Making a list, and checking it twice

Well we made it through the funeral for my grandpa. It was much harder than I ever thought. He was 83 and lived a good life, but man, it is still so hard to say goodbye. When we arrived home, we went through our mail, and we received the best Christmas present! We received our 171-H from immigration, which is also known as the "golden ticket!" We are now totally ready to go get Tanner, therefore our Embassy date is January 27th. We will be leaving on January 22nd and returning January 30th. We are so excited and so blessed. God is good, all the time! One of the things we are still trying to prepare is finances, so if you want, we are still selling coffee through our website http://justlovecoffee.com/TheTrumans where you can order some yummy coffee. This makes great gifts no matter what time of year! Perfect for anniversary's and birthday's also. We are also trying to raise enough money to purchase playground equipment for the care center while we are there. If you would like to donate you can send a check to:
International Adoption Net
2305 E. Arapahoe Rd. #248
Centennial, CO 80112
Please put in your memo "Truman" and remember your donation is totally tax deductible. Great for the end of the year!

Thank you all again for your continued support, love and blessings.
We cannot wait for Tanner Endale to become part of Team Truman (physically)
Merry Christmas!
Mat and Stacey

A much needed update!

Well Team Truman has officially grown by two more feet! (after a long, long road) We did not pass court on Nov. 18th as there was some missing paperwork, so we were rescheduled for Nov. 30th. Well, Nov. 30th came and AGAIN we did not pass! Ugh...MOWA forgot to bring the paper. Our in country coordinators worked hard to figure out why and where the paper was and lo and behold, Praise Jesus, we passed FINALLY on Dec. 2nd! So now we are a family of 8. It is so exciting and overwhelming at the same time.
During these past 3 weeks we have been being attacked by the enemy BIG TIME; not only with all the issues with court for Endale (Tanner) but our oldest son Zachary, had a mass on his brain that he had removed last Wednesday and the biopsy came back negative! Yahoooo-God is good. Really, really good. Again some other news was that I am in need of a hysterectomy. I was suppose to have surgery today, but postponed it until spring since our son needed surgery sooner than soon. I also have had 2 mammograms come back suspicious, so am having them biopsied on Dec. 23rd. Please keep praying...We are also leaving this Thursday to say "good-bye" to my grandpa who passed away last Tuesday. He was one of the greatest men to have walked this earth and he is missed, dearly! To put it mildly things have been stressful around our house. We have vowed not to let the enemy get to us: "When God is for us, Who can be against us?"

Thank you all for your love and continued support. We are remembering the true reason for this season. We hope you enjoy Christmas and find your joy in His love. We hope to travel the end of January to bring Tanner home. Keep praying for him to "see" our faces and know that we are going to bring him home soon.

Big time love and peace,
Mat and Stacey (and the rest of the Truman crew)

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.

Leaving on a jet plane!

This is incredible; in less than 12 hours we will be heading to Addis Ababa to go get our beautiful daughter, Gracie Ayantu! This entire journey has been lead by God and we are thrilled to be following His plan for our family. Please pray for safe travels and health along the way. We cannot wait for Gracie to come home and meet her entire FAMILY!!!! Thank you all again for the love and support.
With lots of love,
Mat and Stacey

Test

This is a TEST to see how this can work from Ethiopia!

Our time has come!

Oh dear ones, it has been awhile since I have posted because SO much has been happening! We passed court last Thursday! Thank you Jesus and thank you to all who covered us in prayer. Now, today, we got "the call" embassy date has been assigned and it is May 6th!!!! Oh my word, we were not expecting it so soon, but are grateful and blessed beyond belief to bring Gracie home! We made our plane reservations today and are leaving next Friday, May 1st. Mat and I will spend our anniversary in Dubai! (Saturday May 2nd) and then be in Addis Ababa, Sunday morning, May 3rd. We will be holding our beautiful daughter in just 12 short days! We are truly praising God for his goodness and this journey He has brought us on. There has been nothing we have ever done in our lives that has been this meaningful and joyous. (Well, the boys are pretty incredible too! LOL!) Please continue to pray over our travel and the travels of the other 2 families who are going at the same time. We are also asking you to pray for Gracie and that our faces will be put into her mind to let her know that we are on our way!

Tomorrow is THE BIG DAY!

Oh my goodness, it is currently about 4 am in Ethiopia. The courts will start hearing cases in approximately 5 hours! Here is our prayer:

Lord, you are so good, all the time! We know you can move mountains. Please help the judges have wisdom and open hearts to show favor in our case for our beautiful baby girl. Please also allow them to show favor for the other 2 IAN families; The Gonifas' and The Washingtons. Lord, this entire journey has been guided by You, please allow us to bring these babies home as soon as we are able. They need to be with their families Lord. We praise you each day for all the blessings you have given us. In your Awesome name we pray, Amen!

We cannot wait to share our baby girl with the whole world!
Love and Blessings,
Mat and Stacey

Exactly 7 days!

