Making some progress

It's been busy at the Woodyard house!  December is flying by! On top of Christmas festivities, Jamie received his Master of Divinity degree (a 93 credit hour program) from Southern Seminary in Louisville.  We traveled to Louisville to celebrate his graduation with family and friends.  Additionally, we also celebrated our 12th anniversary, and had our home inspection and interviews as part of our Home Study.  If your not familiar with the Home Study,  it is basically documentation that declares you are not crazy parents and you can provide the most essential and basic needs of life.  (Funny how no one came into our home with our biological children to do this...)


I'm very blessed to have a tidy husband and when it came to cleaning for the home study; it was a bit humorous to watch him.  I've never seen him dust so much in all my life!  I shared with him that no one would say,  our home is too dusty and therefore find us unfit as adoptive parents.  I did some extra cleaning as well, I admit.  But then I slightly panicked.  We had a problem with our well and we didn't have water.  Water is pretty much a basic need.  The same weekend as our water trouble, Jamie's sermon was on contentment, not worrying from Matthew 6.  I think God has a sense of humor!  We were able to get the situation remedied before our interviews.  (And our social worker never even checked the bookshelves for dust.  Too bad they were spotless.)

We still have a few missing pieces of our home study, but it's coming together.  I'm excited for our Home Study to come to completion.  The conclusion of the Home Study will then allow us to apply for grants and loans.  Then our next step will be to submit our Dossier or in-country papers.  After our Dossier is in Thailand, we will officially be placed on a list for a little girl!  We have a long wait ahead, possibly as long has 3 years.

We are excited to celebrate Christmas.... It is always a unique time for our family to reflect on the mission of our Savior.  We take each evening to share the different portions of the Christmas narrative by candle lights while the boys create a nativity scene with some laminated clip art.  (I got this idea from Noel Piper's book Treasuring God in our Traditions.)  The boys love taking turns blowing out the candles when we are finished.  The first night after blowing out the candle, a spark floated to the Bible and Jamie had to prevent the Bible from catching on fire.  The boys loved it!  Sometimes the best memories are those that are unexpected and lack perfection.  May your Christmas be filled with unexpected joy, peace, and rich memories!

-KW