Birthday Gift for Jesus!

Today we bought the Christmas present that was the most fun to give! It was a birthday present for Jesus. Since Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birthday, we decided we needed to figure out what he would want for a birthday present. We got this idea from author Ann Voskamp, you can check out her blog here (http://www.aholyexperience.com/ ).
While I enjoy getting gifts for the people I love more than you could possibly imagine and would never want to give that up, I LOVED the thought that we should be thinking about Jesus and what he would want us to be doing for his birthday.
So we decided that giving to those in need this year would be exactly what Jesus would want us to do. We decided to pick some things out of the Food for the Hungry gift catalog that would feed families living in poverty. We ended up buying some chickens and a fish farm that will feed families in need. Buying that gift for Jesus, that will help those who most need it, gave us such great joy!
We hope that the joy of giving far out weighs the joy of recieving for you this year as you celebrate Jesus birthday!!

Our Profile Book

Last Friday we turned in our Profile Book to the agency. This is the book that expectant mothers/parents will look at to choose a family for their baby. We put a lot of energy and love into this book. We wanted to make sure it sounded like us. And according to our family and friends we did it! Here is a little peek into some of the book.

The Front Cover

The "Max & Leslie Overview"

A page showing our love for family time & a page about our faith.

These pages talked about our home.

The back cover has an envelope with a personal letter we wrote to the birth family.

We started the profile book with a little note to the family on the first page. We talked about us as a couple and our interests. We each wrote a page describing each other. There was a page introducing and talking about each of our immediate families. We described our home and our business, which of course featured cute pics of the nursery! And there was a whole page showing our love of travel. It was a fun book to make and we know it is going to bring us to our baby. How exciting is that? The personal letter in the back explains our story to the birth family and tells them how much they mean to us. What an honor to write this letter to the Mom or family that will carry and give life to our baby! 
Now that we have turned our book in, we are ready to be picked. Which means we have reached the waiting process. I have to tell you, I don't feel anxious at all. I am just extremely at peace and know that when the time is right our baby will come to us. I am joyful and excited to be at this point and am more than ready to wait!
Since we started the adoption process this bible verse has stuck with us. We even included it in our profile book:
Jeremiah 29:11
"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
What comfort and peace this verse gives us & we hoped that it would give our future expectant mom peace and comfort too!
Bring on the wait...

Three Thanksgivings

This year we were blessed to have not one, not two, but THREE Thanksgivings! Thankfully we have mastered portion control or we would be in major trouble. :) We headed to Chamberlain the Tuesday before Thanksgiving! On Wednesday night (Thanksgiving Eve), we did a simple appetizer dinner. Taco dip, egg rolls, veggies, and dips. And of course, some cup cakes for dessert!

No Leiferman get togther is complete without some Yahtzee! Our first get together was with my Mom's side for lunch on Thanksgiving day. The meal was amazing!

We watched the parade togther!

Mollie got some extra attention during the parade.

It was over 70 degrees in Chamberlain that day! Insane for SD. We took advantage and worked on our tans all afternoon.

Randy & Brittany joined us later in the afternoon. Just in time to head to my Grandma's for the Dominiack Thanksgiving!

Aunt Donna, Morgan, & Mom ready to eat!

Makenzie & Chesney. Adorable!

Full and happy after an amazing meal!

The next day we had a Masters/Friman Thanksgiving at our house.

We had some VERY special guests at our house! The Masters' from Rockford came to Parker to spend the holiday weekend with us. We were so excited to have them here. We hope that they will come visit again soon. We also had the Pesicka family and Aunt Barb here too! It was a full & happy house!

Uncle Jack got to meet Gabe for the first time!

The Masters & Pesicka boys spent the day playing outside!

Family time!

Christian & Gabe were best buds.

Masters men relaxing.

Cousin Jack, Christian, & Aunt Barb.

Having good times!

They even got a tour of the Parker Fire Department.

We ended our finally Thanksgiving cuddling this little cutie. We loved having our nephew with us for the holiday weekend. Can you believe how adorable this little man is?

