JULY 2016: We said YES to THREE kiddos! Adoption has always been our first option. When we got married, we knew that we wanted to adopt and we knew that we wanted to adopt an older child. Because we were so young when we married and we had young friends, we always felt, well, young and we felt like we had lots of time. Then, at some point, we realized that our friends were having kids, some of them already had teenagers, and we should probably start the adoption process. Here we are now, four years into the process. This whole time has been a cycle of fits and starts for us. It has truly been a dance, one step forward and two steps back at times, but there have been enough forward movements through the entire process and we feel like God is leading us through this entire family building process. We had hoped to adopt two boys from Ethiopia, about five years old, but recently - God surprised us with THREE! Two boys (1 1/2 and 5ish) and a preteen girl!! It has been our prayer that we will be the best parents for the children God has chosen for us, not the other way around. We pray that God will lead us and guide us and help us to be examples of His love and grace for each of us. We also pray that our adoption of some kids from a country on the other side of the globe would lead to so much more. Who knows what our children will grow up to be, but our prayer is that no matter what they are, that God would use them to impact their home country in greater ways than we ever could. With the surprise of another child, any help our friends and family can give would be amazing! Read our story: houseofstewart.blogspot.com