Randomness For Your Friday

1. We have chosen a name for our baby boy....drum role please...we are naming him Elijah Ivan Williams! His given name is Ivan which means "God is Gracious", how cool is that?? I would definitely agree. :) They currently call him Vonya which is a derivative of Ivan. We had much debate about changing his name but feel very confident about our decision.

2. I posted a ton of pictures from our trip on Facebook...nothing too exciting since we still can't post pictures of Elijah, but they are Russia pictures none the less. If we're not yet friends on Facebook, look me up! (Lisa Houston Williams)

3. We are so ready to go back to Russia. Surprise I know. This is hard!! I knew it would be and honestly, God is giving us the strength to make it through each day and we can feel Him holding us up...but it's not easy leaving your son a half a world away and not having any idea when you will be able to hold him again. I have an ache that just won't go away...I'm constantly nauseous and don't have much of an appetite. Want a way to lose weight? Try adopting and leaving your child in a foreign country.

4. The biggest prayer request...well there are several...but a pressing prayer request is that our FBI clearances will be processed so so quickly!! We have completed all of the paperwork that is in our control (we worked on it literally all last week...I mean it's crazy the paperwork that is needed!!) and are now just waiting on these clearances (even though we already have had FBI clearances). FBI told me that they are taking about 8 weeks but we have been told by other adoptive families that they have taken about 5 weeks. Regardless, we know that God is bigger than paperwork and can get those things processed! Please join us in prayer that they are processed quickly!!!

5. We miss our son.

6. I have had to be fingerprinted 5 times for this adoption. How absurd is that?? Last week when we got fingerprinted they had to take us back in the holding room at the jail. There were inmates staring at us through the windows on their holding cells the entire time we were back there!! It was really nerve wrecking!!

7. Another thing we had to have completed were psychologicals. Thankfully with my job, we have contract staff that are therapists at a nearby clinic. One of them is amazing and was able to get Barry and I in to see a clinical psychologist there within a few days of calling her. She also cut us a GIGANTIC discount. Such a blessing!! We had to take the PAI and have a clinical interview with the psychologist. I was scared they were going to diagnose me with OCD or something (I have been accused of this by several people...) but thankfully we passed. :)

8. We miss our son.

9. It wasn't fun coming back to work after being out of the office for three weeks.

10. Some of our friends are throwing us a baby shower the end of the month and I'm so excited!!!

11. We've been having so much fun showing off his pictures to anyone and everyone! I mean, we've shown them to our bank teller, the lady at CVS, the police station, our nurse...when we were trying to get paperwork processed quickly I would show him to whoever was helping and it worked wonders!! There's no way you can look at his little face and not want to work hard to get him here!!

12. We painted Elijah's room and it looks great! It was very stressful picking out bedding and the paint color. I mean seriously stressful. I've waited so long to decorate a nursery!! Here's a picture...the rest of the furniture is still in the hall and we're now trying to decide if we want to leave it all blue or if we want to do something else with it...

13. Have I mentioned that we miss our son?