Holt Gala 2012

Last Saturday we were able to attend the Holt Gala with Matt's parents.  We had so much fun!  First of all, I love being able to get dressed up and go out.

The Holt Gala started with a silent auction.  There was a ball room full of items for sale.  This year we were able to get coasters made in Guatemala, China adoption books, and a baby quilt.  I am in love with the baby quilt.  In fact, I may have guarded it when only a few minutes were left in the auction...maybe!!  I have been looking around for baby bedding for a while now and haven't found anything that I just love. It may sound silly, but I don't want it to be your typical "baby" decor.  And this quilt seems to fit the bill.  Now I have to figure out what color we want to paint.  Maybe match the green?

We ended up sitting with the same family we sat with last year, which was cool to catch up with them.  For supper we had salad, steak, chicken, new potatoes and dinner rolls.  It was delicious!  Especially the steak.  It was so tender.  For dessert, we did the dessert dash again.  This entailed bidding as a table for dessert.  Then they called the table numbers in order of highest donation to less to pick your dessert.  I was nominated to make the run this year.  The heels had to come off for this serious competition :)

At the end of the auction, Holt had 6 left over bottles of wine.  To get rid of them they had everyone who wanted them stand up.  Then we all played heads or tails; they'd flip a coin and we'd place our hands on our head or tail to place our bet.  When I made it to the top 5 or so, they had us all come stand in front...so everyone could get a better view of our tails I'm sure ;)  In the end, I won 6 bottles of wine!!!

We had a great time meeting new people catching up with some friends.  The Holt community is such a fun and unique group of people.  Not everyone has adopted, but everyone has been touched by adoption in some way.  It's one of those things that you just can't completely understand until you've been through it and we are very thankful for our friends and family who are walking this road along side us.

Home Study for China...Done!!

What a week it has been!  We woke up on Monday to quite a surprise, an email from a good friend letting us know that there may be an infant in need of a home.  We are very thankful for amazing friends who are thinking about us even when we least expect it!  But let me tell you, this was a lot to process at 6am on Monday as we are both getting ready for work!!  Matt was able to call our friend to see if he could give us any more information or at least tell us who to contact.  It turned out that the situation was not a clean, clear cut one with lots of scary possibilities for now and down the road.  I know I am being a little cryptic, but I don't want to give out too much information regarding this particular situation.

Matt and I prayed and talked and prayed and talked about what to do.  In the end, we did not feel that this was a direction we were supposed to go.  We are both feeling at peace and very comfortable in our current position with China.  As things would go and often do with God, our clearances from the state finally went through on Wednesday of this week AND our social worker had time to do our home study on Thursday AND I was off work on Thursday AND Matt was able to take off some time Thursday morning as well...coincidence??  I think not!!  That was definitely the validation I needed that we had made the right decision.

We met our social worker, Bonnie, on Thursday morning and spent about an hour catching up.  She had a lot of our home study already filled out since we had been spending so much time together lately.  We mainly had to update financial information.  Apparently, China is very particular about things and we have been warned that everything from the homestudy better match up to documents exactly including financial numbers.  So that took some time to make sure we were doing our math appropriately.  Thank God Matt is a mathematician!

Last night we looked over a final draft of the home study and today it was submitted.  YAY!!  Another big step in the right direction.  We were also able to start gathering paperwork for the dossier for China.  I remember feeling very anxious about the paperwork for the Ethiopia Dossier and I must admit that I am feeling some of the same anxiety for the China Dossier.  But just like last time, we need to break it down one item at a time and obviously it is all doable.  Matt and I are just wanting to move really fast so we have to remind ourselves to take a breath sometimes.

2 Timothy 1:7...For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.