Marcus 3 1/2 weeks

These past few days with our son have been wonderful! I can't stop staring at him and just want to kiss him and snuggle him all day long! He is so sweet and loves to cuddle. It is incredible how much we already love him. Here are some pictures from the past few days!

Our Christmas Blessing

It is hard to know where to even start with this post! These past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of emotions, but definitely all worth it! About a week after Thanksgiving we got an e-mail from our adoption agency telling us about this sweet little boy who had been born and they were looking for a family for him. We responded to that e-mail which let them know that we were definitely interested in being his parents and gave his birthmom a chance to look through our profile book. It took about a week for her to make a decision. During that week we felt excited, scared, nervous, joyful, and everything in between! We were so excited at the thought of being parents, and yet so nervous to get our hopes up because we knew that we weren't the only ones being considered. Finally we got a call saying that she had chosen us! It was awesome. We were both eating lunch with friends at the time and got to have a three way conversation with our social worker and she gave us all the details. The only thing that his birthmom asked is that we could all sit down and meet together. We said of course, we were so thankful for an opportunity to meet her and get to talk to her. We also got to meet her two other children, one of them being a full sibling to our sweet little baby. The meeting went wonderful. We could not have asked for a better birthmom. It was so obvious that she loved this little boy so much and she wanted him to be with a family that would love him just as much and take very good care of him. The next day we got to pick him up from his foster family! Yesterday we got to bring home our son, Marcus J. Neal!! He is so wonderful. He loves to snuggle, is incredibly cute, and hardly ever cries! It is amazing how much we love him already. We have been so incredibly blessed. From the beginning of our adoption journey we have been praying that we would get matched with our child before Christmas. Yay! God is so good! All of our friends have been so incredible in helping us get prepared this past week! One of our friends gave us tubs and tubs of little boy stuff from her twin boys and we even came home to a bag full of diapers, wipes, and newborn clothes! We are so grateful for all of the prayers and all of the support everyone has given us throughout this process!
The only thing left to say now comes from Psalms150:
1 Praise the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. 2 Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness. 3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, 4 praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, 5 praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals.
6 Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD.


Here are some pictures from Marcus's first day with us!

Chillin out with his Mom :)

Marcus has the best Dad in the whole world! He is so blessed to have a father who wants to be so hands on and who loves him so much!

This is us meeting Marcus for the first time!

Marcus Neal, born November 24th, 2010, weighing 7 lbs 11 oz!

Shower Full of Blessings

Ever since we started the adoption process I have really been wanting to guard our hearts and not get a lot of baby stuff (or any) so that we wouldn't have it all just sitting around our house reminding us, especially if the process was going to take a long time, which most adoptions do. I kept saying- maybe after the homestudy we can start to get ready. Well, we finally finished all of our paperwork and homestudy and were approved in the beginning of November. So, a couple of weekends ago my awesome friends threw us a baby shower to help us be ready for when we get "the call." It was such a fun time to have so many friends in one place! We are so thankful for all of the fun, but very useful things that we got!! Here are some pictures!

So of course after I got home the room that we have started to get ready for our baby looked like this....

o my friend Elle (who is amazing at organizing!!) came over and helped me get the room to look like this!! We are so excited to bring home our sweet bundle of joy!

Thanksgiving

This year we had a full house for Thanksgiving!! Cory's whole family was here from Texas and Nebraska as well as my sister Dawn from Minnesota. For me, that is what Thanksgiving is supposed to be all about, we always grew up with a full house and I can't imagine a holiday without!

Since we are going to Omaha this year for Christmas we celebrated Christmas with Cory's family while they were all here. Although it is a little hard to get into the Thanksgiving, let alone Christmas, spirit while wearing t-shirts and with the windows open we still had a fun gift exchange with his siblings and parents. This year Cory's parents got us an awesome new camera! It was so generous of them and we are so excited to take some great pictures of our sweet little baby whenever we get to bring him or her home! Here are some fun pictures we took of the weekend (it will be obvious who the star of the weekend was...our sweet little nephew Garrett!)

