Tomorrow is the day!

It is almost time in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the courts to open and our case to be heard! This will mean that "legally" our little boy could be ours in about 4 hours. This momma probably will not be getting much sleep tonight. Please pray with us that all goes as planned and our little guy will be part of Team Truman! I am really tired of looking at our empty kitchen chair! Thank you to all of you who have continued to pray for us and support us. It means more to us than you could ever imagine. We also are doing a continuous fundraiser for our children's orphanage. We have a great website where you can go and purchase coffee from Africa. To place an order and have it shipped directly to you go to http://justlovecoffee.com/TheTrumans.

Be blessed and look for good news tomorrow!
Stacey

Are our eyes wide open?

Frustrating to say the least, we need to do MORE! What does that mean? We are called by God to take care of widows and orphans...NOW is the time! Orphan Sunday is coming (November 8, 2009) Get on board, do something, anything, even the smallest prayer will help. I am sharing with you the small video from Christian Alliance for Orphans (thank you Chantelle!) Tell me what you think? Where do we go from here? Our eyes have been opened, now we need to step out on FAITH through Him and move forward. Not sure what else this looks like (besides bringing home our new son)but we are trusting the Lord to show us his plan. How about you?

Orphan Sunday from Christian Alliance for Orphans on Vimeo.

It's Official...Our girl turns ONE! And other happenings.

We honestly cannot believe that yesterday Gracie turned one! She is almost ready to walk, stands on her own, claps like crazy while standing and is the cutest girl ever! We are truly blessed beyond words...Her party was fun and her favorite part was the cake! (Just like her mommy) Let the pictures speak more than my loss for words:
This is the birthday Princess at breakfast!


The yummy birthday cakes...and Yes, her mommy did make them!

And she was enjoying the cake!

Her birthday was so fun, but went too quickly. She was overwhelmed by gifts so we finished opening them this morning and she had a much better time!

This journey has been incredible and directed by God, but this journey is not ending here. When we were in Ethiopia picking up Gracie we spent the majority of our time at the orphanage. On the first day we met a little boy who never left our sides for the entire week. At this time, he was not one of the children who was available for adoption. When we came back to Colorado, our hearts ached for him, and we prayed as a family for him. We also prayed that if it was God's will, we would be able to adopt him one day. Well, about 3 weeks ago our agency coordinator called and asked if we were still interested in adopting him. We flipped and jumped up and down! We were so excited. We knew, once again, this boy was hand picked for our family. We just received his background and it looks like he is about 3 1/2 years old. His birthday is sometime in February. If things go smoothly we will hopefully and prayerfully get to bring him home sometime in January. 2010 here we come! Mat and I knew somewhere deep down, there was "room for one more!"

Time is FLYING by!

Oh man, it is just crazy busy around here. Gracie is amazing and growing way too fast! 2 teeth and crawling! She is the light of this family. I still wake up and cannot believe she is here. Our summer has flown by. Baseball is all over. Justin's team decided not to play in the state tournament, but Cameron's team did and we spent a weekend in Greeley. His team WON, so they are state champs for 9A! It was awesome and Cameron even got some pitching time. He did great, struck out some too. We had a huge storm here the other day, and our city has been devastated. We have trees in our yard with NO leaves, and we have very large trees. It wiped out all the flowers and gardens, was horrible. Tons of hail damage to our cars...I guess it was time for "fall" cleaning. My sister from TX is here with her 2 kids, so we spent 2 days cleaning up the yard! We had over 65 bags of trash. Not a very fun summer vacation for Lori and her kids, but they were a great help since Mat was at work for 2 days. We are having our church here on Sunday for a pool baptism. It will be so much fun and what a way to start my immersion for a new life!
We also had our pictures taken by a wonderful lady at Contemporary Expressions. She is part of the celebrating adoption photographers and she is AMAZING! Our pictures came out great and can't wait to share them. Here is a sneak peek:



To check out more of Tanja's work you can visit her at www.contemporaryexpressions.net. She will be more than happy to help you out. She LOVES what she does and to her it is truly art!

Next week we are leaving for Wyoming to visit some of my family. We are going to do some white water rafting, visit Yellowstone and see lots of wildlife we hope. It should be a nice break before football is in full swing!
Tyler, Gracie and I are also going on a 4 day trip to visit our dear friends, The Beckings and The Outmans. The Outmans just came home with their twin boys and The Beckings were our travel partners. We cannot wait to be all together again!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures and the update. I will post more when I can.

Finally an Update!

Ok, so I never thought adding one more would cause total chaos! Good chaos I mean, but yes, we are busier than ever! Summer is here, camps, swimming, baseball, get together's, etc....whoo. So exhausting, but we are loving every minute. To say the least we love introducing Gracie to everyone. She lights up the room! It is truly amazing. I still wake up in the middle of the night to go peek in on her, and pinch myself! Is that really her? Thank you God for your goodness. Thank you for giving Mat and I the opportunity to be her parents. She has cut her first tooth, she loves to eat. She is a "go with the flow" little girl. We had her ears pierced. She cried briefly, but other than being hungry, she does not cry. She smiles ALL the time. The boys adore her. Tyler is her best friend and will do anything for her. Sometimes he does not like it very much if Gracie wants to love on us! I guess that is just him being 2! Tyler loves to read to her and take baths. We have had her swimming and she loves the water. In Ethiopia she did not like the bath, so this is a real treat considering we have a pool. Ok, now for the best part: PICTURES!

We are home and LOVING Gracie!

Our lives are fully blessed and we completely celebrated with our incredible friends and family yesterday! Gracie Ayantu is wonderful, totally happy and fits in perfectly with our family. Our trip to Ethiopia was fantastic and totally life changing. We are humbled and honored that Ethiopia has allowed us the gift to raise one of their country's children, Ethiopia is an amazing country and we are forever grateful. Thank you to all who have prayed us through this incredible journey. We will fill you in on more details and pictures as we get some more rest and catch up with life.

With much love and blessings,
Mat, Stacey and Gracie (and the 4 boys who cannot get enough of their little sister!)
P.S. Beckings, We are MISSING you guys something terrible! Love you tons! Please kiss Ms. Solie for us.

We arrived and Have our baby girl!

We arrived today and were able to go pick up our baby girl. She is incredible and it was definitely love at first sight! Gracie Ayantu knew who we were right from the start. God is so good and we are truly blessed. She smiles all the time, laughs and giggles and is even rolling over. Addis Ababa is amazing from what we have seen. The orphanage is a very well run and clean place. You can tell the children are very well taken care of.

We will try to update and post some pictures when the internet is running.

Love and Hugs to all,

Mat, Stacey and Gracie.