happy halloween

wolverine won an award in the costume contest because he's super cool! i love the facial hair! it was a beast to get off though, poor guy...his cheeks were really red when we finished. he said it was worth it. :-)

i can't imagine not going to this pumpkin patch. we've gone every year since elijah was a baby. this year my mom was in town so she went with us.

elijah took this picture and i think it turned out so cute!

 

my mom brought her new kitten with her to spend the weekend with us. the boys loved her and wanted to keep her. she loves to crawl up in your lap or inside your jacket to sleep.

comic convention

first of all, i just came across this song and it really speaks to me right now.

have you ever heard of "enter the worship circle"?

i sure hadn't but i am loving their music right now!

this is the best youtube video i can find of it.

this song and one of theirs called "orphan song" are just great-ness!

and the title of this blog post...

we took the boys to a comic convention last saturday.

they had a great time and got their picture with a lot of costumed heros/villains!

THOR

IRON MAN

DEADPOOL

WOLVERINE(S), MS MARVEL AND MAGNETO

BLACK WIDOW

BATMAN AND HAWKEYE

SILVER SURFER AND CLONE TROOPERS

we have a full weekend of fun fall activities planned!

hope you have a wonderful pre-halloween weekend too!

a week of highs and lows

this past week was a doozy. 

we were up and down, up and down emotionally. 

in a way, i'm really glad this week is over. 

highs from the week:

savannah's 3rd birthday party last saturday,

complete with face painting.

spiderman and hulk were happy!

 my college buddy stephanie and her son clint stayed with us a couple of days.

here are all the boys blowing bubbles!

judah is loving gymnastics!

elijah is in his second month of judo and he loves it!

it is great for discipline and strength and he gets to wrestle...what more could an 8 year old boy want than to get to wrestle?!?!

 lows from the week:

*spending more money to get our THIRD fingerprinting done with CIS

*not getting a referral - and it hit us especially hard this week

*it seemed like a lot of life stresses hit us this week as well

having to say goodbye to our sweet dog amos. it. was. HARD. :(

Lord, I will praise you during the highs and lows of life.

I refuse to feel defeated and hopeless.

I really do feel in my gut that this darkness will soon lift...our dawn is coming!!!

oktoberfest

in the spirit of lightening things up around here,

we went to oktoberfest this weekend.

yummy food, cool weather and fun with the family.

 

surrender

Sometimes you have to let go of your "perfect" plan and trust that God's is going to be much, much better. The first step in trusting God is surrender. These past almost 3 years since we started the adoption paperwork, have been a slow, painful surrendering process. A letting go of control, of how we wanted things to happen and taking one more tiny baby step each day toward God and His plan. I can say with confidence that I am changed. I am not the same person I was 3 years ago.

The old me had a closed fist.

Now my fingers are slightly open.

The old me thought I knew what patience was.

Now I realize that patience is letting God have control of the timing.

The old me thought this was about the act of adoption.

Now I know that God had a journey in mind to change me.

The old me wanted another child for our family.

Now I know that we are providing a family for the child.

The old me thought I knew what was best for me.

Now I am finally willing to let God write His story.

And ultimately, my life is God's story, not my own. 

I thought when we obeyed the call to adopt, that things would happen the way we wanted them to since we said YES. I mean, we said YES God, can't you at least allow this process to go the way we want?!?!? No. He is not content to let us write our own story because He knows that His story is going to knock our socks off. 

So write your story Lord, we are just along for the ride.

twenty-seven months

totally off my rocker

like most of you, i love fall. i love everything about it.

this month has been quite a whirlwind and has gotten away from me.

i have neglected to take pictures of anything.

i feel restless and undone.

quite honestly, i feel completely off my rocker.

if you don't know much about adoption, let me fill you in on one tiny detail:

it will make you go crazy or close to it.

the only thing keeping me grounded right now is my faith.

we are sad.

we are frustrated.

we are confused.

we are hurting.

we did not sign up for this.

let me make it clear to you that we still 100% feel called to adopt.

what we did not sign up for was the 2 1/2 year wait.