Adoption Update

Exciting news...we are done with our homestudy and have been approved as adoptive parents!! We are so so excited to be done with everything and now we are just waiting for THE call! Please be praying that we are patient during this time and that we put our hope in the Lord not in circumstances or our timing of things. We are really praying that we will have our baby by Christmas, but please pray that if that is not God's will that we will be okay with it! It is so exciting to think that at any moment an expectant mother could be looking at our profile book and at any time we could get a call saying that we were chosen! I know it could take a while, so I am trying not to get too excited but it feels so good to be so close. Keep praying for our little one wherever he or she is! Thank you for all the support!

Uganda 2- Tender Hearts Baby Home 2

One of our projects while we were working at the babies home was painting. We did a lot of painting outside. We painted the outside walls a fun blue color that helped everything look fresher and inviting for children. We also painted an office area for Kenneth and Kathy and the front porch.

As us ladies were painting the guys that came had a couple of big construction projects. They built a gazebo for the children to be able to play outside during the day and have protection from the hot African sun. They also built playground equipment, from scratch! It was such a blessing that the guys were able to come at the last minute!

Each day we were working at the babies home we had a little audience. The home is surrounded by a gate but that didn't stop these sweet little children watching us all day long. They even laid on the ground to get a better look at the Mzungus (white people). We tried to go out and play with them on our breaks. They were so fun! They loved having their picture taken and we gave them candy and stickers. A bus of 22 white people caused such a scene that people were coming to the gate of the babies home at 6 in the morning saying that they heard people were doing healing miracles and helping the blind to see. I wish we could have done that!

Uganda Part 1- Tender Hearts Babies Home

So a week after coming home and I am finally going to attempt to update you all about our trip to Uganda. The trip was so incredible, it is hard to know where to start! I am going to try to do this in groups so there will probably be more than one post! I will try to throw in as many pictures as possible because pictures really do help.

This is a picture of me, Carla (holding Charlie), and Elle. We were the three in our group (of 22) that were coming from Columbia. I seriously can't tell you enough how thankful I am for these girls and what a blessing it was for them to come on the trip!

This is a picture of our amazing team that the Lord gathered from all over the United States (8 states) and London! One of our prayers before going on the trip is that the Lord would bring together a united team...and he did! There were never any riffs and everyone got along so well, especially for not knowing each other. Everyone was not only willing but wanting to work hard and give everything they had. I am so thankful to have gotten to know everyone and really do miss them all!

This may look like an old building to you, but it is a beautiful site to me. This is a school that was next to the guest house we stayed in. Each morning the children would get to school (around 7 am) and would sing praise and worship. It was such a great way for us to start our mornings!

You all may remember a post earlier that was asking for prayer for a little girl at the babies home...well thanks to all who prayed! She is doing amazing. She is so beautiful and has a wonderful sweet little laugh and contagious smile!

Here is the staff of Nightlight with the starters of the babies home (from left to right: Kenneth, Lisa, Kathy, myself with one of the babies, Chelsea, and Ron). Kenneth and Kathy are incredible and have such a heart for orphans in a country where people think they are crazy! They are such hard workers, even Kathy who is due to have a baby in 2 months worked the whole time we were there!

Here are a couple of pictures of the other two children at the babies home. There are currently only 4 babies there now since they just got started. Kenneth and Kathy are trying to get everything organized and set up before they accept more children, but are planning on putting their sign up in January. They told us that once they put the sign up that they are a babies home they will find abandoned babies at their front gate all the time.

This little boy was really everyone's favorite. He is the oldest baby at the home right now and so much fun. He loves to run and be ticked and thrown in the air. He also has a great laugh and is so sweet!

Kenneth and Kathy have done an incredible job making the babies home into a home and not just an orphanage with the money they had. Unfortunately they didn't have a ton of things for the babies like clothes, blankets, or toys. When we got there the boy babies were wearing girl clothes, just because that is what they had. Thank you so much to everyone who donated clothes or other baby supplies for us to bring to them! It was so fun to go through the suitcases of clothes and get them organized for different genders and sizes.