Thank you.

We have lots of magnets ready to be delivered and a thank you blog post is long over due. So here it is. Thank you. Thank you for coming along side of us for the sake of our next child for our family. Thanks for your words of encouragement and for your prayers. There is no way to explain how much we appreciate it.

Because of your support we have our first home-study meeting on March 8th!!! Keep praying and stay tuned for more ways to join our journey!!

A piece of our hearts

Since filling out our application to adopt from DR Congo we have not stopped thinking about our baby. Right now we are narrowing down some choices for our home study and just wanting to get the ball rolling. Of course the reality of everything is setting in- so our minds have been racing trying to come up with our first fundraising project.

Will you partner with us in our effort? We are selling Africa magnets. Each magnet has a small heart in the area where DR Congo is located. The suggested donation is $10. These are very simple magnets, but can also serve as a reminder to pray for our little one. If you would prefer you could have a pin or a hair clip instead (I have worn one or the other everyday this week!). Lylah also tried one on!!

Are you ready to join us? If you would like to place an order you can email me at lara.mattingly81@gmail.com OR leave a comment here OR message me on facebook. Oh and please spread the word however you can!! We are praying for a loaves and fish sized miracle!! Thanks in advance for your love and partnership!

And so the journey begins

Nathan and I have been talking about adoption for a long time. Actually we began foster care classes in 2008 but then I found out I was pregnant and so we stopped going mainly because I was ready for bed before 7:30! Now that Lylah is 18 months old we have been talking a lot about our desire for a second child. Adoption had not left our hearts so it in fact came up again with these discussions. This time we began talking and praying about international adoption specifically through Congo. In our research we found that one in five children in Congo die before the age of five. Many children are forced to become soldiers or the girls become sex slaves. So after even more prayer we sent off an adoption application this morning. We will be using One World Adoption Services as our agency. Please join us in prayer and consider partnering with us (more info on how coming later). We realize this will be a journey of faith as it will surely come with trials, but we believe that in the end we will not only be making a difference in a beautiful child's life, but also bringing glory to our Heavenly Father who adopted us. If you have questions or would like to partner with us right away feel free to email me lara.mattingly81@gmail.com

Thanks in advance for joining with us on this journey!! Here are some sweet pictures of children in Congo (pulled off of google images). Be ready to fall in love. Pray!

18 months

Eighteen months with our lil lady seems like a blur at times, but we are enjoying every minute for sure!! Today was suppose to be Lylah's appt but because of the snow we opted for rescheduling. So, we had a great day playing together!! We started out our day making cinnamon roll toast that was oh so yummy!! Then we played babies most of the morning. Lylah loves to play babies!! She loves playing babies more than anything. In fact I have a whole post on that coming later. Lylah enjoyed her first PB&J for lunch. After a nap we had some snow fun.

Yep, we made an indoor snow man with real snow and Lylah wanted to squeeze him just like one of her babies!! In fact she cried when I put him outside on the roof by her room!! Later when Nathan got home we went to an indoor play pace in bowling green. Lylah's favorite thing there was a little toy vacuum. She buzzed all over the place with it.

At eighteen months Lylah amazes me with how quickly she is learning. She is also really starting to use her imagination during play, which I love!! She is always making associations and her memory is so good that it's sometimes strange! I love having little conversations with her. I can tell she really understands the things she hears. She is also starting to put two word sentences together sich as "baby sleep" or "daddy up". She is still quite the little signer-recently she has taken a liking to alphabet signs!! We realized last week that she actually knows her abc's if you are signing them!! I still think she gets her personality from her daddy. She is such a little funny lady!! She also has learned the meaning of "no" just in the past couple of days and she says it A LOT!! Either way we love her to bits!! Cant get enough of this cheese smile!!

February 2nd and our favorite groundhog

Happy Groundhog Day!! In case you didn't hear the groundhog predicts that spring is right around the corner! Sounds good to me. I'm ready for more days like this:

But since I've never been one to put much hope in groundhog weather predictions, we'll just keep on having inside fun! Tonights inside fun had a groundhog theme. First we watched a groundhog story. Lylah loved it so much that we actually watched it like 3 times!!! She kept clapping her hands and saying, "YAY!". Too cute!! After that we made a groundhog headband. Lylah really liked her hat for about 3 minutes and then she ripped it up :) Finally, we had a groundhog treat (small candy bar, m&m ears and nose, choco chip eyes, and sprinkle teethe) thanks to the first grade class at school! I don't think I need to comment on if Lylah liked it :).

All of that was lots of fun, but the best part of our groundhog day was celebrating our favorite "groundhog's" birthday!!

We love you Dad (Poppy)!!