Wow! So I'm a little overdue in blogging!  How quickly time gets away.  A lot has happened in the past couple of weeks, so I'll try to recap as much as I can remember.  Mostly this blog is for myself.  I wanted to keep track of each small step we take towards expanding our family.  I have a horrible memory, so I thought blogging would be a great way to remember all the little details of how we get to where we're going.  So let's go back a couple weeks.

The last time I updated was the ending of our 4 weeks (but 10 classes) in Richland County.  What an ending it was.  We made some wonderful friends, and one of the girls even started a Facebook page just for our group so we could all keep in contact and monitor one another's progress through this process.  Kudos to Jaimie Bisher!  Well, the following Saturday, which would have been March 1st, we headed up to Chardon, OH (Geauga County) for our final two classes, which ironically were sessions 1 and 2.  We had another great instructor and before we knew it, class was over and what a feeling of accomplishment that was!  We also made some more friends, Halle & Michael.  Best wishes to Halle if she ends up reading this, as she's about to have some major life-changing surgery!  Hope she has a speedy recovery and gets right back on the FC/A train!  We left the following day for Kalahari for 3 days, which was a late birthday celebration for Liam, but in hindsight seemed more like a celebration for so many reasons!  First, yes, celebrating 13 wonderful years that God has blessed me with being mom to the most awesome boy on the planet...and celebrating all we've accomplished in just 4 short weeks. We managed to get 36 hours of preservice classes under our belt in one month!!  Woo Hoo!!!  Not only that, we have a wonderful caseworker that has been pumping out the paperwork throughout our classes, which gave us a jump start on our certification process.  So not only have we completed the preservice classes, but also turned in our application, finished and submitted our 60 page assessments, and got our reference checks sent out and most have been returned that we know of.  This week our goal is to complete some more paperwork that we received, make an appointment to get our cat's vaccinated and up to date on their shots, and the biggest and best news as of late is that our first homestudy is scheduled for next week!!!!  Things are moving right along.  Not to say the rest of the process will be this quick and easy, but I have to say,  I'm a little surprised at how fast and smooth things are moving along.  It's just starting to feel so real!

Last week Jay & I started moving furniture from her upstairs office down to my office, as we're combining the two into one.  So before she could move IN, I had to reorganize my entire space as well.  Saturday we found a great deal on a roll top desk on Craigslist up near Cleveland, so I am the proud owner of beautiful new work space!!!  We got Jay's desk moved down and now she's all organized as well.  FOUR.DAYS.  Four days of hard work, but we have an office that we're both proud of now, and there's plenty of space for both of us in there PLUS a treadmill!!  All that to say that we have a room upstairs now that's ready for a makeover and soon will be waiting for a little person to occupy....hopefully our future daughter.  We went shopping this weekend and priced some cribs and toddler beds, and beddng.  I had forgotten how fun and exciting it is to shop for that stuff.  I have to remind myself not to go overboard.  lol  Things have changed a lot in 13 years and I could easily get sucked in to all the cool, cute stuff out there!!!

So that's it. That's where we are now.  Paperwork this week, homestudy next week.  I'll be sure to keep the blog going as new things happen.  For anyone reading this, please continue to keep us in your prayers, and the child that's out there waiting for a forever home.  I hope she or he knows how hard we're working and praying and anticipating their arrival.  God's got this!!!  :)