We’re back online… and we apologize for the delay.

As many of you know this past week Brandon’s grandmother passed away somewhat unexpectedly. Mary Lou Holloway is his stepdad’s mom and was very much beloved by the whole family. Brandon had the privilege of speaking at her funeral and in the last two days we have been enjoying time with family we haven’t seen in a while. We will return home Monday night and will be taking two additional days of vacation in order to prepare for our upcoming season of work and to finish up adoption stuff!

Over the last few days adoption has been heavily on our minds. You see Mary Lou and her husband Marvin fostered 56 children, 1 of whom they adopted–Gail Holloway. In addition to this they had three biological sons. The Holloways loved children.

Brandon’s mom married Randy Holloway when Brandon was 10 years old and from the time he entered the Holloway family he was a grandson. Not a step-grandson, not an adopted grandson, he was a grandson!

This was just Mary Lou. Blood wasn’t necessary for you to be considered family.

In the past few days Brandon and I have regretted that Mary Lou can’t share in our adoption journey. We very much feel like she is the one that would understand best. But we have also rejoiced over the opportunity to add one more adopted child into this wonderful family. We love that this is a family that will recognize our child as family, regardless of a blood connection. We also look forward to our child finding individuals in the family who share and understand their experience.

What we are finding is that more and more we are becoming adoptive parents, even before we have a child. You see each training session we do, and each book we read is teaching us more about this wonderful journey we have begun. And we already love this child even though we know nothing about them… It’s been a great process!

So, to update you on how things are going. Tuesday morning we have our home visit and with that will conclude our home study. It’s gone by very, very fast! Hopefully within the next week we will also have our profile book in pretty good shape so that by the start of August we can officially be waiting. Wow! I can’t believe how fast it has gone.

But at the same time, we know that this will bring new feelings and emotions. You see up until this point we have had lots of work to do which has kept us busy! Now we are looking at the waiting process which is a little intimidating. We have no idea what the time frame for this process will be. We can only wait.

Thank you for praying for us. We appreciate your continued prayers for us as we complete our homestudy, finish up our profile book and enter into the waiting process. Pray with us for our child and the relationship we will have with their birthmom.

And stay tuned for more updates… hopefully we won’t have additional interruptions and will be back to our regular schedule!

grace and peace,

Amy (& Brandon)