Done with 2014, onto 2015

Bloglovin LinkI hope everyone had a great Christmas! As we're getting closer to the end of 2014, it's easy for my mind to drift to what might be next year. This year was GREAT for David and me. We're working at terrific jobs that we're finally able to understand what we're doing and what our goals are. We have wonderful students, co-teachers, and grade level peeps. Our bosses have to be the best in the world, but seriously. We have friends teaching at the school that plan to stay for some time. We also started our adoption process and got that ball rolling. There is just so much to be thankful for.

This coming year holds so many hopes and dreams for our little Carr family. So I would like to spend some time sharing here what some of those are, both to satisfy curiosity and for a measure of accountability. We, of course, have the cliche goals like, lose weight, drink more water, exercise - and honestly some of these are remarkably similar to last year's resolutions. Last year, I met several of my goals! I've started exercising more, and I gotta give a shout out to Jillian Michaels and her kick-butt programs, I love/hate her! I've drank more water than any year prior, ate healthier choices and lost about 10-15 pounds of weight! (it's hard to know exactly because we didn't get a scale until summer time).

There were some goals that just weren't as realistic as I thought at the time or that we worked hard to achieve, but just didn't happen - things like, travel more of China, pay off 3 school loans (we did 2!), and some others that are so ridiculous I'm a little embarrassed to them post here!

So for this year, when I consider what is coming up I will have some things that are for my personal betterment, but most of my resolutions will be about us becoming a little bigger of a family. So here they are:

1. Get a home study completed before summer starts.
2. Put on at least one super-successful fundraiser for our adoption.
3. Accumulate toys and books that would be appropriate no matter what the age of our kids.
4. Read 3-4 parenting books.
5. Read 3-4 adoption oriented books.
6. Apply for as many grants as humanly possible.
7. Keep all adoption paperwork extremely organized.
8. Start debt snowball and ATTACK! (thanks Dave Ramsay for the saving know-how!)
9. Read 2-3 books about being a better teacher.
10. Get fit - not necessarily lose weight, but be healthier.
11. Do devotions more diligently (maybe She Reads Truth - any other suggestions let me know!)
12. Blog every week (if you have any ideas for topics PLEASE let me know!)
13. Take pictures at least once a week - and keep learning more about the beautiful camera I got for Christmas!
14. Love on kids at Haven of Hope twice a week (at least) Find out more about this great program that helps special needs orphans by clicking here. 
15. Paint the house.
16. Travel somewhere fun (but cheap, maybe Bali?).
17. Cook more at home, and healthier foods.
18. Keep learning Chinese, and pick up some basic Bulgarian.
19. Complain less, encourage more.
20. Bring our kids home - now I know that this may not happen this year, but let's face it, how many of our goals do we actually achieve in our own little time-frame? I see no reason not to be optimistic. God showed us that this is His calling for us right now, so until he says otherwise, we're running full speed towards that goal.

I hope you enjoyed reading my list of goals and can help keep me accountable to achieve (and maybe even help achieve some!). I hope many of your goals are met this year and that this New Year brings more joy to your life. Happy New Year!

Baby, All I Want For Christmas is You

When David and I were talking turkey about presents for Christmas this year, I was able to come up with quite a list of things. Of course, David did too. Then a day or so later we got the next step of our adoption process outlined for us, and everything about what I wanted changed. I still want that awesome new camera, but all my reasons are adoption oriented! We did some Christmas shopping and I couldn't help but buy a couple kids toys to store for the future. I was thinking it might be really cool if we start buying small toys, wrapping them, and then when we finally bring our kids home they can open them all. It might be fun to be able to start our new relationship with something as cool as opening presents! What kid doesn't like opening presents?

Now, there are new things on my list. Things like: I want to complete this paperwork as quickly as possible, I want to make appointments for while we are home in February, I want to get those t-shirts made, I want to set up some fundraisers, I want to find my home study provider, and many other seemingly boring things. All these things add up to the thing that I really want for Christmas, my kids. I have been praying for them a lot. I've been thinking about them all the time. Christmas is a time for family and David and I are so ready for our own little family to grow. For now I'm happy with our family that consists of David, me, a pretty puppy, and a crazy cute kitten, but soon I want so much more. So this year, the song "All I Want for Christmas is You" has a whole new meaning for me and every time I hear it, it fills my heart with longing.

Click here to listen to it. :)

I hope my babies are safe and happy this year. I can't wait to spend every holiday with them soon. Hope your holidays are fantastic! Merry Christmas!

Parenting - Great Expectations & Feelings

Sometimes, when things don't move as fast as I thought, I lose hope. Please tell me you have been there too, that I'm not the only one! To you, as a third party to our adoption, it may seem that things have been moving at a pretty good pace - one thing happening after another. To me, this whole becoming a parent thing is taking forever. And when something takes forever, I start to over-analyze. Unfortunately, I am also a researcher at heart and tend to look up as much information as possible with whatever is on hand. What is on hand right now is the internet; and people's blogs; and people's stories of adoption; and people's horror stories.

Now, I do tend to be the kind of person that believes that all things work together for good, and so I am confident it will all work out well. I do realize there will be some difficulties, and have never been under the delusion that any kind of parenting would be easy. However, when I read some of these stories, I feel seriously discouraged. I feel like it might be too hard.

