A whirlwind weekend

It's been a few days since we've posted anything, and I wanted to take minute to do so, and to say why. This week had been absolutely crazy. The mountain of paperwork I mentioned in my last post, there has been more. More phone calls. More craziness.

What has been the most overwhelming is the generosity of our friends and family. Becky posted last night that I had a surprise at work. One of the guys I work with raised $130 and put it on a gift card, signed by several co-workers, and a couple managers, and said "here, use this to buy the carseat." I've got to say, I'm blown away by the generosity of the people I work with. Becky was too.

We've received several donations, and honestly, they've been coming quickly enough that its hard to keep up. A friend walked up to us at church, 12 hours after our first blog post, and handed us a check for $100 dollars with the memo line "Operation:Adoption!" One of Becky's coworkers gave her a gift card to Target for $100. We got a $10, and a $20 donation through the YouCaring site listed here on the blog, both within hours of our first post. Becky's parents have donated, and today, someone snuck up and left an anonymous gift, a Christmas ornament and $1000 cashier's check that simply said "For Baby." We have been offered car seats, photography sessions, a crib, a pack-n-play, donated milk from a mama who lost her little one two months ago,  and honestly, I'm not even sure what else. Becky has been fielding the texts.

You people, your support, your prayer, your hope and excitement, are overwhelming. I simply don't know a better word for it. I want you to know, we cherish every single one of you. Even just the excitement you have brought to us, has been sustaining. Your gifts are building the story of this little girl, and our journey to bring her home.

We have said, and continue to say, that we don't know how long she'll be a part of our lives. Because of the situation, the accelerated time frame and all, she could be with us for a short time, or a lifetime. Either way, these gifts will go to her care, and, if she ends up being God's gift to another family, they will go helping us bring another child into our home.

Thank you. Thank you.

Now, as is my style, I'm going to submit you to a bit of an anecdote from our first trip to buy baby things. This weekend, we took a trip to Target, to the baby section, and tried to make sense of what all of this stuff is. Now, there are about 300 different sizes of clothes, which was easy enough to navigate. Apparently, I can't seem to figure out what the difference between girl clothes and boy clothes are. Becky, of course, has a bit more of an eye for picking out the difference between a grey and white onesie with penguins and a grey and white onesie with penguins in which every 23rd penguin has a pink ribbon in its hair. (I didn't realize penguins had hair, let alone did I notice the bows)
We found baby a couple receiving blankets, some towels, we got some formula, and then realized that there is a whole aisle in Target, which is not a baby specialty store, of just different nipples for the bottles. Who knew? Actually, I'm sure many of you knew.

Lets not even get into the selection of pacifiers. Becky ended up just grabbing the pink ones, while I pondered whether to get the infant nuks, or the 0-3mo philips something or others. I particularly favor the ones with mustaches, although I've been told they are inappropriate for a girl baby.

We are diving in. You are making this possible. Thank you so much.

If any of you are holding off, I thought I'd mention, if you don't want to mess with YouCaring, we can also do paypal. Jesse.Brimhall@gmail.com.

Here's a picture of a couple outfits I picked out. Can you find the penguins with bows?