So, I know I have left a bit of a cliff hanger for a couple of weeks and then fell off of bloggyland. We have been WAYYYY busy the last few weeks, which is great! I am finally feeling like "me" again...the me that runs around like a crazy person volunteering everywhere. After quitting everything....working and all volunteer work, it was nice to have the time to help us settle in but after awhile I started to realize that I was a little depressed. I started to feel a wee bit jealous of another busy body I know....kind of like I was "slipping", "growing old", "mind turning to mush", etc. After more introspection I realized that I LIKE feeling crazy, running around checking things off of my to do list, pulled in many directions, and well IN CHARGE of something....a focus...a purpose... a goal.........beyond breaking down laundry mountain and keeping my living room clean for 5 whole minutes. So I have put myself back out there a bit (with Torrey's tight leash ready to reel me in if needed...and you all know I WILL need it).

Anywho we are still trying to figure this whole thing out but we think we are going to stick with international adoption at this point. 2 weeks ago a friend who is a foster parent trainer mentioned to us that we should look into foster to adopt again. With our continued financial whoas (note + last weeks: dryer broke for the 3rd time in 3 weeks= need new dryer) we gave it a few whirls around the old thinker and still have not come to a firm decision. When we started our second ET adoption we knew that it would be hard financially but we had a plan in place that would make it all work....it still will work but it will continue to be a HUGE financial sacrifice for the whole family. While International adoption comes with many unknowns, we feel like we have been there and done that once so (perhaps mistakenly) we think that this go around it might be a wee bit easier. With Foster to adopt there are so many additional issues that we are not sure we are ready to deal with. Which makes us reevaluate all of the ET issue again and what new ones might come up that we haven't dealt with before. So nothing has been officially resolved. We have thought about dual listing and seeing if we find a US child first. Our ET specialist says that it may be 6 more months before we receive a referral but they can never be sure if it will be tomorrow or next year. So the question remains...where is our next child...here in the US or in ET? We have looked over the waiting children lists from all over the nation and identified a few children that we may be interested in but they are older and would fill in the 3 year gap between Carter and Noah. But again are we realistically ready as a family to disrupt birth order? There is a sibling group in particular that has been pulling on our heart strings but our house isn't big enough for 5 children. Is that what God wants for our family? Our hearts are open and our ears are keen to hear...oh yeah and if you have God's email address can you tell him to shoot me over an email? I will be waiting by my computer checking the adoption forums!