The Print

  We bought our house almost exactly a year ago, knowing it needed some updates.  New paint colors in every room was one of our requests.  As new homeowners tend to do, we got ambitious.  In about one weekend, with the help of my parents, we painted our living room, kitchen, and bedroom.  Then, you may guess, we lost steam.  We painted the bathroom this winter but our desire to paint our spare bedroom and office got overshadowed by life.  We just didn't have time and we had bigger issues--like new flooring in every room.  So, a year passed and we didn't repaint the rooms.  These rooms, you must know, were no "builder beige."  No, the spare room, or the IC room as it's come to be known, is a delightful color we've called "Smurf."  Whatever you are thinking in your head, I promise you, it looked worse.  We had gray renters carpet in there that made it even brighter and when we would bring people in, the first thing they would say was, "Woah!"

So, flash forward to this summer. We installed a light laminate into our bedrooms, and suddenly, the paint was tolerable. More than tolerable, in fact, we decided we would think about keeping it.  We are adopting a baby boy, after all, so blue would be more than acceptable.  With new flooring, it looked less Smurf and more playful.  We decided not to decide but were leaning toward keeping it the blue we thought we hated. Hold that thought.

One of the cool things about adopting, and keeping an adoption blog, is getting to know other people who are or have been in our shoes.  One such couple is the Hale Family at Love is Waiting.  We've been following their blog for a while, purchasing t-shirts to help them on their journey, and praying for their Little Man Arthur.  They just got to meet Arthur this summer, in fact, and he will make his journey home soon.  We feel blessed to keep up with their story (they are also the people we stole the puzzle idea from and their names will hang in our little man's room when he comes home). So, they have an amazing store, which you should visit if you like helping adoptive families.  They did a cool giveaway for families who are adopting from Ethiopia this week.  They have a print that the talented Heather created, and they gave it away to families who commented and were adopting from Ethiopia. The print has an awesome Ethiopian minibus with the symbol on the ET flag carrying suitcases on top.  See for yourself how cool this print is here.  I had looked at getting it before but since we weren't sure about IC's room yet, I'd held off.  Well, it came in the mail this week and I held off tears.  Guess how perfectly it fits in the IC room?  The colors are, amazingly, identical.

See?

And people out there doubt God's sovereignty:).