David

Henry

Jack

Katie

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Run for Katie

I'm going to do a little profile for each of the runners on our Run for Katie fundraising team.  You can read about Misty here.  Tonight I'm going to tell you about Travis.


His official photo!
Travis is one of the attorneys in my office, and I've only known him for about a year.  I'll be honest - when I first met him I wasn't so sure I was going to like him.  He was very quiet, didn't really say much, and I couldn't really understand why everyone in my office liked him so much.  I should have known better, because I quickly realized they were right, and he's one of my absolute favorite people.



Travis has been married to his wife Caroline for nine years.  They have two boys I could eat with a spoon. Carter is 3 and Hank is almost 6 months.  You know how sometimes you like either the husband or the wife, but not both?  Not the case with Travis and Caroline.  I adore his wife as much as him.  They are such a wonderful family - their boys are adorable and so sweet.  Little Carter is hilarious and smart, and I could snuggle Hank all day.  Travis and Caroline are both smart, fun, kind, generous, and funny.  Travis is a great dad, and he really loves his sweet family.

Travis was an Assistant District Attorney with the 16th Judicial district for the state of Tennessee for several years.  He's now a private practice attorney.  We work in a small office with four attorneys and three support positions.  Everyone in the office is close and we have a bit of a family atmosphere.  Travis has only been at our office since March, and he quickly fit right in.  He's smart, and he's a great attorney.  He does a lot of probate work, which means he gets a lot of older clients.  I've never seen someone love an old person like Travis does!  I think he has a crush on every woman over 80 in town who needs to have a will done.  And trust me - they all love him too!



Travis does a lot of volunteer work for various organizations.  He's a loaned executive to the United Way campaign, is the president of the Rutherford County University of Tennessee Alumni Association, and has done work for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and other local charities.



Travis has been running for about seven years.  He's run tons of 5ks and 10ks - too many to keep track of.  He's also run six half marathons, including the Chicago Spring Half Marathon, the Middle Half (twice), the Music City Half Marathon.  Travis also ran the Ragnar Relay last year on the Bumpshack Racing Team.  Ragnar is a 196 mile relay from Chattanooga to Nashville, and the Bumpshack team came in 32 overall, out of 160 teams.



I didn't need to ask Travis why he would run on our Run for Katie fundraising team - Travis is the person who came up with the idea!  I will never forget Travis' reaction when I told him that Chris and I were thinking about adopting.  He said, "I think you need to sleep on it.  For about 18 years."  I will also never forget what he later said; the more we discussed it and he realized we were serious Travis said, "I know I said to sleep on it for 18 years, and I still think you should.  However, if you decide this is something you want to do, I will be your biggest supporter."  And he has been.

Travis was the first person, outside of my parents and my sister, to sign up to follow this blog. . . and I'm quite sure it's probably the only one he follows.  He sits in my office every day and listens to me talk about Katie Ruth.  He looks at her photos without complaining.  He talks about fundraising with me whenever I want to discuss it.  He thinks of prizes we could have donated or people we could talk to about participating.  He listened to my list of names when we couldn't decide on one.  When I asked him to email one of his contacts and ask if he would donate a prize he did it immediately and even picked up the prize.  He has absolutely done what he said he would, and he, as well as everyone else I work with, has been a huge support through this process.

Travis is not running in our fundraiser to win a trip to Florida.  While I'm quite certain Travis would love to go on vacation, Travis could pay for a trip to Florida if he wanted to.  He's running to help us.  He's running to help us raise money to bring our little girl home.  The generosity of people continues to amaze me throughout this process, and Travis is no exception to that.  I'm very thankful for Travis' support and friendship.



Monday, August 8, 2011

More Photos of Our Girl!



Here are some photos of Katie Ruth from 2009 when she was just two years old.  It makes me so sad to think that she's been in the orphanage for at least two years.  Hopefully she's not there too much longer!



She's got such pretty eyes!

I love this picture for so many reasons.  
She's mobile, walking, and obviously has good body strength which makes me hopeful that she gets to play and gets attention, rather than being left in a bed or ignored.  I cannot wait to get this little girl home

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Our House

As anyone going through the adoption process knows, part of it is photographing your home.  I was so stressed about this!  I'm not really sure why, because I think we have a great house, but it was really stressful to me.  Well, the pictures are done.  I've done a long post about it here at my other blog.  I don't want to bore people who read both, so just jump over to The Real Housewife of Bedford County and dig in!

Yard Sale Skinny

I hope nobody wanted to come over to eat anytime soon.  
This is our dining room.

We have had so much stuff donated for our yard sale!  We have also had to rent a storage unit to hold it all, because we have no garage to keep it in, and I still need to pick up from four more people, as well as my parents and Chris' parents.  I am overwhelmed by the amount of stuff people have donated to us to help us raise money to bring Katie Ruth home.  Pray for good weather the weekend of August 26 & 27!!  If you are local and have anything you'd like to donate, we would be so appreciative and I am more than happy to come pick it up!

Katie Ruth's room

We've started working on Katie Ruth's bedroom.  You can read all about that on my blog The Real Housewife of Bedford County!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Is it Christmas?



It must be.  Why?  Because we got several photos of our sweet Katie Ruth!


Like, as in SIXTEEN PICTURES!  
Can you believe it?!


Some are as old as 2009, when she was just 2 years old.
Some, including the original photo we had, are as recent as March 2011.


She looks great!
She looks healthy.
She looks social.
She looks mobile.


She looks like she's had a horrible haircut for her entire. life.
And most of all she looks like she needs to get home.  
Home to her mama and daddy soon so we can kiss 
all over that face and those yummy cheeks!


Thursday, August 4, 2011

So I'm Thinking. . .

 . . . Maybe I would have more luck completing the mountain of adoption paperwork we still have for our dossier if I spent my evenings working on it.  You know, as opposed to reading other people's blogs about their adoptions.  I'm just saying. . . 

In other news, Chris and I had our psychological evaluations yesterday.  Our report should be ready in the next week or so.  We are still waiting for our marriage certificates to come in the mail.  From HAWAII.  If I knew we would be adopting and need multiple copies of documents, we may have reconsidered getting married so far away!  We're waiting, waiting, waiting.  Waiting for our passports to come (mine is a renewal, Chris is a new application).  Waiting for our FBI fingerprinting to come back.  Waiting for our UCIS approval.  Waiting for our biometrics fingerprinting appointment.  Waiting for our psychological evaluation results.  Waiting for our homestudy report to be completed, which cannot happen until a good portion of the previous list is completed.  Waiting to finish filling out paperwork, which I can't do without a lot of the previous list being done.  Waiting for our yard sale so we can *hopefully* make some money so my checkbook will stop cringing every single time I open my wallet!

Have I mentioned I'm not a patient person??  All of the waiting will be worth it to love on this girl!