All these stories are not helping my current emotional feelings of incompetence. Lately, I've felt so stressed out with work, having a semblance of a social life, and trying to keep my house in order that I've come to question whether I can even be a working mom. I've talked it over with David, and we've decided that as soon as possible (aka when our contract allows me to) I will go down to either part time or not working with some tutoring jobs. The more I think about it, the better the plan seems. I took a sick day today because I had a huge headache and was feeling flat out awful from my cold. I was able to sleep, get good medicine, eat decent food and altogether rest. Not only was I able to finally rest, but I also had a chance to catch up on some things that have fallen behind in the chaos. I was able to straighten up and do some serious amounts of laundry. Cuddling with my babies (Aubie and Luna) was truly helpful to my mental health as well!

All of these thoughts when considering myself being a parent is leading to me feeling that maybe I'm not ready. (I need to insert here that I have not changed my mind about adoption! Just in case you were getting that vibe). It makes me feel like if I can't handle these small little responsibilities, than what will happen when I have extra little people, with bigger needs than mine, to take care of. It's kinda freaking me out a little. I have been consoling myself with the fact that it's very common for people, when they find out their going to be parents, to freak out and wonder what kind parent they will be.

Because I have been feeling uneasy about being a parent, I've decided to do the one thing I know usually makes me feel better about doing something new; pick up a million books and read about it! I've gotten tons to samples of parenting books off my Kindle, and I'll be buying a few of them as soon as I figure out which ones I like (i.e. the ones that actually teach good parenting techniques based on Psychology, and not ones that are like "I have pretty good kids, this is how I did it!" - It's crazy how many books like that there are!). I feel like maybe if I can read about good techniques, I will feel more prepared for managing my life and my children, and then will feel less uneasy about becoming a parent. Do you have any favorites that I should check out? Any advice during this period of waiting?

T-shirts!

Hey guys! We were brainstorming for our adoption fundraising and we stumbled across a new way to t-shirt fund-raise. It takes out some of the risk because it's through a website that doesn't charge unless we meet our goal of 100 t-shirts sold in 21 days. Also, it allows people to pick out the style and their size instead of me having to guess which ones to order and having left-overs. I'm so excited to present our first t-shirts! Later on we'll have a different style available, but for this month we're just going to try this one! We would really appreciate it if you would consider buying one! Consider it a Christmas gift to David and I! We're trying to raise money in time to get paper processed in February and for our home study soon after.

Click here to buy one!

So Much to be Thankful For

This year we have so much to be thankful for!

I am so thankful for God's perfect timing, above all else. David and I thought we were in the perfect apartment for our upcoming adoption. It had more rooms in it than we had currently needed and had an amazing loft and attic. We had landlords that would work with us and an agency that would get things done immediately. So when we found out that our landlords had decided to sell, we decided to find another place! It's so funny, because not two weeks earlier I was telling David that I really felt like we should look at other apartments just in case there was something out there that was ABSOLUTELY PERFECT for us. I told him that I really wanted to feel reassured that there was nothing else for us, before we received our home study.

Our landlords gave us the option to stay as long as we could be open to receiving buyers up to twice a week! This was not an option for us for several reasons. The first being that we have a delightful, anxiety-filled dog and a wonderful, rambunctious, 5 month old kitten. The second reason is that if we move after our home study and before we bring our kids home, we have to get another at our expense. The home study will most likely cost a little more than normal for us since we live in China and have to find someone that is Hague accredited, so having to do another would be extremely inconvenient.

We went on the hunt for our perfect apartment, for which we had surprisingly good attitudes! We both had a peace about it and we just really felt that God had prepared a place in advance for us.

We looked for two days (only!) and found THE ONE! It is five four bedrooms and four three bathrooms. (One room doesn't count because it's the size of a closet, and one bathroom is a Chinese toilet... haha!). Two of the rooms are really starting to come together as kids rooms, which is SUPER exciting to me! Our couches are at least 80% better in looks and comfort and we're super close to my campus of school.

We decided to go ahead and dedicate some of our funds this month to making our house our home. We took a trip to Ikea and bought some new stuff (finally!) for our place. We got some things that, honestly, just make me feel more at home and better equipped for a home study. I know that things are not what makes a home study, but there's something about finally having dishes that match each other that makes me feel like I actually have my life in order! Don't judge me too much!

Our next step in our journey is our first big payment. This fee goes towards our agency fee and the first part of our home study. It comes out to roughly $3,200. What's crazy amazing is that we have exactly the amount we need. I mean, we come within a hundred dollars of exactly. God is so, truly amazing. I need to share that this is further confirmation (like we needed any more!) that we are exactly where we need to be, doing exactly what we need to be doing. The next thing we will need is our home study fee, and we're having that after two fundraisers we're planning. If you're in Hilton Head in February (tentatively the 21st), we will be having a silent auction/dinner! If you can't make it to that, know that soon we're going to set some goals to cut/shave hair on David's head (yes, that includes his beloved beard, Dad Carr!). We're really excited and we know God will provide even if no one shows up to these fundraisers. After the home study we will be applying for every grant we even partially qualify for in the hope that it will help us receive the rest of our funding to bring our kids home.

If you have anything you would like to donate to our silent auction, you can contact my Mom Watkins, Mom Carr, my sister Erika, or me.
I can't wait to see so many of you in February!