Showered with Blessings

I was so blessed today to go to a shower for the Mihnovich family. This precious family has just adopted a sibling group of FOUR from Ethiopia to add to the three children that they already have. In just two weeks from today, they will travel to pick up the new additions to their family.

Tracy has been very influential in our decision to adopt. I first met this lovely lady in September of 2008 when I was providentially placed in her small group in our Community Bible Study class. International adoption was something that had already been in our hearts for a while, but having the opportunity to be around Levi (their youngest child, adopted from Ethiopia in January 2008) every single week, to ask Tracy questions, and most of all, to see her beautiful heart caused me to begin considering it much more seriously. I will always be thankful for Tracy’s influence on our family.

One of the many unexpected blessings on this journey has been the people that we have met along the way. The instant connection of the heart that I feel with other adoptive families is amazing. Our monthly get togethers are literally a highlight of the month for me. We have received so much encouragement and support from these wonderful families. My heart was blessed and refilled today as I got to talk to Gillian, Missy, Amy, Tracy, Kristi, Cindy, Gwen, and many others.

Only four more days now until our court date. It will actually take place during the night on Thursday. Please remember to pray for Little Brother, his birth mother, and all of the court proceedings this week. Thank you and God bless you!

Little Feet

Look what I found when I went to the mailbox yesterday:

What a gift from above! I had asked an adoptive family who traveled to pick up their child a couple of weeks ago to take some pictures of Little Brother for us. I had been eagerly anticipating receiving those. When I saw that they had sent us a small package in the mail, I wondered why they didn't just email the pictures instead of mailing a CD. When I opened it up, I found this and absolutely fell apart. Our little guy's foot had actually touched this piece of paper that was now in my hand. This made me feel more connected to him than anything so far. I thanked our Father above for this gift and sat and cried for a while. Then went to his room to see if some shoes that I have for him are going to fit. :)

I pray that next Friday he will legally be our son, and I will be able to share the pictures that they sent. Thank you, Richardson family, for this precious footprint!

Court Date!

I am very, very excited to announce that we have a court date: Friday February 12th!!!

This is when our request to adopt our son will be heard by a judge in an Ethiopian court. No, we will not be present for the hearing. We will actually be asleep in our own beds when it happens, as Ethiopia is nine hours ahead of us. (Yeah right, like I will be able to sleep that night...) An individual from our adoption agency has power of attorney for us and will present our case to the judge.

Hopefully, we will receive a phone call early in the day on the 12th letting us know that we have passed and we are legally and officially the parents of our little guy.

Unfortunately, about 50% of families do not pass court the first time. This happens for a number of reasons:

• First of all the courts are in Africa. Things are a little more laid back there than they are in the U.S. Recently, several families didn't pass simply because the courts decided to have some meetings that day instead of hearing the adoption cases that were scheduled.
• Sometimes paperwork doesn't make it from one office to another. One missing document is all that it takes to not pass.
• A member of the child's birth family does not appear in court. If there are any living birth family members, they must travel to the capital, Addis Ababa, to testify before the judge that it is, indeed, their wish to release the child for adoption. This can be a very big deal, depending on where they are from. Our son is from the far southwest corner of Ethiopia, Bench Maji. I've learned that it takes about 24 hours of travel to reach Addis from that region. A family who is in a situation that requires giving up a child for adoption is most likely not in a good position to make a huge trip like that. Our adoption agency assists them in their travel, but still it can be a tremendous burden on the family.

If we do not pass court the first time around, we must wait for another court date a month or so later. Yuck. If we DO pass, we will travel to Ethiopia pick up our son approximately six weeks later.

Please, please pray for our court process:

• That God's hand will be over the whole process and his will be done in our son's life.
• That all the proper paperwork and officials show up at the right time.
• That Little Brother's mother will be able to make the trip to Addis Ababa to appear in court.
• That we are able to find out more information about his birth mom's life and situation. Someone from our agency will ask her a few questions for us while she is in court and record the answers. We really, really desire to meet her when we are in Ethiopia, but we do not know yet if she will be willing. If she is not, this will be our ONLY OPPORTUNITY to find our more information about our son's history.

