It is official...

You can say that we are officially expecting! The contract and first payment was mailed to our agency yesterday!!! I was planning to go to the post office at lunch by myself, but I ended up asking Audra to come with me because I needed her to take pictures. I don't think a random person off the street would understand the significance of me placing an envelope in the mail. It worked out well and I told her that I will probably recruit her to be my official "please go with me" friend. We have made contact with an agency in Indiana to complete our home study. I still have to send them the information from CWA. I plan to do that today. After talking about the home study, I think we will be well educated on international adoption! To complete this part of the process, both Chris and I have to read 3 books, complete the online Hague training, attended 2 education seminars on adoption related issues and meet with the social worker 3 times. To be honest, I am looking forward to this to see how a person from the outside will view us. I already reserved one of the books that we have to read from the library. I will probably pick it up today. In addition to these 3 books, we have to read one from our agency called "Adoption Parenting". For those of you who know us, I love to read (I have already read 4 adoption books) and I couldn't tell you the last time Chris picked up a book.

My sister-in-law, Angie, works with a lady that goes to a church where the associate paster and his wife adopted from Ethiopia. He recently called us to share their experience. I was at work, so I plan to give them a call later today. Their child is 16 months old and their "Gotcha Day" was in June 2007! I think it is really neat how God works - maybe our children will grow up having an Ethiopian friend an hour away! I am excited to hear about their experience.

This weekend Chris is going to hang out with the boys, Syd, Greg, and Mike, in Indianapolis. He is taking Guitar Hero and our Wii. I am sure that they will have a great time! I plan to work on my master's class. I haven't put the time into it for the past couple of weeks and I hate falling to far behind. On Sunday, we will go to church and in the evening we will be heading to Purdue to go to a SWE (Society of Women Engineers) banquet to give out a Delphi scholarship to one of my summer students.

I guess that I consider myself PAPER PREGNANT at this stage! According to my co-worker Suzanne, this entitles me to eat for two, be grouchy, be tired, buy new clothes, tell Chris I am to tired to do anything and cry over silly things! I love it!