And so it begins...

We have BIG news....we are officially beginning the adoption process!! We have sent in our initial application to Lifeline, which is the agency we have decided to adopt through. (Side note: They are an amazing christian agency that is completely gospel centered and I would highly recommend them for anyone thinking of adopting or doing foster care or just looking for a great cause to support!) We have a long journey ahead of us but we are so excited to begin! We are planning to adopt a baby boy anywhere between 0-2 years old from Ethiopia. I plan to update the blog in the near future with more details on our decision to adopt, why we chose Ethiopia, and specific information on Ethiopia. We also plan to sell t-shirts on our blog and maybe do a few other fundraisers to help with the cost.

We are so blessed to have dear friends who are in the final stages of adopting their sweet little boy, Jeremiah, from Ethiopia and other friends who are beginning the process at the same time as us! God is so good! It is crazy how he works everything out. 

Dan and I firmly believe that Christians are called to care for the orphans. I don't mean to say that every Christian is to adopt, but we can all commit to some form of orphan care. Whether it be praying for the fatherless, supporting others who are adopting, doing foster care, adopting, or taking part in other orphan ministries. We have no doubt that adoption is something God wants for us and we are thrilled! We by no means think it will be an easy road and we know our family will be forever changed. However, we also know that we serve a great God and we are trusting Him to be by our side through it all! Here are two scriptures that we cling to: 

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.     James 1:27

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.       Romans 8:14-16

Favorite Things

Just wanted to share a few of my favorite things, in no particular order....
My husband Dan. He is the love of my life, a wonderful father to our children, and a godly man who is constantly striving to bring glory to God every day.

My three girls, Mary Claire, Lilly Jane, and Elsie. They bring so much joy and laughter to our home.

Photography. I am blessed to be second shooter to an amazing photographer, not to mention one of my best friends, Alyson Clemons with Eternal Reflections Photography. This picture is from the most recent wedding we shot.

Coffee. I am absolutely obsessed with coffee. I'm sure my teeth don't appreciate my coffee drinking habit.

Listening to my girls pray. There is something so pure and inocent about listening to a child pray. Childlike faith is such a beautiful thing.

Watching my girls play. Mary Claire and Lilly have become so independent. I love to watch and listen in on their play time. It is amazing the things they come up with! I also love watching Elsie develop; I am enjoying each stage of her life so much!

My journaling Bible. Spending time in God's word is one of the most important parts of my day. I am in love with my journaling Bible since I am a huge advocate of writing in Bibles and it gives me plenty of room to do so!

Music. It has always been and will always be a huge part of my life! I attribute this to my Dad. I particularly enjoy listening to vinyls.

Plants. I have to admit that these are fake plants, but they photographed better. I actually do have several live plants that I love as well.

Books, books, books. It is my opinion that you can never have too many books. Once again, I attribute my opinion on books to my Dad.

Cooking with the girls. They love to help in the kitchen!

Orphans. By this I don't meant to imply that I love that children are orphans, but that I have a heart for the orphans of the world. I believe as a Christian, God has made it clear throughout scripture that we are to care for the orphans. God has placed it on our hearts that for our family the way to do that is through adoption. We plan to begin the process of adopting a little boy, most likely from Ethiopia, in the near future.

Most of all, my Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Without Him I am nothing. It is impossible for me to articulate what my faith in Christ means to me. I pray every day that God will enable me to take up my cross and follow Him and to be a light in this dark world. I believe my sole purpose in this life is to bring glory to God by multiplying the gospel of Christ. I make many mistakes along the way, but praise God for his mercy and forgiveness!

Follow Me by David Platt

I am currently reading David Platt's new book entitled Follow Me.

Here is the book description from Amazon:

What did Jesus really mean when he said, “Follow Me”?

In this new book, David Platt, author of the New York Times bestselling book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, contends that multitudes of people around the world culturally think they are Christians yet biblically are not followers of Christ.

Scores of men, women, and children have been told that becoming a follower of Jesus simply involves believing certain truths or saying certain words. As a result, churches today are filled with people who believe they are Christians . . . but aren’t. We want to be disciples as long as doing so does not intrude on our lifestyles, our preferences, our comforts, and even our religion.

Revealing a biblical picture of what it means to truly be a Christian, Follow Me explores the gravity of what we must forsake in this world, as well as the indescribable joy and deep satisfaction to be found when we live for Christ.

The call to follow Jesus is not simply an invitation to pray a prayer; it’s a summons to lose your life—and to find new life in him. This book will show you what such life actually looks like.

So far I am really enjoying it. I have also read Platt's book Radical, which I highly recommend!

Elsie Kate

I have decided to give this whole blogging thing another try. It has been almost three years since I last posted, which is a little ridiculous I know. I figured what better way to get back into the swing of things than to post about our newest addition to the family....Elsie Katherine Culpepper. She was born October 5, 2013 at Huntsville Hospital. She weighed 5 lbs 9 oz and was 18 inches long. She is absolutely precious and I can't even remember what life was like before her arrival. 

God has blessed us with three beautiful girls and we couldn't be happier! Here is a glimpse of Elsie's nursery....

Here is a more recent picture of our sweet Elsie.....

Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Psalm 127:3

I plan to be posting much more frequently in the future so stay tuned....

drum roll please....dan officially has a job!!! we are excited/relieved and i personally am very proud of him! it seems as though right now it is difficult to find a job unless you know someone or know someone that knows someone....however, dan was able to find a job completely on his own merit. he is working for a engineering company in decatur al called hargrove and associates. he has worked there for two weeks now and so far so good. the only downside is that the girls and i don't get to see him all day every day....but we are adjusting just fine.

in other news, we have had the opportunity in the last month to see all four of our best friends from orlando!! (of course when it came to saying goodbye to them all i cried like a little baby all over again.....) first, we went to tennessee to visit carissa and brian at carissa's parents' house. (oddly enough both my parents and carissa's parents have recently moved to tennessee and they only live about 90 miles apart from one another, which works out great for us!) unfortunately we only got to spend one day with them, but at least we got to see them.

we went to atlanta to see dusty, leah, and, most importantly, their new baby alice! they were up visiting dusty's parents for the weekend to celebrate dusty's sister allison's 30th birthday. we were able to spend the entire weekend with them because the embreys were gracious enough to let us stay there as well. all in all it was a wonderful weekend! the entire embrey clan was in attendance as well as austin and tawnie bryant and shannon and drew ellis (and a lot of other people that i didn't know). lilly's best friend little alice is absolutely beautiful! i just wish they lived closer so we our girls could grow up together. hopefully we will be able to visit each other plenty so they can still be best buds!

lilly jane finally had another pediatrician appointment last week. she weighed 11 lbs 13 oz and was 23 1/4 inches in length. she had to get four different vaccinations, which neither she nor mary claire were too thrilled about. lilly's infancy is definitely flying by way faster than mary claire's did, but we are enjoying every second of it. here are the skills she has now acquired: smiling and laughing (my two favorite), holding her head up while on her stomach, holding her hands together, sleeping through the night, and holding onto toys briefly.

i am lucky enough to have two best friends that are excellent photographers, alyson clemons (http://www.erpbyalyson.com/) and lisa taylor (http://www.twopeasphoto.com/). this past wednesday, alyson was able to take some pictures of lilly for me. we tried to get mary claire to be in some as well, but aly's girls were there and mc was just too busy playing with them to care about being in any pictures. i think we managed to get her in a handful of them but that's about it. here's a little preview....

since we have been in hartselle we have started going to first united methodist church. alyson's dad, john mcfee, teaches our sunday school class, which we have really been enjoying. it is one thing to find a church, but to find a smaller group within that church that you are comfortable with, like a sunday school class, is really a blessing. it also just so happens that they have a service at 9:00 and sunday school at 10:00, which works out perfectly with our girls' schedules!

i think that about wraps it up for now. oh, and the look of the blog has changed a bit because my old template was deleted for some reason. i think i like this one just as well though....

new addition.

where to begin?? it has been quite a while since i have posted anything so this could get a little lengthy....

first and foremost, lilly jane culpepper has arrived and is now actually two and a half months old! her delivery went very well. we arrived at winnie palmer hospital in orlando at 6:30 pm on may 10 and lilly made her debut at 8:56 pm. she weighed in at 6 lbs even and was 19 1/2 inches in length. she has been a great baby since day one! she doesn't cry very much and she is already sleeping through the night.

mary claire just loves being a big sister. she likes to check on lilly during her naps, help change her diapers, give her kisses on the head, tickle her tummy and toes, help read her books, etc. it is absolutely adorable! it is strange how i can hardly remember life before lilly jane now.

we have had another major change since i last posted...we now live back in my hometown of hartselle, al. shortly before lilly was born, dan was laid off from his job in orlando due to lack of work for his company. we looked at it as a blessing in disguise because as a result we decided to move back here. it just so happened that my parents still owned a home here that was not occupied so we could move right in. also, we are close to huntsville, which is a great area for mechanical engineers to find work. best of all, we are much closer to our families and many of our friends! however, it was extremely difficult to leave our best friends in orlando (dusty, leah, carissa, and brian) as well as our family (patrick and jason) and we still miss them very much! ( i'm still hoping they will eventually end up in alabama too!!!!!) anyway, we moved here two weeks after lilly was born so you can imagine how hectic life has been for us lately.

here are some, but not all, of the things we have been doing since the move:

fishing for the first time.

swimming and playing in sprinklers.

going to huntsville stars' baseball games.

boating with doc and nana.

amanda, matt, and baby luke came to visit.

meeting the great-grandparents for the first time, both memaw and pawpaw and grandmother and howard (pictured is the grandmother that lilly jane was named after).

hiking at hurricane creek park with the caves.

celebrating emily anne's birthday/4th of july complete with grill out, fireworks, and fire pit to make s'mores....and yes i dressed mary claire to match emily anne and we made then wear the bandanas meant for the dogs.

visiting the tennessee aquarium to see all pop-pop's fish.

lilly has now met all of dan's immediate family and all of mine with the exception of keith (i called you out...come visit us!). on top of all of this we have been able to spend time with many of our friends (austin & tawnie bryant, aly & pat clemons and their girls, lori scott, lisa taylor, matt willette, and david evans, just to name a few). we are finally getting settled in around here so hopefully i will do a better job of keeping this thing up to date!