we didn't sign up for our children being this far apart in age.

we are aching for another child.

remember that we started the paperwork almost 3 years ago.

i want to scream.

it is completely out of our control.

i have to trust you God, that you have a plan.

a plan for our family that is far better than mine.

a plan for our daughter.

thanks for letting me get that out of my head.

in the meantime, i've been reading.

a lot.

you MUST read the book 7 by jen hatmaker.

must.

or any of her books for that matter.

she is phenomenally talented.

and a wonderful speaker (i heard her).

and a very sweet person (i met her).

and in the adoption club (from ethiopia).

this book completely ruined me (in a good way).

get you a copy (but not my signed one :-).

website HERE

also, we think it's cool that jason's grandfather wrote a book.

so check it out too.

he has his own website and everything.

 website HERE

enjoy fall!

the weather, the decor, the food and the fun.

everything about it.

a last first

 yesterday was judah's last first day of preschool.

he is in the 4 year old class this year and will be in kinder next year. :-(

that means that i started back to work as well!

here we are on our first day of school together!

at his desk

and by his cubby

with his sweet teachers, ms liz and ms terri

and here is my classroom. it's a circus theme this year and i can hardly take any credit for it. my co-teacher ashley is very creative and i think it looks great!

the first day went great! judah had a fun day and i have a very sweet class.

but i was EXHAUSTED at the end of the day.

i forgot how much energy i need for 13 four year olds!

weekend wrap-up

our labor day weekend was spent...

seeing a $ movie with the kids,

grilling out,

looking for a "new" car,

updating adoption paperwork,

doing some internet research,

going to church,

boys staying one night with grandparents,

having a date night,

shopping at 1/2 price books,

and miniature golfing.

what did you do?

he was mad cause he's "bad" at golf. typical. :-)

twenty-six months

I am going to copy and paste part of a blog post directly from Jen Hatmaker's blog because I like it, it's my blog and I want to. :-) Please don't take it personally if you have said any of these things to me because believe me, I know your heart is in the right place. We are just not in a good place with the adoption right now. I thought it might be beneficial for all of you wonderful people who support us to know what we need to hear at this point. This is me helping you out here, people...for reals! I understand that if you haven't adopted before you can't possibly know how we are feeling...this will tell you! Thanks for being our village.

Your friends are adopting. They’re in the middle of dossiers and home studies, and most of them are somewhere in the middle of Waiting Purgatory. Please let me explain something about WP: It sucks in every way. Oh sure, we try to make it sound better than it feels by using phrases like “We’re trusting in God’s plan” and “God is refining me” and “Sovereignty trumps my feelings” and crazy bidness like that. But we are crying and aching and getting angry and going bonkers when you’re not watching. It’s hard. It hurts. It feels like an eternity even though you can see that it is not. It is harder for us to see that, because many of us have pictures on our refrigerators of these beautiful darlings stuck in an orphanage somewhere while we’re bogged down in bureaucracy and delays.

How can you help? By not saying or doing these things:

1. “God’s timing is perfect!” (Could also insert: “This is all God’s plan!” “God is in charge!”) As exactly true as this may be, when you say it to a waiting parent, we want to scratch your eyebrows off and make you eat them with a spoon. Any trite answer that minimizes the struggle is as welcomed as a sack of dirty diapers. You are voicing something we probably already believe while not acknowledging that we are hurting and that somewhere a child is going to bed without a mother again. Please never say this again. Thank you.

2. “Are you going to have your own kids?” (Also in this category: “You’ll probably get pregnant the minute your adoption clears!” “Since this is so hard, why don’t you just try to have your own kids?” “Well, at least you have your own kids.”) The subtle message here is: You can always have legitimate biological kids if this thing tanks. It places adoption in the Back-up Plan Category, where it does not belong for us. When we flew to Ethiopia with our first travel group from our agency, out of 8 couples, we were the only parents with biological kids. The other 7 couples chose adoption first. Several of them were on birth control. Adoption counts as real parenting, and if you believe stuff Jesus said, it might even be closer to the heart of God than regular old procreation. (Not to mention the couples that grieved through infertility already. So when you say, “Are you going to have your own kids?” to a woman who tried for eight years, then don’t be surprised if she pulls your beating heart out like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.)