Well we are counting down. Only 7 more days until Gracie's court date! Many people have asked us if we have to be there for court and NO, we don't go for court. What happens is that our representative in Ethiopia goes to court and accepts her on our behalf; presents all the paperwork and waits for the courts ruling. Once the court gives their ruling (which we are praying is favorable and no paperwork happens to be missing) then we will be assigned our embassy date and get our travel dates. The embassy date is a day we need to be present. We take an "oath" to love and take care of her! I think we will be screaming, "Of course, of course...she is our daughter!" If all goes well, which we are praying hard, we will hopefully be traveling May 15th.
We would fly from Denver to Houston to Dubai. Then we will stay the night in Dubai at the airport and then we leave in the morning to head to Addis. By Sunday afternoon, we should be holding our baby girl in our arms! We are looking forward to this day! Thank you Jesus, for making all of this possible. He is so good, all the time! Friends, we are asking for HUGE prayer for this next week. We need God to place wisdom in the hearts and minds of the judges to look favorably on our case and let Gracie come home as soon as possible.
With much love,
Mat and Stacey

Praise this day!

Our court date was moved UP!!!! That means we no longer have court on April 29th, but now it is April 16th. That is EXACTLY 3 months from the day of referral! How good is our God?
Hope everyone is having a wonderful day.

Our hearts are full today!

Today is a great day! At first I was sad, as today is Ms. Gracie's 6 month birthday and we were hoping to be holding her in our arms by now. As we all know, that was not God's timing for us. Last week I found the most beautiful dress at my friends children's consignment boutique, that I had to buy for Gracie's 1 year birthday! (If you are here in Colorado, you should check out Cailin's boutique "Couture Kids Consignment" in downtown Littleton) After a long day, we received an incredible email. One of the families with our adoption agency just returned from Ethiopia and she sent us pictures of Gracie...my how she is changing, even in this short amount of time. Let me tell you, she looks very healthy and peaceful. I cannot wait to hold her in my arms. Mat is already smitten with her and she will have daddy wrapped around her finger completely.
Life here is busy, baseball for Justin and Cameron has already started. Tomorrow is Zach's opening night for the middle school musical. He has the lead. We are so proud of him and all he has accomplished this year. Having Asperger's does not stop Zach...he amazes us.
Tyler will be starting music and gymnastics next week. I love being busy, especially now as we are still waiting for April 29th!
God is so good to us and each day we count our blessings.
Thank you for supporting us and loving us.
Our hearts are full; full of love, full of kindness, full of compassion and the never ending grace of God.
With love,
Mat and Stacey

9 Weeks and Counting...

Well, one week ago we received our court date so only 9 more weeks to go! Yahoo...We have been busy, busy, busy this week. Mat has been working super crazy on remodeling the kids bathroom and getting Gracie's room ready for her. I LOVE her room. I hope she will love it to. We are praying for her everyday and hoping she stays healthy. One of the families with our agency has been in Ethiopia this week to pick their daughter up and had a chance to visit the orphanage where our daughter is. We are hoping they were able to get some new pictures of Gracie for us so we can see how well she is doing. Here are some pictures of her room. Let us know what you think. We still have some finishing touches to add, but we are really loving it.
Blessings and love to you all,
Mat and Stacey

Gotta LOVE Pink and Court dates!

Yes, you read that right. We officially have our court date for Ms. Gracie. It is April 29th and we are THRILLED. The way things have been going we thought we would be getting a court date in May. But God is so good and we are in April. If we pass on the first time, we will hopefully be traveling at the end of May or first week of June. We are busying ourselves with all sorts of projects and lots of entertaining. I know that if I am not kept busy; the waiting time will be even harder. Mat started the upstairs kids bathroom remodel and also Gracie's room. I have been doing a very good job of instructing! We also had a bunch of families over last night for an Ethiopian adoption get together from our agency. One family who is in the process was driving through Denver and wanted to meet some of the Colorado families. It was a really fun time and I love seeing the kiddos who have come home. It helps give us the ability to "see the light at the end of the tunnel." Enjoy the pictures!




Don't you just love the color pink? My wonderful husband said he was "seeing spots" while in the midst of painting!






The valentine get together becoming instant friends and leaning on one another during these hard times. Thank you all for coming and sharing the evening and letting us "waiters" ask away...

May everyone rest in His presence today.
Blessings and Love,
Stacey

We can't always take life so seriously!

In these hard times throughout our world we tend to be taking everything so seriously. I am a believer in the fact that I think God wants us to enjoy ourselves and LAUGH! A friend of mine posted this on his Facebook and I could not stop laughing! I hope you enjoy it too! Love, laughter and peace to all of you!

