please pray for the Chapman family

Please pray for the family of Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman. They family lost their daughter/sister Maria in a tragic accident. The brother especially needs to be wrapped in prayer. Visit http://www.stevencurtischapman.com/ for more information.

a home has been purchased

We FINALLY found a place to call home! Good thing too because we have to be out of our house in less than a month! It is pretty much everything that we wanted - even a fenced yard for the dogs!! It is not a ranch like we wanted, but it is a nice tri-level. We are very excited about this house - it will be a great place to bring our son home to! It is very close to a couple of our close friends, but only 30 minutes away from where we currently live. We will both be closer to work, which will really save on gas money!!

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Now that the house has been purchased, I need to focus again on getting our dossier updated for travel. We have our fingerprinting redone tomorrow morning at the USCIS Department, so I have at least gotten that scheduled in the chaos! I plan on taking one updated copy for the facilitator, and one for us if needed. What are some other documents that we might be asked for by a judge? I almost forgot about copies of tax returns.

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Staci

what's in a name?

Thursday night Damon and I went to dinner at our favorite local Mexican restaurant. Every time that we go, we talk about visiting our friends who are missionaries in Puebla, and Damon is ready to go back to visit. Well...as we are eating our chips and salsa, Damon said "I can't wait to go to Mexico with Trent." I said "who?" and Damon replied (in a sarcastic tone) "our son."

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Now I don't know if I've talked about this before, but it took us a LONG time to agree on names for our children (as we plan on changing their first names). I can assure you though, the boy's name we agreed on was not Trent (short for Trenton), even though that was one of the two finalists. So apparently I have been telling people that we are naming our son Wesley, while Damon has been telling people we are naming him Trenton. So I guess we need to decide on a name (again). It's pretty funny though because I thought that was one of the things we had "nailed down" in the large amount of unknowns in international adoption :)

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In news entirely unrelated, we have accepted an offer on our home! I realize that our home has been for sale for about 2 months now, but I never seriously considered the fact that it might sell and we would have to move! (Sometimes I just don't think things through...) I don't mean to sound like such an airhead, but I didn't think the house was likely to sell based on market conditions.

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I am actually pretty sad about leaving this house. It was our first home together, and it is finally the way we always wanted it to look!! If I am totally honest though, I am afraid of change. I feel like we are changing our lives so much with the adoption, and I feel overwhelmed as it is. I guess I should have thought of that before we put the house on the market :)

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So we have to begin searching for a new home to move into before we leave for our appointment in 73 days. We have to be out of our house by June 15th, so we have some work to do! Better get back to house-hunting on the internet. How did people do it before?

Staci