One Sought Me

My husband's grandmother is a sweet little thing.  And I mean literally "little" when she would be pushing for 4 1/2' tall and 85 lbs.  Our little Bug (kid #3) takes after her great grandma's tiny stature but they both have a  great big heart and boundless understandings of the true treasures in life.  All of the grand-kids, and now great grand-children too, often measure themselves in comparison to "G.G" (Great Grandma) and near 8 or 9 years old, they've won the privilege to say, "I'm as tall as G.G." G.G. has amazing stories to tell about her life growing up in a small town, her husband overseas fighting in World War II while she was home in the states giving birth to their first born son.  G.G. kept all the letters her husband wrote to her during the war including the one that read, "war over?" on the outside of the envelope.  He did make it home again to hold his little boy and the family enjoyed a simple life together....

James 1:27  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Not at all that Todd and I are the 'pure and faultless' for pursuing an adoption or that we are going to get a big sticker on our "good deeds chart," but we do know the bigger picture that this verse has to offer. And that is the hope that points to Jesus. We know that even in our filth of sins and our deepest hopelessness, God sought us, loved us, and took us in to be His own. We see adoption as an earthly example of God's pursuit for us and our adoption into His family, the Kingdom of God.   "Pure and faultless religion'" means the most unobstructed way to know God's ways and glorify Him through this. You may be asking, "so to know God is to take care of orphans and widows?"  YES.  Look deeper at what that is to take care of an orphan and th...

Along with the paper collection of our home study, appointments, and inspections, we are also preparing for our adoption with Ethiopia by preparing our biological children for the soon coming changes in the family.  The joining of a new family member is an exciting adventure as it brings a new personality to learn about, new temperaments to adjust to, and new likes and dislikes in that special child!  With all these little people living under one roof, there are times when mom is not so available to everyone at every moment.   For me, meal time hits the top of the list of the times where I wish I could race into the nearest phone booth, spin around, and become Super Woman!  Well, I do have a pantry closet I could spin in and put an apron on!  That'll have to do.   It probably doesn't help that I'm not very confident in the kitchen, not a great cook, and therefore not good at the timing of having all the meal ready at once. I try to adjust for th...

We're expecting! Can't you see the paper cuts?  Just like you don't really get it when people say "time flies" until your older and you know that it does! Or "kids just grow up so fast" then you have them and realize how true that is! "If the shoe were on the other foot" then you find yourself in that very situation you were just criticizing.  The same is true for working through an adoption process.  We saw the list of the process, we read the blogs, talked to some friends who've been there, but you just don't get it 'til you've sat with a pile of papers and all these to-do lists.  The end result? Worth it.   We have four biological children, so I'm just going to make the comparison that this on-going paper trail phase in the early processes of adoption are similar to the constant morning sickness in the early stages of pregnancy!  It's always on your mind and effecting you (a good thing of course) because behind...

(You have to sing this post to the tune of "Gilligan's Island"- it's an old show's theme song  for you young people ) This is a tale of a man and wife who had a heart to adopt, They had their home study agent come visit the house today. Questions were asked and rooms were inspected....A three hour tour, a three hour tour.... Ok, I won't torture you any longer with my song writing talents/lack of, but I did want to post about our passing this phase of our home study- drum roll please.... the home visit and family interviews by our case worker!  This was our second required meeting of three total required meetings.  The first was just an brief hello meeting and we met at a coffee shop.  The second meeting, well, that was today!  Our case worker came to the house to interview us the parents, and our two older children, Quinn is 9 and Roosky is almost 7.  She also had to interview our college renter/21 yr. old friend who is living with us, and then inte...

We're adopting! Read all about it in the message in the bottle! This is an idea for announcing an adoption and for kicking off a coin drive fundraiser.  We have seen where people use baby bottles to collect coins for various fundraisers, but we don't know the age of the children we will be matched with, so a baby bottle just didn't quite fit. We decided to use a juice bottle for a coin drive fundraiser. Most of our friends and family already knew our news about adopting from Ethiopia, but some non-internet folks still hadn't heard.  We took the juice bottles to our adult Sunday school class to  announce the news of our adoption and as a kick off to our coin drive fundraiser.  We've also been passing them out to friends at the kids dance class, local businesses we frequent, and friends at work.  We posted it on our face book page that connects to the google doc so that if someone is so inspired, they can print off the bottle label and start collecting coins! ...

Let me back up a year or so to how we eased in to the idea of adoption with our biological children.  Currently our bio kids are ages 2, 5 (just had a birthday!),6, and 9, so they are young.  We do have three close family friends who have adopted internationally so our children have those families to observe and just be around.  In a child's mind, those families are just that, a family.  This is a good thing of course, that the children know that families can look different from other families and each member can look different from the other.  But, I will say, our children didn't really know about adoption from these relationships, they knew about diversity within a family.   The families were already established and we weren't along for the processes of their adoptions. In order to teach our children about adoption and acceptance of a child, we started on a easy level then slowly moved to the more difficult topics.  When I say easy level, I'm ta...