The Dotted Line

***Quick Update on my brother.  He got out of surgery at about 10:00 last night.  The doctor was completely monotoned but said they believe they got all that they could, which is good news.  I suppose a doctor would never claim to have removed it all.  Last I spoke with my parents, he was in recovery and would be there for at least 4 or 5 hours.  They were hoping to go see him by midnight.  He should be groggy, but waking up today and I cannot wait to hear his voice.  
We now move on to the next step of healing his head and waiting the grueling 4 days for the pathology report to come in.  I am fully claiming that it was benign and that he is now a perfectly healthy, buzz cut sporting dude.
Thank you from the bottom of my soul for your encouraging words last night.  I knew I could count on each of you.


Now on to some happy stuff....


If you don't read every line of every post, you may have missed our added treat on Halloween.

In between running from one side of the county to the other, we made an important stop at the DFACS office to sign on the dotted line for Gabriel!

*excuse the awful phone pictures.  I was too embarrassed to bring in my real camera*

We are now fully responsible for the little bugger.

Our trial period is over.

No refund policy.

Ours forever.

He even got to sign off on his new name.

I loved that Josie got to come with us.

She has really been talking about adoption a lot the past couple months and it was awesome for her to get to listen and see us signing all the paperwork.

Gabriel was a wee bit excited too and spent the entire meeting running from one side of the room to the other.

Pretty sure he was feeding off our emotions.

That or just burning off all the cupcakes he ate at The Goodman's Halloween party.

Either way, we are one step closer to wrapping this one up.

Now we have to bring a letter to our lawyer to start the petition process.  He will request more papers from DFACS, which they said they have ready to go, then request a court date.

It's still going to be pushing it, but I'm starting to think we may get our wish of being official by Christmas!

I'm off to start reading this insane amount of paperwork outlining his whole 22 months of life.

I can't wait to read about the day he was born and the details of his heart surgeries.  All the little things that have gone unanswered are tucked away in this huge stack.

The timing couldn't have been better since November is National Adoption Awareness Month.

I have some awesome guest bloggers coming up this month that are going to share their adoption stories with you.

Each one a testimony of how awesome God is and how He creates families in so many different ways!

I hope you'll come back and read their stories and be encouraged.

"God sets the lonely in families."

- Psalm 68:6