Ok so Reagan felt left out and I had to take a pic of him and (toast it) post it on my page.


I forgot about Levi's little owie from Reagan throwing a snowball at him and it had a piece of ice in it.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone Melissa

Hair bow

I bought this cute headband with interchangeable bows. Poor Levi was my guinea pig! He will probably be mad that I posted this but he don't know how to get on my blogspot, so don't say anything to him.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone Melissa

Okay so I got a call today from our agency and they said they are going to work out our homestudy issue  for us since they didn't catch it months ago, thank you to whoever prayed concerning this issue.  God is in complete control!  I just finished preparing food for Thanksgiving.  It's just me and the Reagan boy at home tonight, Billy took the other boys to the Alaska Basketball Shootout, OU's playing!  Can't wait for homemade cornbread dressing tomorrow.  I called my grandma and got her recipe, I sure do miss her dressin'.  Hope you all have a Happy Blessed Thanksgiving!!

FRUSTRATED!

I got an email today from our agency saying our home study is not approved because our home study guy is independently owned.  Why are they just now telling me this when 4 months ago they reviewed our home study for corrections and didn't say one word about him not being contracted with an agency.  I immediately got on the phone and called him, which he is very hard to get a hold of, for some reason today he answered, thank you Lord!  He told me he had never been denied before so he wasn't for sure what was going on.  I told him well I would appreciate it if you would figure out the problem and fix it because I don't want to be out $1000.  What a headache!  We are so close and this would be a huge stumbling block in our process.  Please if you are reading this, PRAY!!!  When I get more answers I will keep you posted.

No news on adoption, just waiting for fingerprint appointments.  I went grocery shopping for Thanksgiving, since we don't have family up here we are starting our own family tradition.  I'm excited to start cooking, I love to cook.  Nothing much to post just thought I would try to say something daily, have a good night!

Spaghetti Feed Fundraiser Nov 7th

We (Kara, Donna & I ) started planning our spaghetti dinner about a month before.  Finding a place around here big enough to hold at least 200 people was difficult.  We asked tons of places and either everyone had something going on or they didn't allow other groups to come in, except for Palmer Church of the Nazarene.  We were so excited to actually have a place to decorate and feed people!YEA!!  Now we had to decide how many tickets we wanted print and who better to design them than our dear friend Derick Rowlan, he did an outstanding job.  I would show you a picture, but I don't have one yet, maybe later.  We decided on two sessions so we printed 200 tickets total, I know call us crazy.  Kara and I went around to different businesses and local consultants to ask for donations to our silent auction, we had an awesome turn out of items. With the Flu and other sickness going around which everyone got weeks prior except my family, guess whose kids get sick the week of? MINE!  Not good, I couldn't believe it, Reagan got it first, day later Isaac and then Thursday night Levi had it. Are ya noticing a pattern here? Billy and I were getting a little worried along with everyone helping us with the spaghetti feed.  I did get sick on Friday, but only with head cold stuff, nothing like my boys had, thank the Lord!  Kara, Donna & I decided to meet two days  before the event and make all the Pumpkin Bars, Brownies and last minute Chocolate Chip Cookies, which was the best decision we ever made.  This was before Levi got sick and after Isaac had been sick.  Saturday came and I was getting nervous.  We all arrived at the church at about 130pm, our first session started at 5pm so we wanted plenty of time to set up.  A team of friends volunteered their time to help serve where needed at our event: Cheryl Land, Trish Applehans, Becky Day, Joanne McAuliff, Lorna Henze, Debbie Dietz, Amy Broemeling, Victoria Metoyer, Carla, Shelby Land, Carrie Land, Kayla Ballard, Jordan Ballard, Isaac Houck, Aaron and if I have left anyone out I apologize.  People started showing up at about 430pm, luckily we were all ready by then.  Becky Day auctioned off desserts each session which people loved and so did we because that meant more money toward getting our baby girl. Certain items in our silent auction were people pleasers also, I won't mention any names, you know who you are! We had about 150 in attendance.  We are so blessed to have so many people care about our adoption!  We were sad to see the night end, but some of us did have church in the morning!  We had nothing but great compliments about the whole thing.  We raised a little over $3000, what and awesome GOD we serve!  He knows what we need when we need it.  Kara and I got together afterwards and counted the money and with what we raised at the spaghetti event and the money certain ones had given before we have $6500 to send in. THANK YOU LORD!!!  A big THANK YOU to everyone who supported our event by coming or donating we appreciate it!  Kara & Donna are ready for fundraiser #2!  My crazy girlfriends!  I also have Tshirts & messenger bags for sale also if anyone is interested.  Tshirts- $20 please add $2 shipping cost if you live out of state  Bags $35.  I will try and post a pic soon!  Thanks again everyone!

