Guest Posting at Le Musings of Moi

Happy Monday, Wayman Family Nesters!  I'm so excited to be sharing our little abode over at Le Musings of Moi today. 



So head on over and check out Summer's fabulous blog.  It's one of my favorite reads.  Her writing is refreshingly honest.  Trust me!  You won't be disappointed!  A BIG thank you to Summer for having me!

27th Birthday Fun

Good morning Wayman Family Nesters! Sorry for the absence for the last week. My birthday was last Monday, and I was busy celebrating for much of my long weekend. Yes, we Nashville folks were blessed with a SNOW DAY before the holiday weekend.  For my Northern peeps, the thought of being idea of being out of school for a mere 1/2 inch (or less!) of snow is absolutely proposterous. But here in the South, we love it! (Well, the teachers and students do. I'm sure the parents don't!)

Sunday after church we celebrated with my family. My mom fixed lunch and we had cake and ice cream. 3 of my siblings were out of town (1 in Texas, 1 in Florida, and 1 in Haiti), so I was definitely missing them! My parents spoiled me with a Groupon for a manicure/pedicure and a gold moroccan pouf like this one I'd been wanting for the nursery.

Not the best shot, but here's a few of my large family!  Sadly, missing 3 siblings!  What a group, right?!

My mom, Mada, and me.  Not a great pic to be able to see my grandmother, but she's almost 95 and totally amazing!

My Mom, Dad and Me

Sunday night I got to celebrate with the hubby's family at his sister's house.  We enjoyed a delicious meal and playing with our adorable nephews! (age 5 and 2)  Here are a few shots from party #2.  It's rare that my nephews will sit still long enough to take pictures with me, so I definitely enjoyed the mini photo shoot!

Jack and Me

Silly Faces!



Jack, Knox, & Me

Love my nephews!

Monday I got to eat lunch with mom and one of my brothers.  After that I went and redeemed the mani/pedi my parents had bought me.  That night the hubby and I enjoyed a quiet dinner at Sperry's, one of our favorite local restaurants to eat at on special occasions.  We enjoyed steak, crab legs, and asparagus.  It was delicious and we were both definitely stuffed after that meal!

And Tuesday the celebration continued!  My sweet students threw one of my teammates and me a surprise party (they had a little help from the 2 other teachers I work with!).  We had cupcakes and they presented me with a book of poems they wrote about me.  Precious.  Definitely something I'll treasure forever!

Guest Nest: Just A Touch Of Gray

Good morning, Wayman Family Nesters!  I'm excited to share with you another home from my "Guest Nest" series!  (the first one was WAY back in August.  Read here in case you missed out!)  I got so busy with our adoption, school starting back, etc, that the series fell by the wayside!  I'm excited today to feature the home of the fabulous Rachel from Just A Touch of Gray!  I asked her to describe her favorite "nook" in her home.  I'll let her beautiful home speak for itself!  Enjoy!

I'm very excited to be here on The Wayman Family Nest and share my favorite space or nook in our house. I have lots of favorite areas but when she used the word "nook" our master bathroom came to mind. Why you ask? Well because it's small. Then I googled the word nook and the first definition that came up was:

          "A small corner, alcove, or recess, especially one in a large room."

Yup, I think our master bathroom could easily be considered a small corner of our master bedroom. Hah, but hey, at least we have an en suite! :) In all seriousness I absolutely love our master bathroom. When we started our renovation we knew we had to get rid of all that 1960 blue, but we were also on a budget. We painted the walls a light grey, replaced the toilet (ahh, white!), and covered the wall tile with beadboard. We fell in love with a furniture inspired vanity piece and adhered a gorgeous marble top and over mount sink right on top. Then looking around we actually loved the blue floor with it all. It was just the pop of color our tiny bathroom needed. And I love the idea of keeping that "original" touch to the house. Vintage charm at it's finest! Hope you like it... we sure do!

You can read more about how we did it {here} and {here}.

Thanks again Jennifer for having me share my Nest!

Master Bathroom

 

Master Bedroom



 

Living Room 

Hallway

Guest Bedroom

Want to see more of her fabulous home?  Be sure to check out her blog!  Definitely check out the before pictures as well.  She and her hubby have done an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G job!  Thanks for sharing Rachel!

"If You Want to Make God Laugh, Tell Him Your Plans"

The quote that was the inspiration for this post was sent to me by a sweet blogger friend Rachel from Just A Touch of Gray (check back later this week to see more from her!).  I thought it was the perfect saying for our life right here (click here to read if you missed out). 

{source}

I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU for all of the prayers, thoughts, well wishes via text e-mail, Facebook, and blog comments.  We appreciate it more than you ever know!  We are so blessed with wonderful family and friends (and many of you we've never even met!).  So thank you for brightening what was a dark day for us during this adoption process.  We are excited at what God has planned for our family.

