I was looking forward to September being a bit calmer and more focused after the chaos and stress of our summer. It wasn’t.

At the beginning of the month, we went to Denver for Bekah’s Run. It was a beautiful day– Bekah touched so many lives and seeing everyone come together for this day was incredible. Such a beautiful community of people coming together to remember Bekah and support Love Without Boundaries.

Aaron and I spent that weekend kid-free, so we did lots of hiking. We had a great time.

This is probably one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken. It was on our drive back home from Colorado.

We visited the sunflower field again. I love this place.

The next week, my mom came out for a garage sale. She spend the whole week organizing donations. It was a huge project. Between the two days of the garage sale, we made $600!

I felt relieved to have the garage sale over. And, as I was returning borrowed tables one morning, someone pulled out of an alley and hit our van. Fortunately, Gus and I, the only ones in the van at the time, were totally fine. The other driver was very apologetic. Gus yelled at him, saying “You crashed-ed our car! You shouldn’t do that”. Despite the fact that it was a very minor accident, the damage on our van was enough for it to be “totaled”.

Ugh. We knew we’d need to replace ours soon due to the age and high mileage, but this wasn’t a decision or expense that we wanted to take on during our adoption. It’s been a very consuming and daunting task to find a new van that is a good fit for our family. We bought one this weekend. It was a tremendous relief to have that figured out.

The day of the accident was also the day that our homestudy review was supposed to be done. It ended up taking a few more days, but OUR HOME STUDY IS DONE. Our i600a application is mailed, and will arrive on Monday!

Now we wait on USCIS and fundraise and fill out grant applications while we wait.

We have been majorly blessed by our family and friends this month. I will not tell you that the adoption process is easy, but we’ve been surrounded with the help and prayers of friends and family. We have a community that loves Luda already and keeps me going through doubt and frustration.

Come check out our auction!

Speaking of how wonderful our community is– a friend of mine is putting on an auction for us– there are tons of great items available! It runs until 9pm on October 7. Please check it out!