I haven't posted in awhile because I just got the hang of this blog thing.  A lot has happened since I last posted.  We found an agency Dove International Adoptions based out of Banks,OR.  We were accepted in May 09.  After getting the contract to sign, which was probably 15 pages, we had a month to send in $3000 with the contract.  Ok, I don't know about some of you, but who has that sitting in their bank account ready to be given freely, not I.  I believed God had purposed this in our heart and He was gonna supply us with the money. Low and behold a $1000 check came in the mail from a couple who didn't even know we were adopting, the letter said just thought you could use this, you betcha we could.  Several other people stepped out in FAITH and blessed us with money too, which all added up to about $1500. We have $1500 left to come up with so my best friend Kara & I planned a garage sale around the 13th of June (i think).  We had an awesome turnout.  Saturday after it was all said and done we counted the money and had exactly $1503, with $3 left to put toward our next installment.  God is so mindful of our need!  I told my husband, God is never early, never late always right on time!  Our deadline was June 18th and I sent it in on June 15th.  Whoo, one down 3 more to go.  We left later that week for Oklahoma for a month.  The big question we get is why are you adopting from Ethiopia?  Our response is Why Not?  I mean there are a lot of reasons, but God placed Ethiopia on our hearts, so why not?  We have some friends in the ministry from Arizona and Missouri who have adopted from there and I have been drawn to Ethiopia ever since.  While in Missouri this summer I got to sit down with Gwen from Arizona and discuss adoption.  She gave me helpful information regarding adoption.  Our dossier packet was sent to us while we were in Missouri.  Dossier is information about you and your family, medical, financial, housing, debt everything you can think of to be filled out and send over to the Ethiopian courts to look at.  Lots of copies & notarizing.  We have 6 months to fill out all of this plus get fingerprinted at Homeland Security office.  Yippee!  Needless to say I put it on the back burner for a while due to some medical issues I was dealing with.  After going through a rough spot, God reassured me that the baby girl He has picked out for our family is going to be so much more precious than I could ever imagine.  She's gonna be a Houck, of course she will be precious!!  Our next installment of $6500 is due in Decemeber.  This is where my FAITH comes in increments, if you know what I mean.  I will back track a little, in August we had our 3 day ladies retreat.  Our speaker was from a town called Peters Creek, I had just met her in June before I left for Oklahoma and I felt connected to her right away.  After retreat, we were starting to clean up, she came to tell me goodbye and I gave her the love offering.  She immediatly gave it back and said God told her to give it to me for my adoption.  Talk about humbling, I started crying and couldn't stop, God is so thoughtful of me!  You feel so unworthy sometimes.  Billy and I told God right from the beginning, we don't want to borrow the money or put it on a credit card, so far we haven't.  As of October we had $3200, just from certain ones giving to us.  My best friend Kara ( whom i have named CEO of the Houck Adoption) and Donna planned a spaghetti dinner with a silent auction/dessert auction.  Talk about FUN, now that it is over!  We have never done anything like this before, what were we thinkin?  I will post about that later, this is enough info to get ya by for now, my hand hurts.  Good night!