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..