HALLOWEEN Happenings...

We all had our fair share of Halloween fun!! Lucas had a fun party at school and got lots of candy from his trick or treating excursion...we hit two different neighborhoods this year! fun! He was Batman. Then for Sunday School and All Saints Day at school, he dressed as his favorite saint. Of course Lucas was the SUPERHERO of saints, St. Michael the Archangel who defeated the bad guys in the Bible!....we had an awesome costume including wings, sword, and shield....it was cool! He had a blast, and we had so much fun taking him around and see how excited he was about all the festivities this year! Here are some favorite pics!

Blessings...

I am feeling very grateful this morning. So many people have shown their support for our adoption plans. I have even had students buy coffee, t-shirts, and donate $ to our adoption cause--students who have so little, yet they give from their hearts. It is a blessing to know we have good people in our lives surrounding us with love and prayer during this endeavor. It is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are saving every penny we can, and it is hard to see the end goal right now. Even Lucas is chipping in some of his money to the fund! Every penny counts, and we both feel in our hearts that this is where the Lord has brought us. Even though there are many things we are not sure of, we both know that we are meant to travel this path. Justin and I are taking every extra job we can. We have trimmed all the fat from our budget and cut out things like going out to dinner, buying gifts, going to movies, pedicures for me, and buying books, CDs, and other extras that can add up to hundreds of dollars every month. We have been listening to Dave Ramsey and have gone through his Financial Peace University course online which has helped us tremendously in getting our finances on track and living on much less..by making these changes in our lives, we have been able to make our money work for us much more efficiently! It is helping us grow our adoption fund each day, and will hopefully get us to our goal over the next 6 months.

We are feeling blessed and lucky to be traveling this path. We have wanted to expand our family for so long, we know the sacrifice we are making now will be worth it when we add that sweet baby to our family. Lucas has already chosen the Build A Bear he wants to get for the baby when he/she comes home.

To all who keep up with us, we ask for your prayers. We ask for patience and diligence in this process. We ask for continued faith in God's plan for our lives and family. We ask for help in discernment in trying to choose the right profile when it comes our way. We ask for prayers for the birth mother carrying our baby--we pray she makes good decisions concerning her health and the health of this un-born child. We pray for her spirit and hope that the Lord blesses her life for making such a courageous decision and providing a plan for her un-born child's life. We desperately want to follow His will for us in this journey. We know He has a master plan for our lives, although at this time we can not see the end result. As a Type-A person, that is VERY difficult to deal with on a daily basis. However, the Lord works daily to teach me patience and faith in His plans for our lives.

We will keep you posted on our journey. It is exciting, wonderful, and scary all at the same time. You can find us on Facebook at LEE Adoption Journey. Check out all our fundraisers we are having to help raise funds. We are in the process of planning a big yard sale in October to make some extra $$ for our adoption fund. If you have any donations of stuff you would like to donate for our yard sale, that would be greatly appreciated...

Have a blessed day!

OUR ADOPTION PROFILE

Well, we have completed our adoption profile. It is like a scrapbook of our lives and family. When we find a birth mother profile we are interested in pursuing, our adoption profile is sent to the birth mother in hopes that she will like the look of our family and choose us. Here are a few pages from our profile!!

Mark Schultz - Everything To Me (Video)

So ironic that Lucas is the baby picture at the very beginning and end of this video by Mark Schultz about the beautiful and courageous gift that IS adoption...makes me cry everytime I see it. Justin did the editing for this video....I love it!

Lucas and his Violin

Lucas enjoys his violin....It is named "Steve Allen." Don't ask me where this name came from. This is his second violin....the first was smaller and was also named Steve Allen....Its full name is "Steve Allen who works at the grocery store"....yeahh....i have no idea...anyway...he outgrew his first violin....now he has the next size up (1/8 size) and it is also Steve Allen....however, this one is "Steve Allen who is getting ready for the big race." I just call it Steve Allen...I digress...Lucas likes to play his violin, and we have devised all sorts of ways to motivate the practice routines at home. Curently, the most popular game is to draw song names out of a bag to determine practice order....this has been a big help in "spicing things up." Although he is being trained Suzuki, he is somewhat of a hybrid kid....perhaps because his mother is a trained musician and wants this kid to be reading music...haha...anyway...needless to say, we are also reading music....he has 6 songs he plays from his Suzuki book, 3 scales, and 1 bluegrass tune...his favorite song is this bluegrass song "Bile the Cabbage Down." We are currently working on the double stops on that piece however it is NOT going well....time will tell i guess...anyway, it is ironic because my father always wanted me to take an interest in bluegrass music (his favorite type of music), and I strongly rejected anything but Classical music ( my first love of music)....now my child has more of an interest in the bluegrass style than anything else...I think it is hilarious...so we went out and purchased him 2 new violin (fiddling) books....he will be doing more of that type of music along with his Suzuki books....he really wants to learn to play "Cotton Eyed Joe" which is a "super cool" song on one of his toy trucks...so we are hoping to learn that song at some point...anyway...I am glad he seems to enjoy music....he is also taking some piano from me...about 2-3 lessons per month...it comes super easy for him...it is almost comical how easily it seems to him....he can play Mary Had a Little Lamb like a pro...and he even counts aloud so beautifully...i love it...even though I don't care if he does this seriously throughout his life or not, I just want him to love music, and I want it to be an important part of his life..

YOU LOOK LIKE YOU NEED COFFEE...