5 Kids, A Dog and A Minivan!

OK, who would of ever thought? I was giggling to myself as I was driving kids to school today, the dog running around in the car, music blasting and me enjoying EVERY second. Now wait, you say, 5 kids? Well, I am lucky to be able to watch my friends 6 month old baby girl a few days a week while her daddy is at work. Daddy is a firefighter with Mat and mommy teaches, so it works out great. I am getting lots of practice for when we bring our bundle of sunshine home! I forgot how hard it is to shop with 2 under 2!
Still no news on a court date, we are hoping to hear something within the next 2-3 weeks. A friend told me, now that we have our referral, this WAITING will be even harder. Well, we decided to add some home improvement projects to the mix and finish the kids bathroom upstairs and we have begun the nursery for Grace. So exciting.

Love to all,
Stacey

Our referral day is here!

We are still trying to comprehend what has happened. Yesterday, January 16th, 2009 we received "the call." Our coordinator called at 11:30 a.m. and of course, I was not home and Mat was at work. She then called on my cell, and asked me to sit down. I said, "No, just tell me." She said, "I have your baby girl and can't wait to show you." I was silent for at least a minute and then I think I started hyperventilating. I asked her, "When can we see her?" She told me she would send us the email right now. Then we hung up. I don't even remember saying good-bye. I immediately called Mat and told him, crying, and he was on a call. He said he would meet me at the firestation so we could open the email together. He first told me to stop and get photo paper incase we could print out her picture. I was right around the corner from Staples, but for the life of me I couldn't remember where it was. Finally got the photo paper and raced to the firestation. I called my mom and sisters and maybe talked for about 2 minutes. All I could get out was that we had our daughter. At the firestation we ran upstairs to the computer and it took forever to get our email open. (Probably not forever, it was really only 30 seconds, it just seemed a lot longer) And then there she was, our amazing, beautiful, fantastic, gift from God daughter! She was the best little girl we had ever seen. Here is a picture of us seeing Gracie for the first time:



After we studied her gorgeous face I called our coordinator back and she had our referral packet ready which contained our baby's medical history and the papers to officially accept her as our daughter. She also then told us she had a short video of her as well. VIDEO!!!! I don't really remember driving to our agency, but as soon as I got there, we were all crying and I still couldn't believe this was really happening. I rushed over to Walgreens to get the photos printed out, headed to Zach's school to pick him up and then hurried back to the firestation so Mat and I could watch the video together. After watching the video as a family, crying huge tears, we prayed for Gracie's health and safety; for God to place his hand on her.

The kids and I left the firestation and got a "celebratory" Starbuck's on the way home. At home, there were some beautiful African Violets waiting for us. They were from my mom and step-dad. African Violets were my grandma's favorite and I knew she was smiling down upon this day. Thank you Mom and Mike for the violets.



While posting our exciting news to the world, my wonderful friend Vikki and her kiddos showed up with this HUGE bouquet of balloons. Thank you wonderful friend. While Vikki and I were watching Gracie's video, Nicole called and decided we all needed to celebrate. Jose O'Sheas and a margarita. My dear friend Jessi joined us as well. It was a wonderful ending to a fabulous day! How I wish my sweet, handsome husband would have been able to celebrate too!


Needless to say, I had a hard time sleeping. All I wanted to do was dream of her round face and sparkly eyes. I think I fell asleep around 12:30 and was wide awake by 4:30. Today, even the sunrise looked different. The colors were brighter and more amazing than ever. The sky was bright purple and pink. My 2 favorite colors...God's creation made for us.

Thank you for the love, prayers and support. We cannot wait to bring her home.

Oh, did I mention that yesterday even in all the craziness, I stopped by Baby Gap and had to purchase a few outfits...notice though NO PINK! (Guess I need to get used to buying pink)

Many Questions

Today is a day of cloudiness, fogginess, and sadness. I am not sure why, except for the fact that we have now been waiting for almost 6 months to know who our daughter is. I keep remembering that this is God's plan and not our own. Even though this is truth, it does not make the waiting any easier. It is frustrating. Frustrating to see others who started the process later than we did, get referrals and court dates and getting closer to bringing their children home, when it seems we are still far away from this reality. Maybe today is frustrating for me because I am still not feeling well and Tyler is still dealing with croup. This is how I was feeling this morning and then I went on Youtube and found the following videos; which help me remember what and why we are doing this. We are doing this for God's glory to give another child a chance at life. God is good, all of the time. These videos answer questions for others; like why adopt when you are both healthy and able to have kids biologically? Why Africa? Why Ethiopia? Family and Friends, this is why! May God bless you and lead you to help make a difference. What are you doing today?

Guess what we did?

I guess in all this crazy waiting we have truly lost our minds. We decided to get the kids a dog! He is absolutely adorable and we named him Jack! Actually Tyler named him Jack. He is a 4 month old Goldendoodle and is very sweet. Everyone says that a dog is "good therapy." All the boys are just loving him, but Tyler is especially fond of him. He runs in the house, yelling "Jack, Jack!"
Got a love it. Our agency gave out a baby boy referral today; which is wonderful. Hopefully more referrals will keep on coming. It is just amazing to see God's handy work in all of this.