You want one?

Wow, we have been incredibly blessed and humbled by the generous outpouring of support from our family, friends, and even strangers to us. Our t-shirt pre-orders have been so encouraging. There are still a few days left to get your pre-order in by the end of the year. Click here for more information on placing your order.

In adoption news, we completed our orientation interview with Lifeline and plan to begin the lengthy home study process at the beginning of the year. We covet your prayers as we begin the "paper chase" portion of bringing Lottie home.

God has blessed us tremendously in affirming our decision to begin the adoption process. His faithfulness to provide has strengthened us as we move to the next step of our journey.

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas this week, we pray you will each praise God for the Savior that came as a tiny baby, to live as a servant, and die a death that we deserve. In doing so, Jesus payed the price for our adoption as God's children.

"Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings, ris'n with healing in His wings. Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth. Hark! the herald angels sing, 'Glory to the newborn King.'" - Charles Wesley

Luke is 9 months old!

Luke - 9 months old

Hello,

Merry Christmas everybody! I am enjoying every minute of my first Christmas season and can't believe we get to do this every year! I'm crawling full speed ahead now, and cannot be stopped. My favorite targets these days are the Christmas tree and the fireplace. I like to keep my folks hopping.

In other recent news, as soon as I learned to crawl I started pulling up on anything and everything. One of my favorite things to do is get into a standing position leaning against the most random possible things I can find. Making my Mom nervous cracks me up!

The picture below is Abigail's puppy dog picture. She insisted on one too after my monthly shot with the dog.

I got another A+ report from my doctor this month and weigh in at 19 pounds, 5 ounces. I measure 29 inches in length too. Not to shabby, right?

I leave you with a couple of pictures of our Christmas celebration with Coach and Nana this week.

Merry Christmas,

Luke

Love for Lottie Shirts

Here it is, our first official fundraiser for Lottie! We are selling t-shirts to help offset some of our adoption costs and are so excited about the design. A dear friend, Nick Nitsch, was so kind to do the design for us. Here is the design and the details:

• The t-shirts are brown with a light blue design (the picture looks pretty dark, but they are brown).
• They come in adult sizes S, M, L, XL, & 2X as well as kids sizes S, M, L, & XL.
• Adult t-shirts are $20 and kids sizes are $15.
• If you are in the Jackson Metro Area, we can hand deliver them to you. All others, we will ship them to your door. Please add $3 for shipping costs when ordering.
• We plan on making our first order by the end of the year. We will take pre-orders up until Friday, December 30th and will order extras for future sales past that date. Pre-ordering will ensure that we have your size!
• There are a few ways to order:

1. Comment on this post or email me at glohunsberger@gmail.com to place a pre-order.
2. Click the "donate" button on the sidebar to purchase a shirt using your PayPal account, credit card, or bank account. After entering your payment information through the secure website you will be directed to a page where you can confirm your donation. On that page is a link to "Add special instructions to the seller." Click this link to provide us information about the sizes you want and a shipping address if necessary.
3. See one of us in person or flag us on Facebook to place your order.

We can't wait to wear our t-shirts in support of sweet Lottie! Let us know if you have any questions.

Launching our Adoption Fund

As you read in an earlier post here, our family has recently begun the adoption process. We will be using our blog to keep you informed about every part of our journey including opportunities for you to help in bringing Lottie home. We are extremely grateful for any financial help you give toward our adoption and want to be completely transparent about how we use the money donated. So, consider this our "Adoption Fund Fine Print."

Here are just a few things we want you to know when donating to our adoption fund:

• Money donated through our PayPal account (the "Donate" button on our blog) is subject to a PayPal fee of 2.9% + $0.30 for each transaction if paid by credit card. This means that if you donate $10 to our adoption fund we see $9.41 of it. We feel the fees associated with PayPal are completely worth it for the ease and security that PayPal offers.
• We have set up a separate bank account specifically for our adoption fund. All financial gifts given toward our adoption will be held in this particular account to ensure they are kept separate from our day-to-day money. Our PayPal account is linked directly to this bank account as well.
• You are welcome to send a donation through the mail if you do not wish to use PayPal. Email me at glohunsberger@gmail.com for our mailing address.
• Please feel free to ask about details associated with the cost of our adoption if you have any questions. In response to your generosity, we see it as our responsibility to keep track of every penny spent throughout this process.

Again, we are incredibly thankful for your support and look forward to telling Lottie about each of you that help to bring her home through prayer and support.

For Our Many Blessings

We had a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving and enjoyed it with the Gladney extended family at Lake Bruin.

Abigail and Joshua were in heaven with so many fun things to do indoors and out. It was fun watching them play together more than just playing around each other. They are both growing so fast!

The zip line and rope swing were big hits. Their confidence grew each time they tried it and by the end of the week they were zip lining without help and swinging as high as we could push!

They also enjoyed climbing trees ...
riding in wheelbarrows ...
and doing crafts with Aunt B!
By the end of each night, they were exhausted.
Thanksgiving Day also happened to be Abigail's third birthday! Not to be outdone by the turkey holiday, we hosted a Cinderella birthday party that morning. Here is her homemade birthday cake that, thankfully, tasted better than it looked!
So much love for one little girl!

She was so cute opening presents and really focused on each one. She would gasp with excitement at the first glance of EVERY present!

This is one happy Cinderella! Happy 3rd Birthday Abigail!
Oh yeah, Luke was there too! Poor baby didn't get much camera time. He devoured his sweet potato Thanksgiving dinner and chased it with some Puffs!

We sure did miss spending the week with this crew below! Can't wait for 2013 to ...

sit around these tables and ...

enjoy this yummy spread!

We are so blessed! Thanks be to God!

Future American Idol

I'll let the videos speak for themselves. Enjoy!

Another new post below!

Luke is 8 months old!

Luke - 8 Months Old

Hi Everybody,

Well, I turned 8 months old on November 10th but am just now finding a few minutes to update all of you. I had the croup and an ear infection that sidelined me for just a few days but have bounced back with extra steam since then. I've been really busy playing with my sister these days. She is really pretty nice to me!

I've also been busy trying to learn to crawl. I think I'm getting pretty close, but not quite there yet. For some reason, I can go in reverse but haven't learned to put it in drive yet. Maybe I will just keep crawling backwards wherever I want to go.
Still no teeth to report. Not for my lack of trying for sure. I will put anything into my mouth that I can get my hands on. It's my favorite hobby.
I am also really looking forward to my first Thanksgiving and spending time with some family that rarely gets to see me. I foresee four full days of getting anything I want (I mean Aunt B will be there for goodness sakes). Since Tom Tom will be there, I am working on my baseball signs so we can speak our own language to each other!
I'll tell Mom to give you a full report of all of the fun soon.

Later,

Luke