Melkam Genna!

Saturday was Christmas Day in Ethiopia!  "Melkam Genna" means "Merry Christmas" in Amharic.  This is the day they celebrate the birth of Christ in Ethiopia!

We did have a piece of good news (after receiving some bad news on Friday) on Saturday.  We received our USCIS Favorable Determination Letter (FDL) in the mail!!!

This is basically the approval of our Form I-600A, Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition, which we filed on October 18th and were fingerprinted for the day after Thanksgiving.

Loved seeing that we are now OFFICIALLY approved to bring our baby boy home from Ethiopia!!!

Our fingerprints will expire 15 months from now and the FDL will expire in 18 months, so we are praying that our sweet Hayes will be HOME before either of these expire!

So, we did have a bit of a "Melkam Gena" in our house on Saturday!  There were a few tears still being shed on my part, but we really appreciate all of the prayers, calls, texts, and messages.  It truly means a lot!

Prayers Needed: Trying to Keep Things in Perspective

Well, Wayman Family Nesters, we are in need of prayers today.  We lost the referral of a beautiful baby boy (Baby "K") we received the day after Thanksgiving.  I had written up a blog post to announce it to our wonderful readers, but he hadn't had his medical tests yet, so I was waiting.  Well, 6 weeks later-after hearing nothing, we hear today that he is not to be our child.  I won't go into details about the situation with the orphanage, but basically now we're back on the waitlist for our boy.

As I sat in tears in our driveway (I'd been feverishly checking my e-mail for any updates), I tried to keep things in perspective.  This was me just being selfish.  Bottom line is, precious Baby "K" has a family.  And that's all that matters.  It's not about me and my impatience of wanting to see his face now.  I know that God has a plan for our family, and that's what I'm trying to keep at the front of my mind right now.  But, it still  hurts. I'm not going to sugar coat it!

So, what's next?  Well, we're back on the waitlist and next in line for a baby boy.  We appreciate any prayers you'd like to send our way at this time! : )

Thank you!

Craigslist Dresser Revamp

Good morning, Wayman Family Nesters!  (at least I'm hoping for a good day!  By the time this posts, I'll be back to work after TWO WEEKS off! Yikes!  I better get back in the swing of things!  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my students, but I'm not ready to be back!)

Today I'm going to show you a project for the nursery that the hubby and I  undertook for the nursery.  This past summer while perusing Craigslist, I found the PERFECT dresser for our little one's nursery.  I knew it was a little early to be making such purchases, but this one was just what I was looking for and a pretty good price.

Here's a before shot...

First, the hubby took all the drawers out and gave the exterior surfaces and drawer fronts a light sanding with a fine grit 150 sand paper.  Then, he primed it with an oil-based primer (original Kilz) we had tinted at Home Depot (per the instructions of our local friendly paint guy).  He sprayed all the surfaces (including inside and underneath the dresser) with the primer (the dresser smelled of smoke, so we were trying to get rid of that smell!).  He used a sprayer with his compressor for all of the painting.

Here he is hard at work!

Then the hubby sprayed 2 coats of paint (we chose Behr "Grape Creme."  I was going for a grayish-purplish color inspired from my all-time favorite nursery below:

The last thing he did was prime and paint the hardware.  Loved the beautiful original hardware!  Sorry for the bad iPhone picture, but it looks even better in person!

A big thank you to the hubby on this project!  It looks great and will be one of my favorite parts of the nursery!

What about you Wayman Family Nesters: Do you have any furniture revamps going on right now?

P.S. I'd like to wish my sweet sister a Happy Birthday today if she's reading.  Love you Rachie!

Long Time No Hear From!

I'm back, after a little blogging break (I hope to be able to fill you in S-O-O-N!).  We had a wonderful holidays around here and like most of you we were busy busy busy!

I go back to work tomorrow after 2 weeks off, so we'll see if I can get back in the swing of things! 

Here's a peek into a few things that went on around here during my 2 weeks off...

Our sweet nephews, ages 2 and 5 came to spend the night.  And we had quite a busy night!
We baked cookies (check out their concentration)...

We played on the iPad...  (how cuddly is he in his footy pjs?!)

We got our bed ready for sleeping... (the hubby is gonna love me for this one!)

We watched a Christmas movie before bed...

The nephews also helped us put up our "Christmas tree."  Sad, I know.  This isn't much of a tree, but it just got later and later and we never got around to it!  First year in my life I didn't have a real tree!  Hopefully next year we'll have a little one to help us!

We also made a few purchases and did some projects for the nursery, so stay tuned for that later this week!  I hope that you had a blessesd holiday season surrounded by friends and family!