We hope you all had a wondeful Thanksgiving too!

We are truly blessed.

All Done!

Between Thanksgiving and getting sick this week, I got WAY behind on blogging. So much has been going on. We have LOTS to share with you. Our most exciting news is that we have finished our homestudy. We had our last visit on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We got the draft back on Wednesday and it should be approved at anytime now! So exciting.
We also ordered our profile books on Wednesday night. These are the books that the birth families use to pick out the family for their child! The books should get here between the 8th-14th of December. At that time we should be ready to be picked. We are amazed and excited to know that we are already at this point.
We could have a very long wait ahead of us or it could happen very fast. Either way we are just beyond excited to be at this point in the process. We know we have so many of you praying for us and we don't take it for granted. We are honored to know you keep us in your thoughts and prayers and we feel them every day. Prayer is so powerful and God is so good! We truly can't thank you all enough!

Homestudy Visit #1

We had our first of three home study visits yesterday morning. And in our opinion it went great! We are so blessed to have the most wonderful social worker who is very laid back and makes us feel very comfortable. She is clearly a woman of God and we are very thankful for that.
We started at 9:30 and finished at about 12:10. The time flew by very fast since we were busy answering question after question about everything you could imagine. It didn't feel like an interview, more like telling the story of your life.
Thanks to all of you for your prayers. You have no idea how much they helped us to stay calm. I got a little nervous right before she arrived and just as soon as I realized I was nervous I was calm again. We are super excited to be one step closer! Our next visit is next Tuesday morning, the 15th. We will go into Sioux Falls for that one and have to be interviewed separately. Keep the prayers coming!

Step of Faith

Last Thursday evening we went to an adoption panel put on by our adoption agency. There were two couples that had adopted internationally and two couples that were there with the sets of birth parents who they had adopted from. I can not even begin to describe to you how wonderful of an opportunity this was for us. Each of the 6 couples shared their stories and when they were finished all of us couples getting ready to adopt could ask them anything we wanted. They were so open and honest with us, it was just fabulous.
Being able to hear from other couples who have been through the process before was just priceless. And to hear from these parents who had loved their unborn babies enough to give them a better life just indescribable. It made us think about things we had never even considered before. God definitely used this to open our eyes and our hearts even more in this process. I am so thankful for Thursday night, and the extra peace, excitement, and openness it brought to our hearts!
As we were talking with friends recently it was brought up once again, that adoption is really a step of faith. There are many unknowns and it can get a little scary at times but that is when we just have to trust God and remember as we should in all things, that we are not in control and he is. And that is honestly a huge weight off of our shoulders! I have had overwhelming peace throughout this entire process and I know that without faith this wouldn't be possible.
God is good, all the time. And we are thankful.

HomeStudy Visits

All of the paperwork and fingerprints came back and we are officially ready to start our homestudy! We have our first visit on Tuesday the 8th and the next two will be on the following two Tuesdays. That means we should have our final homestudy on the 22nd of November.
We are so excited to do our homestudy and be ready to be picked! This also means I have about 3 weeks to get our Profile Book completed. So prayers for calm nerves for the homestudy and for us to get the book finished would be greatly appreciated!
Also, we would love to have you all praying for our future baby and birth family as well. It is so amazing and humbling to think that someone could be out there right now carrying baby Masters! We have been praying for our baby and the family that has chosen to give our baby life and would love to have you praying with us as well!

The Nursery

We have been busy getting our nursery ready so we can put some pictures in our profile book. We have been so excited to do this for years, so we have been enjoying every minute of it. We knew we wanted a neutral ocean theme that would work for a boy or girl. First we found fabric that we liked for the curtains and went from there. Here is a little peek at what we have so far...

Old blue dresser that we painted yellow. It is the new changing table.

We found little iron on patches and I glued them to the drawers.

I found this cute fabric that I loved! Mom Masters made a bumper
& crib sheets for us.

My Mom is making the baby a quilt out of the same fabric.

