One

Well, it's been one month waiting for our referral. One down, 7-13+ to go! I've been living in a constant state of what if. 

What if it's more like 18 months?

What if something goes wrong in our personal life and messes everything up?

What if I'm not cut out to wait this long?

And it's only been ONE month!

Well, I said at the beginning that I had goals to accomplish while waiting. So here's where we are on the goals:

1. Be Healthier!

Gotta say, this could have gone better. I've been going to Weight Watchers meetings since mid-summer and have only lost 5 pounds. I have only lost about a half a pound in this month waiting. I definitely am going to have to step it up and get healthier. I need to have more energy!

2. Be more organized!

This is going well! This month I rearranged the living room to put Z's toys along the one wall and not in the middle of the floor. This has giving us a lot more room to play and work and not feel so cramped. I also cleaned the desk and organized the paperwork! 

In addition to working on the living room I also worked on the kitchen and set up some new shelving that cleaned off the counters and left me with much more usable counter space!

The next project is to clear out the upstairs storage room and move my crafting stuff in there to create a true 4th bedroom upstairs. This will definitely be documented with pictures as it will be quite the transformation!

3. Get a better budget!

Still need to work on this. Made some good strides, but still am not where I'd like to be. We did pay off one student loan this month that we've been working on 6 years now!! But we also still ate out much more than we should have and spent too much on food. This is so linked to my problems with getting healthy! New habits coming soon!

We also had to make some repairs on the house again. Ah, the joys of a 100 year old home! At least the gutter won't be leaking all winter!

4. Making more time for family!

This one is going pretty well! We've got a lot of great ideas for moving the ministry forward and had some great talks with the director of Shepherd Community Center in Indy a few weeks ago that have given us a renewed vision for what we need to do to make this ministry sustainable. Sustainable ministry = more family time! So we're excited about that. Here's some pics for you to enjoy of our family time today at the Lebanon Rail Road!

Just getting going on the train!

Z looking out the window. He loves trains!

Mama, me and Z. T wouldn't come out until Abe coerced him too. He said trains are dangerous to walk on!

On the pumpkin farm!

Z the pumpkin face!

T the pumpkin face!

Sleeping boys!

Overall, I think I've made ok progress for the first month waiting. More progress to come. More time to pass. More waiting to do. Closer and closer to Ethiopia we creep. :-)