Justin and I have initiated a coffee fundraiser to help with our adoption expenses. Please visit our Just Love Coffee storefront and order some fair trade coffee!!! For every bag of coffee we sell we get a $5 donation toward our adoption. You can order a single bag or join the Coffee Club and get one or two bags every month. Spread the word around the office or buy a coffee lover and someone with a big heart a gift! Also, please read the "Our Story" section about the creators of Just Love, they have a wonderful message! We appreciate your help and support. Now go order some coffee!

Selling T-shirts to help fund adoption!!

In addition is our adoption t-shirt fundraiser! We are selling a few different kind of shirts so please visit our t-shirt site and order an adoption fundraiser t-shirt! We receive a small commission for every t-shirt sold on our page:

AdoptionBug T-shirt Fundraiser--BORN IN OUR HEARTS

Our fundraising efforts for BabyLee2 adoption

Dear Family and Friends,

We want to share our exciting news with you! We have decided to expand our family through domestic infant adoption and are busily getting ready to welcome our new child hopefully within the next year.

For us, the difficult part of this process - other than the waiting - is the expense. As some of you may know, adoption expenses include agency fees, birth-mother expenses, legal fees, document preparation costs, travel expenses and more. We have been saving for some time, but are still seeking ways to raise more funds for our wonderful venture.

Below are several fundraising events we are involved in to reach our financial goal. Please look at them and consider donating to our cause.
If you would like to help us with a cash donation, you can donate via paypal by going to the following website: http://babylee2adoption.chipin.com/our-adoption

Well....we are moving forward

I am so embarrassed to see how long it has been since I have posted to this blog. We have been super busy with a variety of things. Justin has been really busy working for INPO, the same company who has been wonderful to us and our family. I finished my school year last spring. Over the summer, I completed my ORFF Level II training, began a children's summer music program at Reinhardt UNIVERSITY (we just became University as of June1st!!), and I taught summer graduate school. We took a short jaunt to Disney World in early May and had a wonderful time. We also made two trips to my mom and dads to visit over the summer. We are now back in school, and life is super busy again.

One other big event going on in our lives is that we have begun a domestic adoption for an infant. Adoption is something that Justin and I have prayed about for quite some time. This summer, the timing seemed right to begin the lengthy home-study process. As of 2 weeks ago, we completed and received our approved home-study! We are very excited! We are working with an adoption consultant who works with agencies and attorneys all over the country. It is estimated that we will complete the process and welcome babyLee2 into our forever family in about 10-12 months.

Lucas is very excited about being a big brother and asks when we are bringing home "his baby." We would love to have a little girl but are open to whatever God brings to us. Mostly, we are praying for a healthy baby to love and cherish. Please keep our family in your thoughts and prayers. This entire process is more expensive than we ever imagined, however, we feel confident that the Lord will provide and lead us in the direction of His will.

I will keep everyone posted on our adoption journey. We will also be participating in several adoption fundraisers to raise money to achieve our adoption dream. There will be more information on our fundrasiers as they become available.

Lucas loves music

Lucas has always loved music. He and I have been doing Kindermusik since he was 6 weeks old. At that age, I couldn't get him into a class so he and I would do music together each day, since I am certified to teach it. He has been singing since he was teeny tiny and can match pitch pretty well. Here is a video of him singing the Beyonce song "All the Single LAdies" or as he calls it, "Alla singa lace." He has also been taking violin lesson for a few months. Within the past two days he and I have been playing duets (he on the violin and I on piano). He gets a real kick out of that. We are working to perfect our Twinkle Twinkle variations. This is the Mississippi Hot Dog variation. He is doing so great, and now that he can get thru a song (more or less), he can see his progress and enjoy the experience of making music!

HAPPY MARDI GRAS!!

SNOW in Georgia!! Hooray!!

We had more snow this last Friday than we have had since we've lived in our home. It started Friday afternoon and snowed for hours. We had a blast making a snow man and having a snowball fight. Lucas had never been able to play in snow before and he was so excited!!! Shesa also loved to eat the snow! So cute!! i couldn't believe how beautiful and peaceful everything was!!

So much fun!

MOVE-A-THON at St. Catherine's

Lucas had the big MOVE-A-THON at his school today where all the kids had 2 minutes to go thru the obstacle course as many times as they could in the allotted time. The event was held to raise $$$ for the schools spring fling in April so this is their fundraiser! Lucas did great job and I am so glad I was able to attend! His teachers were so supportive for all the children and everyone had a great time! Here are some pics and a video from his big day!

Our (NOT SO MUCH) Snow Day

Well, Happy New Year!! We are off to a new (much welcomed) NEW YEAR, and are hoping that 2010 will be much better than 2009 was. Although 2009 was quite a challenge for us, we have high hopes that 2010 will be filled will good memories, good health, and many blessings! Today, Lucas and I were out of school because of snow. The weather here has been tremendously cold (mostly in the teens...YIKES) and we got a good bit of snow yesterday. Now the roads are covered in black ice, and well, Georgia tends to shut down when there is any sort of frozen condensation on the roads...So all schools are closed...I would guess we got about 1 inch of snow total. However, this was still very exciting to Lucas since he has never seen snow before....how sad is that? The day off however is greatly appreciated. We went out this morning for a short while to play in the snow. We did not stay out long because it was 17 degrees!!!! Yikes! The snow was all frozen to the ground so we couldn't even make a 2 inch snow man, but Lucas had a blast pushing his cars around and making tracks in the snow....Shesa also had a blast slipping and sliding around on the driveway...which was pretty hilarious anyway..I imagine she must of looked as though she was wearing roller skates...although when she realized the snow was edible, that kept her focus until it was time to go inside for hot chocolate!!

Here are some pics to enjo











y!!