bar, house, babes

friends have been asking how the bar exam went for jamie. according to him, it was very hard. extremely hard. so we're just waiting for the results, which will come at the end of august. thanks to all of you who prayed for him. i'm not sure there's anything left to pray now, as it doesn't seem right to pray that his answers are actually the right ones. but think about us towards the end of august...

i've been really bad about not taking pictures this summer, and thus letting our blog become a bunch of words with nothing fun to look at. but fear not, those who read blogs only for the pictures. i will be posting pictures of our new house next week! i think we should have internet on tuesday, so look for a new post then. we are in wilson right now with my family since we are essentially homeless until monday. my sister's 22nd birthday is tomorrow, so happy birthday megan!

lastly, a baby update. this is a fun one. i think most of our friends and family know that we are officially requesting 2 kids from ethiopia. not sure if they will be 2 boys or a boy and a girl, but we're pretty sure we'll end up with 2 boys. we've been thinking for awhile about names because it gives us something fun to do while waiting (and i think it helps make the babies seem more real than just abstract ideas). anyway, because i'm a blabbermouth, i'm spilling the beans on our names:

liam "insert given african name here" dean
elijah "insert given african name here" dean

we do have a girl name just in case, but i'll leave it at the boy names because i love them. picking names is hard, especially if you don't have any strong family names that you want to use (and that was true in our case). we've loved the name liam for awhile. it means "strong-willed warrior," but i also found that the hebrew name "liami" means "i have a people." what a great meaning for an adopted child, at least i think so. we decided on elijah out of the blue after sorting through lots of biblical names. it means "the Lord is my God." we feel very strongly about keeping both our children's african names as middle names to honor their culture and their birth mothers. of course, not all children are named by their mothers, especially if they're abandoned. in those cases, orphanage caretakes usually do the naming. no matter what, we want to honor whoever cares for our children until we are able to get to them. alright, it's about to storm. next time i post, we'll be homeowners...