Pink Preparations!

Total emotional and spiritual uprising was going on in both Josh and me. We were so excited to meet Anna, but still a little nervous about her arrival. One thing we were sure on was the fact that we knew this was something God wanted us to be doing.

In June, we had the amazing opportunity to buy a house. We had been renting a house from a dear friend, but we knew we needed to get a place of our own. Long story short, there was a house for sale in an area that we dreamed to be in... we had the Realtor show us the house (only for wishful thinking)... and we loved it. We figured out a way to afford it... and God provided it at an incredibly too good to be true price...

When buying the house, we wanted to have a "spare room," and this house had it. From the moment we bought the house, we wanted to use it to minister, to give others a room when they needed it. Whether it was for friends, relatives, or even a child in need. We had no stipulations.

This room was going to be Anna's room in a matter of a couple weeks and it was currently... ummm, in need of some decor! :) I tried to look at the list of things Anna liked... but one thing I knew she LOVED was the color PINK! With a house FULL of boys (even the dog is a boy!) I was more than happy to add a little 'sugar and spice' to this house... mainly in the rosy color of pink! I painted a dresser pink, I bought a pink bed spread, I found pictures that had lots of pink in them at Hobby Lobby and got amazing deals on them and hung them on her walls. I also added a (non-pink) world map and pinned Ukraine... and Wisconsin. I bought her some knitting supplies and put them in pink baskets, and I had pink fleece sheets that were SO comfy! I had some pink lotions and body washes, and had a pink little container to hold them in! I hung up pink jewelry, tied her curtains with a pink ribbon, and even found a big sparkly letter "A" in pink to hang on the wall!

Basically, I wanted that room as my own. I have to admit... it was pretty awesome... and SOOOOOOOO girly!

What surprised me was when we had our home study done for New Horizons. When Dani came into the room, she nearly cried. She said in her 12 years of doing this, she had never seen a family devote and decorate a room like this to their host child unless they were adopting. That surprised me. I was seeing a lot of Facebook friends who were hosting were preparing such lovely rooms... I just wanted to prepare something for Anna that said to her, "WELCOME! WE LOVE YOU!"

We finished the majority of her room by the end of November and I was so excited about it! I showed pictures of it on Facebook and was just delighted with how it turned out.

Then we went to training.

I became incredibly nervous when the coordinator said to us,
"If the children have a favorite color listed on their biography... don't expect it to be true! Sometimes, they are so nervous that they just say any random color, when, they actually don't like it! They just heard their friend say that color... so they said it too!"

A family friend (who I had shared my pictures with) looked back at me with a bit of a "uh oh" smirk and a shrug.

Oh dear.
What if she HATES her room!? What if, instead of LOVING the color pink, she actually HATES it!? What if she thinks we're saying, "Welcome to our house! You're stuck with something you hate for the next month! Muahahahahaha!"

My only comfort was that she sang a solo for the interview team.
If she was brave enough to do that... she was probably the one the kids who were nervous were listening to for THEIR favorite color!

That's all I had going for me.
Only time would tell.
... and not much time!