I found these adorable wall clings for above the crib!

And here are the curtains that started it all!

Max & Mollie excited about the nursery!

And of course, a map for the baby to look at while
on the changing table!

The map, a sign we have had for years, & the octopus
Mom Masters made.

I don't have a picture of it yet, but we also have an adorable little crab on the opposite wall that I found on clearance at Kohls a few years ago. His little crab claws stick out to hang things from. Too cute!! So look for more pictures soon! In mean time we are working on a few more little things in the nursery and waiting on our fingerprints to get back so that we can start our homestudy!

OoPs!

Sometimes things go wrong...

Like when you are trying to quickly finish up a little bit of painting in the nursery, slip on the plastic you have down, kick the paint can, which rolls off the plastic & onto the carpet.

If you can't tell from his expression in the picture he was NOT happy. But believe it or not we got ALL of that paint up and out of the carpet. There is an extremely clean spot in the middle of the floor now with a hint of very light blue that you can only see in just the right light.

Needless to say, it was not the relaxing evening of watching football that we had been planning. We worked on cleaning that spot for hours! I insisted on taking pictures because someday he would look back on this a laugh. He didn't think so at the time but I think he agrees with me now!

Going to the Chapel

On October 1st, 2011 my brother Randy married my fabulous new sister-in-law Brittany! They got married at The Chapel in the Hills in Rapid City, SD. We all stayed at The Lodge in Deadwood, SD. It was unusually hot for October and was 94 degrees on the big day! Everything was beautiful and went perfectly! We couldn't be more happy for them. I have never seen my brother so happy and we couldn't be happier to have Brittany in our family!

Showing off the luggage tags we got them!

My adorable parents!

Forever & for Always

Best Man & Groom

Bride & Bridesmaid

The girls

The ceremony

Love this!

In Deadwood

Aren't they gorgeous?

The happy couple!

Deadwood

It was a perfect weekend celebrating love! They had an awesome honeymoon in Seattle, other than being hit by a bus that just kept going after running into them! But that will make a great story to tell for the rest of their lives right? :)

Paperwork, Pee Tests, & More

So far we have finished all of our major paperwork, done our fingerprints, peed in a cup, and on Friday we get to do physicals and TB tests. Every thing we can cross of our list brings us closer to our baby!
We have started some paperwork for our homestudy and can't wait to get going on the rest of those meetings. Things are moving along fast. We know the sit and wait part will be long but we are more than ready to be there & wait for the baby God has picked out for us. We are also busy working on our profile book. At first I was nervous about making this book but now I am just having fun with it. I get to to make a book all about us, our story, & our amazing families! How cool is that!?!?
Stay tuned for more updates as we move along!!!

October

I am pretty sure that EVERY year I blog about how much I love October. And how I love fall & everything that comes along with it. This year is no exception. In fact, it has already been one of the best Octobers I can remember. We have already watched my brother marry his beautiful wife in the Black Hills of South Dakota, celebrated their marriage with a big reception & dance in Chamberlain, and celebrated my Dad's birthday! And there is SOO much more to come! We almost have the nursery done, have started our homestudy paperwork, and are moving even closer to adoption! I can't help but be amazed by all that we have to be thankful for in this season of our lives. God is good!

The Crib

Yesterday we bought a crib for the nusery. Lots of people include pictures of their nursery in the Profile Book that expectant parents use to pick the adopted parents for their baby. So we wanted to show our future birth parents the fun & cute nursery their baby would be coming home to someday. And of course we have been waiting for a LONG time to have a reason to get to shop for nursery things and were beyond excited. It is still so strange to walk past the old guest room and see a crib sitting in there. Strange & wonderful!

Max was so excited to put it togther!

He worked hard!

And as the crib came together, the guest room started

to become a nursery!

We are excited to paint the walls & the dresser/changing table next!

Our nursery is going to be an ocean theme!

The blanket on the crib has little anchors on it. We found the fabric at JoAnn's

& Deb made the blanket.

Look for more nursery blogs coming soon!