waylon's morning and nightly prayers, we always pray for the children of Africa. May they be clothed, fed, have shelter and love. We urge everyone to pray for the people of Africa and to have a heart for the nation.

We also pray for Sister morning and night, but my heart prays for Carolina Grace all the time. Wherever she may be, even if she is but a tiny egg in her mother's body, I carry her in my heart with me at all times. I know God will care for and watch over her, as He has set us on this path to her. I realize the prayers may be more for my comfort than hers.

I also pray that I can help other adoptive families as often as possible in their journeys to raise funds for their adoptions and/or orphan care and/or mission trips. Whether it's buying a t-shirt, a handmade item on Etsy, donating my handmade items to their auctions, etc. I believe in blessing others, especially when they are bringing a little one home.

The one prayer that has me torn up the most and that is the most personal is for God to be able to touch the people in our lives to understand the reasoning behind our adoption and the reasoning behind our fundraising.
- Some people are understanding, positive and supportive.
-Then, we have our opposite ends of the spectrum people: the ones who completely ignore us, and the people who tend to be negative about everything.

I pray that God can touch their hearts to let them know that:
a) People can talk to us without us forcing them to give us money. (If you can't give, that's ok; God will make it happen in His time. No hard feelings, honestly.)
b) Negativity need not apply. (No, we would rather not adopt from Russia, and yes, we know the dangers of social networking, thank you very much).

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Pray for my heart on that last one, to keep me nice and calm and to just simply bite my tongue...because the little chihuahua that lives inside of me - that would be ChiChi - keeps getting jumpy (you know how spastic those little yappers can be). And once he gets to barkin'. Ooh...it's hard to make him stop. Funny as it may be, and I know it is; I just need strength to disregard the negative and stay in the positive.

I'm excited about the future for our family, and I pray everyone could be just as excited! We're having a baby! Yay! It's just a different way! :)

While We Wait - Summertime Fun

I am linking up with Mattie over at Bring Hope Home for her "While We Wait" series. It's for adoptive families to share what we're doing, while we wait for our little ones to bless our families.

For us, summer began the moment Daddy stepped off that plane from Afghanistan!

Whew! No more anxiety! Now the fun can begin! Yay for being a family again!

I started making more and more jewelry for the Etsy shop. I found out there is a Downtown Market in

Clarksville. Now, I'm getting ready to have an actual little "shop" set up. Oy! It's a lot of work!



Summer just wouldn't be summer without a couple of trips to the zoo to visit Waylon's favorite animals.

He loves flamingos! I'm sorry, I mean "Mingotes." That's how he pronounces it. :)

We took a drive into Guthrie, KY and found a little hole-in-the-wall BBQ place to eat called Red Top BBQ.

Sometimes, those places have the best food, and this was one of them!

Eric got interested in GeoCaching, while he was deployed. When he got back, we started up.

It's a lot of fun! Kind of like a grown-up treasure hunt, but without a treasure chest full of gold at the end.

We found Waylon Jennings' old house in Brentwood, TN. When one of the guys at REI heard Waylon's name,

he told us where to find it. Underneath the "Flying W," it says "Southern Comfort." Too cool.

We went to a Nashville Sounds baseball game. It was fun, but it was when the cicadas were in full swing.

So gross! They were dive-bombing everyone! Waylon had fun watching the game, though.

This was only one of a couple of our trips to the Adventure Science Center. We love that place!

I like this neon globe thing a lot! It reminds me of The Goonies!

We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe on Broadway in Nashville. I love it there! All the waiters and

waitresses are so unique and funky! We got our first Hard Rock pin. New fun collection - yay!

After dinner at Hard Rock, we rounded the corner and saw that Charlie Daniels has a free museum.

Awesome! We went in, looked around and our toddler had a "moment" on the floor. Gotta love the "two's."

I worked on teaching Waylon his colors this summer. Every color used to be "green."

I guess that was his go-to color. This was a fun and yummy way to practice all the colors. If you look closely,

you can see Rawhide chowing down on some strawberries in the background.

We took a quick daytrip to Chattanooga and visited the Tennessee Aquarium.

Waylon had a blast checking out the fish, sharks, penguins, etc. This was a favorite shot from the day.

Outside the aquarium were little waterways to splash around in. It was so nice on that hot day!

Those are my favorite little feet. And since I pretty much hate feet, those are the only feet I like, haha!

We visited Rock City on top of Lookout Mountain. It was really neat. You can see 7 states from up there.

I got a little birdhouse that says "See Rock City" on it. Too cute!

I started doing muffin tin meals, after I came across the Muffin Tin Mom blog. It has been a lot of fun

and a success in most cases in getting Waylon to try new things. He still will not touch carrots!

We had a fun Fourth of July! I decorated, made food, we had some friends over, and my mom,

step-dad and nephew came in from Houston just in time for the festivities. I was excited to find those

cute sparklers! Waylon didn't like the sound of the fireworks, though, so we stayed inside and watched a show.

Oh well. It was hot outside, anyway. :)

I came up with a new shop name and had a logo and banner design done for the Etsy shop. Next up is to get all of the

jewelry from the old shop and all of the new designs photographed and up onto the site.

We took Waylon and my nephew, Hayden, fishing for their first time ever. My mom showed Hayden how to fish,

and Eric showed Waylon how to fish. What did I do? Well, I took the pictures, of course!

My dad came in town from Denver for a visit. We did some sightseeing in Nashville, as always,

I put him to work on some household projects. Poor dad. He always has to do something, when he comes to visit.

Never fails. He loves me, though, so he doesn't mind...I'm sure.

Waylon got a guitar from a shop on Broadway in Nashville. Broadway...that's where all the country stars

get their big break. Watch out world...here's the next big country music star.

He even likes to wear his cowboy hat when he plays.