My emotions have been at a low point since last week. Last Wednesday we received a monthly update from our adoption agency, complete with photos and info about his current size and health. I had been nothing but excited about getting all of this information and seeing more pictures. But my emotional reaction was not what I expected. I could see immediately in the photos that he is bigger, and he has grown two pounds in the month since we received our referral. The realization hit me hard that he is growing up without us. He was four months old when we received our referral and saw the first pictures of him. He is now five months old - he has lived 25% more life already. And meanwhile, he is still just sitting in the orphanage, and we are sitting here in Tennessee, waiting around for something to happen. There is absolutely nothing we can do to expedite the process (except for pray, of course). He hasn't known what it is like to have a mother since he was relinquished at 6 weeks old. Already he is 5 months and has lived two-third of his little life passed around in several orphanages. He needs a mommy. I have been feeling so lonely for him.

So once again, I ask you to pray that we pass court the first time. I want to go get my boy!

Snow!

I love winter, I love bundling up in sweaters and scarves, I love cozy fires and hot drinks, and I especially love SNOW! We got about 4 inches at our house this weekend, which is a very big deal around here. Madeline was not a fan of the white stuff at first, but she warmed up to it after a while. Here are a few pictures of our winter fun this weekend:

It's never too early to start ski lessons!

We took Madeline on a tour of our whitewashed neighborhood via sled.

We stuck with it until she decided that she liked it.

Nothing like a little hot chocolate to help you warm up. :)

About to go for a hike down by the river

Building a snowman this afternoon. Seriously, it has been years since we've had enough snow to do this!

Madeline was pretty impressed with my snowman-making abilities.

Giving the snowman a hug

Happy girl

The view from my kitchen window

And, finally, here's some fun with snow balls captured on video. Madeline thought it was simply hilarious to see us throw snow at each other.

Getting Ready for Little Brother

Nesting (as in the frenzied activity of a woman nearing the birth of a child to get her "nest" just right) is not something entirely influenced by hormones. How do I know this? Ever since we received our referral, I have hardly stopped working for a moment. I have been cleaning out cabinets and steaming my carpets like my life depended on it. I have been pregnant before, I know what it's like, and I am definitely nesting. Think of me as about seven months pregnant now, only without all the hormones.

The reality has sunk in that we have a baby coming to join our family in just a couple of months. I have a lot to do to get ready! Cleaning and organizing gives me an outlet for my energy. I want so badly to have him in my arms now, to be rocking him and loving him. That isn’t a possibility right now, so I am throwing myself into what I CAN do. I am getting our household as ready as possible for him to join us so that I can devote all of my attention to him (and Madeline, of course) when he does get home.

Here is a peek at my freezer.

I have been working very hard to jam it full of meals so that I won’t have to cook for a while after Little Brother comes home. I am up to 25 now, and my goal is to have 30. If I had a deep freezer I would probably fill it up too. :)

We have been diligently working to get his bedroom ready. We had planned to just keep it simple. We weren’t going to paint or anything (the room used to be a guest room). But one thing has led to another and we have now not only painted, but also replaced the windows, replaced the door, and put new trim around everything. (I am so thankful for my super-duper handyman husband!) We have a crib that we borrowed from a friend and a rocking chair, and that’s really all we need for the time being. I am enjoying how spacious the room feels.

Here I am cleaning drywall dust off of the bookshelves. Doesn’t the blue look pretty!

Madeline LOVES her dad’s cordless drill. She knows how to turn it on herself and she walks around with it, pulling the trigger.

In the meantime, I have been reorganizing pretty much every room of the house. Our house is on the smaller side and we have very little storage. (No garage, no bonus room, very small usable attic…) Before we had kids this wasn’t too much of a problem because we had a closet in each of our three bedrooms that we could use to store anything that we wanted. Now with a child in each of our bedrooms, there is NO extra space! Over the years I have gradually purged so many things that I used to treasure. They just don’t seem to matter much anymore. It actually feels good to relieve myself of the burden of all the stuff.

