A REALLY Big Announcement

Ladies & Gentlemen,
We are about to embark on a new journey in our lives! Tomorrow morning at 8:30 we are meeting with Bethany Christian Services to start the adoption process! We are BEYOND excited to start this journey. We are going to adopt domestically this time. We plan on adopting from either Africa or China someday in the future depending on where God leads us. But for now we are starting this amazing journey with a baby from here in the US.
If you know us well or have followed this blog, you know that we have been hoping to be parents for almost 6 years now. That seems like an extremely long time but it has honestly went by in a flash and although there have definitely been tears and heartaches I am beyond thankful for all the time I have had for just Max and I to be a couple. I know we are going to treasure all these years and the memories we made as just the two of us.
As many of you know we were planning on trying InVitro this year as our next step. But early this year God moved both of our hearts to pursue adoption first. We have always planned on adopting at some point and I now realize that the longing God put in our hearts for adoption way back as a couple who had only been dating for just a couple weeks, was preparing us for this moment. We are not ruling out trying InVitro someday. We know that the younger you are the easier it is for it to work, but honestly that doesn't worry us at all. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someday we ended up pregnant naturally. But regardless of how our children end up coming to us, we will be thrilled. The truth is that God has a plan for us. He has children picked out specifically for us and once they are here I will know and understand exactly why the wait was worth it. I have no doubt about this. Right now we are meant to adopt, we have no doubt in our minds. This is God's plan for us and we are simply thrilled to start this journey!
We want to thank my parents for all they are doing to make this dream a reality for us. You are so generous and always willing to help others before yourself. We will never be able to thank you enough. Your generousity always has and will continue to inspire us to find more joy in giving than recieving!
We will keep all of you updated on our journey through this blog. We would appreciate all of your prayers as we go through this process. There is sure to be ups and downs along the way but we are more than ready to go down this road!

Goods from the Garden

We have a garden at our house for the first time this year! The last 2 years we have planted broccoli up in Mom Masters garden and helped her with all the other yummy produce she plants. So this year we planted LOTS of yummy things in her garden again & added even more yummy things into a garden at our house. Between the two gardens we eat A LOT of fresh veggies all year long.

We have already picked many tomatoes for salsa & tomato juice to make lots of chilli this winter!

We have also had TONS of zucchini!

We have a HUGE pumpkin patch full of pumpkins! Can't wait to start decorating for fall with them.

Here is our outta control garden!

We have been enjoying fresh green peppers. Max LOVES them sauteed with some onion on his steak!

Everytime we look we find more tomatoes!

We also planted carrots. Can't wait for fall to see how big & yummy they get.

And of course, Max loves fresh onion with everything!

We have lots of little pumpkins just starting out!

And some that are already turning orange!

We LOVE having a garden. We can't wait for next year when we will add even more yummy things to our patch! There is nothing better than eating fresh food. Especially when you have grown it and know that nothing has been sprayed on it or added to it. Gardens are SO worth the work you put into them! We hope everyone is enjoying some fresh picked veggies this summer!