6 REMPELS!

We finally received our referral!!!!!! Yehhhhh!!!! Her name is Emebet! She is absolutely BEUTIFUL!! How do you SCREAM on blogs???? I am soooooo Excited and can't even explain. I have to run but wow!!!! Life is great right now!!!!!!

I don't know who ordered the weather this weekend, but it was freezing and WINDY!!! We arrived in Minnidosa later friday evening and set up our tent. Last year when we had been at the camping weekend, we had tons of rain during the night and this year it was a cold wind. We made a fire and sat around the fire until 2am with some of our friends. We had a great time chatting, laughing and being kids. During the night, it got even more windy and rained. We were so tired we slept through it all. Saturday morning was no different as far as weather. We went to go mingle with some of the other families who came out. We also saw Roberta and Debra, Arleigh and the other crew. That was special to see them in person. I was shocked at the amount of people. I think Roberta said 250 people. It was somewhat encouraging to see all the beautiful children and know that it will happen for us. I also know that what everyone says is true. The wait will be worth it all.

Congratulations to my friend Lisa who just arrived home with their two beautiful daughters. Welcome home girls!!!

On Friday August 3, my aunt who was 37 and battled breast cancer for four years, finally passed away. We have been very busy with funeral planning and just being there for his her children and husband. What a tragic story.

Bill has been wanting to start a side job of renovations and I feel like it's finally really taking off. He just got a job through the town, concreting a pathway that goes from our house to the school which is one block. It will be wonderful to have a clean path for winter when the girls walk to school. He just finished our fence around our yard and has received tons of complements on it. He has now been offered a job doing fences for next summer through a contractor. Needless to say, he's excited!

I'm really getting excited about the next few weeks. We have a couple friend who have a beautiful site at a local resort and they have offered us the use of it for all of next week. I'm still trying to fix the program that allows our camera to download pictures to the computer. (Did I ever say we have an old computer?) I hope to take a bunch of pictures and then I'll post them. They have an amazing water park with slides and games for kids. They also have the most amazing bands in the evening. Bill has a few days off so I hope that this passes time as we continue to wait for our referral. We also have the Cafac camping weekend August 10-12 and will once again have a wonderful time with a few of our friends who are also in the process. If my next post takes a while please check back again.

Almost 10months and no referral. I would be lying if I said I was not disscouraged. I am kinda starting to feel like this just won't happen. Every where I look are families coming home with their children and receiving their referrals. We have been keeping ourselves very, very busy and for the most part it is keeping me from getting frusterated. But today is just one of those days where I'm just tired of it all. We don't regret starting the proccess at all but it is very hard at times to keep motivated. My prayer was and still is that we will be together as a family for Christmas. We have several friends who have just started the proccess. They all have the same determanation that things will be quicker for them. Bill and I have made sure not to point out reality to them because I believe that having that hope for the first six months is what got us through. To just believe!!

Our first year of having children in school has come to an end and we are having wonderful summer holidays. Bill is taking next week off and we all can't wait to have a week of relaxation and fun. The very first report cards for the girls was a little hard. They did wonderful but to be honest, I'm a bit of a perfectionist and find it hard to need improvement in any areas. Well we've decided we'll work really hard for next year. I'm a little sad that they will be in school all day, but I can't wait to spend some one on one time with Jonah.
On the adoption end of our life, we don't have our referral at this point, but we do know that we are very close. I've had a lot of dreams of her lately and can't wait to see what she looks like and how old she is. We have had so much fun buying a few adorable summer outfits for her on sale racks at Gap recently. I really was hoping to show them but like I said, I can't get it to work.

We have had a wonderful week of fun. We went with our friends to stay in a cabin at Riding Mountain National Park and what a blast! I tried tubing and fell in love with it. We also set up Beach Badmontin and I realized how many years have gone by since high school. Our children also kind of tried tubing and wow!!! We are really water sports lovers. It was great to see the couple we went with having so much fun and just relaxing. It was awsome for me to just get away and forget about our waiting time for a while. I will try to post some pictures of our weekend but for some reason our computer is not allowing us to load the pictures up right now so I'll do it in a later post.