Battle of the Easter Egg!

Zoe Grace will play the role of "Little Sister"

Olivia will play the role of "Big Sister"

Little Sister wanted to wrestle over the easter egg.

Little Sister then started to get a little more rough. Big Sister did not like that very much.

Big Sister then thought Little Sister wanted to lick her...

... but instead, she bit her. It was very emotional.

Little Sister really just hurt Big Sisters feelings.

She thought it was quite amusing.

Mommy made it all better.

Little Sister got put in time out.

Then it was time for a game of follow the leader.

Little Sister grabbed the egg when no one else was watching.

Little Sister triumphed. The End.

First day of Mother's Morning Out -

Here we come!

Mommy and Zoe

Daddy and Olivia

Zoe was as happy as can be -

Olivia was not interested in staying.

A quick catch up from the beginning -

This blog is for all of our family and friends to be able to keep up with the hectic, everyday sprint that we call life. I guess I should take you back to the beginning and catch you up very quickly to where we are now.

KC & I were introduced by a good mutual friend in college. She fell in love with me instantly and we have been together since then. It has been the best six years of our life and we wouldn’t change anything that has happened.

We got married on March 1, 2008.

We had our first baby, Olivia Claire, who you will see plenty of later, on Dec. 7, 2009.

We then felt called by God last summer to adopt a baby. So we brought home our new daughter, Zoe Grace, on August 19, 2011. She was born November 4, 2010 in Ambo, Ethiopia.

We hope you enjoy our blog! It is more of a modern day way for us to scrap book without actually having to deal with the paper. Follow us on our journey to where it is God is leading us to go. This blog will be more of a pictorial play by play, rather than a literary accounting. Enjoy!

Wow. What a morning…

I am leaving the gym this morning at 6:50 when I look at my phone and I see two things that would make anyone’s stomach that is adopting, drop and turn.
It was a missed called from our case worker and a text from her saying “You better call me RIGHT NOW!”

So of course I did. She proceeded to tell us that we somehow WERE submitted to the embassy last week and that we were 100% cleared to travel!!!

Everything is there and we are good to go!!!

They requested the 15th, 16th, or 17th of this month for us to travel!!
WOW!!! We don’t know what to say, other than God is SO good!

Thanks again to everyone who has been praying for us!

We should have our little girl home in about three weeks!!!

Prayer Request -

We know that it has been a while since we have updated our blog and we are sorry for that. Everyone keeps asking us to update them on how Zoe Grace is and when we are going to get to bring her home. We have been so busy that we haven’t been able to sit down and focus on writing anything… but everything is going great, for us.

We are posting this to ask for your prayers on a different subject. The couple here in town, Rachel and Brad Goode, who helped us take the initial step towards adopting, are being faced with a child’s worse fear. Rachel’s father, Sam Rainer, went into surgery for his heart a few days ago, and after the surgery he had a stroke. Apparently it was very severe, but the doctor’s hands are tied because he cannot do any stroke treatments to him post open heart surgery.

I text Rachel and asked how he was doing today, her response sent a chill up my back.
“Dad bad. High fever. Pls pray. If you can get together with groups to pray pls do. The suffering keeps increasing and we need a miracle.”
I don’t know about you, but I could not think of a worse situation to be in than to watch your parent or child suffering and there is nothing that you can do.
Jessica sent this email out a few minutes ago:
“Hey everyone,
I just got an update from Rachel. Her dad has a fever and they are all worried. The doctors say his brain will start swelling about 9 tonight and last for 48 hours. We have to pray, all our hands are tied but this we know we can do. We have to pray diligently and constantly. TONIGHT while we know not everyone can be together everyone can pray. At 8 o'clock tonight we are all going to set the time away to pray for Rachel's Dad. Pray that the SWELLING DOESN'T START. MAN says this, GOD DOES NOT! We believe in a bigger God than that and we believe and we CLAIM that when we come together in HIS NAME that he hears us. While we may not all be in the same room tonight we are all together as family under God praying for our friend and her dad in this time of need. Pray that God puts Rachel on the front row to one of his HEALING MIRACLES! Pray that not only does the swelling not occur but the fever DISAPPEARS, that no more damage is done and they can get him into rehab to have TOTAL recovery. We know how big of a God we serve so this is the time that we hold on to that and we claim that and we believe that. Jeremiah 30:17 says "I will restore you to health and heal your wounds" Yall, join me in CLAIMING this over Rachel's Dad and believing that God means his word and his word is TRUE and his word is SOLID. Just got another text and Rachel says they just found out his heart is out of rhythm again and that is what caused his first stroke so being praying that that is turned around and there are no more strokes!! In addition please pray for Rachel and her family that she is not overcome with a spirit of fear and she has his OVERWHELMING peace wash over her as well as her brothers, sister, mom and additional family. Pray for Brad as he takes care of the girls. If I get any updates I'll pass them along.
Remember- pray 8:00 tonight!!! 8:00 tomorrow night and anyone who can meet in the prayer room between the 9:30 and 11:00 services!! Get this out to anybody who will diligently pray for her Dad and yall she is begging us to pray constantly for him!!!”

God tells us in Matthew 18:19, “Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.”

So if you have time, right now and tonight, please hit your knees and pray that God will place his hand on this amazing family and that Rachel’s father, Sam Rainer, will be healed. God is the creator of all, and I know that if we have faith and pray, that God will see and hear us. He will know that we have faith larger than a mustard seed and miracles will be performed.

Thank you friends.
Until later.
JW

Have you ever thought about adopting?

If you have ever been interested in Adoption, Lifeline Children's Services will be coming to Saint James United Methodist Church (on the corner of Vaughn and Ryan Road) tonight from 6-8 pm in the church cafe. This would be an awesome time to come out and hear about how you can adopt/foster or how you can help support others who are either considering adopting or are in the process already. We will cover everything you need to know about the entire process domestic or international. Please join us! It will be a great time!!!

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Ethiopia here we come!!

Okay, I don’t have too much time to type a long post right now. I am swamped at work and KC has her hands full with Olivia and trying to make the world stop spinning long enough for us to try to figure out what is going to happen within the next month. We were called today by Lesley who told us that we have a court date for the first week of June!!! We are SO excited and cannot believe that it is finally here! We are SO close to meeting Zoe Grace and we can’t believe it! So more will come later when we have time to post it. Thank you everyone who has been praying with us for this moment!! We aren’t done yet, but we are one step closer to having her home forever!