Happy 2019!!! (a few months late...)

Happy New Year!!  Yeah, that one sort of got away from me.  Here are the highlights so far:

All the kids are older: 8, 5, and THREE!!!
Anna and I went on two adventures.  The first was to the Charlotte Ballet with my mom to see a friend dance as Tinker Bell in Peter Pan!

Then the big one: we flew on a plane to see Aunt Cayli and her new baby, Ezra!

The boys did cool stuff too. 

Also, Josh has another new job.  Can I just take a second to say that I married someone with an amazing work ethic and point out the amazing ways that improves my life on the daily?  Josh has been on a career rollercoaster this last couple of years, and it's not always super fun.  But he stays positive and he never stops working at whatever he can find to do.  Recently that has landed him at Waynesville's new Starbucks store as a shift manager.   What started as an "ok for now" job has turned into something that he genuinely enjoys, and his strengths as an employee and leader are being recognized and valued.  It's awesome.   

But that's not the best part: Starbucks has an adoption benefit for their employees to help with expenses.  And it's amazing.  When we heard that on his first day, we knew the Lord had sent us the perfect job, even if it wasn't what we expected.  Isn't that always the way? 

Today, Josh and I ran adoption errands for a few hours together (getting fingerprinted AGAIN, taking forms to doctor's offices, romantic stuff like that).  Sometimes it feels like we will be locked in this wicked homestudy process forever, but we keep moving forward, one step or form at a time.

Pray that this little envelope gets safely to it's destination and that we get our FBA clearances back quickly.  (PS. If you are keeping score and curious, YES, we did all this before in 2017, but things must be updated. PPS. If you are paying really close attention, YES, we did it all again this past August, but we hit more delays and that round of paperwork is now also expired. Sigh.)

Hopefully this is the year we will have more exciting news to share about our sweet baby girl.  Whatever road is ahead, if these people with me, I'm looking forward to it.