End of Summer trip to Michigan!

I am so excited for Fall! It is definitely my favorite season. The only drawback is that Winter will follow. Last week we went on a trip up to South Haven, Michigan and rented a house near Lake Michigan. We went with with our good friends Brian and Jenn, and Adam and Renee who also have little boys of their own: Brady is 21 months and Jackson is 6 months. It was so fun to have them all together! We had a great time and except for a couple of days of cooler weather, it was a great trip to end our Summer! Enjoy the pics!

Court Date!

We got the call last Thursday from our social worker letting us know our court hearing will be on Wednesday October 27th! We were thrilled since we were expecting it to be in November. She told us we need to arrive on Monday and we can leave any day after Wednesday. We are planning on leaving Thursday, October 21st and returning the following Saturday, October 30th. We will actually be flying into Tanzania on Friday, Oct. 22nd to visit some friends of ours who are missionaries there, then we'll be flying up to Ethiopia on Monday. We are not able to visit the orphanage on the weekends, so the earliest we can see Amaya would be Monday. We have heard that we should be able to visit with her each day for about 2-3 hours. I know it is going to be awful returning home without her, but we pray the time will pass quickly before our next trip. Here are some prayer requests as we approach this first trip:

~ Pray the court date does not change! Our social worker said to try to get airline tickets that we will be able to change just in case something comes up and our court date needs changed. Pray that nothing comes up!

~Pray we pass court the first time! It is not uncommon to fail court 1 or 2 times because of missing paperwork or other minor legalities. We will not have to travel again if we fail to pass court the first time, but we do not want to have any delays in getting Amaya home!

~Logan- Okay, so this is more of a prayer request for me. I am so excited to travel to meet our little girl but as we are planning our trip, I get very sad thinking about leaving Logan for so long. Pray I will be at peace about leaving him and that he would do well with family and friends. We know he will be spoiled rotten!

~Meeting Amaya! Pray that she would come to us without fear and hesitation, especially Ryan. As we have listened to others' stories of meeting their children, it seems they have a difficult time bonding with the Father. We are praying that Amaya gets comfortable around us and that we do not lose the bond we make with her over the 4-5 weeks before our next trip.

Thank you all so much for your prayers! We appreciate it!

Baby Brother!

No, Logan is not going to have a baby brother....Logan is going to BE the baby brother! About 4 weeks ago we received a referral for a 16 month old girl from Ethiopia! We were told that when we activated our adoption things would mover fairly quickly and they certainly did. We have received several pictures of her and she is beautiful. We're not allowed to post pictures of her until we bring her home so you will just have to trust us. :-) We submitted the acceptance paperwork in mid-July, and we received an email just last week that the adoption agency has officially filed for a court date. We are looking at the last week of October or early November, and hope to hear in a couple of weeks. After the court date, we'll travel home and then wait 4-6 weeks to return to Ethiopia to pick her up and hopefully have her home by Christmas.

1st Trip of the Summer

We just returned from a ten day trip out to Pennsylvania. It was a work trip for Ryan but we also saw some family and friends of Ryan's because he grew up there. Logan was not too happy about the long car ride. If he wasn't sleeping he was awake and crying, so we had to make a few extra stops to let him have some time out of the car seat. We did have a couple of rough nights of sleep (which were most likely from Logan being sick) but overall, he adjusted well to napping and sleeping in his pack n' play and he really enjoyed meeting a bunch of new people. A week from today we leave for out 2nd trip of the summer to Seattle, which is one of our favorite places to go. This will be Logan's first airplane ride, so hopefully he won't be the screaming baby that everyone is annoyed by. We are also curious to see how he adjusts to the 3 hour time difference. Hopefully we won't have too many days of waking up at 4 AM. Here are some pics from Pennsylvania:

These first two pictures are of Logan with a little boy named Jackson. Jackson is the son of one of Ryan's good friends growing up. Jackson is just 10 days older than Logan. They were very cute together!

Logan meeting his Great-Grandma Foust for the first time.

Logan with Great-Grandma Aughton.

And finally, we couldn't stop through State College without Logan meeting Joe Paterno. :)

Pool Time

On Tuesday, Aunt Nikki came down to visit and we went to the pool. I had taken Logan a couple of times before but this was the first time he got to try out his new float (which I got at a garage sale for $2. :) ) He loved it, and it was nice to let him float around instead of having to hold him on my lap the entire time. She got some great pictures and here are just a few. Yay for summer!!

June 10, 2010

This date is an important one in the Foust family. Not only is it Logan's 6 month birthday but it is also the date that we activate our adoption. We can't believe it is already here! Our adoption specialist said to expect a referral in a little less than a month from activating it, which means we will know if Logan is going to have a little (or older) brother or sister by the end of the summer. We are so excited and can't wait to see the child that God has chosen for us.

Friday morning Logan goes in for his 6 month appointment. We can't wait to see how big he is. We have introduced solid food and he has been eating green beans, peas, sweet potatoes, squash, and bananas. He has enjoyed all of them so far. He continues to spend most of his time on his belly and he is working hard at lifting his chest in preparation for crawling. We are also working on sitting alone. Here are some 6 month pics.

We dedicated Logan at church on Sunday, June 6.

Deciding if he likes green beans or not.

Rice Cereal

This morning we tried the first cereal feeding with Logan. Here is a before picture.

He wasn't sure what to think of it at first, but he did a great job of opening his mouth nice and wide so we could get the spoon far enough in. He spit it out a couple times but we think he got most of it down. Here are some pics, as you can see he really wanted to eat his bib instead. :)

And here is the after picture.