It's Turned In!

I almost had a hard time letting go of it - this stack of papers with a checklist of 40+ things on top and every box checked off...but Wednesday afternoon, I turned it in to Serenity! Woo hoo!  So what now?

Here's this week's update -

- There are only three things left to turn in for the packet, all of which are "on their way" in the mail!

- From here, Serenity will take a few weeks to go through our whole packet and get us scheduled for a home inspection. We now wait for a phone call from them to schedule.

- Although all the big stuff is done for the inspection, we will still need to clean the house from top to bottom before then.  (Can I just express how daunting this idea is? Seriously - every window and wall and baseboard? I can't even remember the last time this happened to our house. We feel like we might need to get a babysitter to watch the girls just so we can CLEAN. Romantic, right?)  :)

- BEDS. The bad news - not only does the age limit of "5 for top bunk" apply to our kids too, on Wednesday I found out the rules have changed again and the new age is now SIX! This is a huge bummer because the girls' room is pretty small, and it means rearranging all the beds in all three rooms to accommodate this silly, silly rule. So if you know of anyone with a toddler bed (or two), we would be grateful - otherwise, we think we will have to go the trundle bed route (with our girls - the boys can't have trundles), and I'll have to take the chair out of their room. Would you pray we figure this new obstacle out? And if you had a toddler bed, how long did it last for you?  (We highly doubt Chloe would make it to 5 in a toddler bed, but this is what we are going to try...)

- The van. Everything is fixed, registered, and up to date...except the air conditioner. We took it in one last time, only for the mechanic to tell us he didn't have the one special tool for the one special part to fix it. It's just comical! HA!

The girls: they are excited for the boys' arrival, and talking about it regularly.  We would appreciate your prayers for wisdom as we try to explain to them why it might be hard, and why they can't have bunk beds (insert emotional 3 year old crying every time I mention it).  But it's pretty cute to hear a two year old say, "da bruhders can play wif my doll, but not my pooh bear banket, okay?"  :)

Things to celebrate today:
As most of you already saw, Tuesday we found out the insurance is settling on my car for so, so much more than we thought we could sell it for! The quote, plus a random donation from a friend, is almost exactly what we paid for the dud of a van. We are SO, so thankful the Lord used this awful situation to show His redemption. Praise Him, peoples! 

CHLOE IS DIAPER FREE! We potty trained her this last week, and she finally gave up and went #2 in the potty yesterday! Pretty exciting.

Dan is my hero. On his "week off", he got the van fixed, did wash, prepped his Pop Show, reorganized all the locks on the cabinets, reorganized the garage, took down an entire tree, did his Dr. appt., got his truck inspected, and potty trained Chloe while I was at work! Can you say SUPERDAD? :)

And to top it all off, the girls both slept through the night last night for the first time in a while.  Woo hoo!

Keep the prayers coming, folks - it's powerful stuff! Specific prayer requests this week:
- Pray that Serenity can move swiftly on our application and inspection. The longer they take, the less time we get in the summer with the boys.

- Pray for the girls' hearts as we begin to implement all the strange rules. Pray for wisdom for us as parents as we talk and pray about it.

- Would you pray for my mom and grandmother? GG (great-grandma) isn't doing well.

- Would you continue to pray for our finances? As we project having four kids in full time preschool, well, let's just say we are stepping out in faith and trying to find creative ways to cut back spending.

- And last, please pray for those little boys. It isn't lost on us that for these boys to need another home in May probably means they are suffering through trauma as I type this. Would you pray this trauma will be as minimal on them as possible? Would you pray they would sense the Lord is with them even now? Would you pray for redemption for the whole situation? And would you pray for the smoothest transition as possible? This whole thing is about them. May we be faithful in caring for the least of these...