I have also gotten more and more efficient at organizing. I’ve realized that it makes a lot more sense to have our changing table in our spacious bathroom now that I will have two in diapers. As a bonus it frees up space in Madeline’s tiny bedroom. I have puzzles and craft supplies tucked in kitchen drawers that I emptied in the latest purge. And the den cabinets are stuffed with Mr. Potato Head and blocks instead of stacks of wedding presents that I have never used. I’ve moved an extra table into our bedroom and draped a long cloth over it so that I can store my sewing machine and supplies underneath it. And now I have a sewing station in our bedroom instead of filling up a closet with that stuff.

With every cabinet that I have cleaned out, I have felt a little more ready. But I think my greatest victory so far has been cleaning my carpets last weekend. They were badly in need of it, and I didn’t realize just how much it had been bothering me until I felt the relief of them being clean once again. I rented one of those big machines from Home Depot on Saturday and worked all day at moving furniture, dusting, and going over and over the carpets until they were completely clean. I feel like a new woman!

Besides just all of my cleaning, cooking, and organizing, I have sent a couple of care packages to Little Brother. He is no longer at a regular orphanage but in our adoption agency’s transition home. Since he is there we have the option of sending gifts to him via other adoptive families who are traveling to Ethiopia to pick up their own children. It gives me such joy to know that these things that have been in my hands are now in his! I sent this photo album of pictures of our family to him first.

Next I ordered this elephant “lovie” from a lady on Etsy. The back is super soft and the ear is silky. She embroidered his Ethiopian name on it too. I LOVE it. I am sending it to him doused in my perfume, hoping that he will get used to my smell and recognize it when we pick him up.

So there’s a little peek into my life in the last three weeks since we received our referral. I am a tired but very happy, nesting mama.

Screen Printing

We couldn’t be more thrilled when the FedEx man arrived with this big box on Saturday.

It was filled with these!

For months we've been sorting out what the future of our Go. Seek. Love. T-shirts should be. When we finished up with our own fundraising in October, we felt compelled to continue selling the T-shirts to benefit another adoptive family. We had been so blessed with our own fundraising, and we wanted to pass along the blessing to others. Plus we were selling more T-shirts than ever before. How could we shut things down? It felt wrong to just walk away from this once we had gotten what we needed from it .

In the last four months our sales have continued to increase. We have been able to send almost $2000 in profits to our partner family. It has been a blast! However…..each T-shirt takes about 10 minutes to produce from start to finish (we hand print them). And we’ve been selling 30-40 per month. Time is at a premium for us these days, and things are only going to get busier when little guy comes home in a month or two. BUT we REALLY want to keep going.

So after much prayer and discussion, Daniel sought out a broker and placed an order with a screen printer for this big box of T-shirts. Now all we have to do is ship the T-shirts. I can’t tell you how excited we are about that!

For the next month or two we will be recouping our sizable investment in the inventory. (Early on we had NO money and we felt like it was too risky to carry a bunch of inventory, which led us to opt for hand printing.) In the mean time, we plan to be working to adapt our website to accommodate partnering with multiple families simultaneously. How we will make it work is still a little foggy, but we are trusting God to lead the way.

And by the way, the shirts look fabulous!

We'll Miss You Pap

OK, I know – it’s been a while. I have been busy with very important things lately. Last Monday morning, Pap (my dad’s dad) passed away at the age of 91. He was a wise, Christian man who raised six children who all love the Lord. His wife (Granny) died several years ago, and it has been a long and lonely few years for him. I am happy that they are together again, with no more pain, no more arthritis, no more heart conditions. Only joy and peace and wholeness in the presence of Jesus. We will see him again someday!

This is Madeline and Pap together Christmas of 2008

And here we are this year at Christmas along with my Aunt Sarah

It was precious to spend a couple of days with family. Whenever we get together for holidays, it is always so rushed and rarely is everyone there. Well, everyone was here and together last week. It was a sad time, but it was also a blessing to be with the ones that we love.

My sis Rachel, cousin Riley, niece Abigail, me, Madeline, cousin Hannah, and cousins Patrick, Nathan, and Jacob

Madeline LOVES Hannah