Saturday, March 29, 2008

Waiting Numbers!?!?

I remember some other adoptive parents (Tracie, Julie and Dee Dee) investigating while they were on the wait list for a referral. Subtracting referrals and figuring out what number they were on the lists. So, here I am doing just that. It's called the UNofficial wait list numbers!!
Here they are (remember these are unofficial)......
Boy #7
Girl # 11
Sibling #1

WoooooHooooo!!!!!!!!

We have moved a lot in just one month!!!!

Monday, March 24, 2008

Easter Weekend

We had a great Easter weekend!!




On Friday we had some friends over to do some Easter egg dying.


Here are the girls with some of their masterpieces.

(The one in the middle is our daughter.)







We hid our children's Easter baskets,

so on Sunday morning they woke up

and had to search for their baskets.



Here is our little guy finding his basket. He loves to play in the kitchen so we knew that would be a great place for his basket. (He's a little too young for us to really hide it)










Here is our daughter finding her basket.

(I think next year we'll need to find a better spot...it didn't take her long at all to find it.)







Here are our children ready for church.








I love this picture!


Mike with the Kids.

Our little guy is getting funny in front of the camera now.






The family picture!

Can you tell our daughter "loved" taking this picture!

I think she was ready to go to church.






Sunday afternoon was the Third Annual Easter Egg Hunt in our backyard.

I don't know if we can really call it a hunt. The Eggs really weren't hidden, just kinda laying around the yard. It was more like an Easter Egg Pick Up!









I Can't help but think what next year will be like. Will our family picture have two more children??? What an exciting thought!!! Maybe next year we will have another toddler that we can share the Easter story with. It gets me so excited to think about!!! Will it be the first time our "new addition" hears about Jesus dying on the cross and rising from the dead??? It's so exciting that we get to share Jesus with our new child/children!!!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Longing

I feel like the wait is getting hard and we've only been on the wait list 19 days. I know that sounds like we are really impatient, but......


we made the decision to adopt in July


Started all the paperwork in August


Finished our home study Nov. 15th


Got fingerprinted Dec. 4th


Received our FDL Feb. 28th


and have been waiting ever since. I feel like we are ready! I am so happy with the two children God has blessed us with already, they are tons of fun! It's just starting to feel like we are missing a child/children. Our family doesn't feel complete right now. Even though my arms are full with our two children, there is also an empty feeling. I am longing to hold, kiss and rock our new child/children. God placed the desire to adopt on our hearts and that desire is growing daily!!

Sunday, March 9, 2008

???Siblings???

Siblings, why siblings??? When we tell people that we might be bringing two children home from Ethiopia they seem very surprised.


When Mike and I started praying/talking about adoption, right away Mike felt like we needed to bring siblings home. I was not as sure as he was. The thought of doubling the number of children we have kinda freaked me out. Right now we have two children ages 5 and 1.5. They keep us pretty busy! We started off thinking, we would for sure adopt siblings...... then fear set in and we had our home study written for one infant. We sent our home study to the agency and started waiting. Our hearts were so heavy for siblings/older children. I looked at my children one day and thought "if they were in Ethiopia and up for adoption, what would happen to them? Would they get separated? Or would they be harder to place because there's two of them?" It broke my heart. Adopting siblings was on our hearts, we thought about it a lot. Is this what God wants us to do? We decided to have an addendum done to our home study and change it to a sibling group or a single infant. We are really trusting in God and want to be open to what He wants for our family. We continue to pray GODS WILL BE DONE. We are very excited to see what God has planned for our family!!


We are sure at an exciting time right now. Being number 2 on the sibling list means we could get a call anytime or it could take 5-6 months.

Friday, March 7, 2008

PLEASE SIGN PETITION!!!!

Please read this even if you don't home school. This is a really big deal!
This is a email from a family that adopted with our agency. They sent this email out to families from our agency and I copied and pasted it for this post.
This message was sent to the South Dakota home school association to notify people of what is happening in California.
"By now, many of you have heard about the court decision that came out of California from a family law appellate judge who ruled that, in essence, the way the homeschooling has been done in California is illegal because most parents doing the homeschooling do not hold a teaching certificate. This ruling affects over 160,000 homeschoolers in California.
Basically, in California, homeschooling is done through "Satellite" schools. These are usually small church associated umbrella schools that allow the parents to direct the teaching, choose their own curriculum and typically have minimal supervisory contact with the parents. The system, which exists in a similar form in several states, works well in California.
Unfortunately, because this situation was escalated through a social services complaint, it has led to a judicial ruling that, while probably incorrect, could have far reaching ramifications in California as well as other states.
Read this!
Here is a link to an article and at the end of the article you can sign the petition!