3. For those of you in Christian community, it is extremely frustrating to hear: “Don’t give up on God!” or “Don’t lose faith!” It implies that we are one nanosecond away from tossing our entire belief system in the compost pile because we are acting sad or discouraged. It’s condescending and misses the crux of our emotions. I can assure you, at no point in our story did we think about kicking Jesus to the curb, but we still get to cry tears and feel our feelings, folks. Jesus did. And I’m pretty sure he went to heaven when he died.

4. We’re happy to field your questions about becoming a transracial family or adopting a child of another race, but please don’t use this moment to trot out your bigotry. (Cluelessness is a different thing, and we try to shrug that off. Like when someone asked about our Ethiopian kids, “Will they be black?” Aw, sweet little dum-dum.) The most hurtful thing we heard during our wait was from a black pastor who said, “Whatever you do, don’t change their last name to Hatmaker, because they are NOT Hatmakers. They’ll never be Hatmakers. They are African.” What the??? I wonder if he’d launch the same grenade if we adopted white kids from Russia? If you’d like to know what we’re learning about raising children of another race or ask respectful, legitimate questions, by all means, do so. We care about this and take it seriously, and we realize we will traverse racial landmines with our family. You don’t need to point out that we are adopting black kids and we are, in fact, white. We’ve actually already thought of that.

5. Saying nothing is the opposite bad. I realize with blogs like this one, you can get skittish on how to talk to a crazed adopting Mama without getting under her paper-thin skin or inadvertently offending her. I get it. (We try hard not to act so hypersensitive. Just imagine that we are paper-pregnant with similar hormones surging through our bodies making us cry at Subaru commercials just like the 7-month preggo sitting next to us. And look at all this weight we’ve gained. See?) But acting like we’re not adopting or struggling or waiting or hoping or grieving is not helpful either. If I was pregnant with a baby in my belly, and no one ever asked how I was feeling or how much longer or is his nursery ready or can we plan a shower, I would have to audition new friend candidates immediately.

Here’s what we would love to hear:

1. Just kind, normal words of encouragement. Not the kind that assume we are one breath away from atheism. Not the kind that attempt to minimize the difficulties and tidy it all up with catchphrases. We don’t actually need for you to fix our wait. We just want you to be our friend and acknowledge that the process is hard and you care about us while we’re hurting. That is GOLD. I was once having lunch with my friend Lynde when AWAA called with more bad news about Ben’s case, and I laid my head down on the table in the middle of Galaxy Café and bawled. Having no idea what to do with such a hot mess, she just cried with me. Thank you for being perfect that day, Lynde.

2. Your questions are welcomed! We don’t mind telling you about the court system in Ethiopia or the in-country requirements in Nicaragua or the rules of the foster system. We’re glad to talk about adoption, and we’re thankful you care. I assure you we didn’t enter adoption lightly, so sharing details of this HUGE PIECE OF OUR LIVES is cathartic. Plus, we want you to know more because we’re all secretly hoping you’ll adopt later. (This is not true.) (Yes it is.)

3. When you say you’re praying for us and our waiting children, and you actually really are, not only does that soothe our troubled souls, but according to Scripture, it activates the heavens. So pray on, dear friends. Pray on. That is always the right thing to say. And please actually do it. We need people to stand in the gap for us when we are too tired and discouraged to keep praying the same words another day.

4. If you can, please become telepathic to determine which days we want to talk about adoption and which days we’d rather you just show up on our doorstep with fresh figs from the Farmer’s Market (thanks, Katie) or kidnap us away in the middle of the day to go see Bridesmaids. Sometimes we need you to make us laugh and remember what it feels like to be carefree for a few hours. If you’re not sure which day we’re having, just pre-buy movie tickets and show up with the figs, and when we answer the door, hold them all up and ask, “Would you like to talk for an hour uninterrupted about waiting for a court date?” We’ll respond to whichever one fits. 


You can read the entirety of this excerpt by clicking HERE.