2 great things!!!

Item 1: Yesterday I got a phone call from Donna who does most of the US side adoption things. She asked if we had gotten our I171H approval yet. I had to call her today and tell her that we had not. I was very sad about this as she probably had a referral for us (just presuming) but couldn't give it to us because our paperwork isn't done yet. So I e-mailed immigration yesterday just to make sure that they got our homestudy and have everything that they needed to approve us( I was paranoid they hadn't gotten it or it wasn't in the right place again). After a VERY long day at jury duty I came home to a reply e-mail stating that they sent our approval on Nov. 28 but that it had my maiden name on it so they will send another out today! I am so excited, everything seems to be coming together and we have one less thing to be waiting for! Now the official wait for our son begins! I will be calling Donna first thing in the morning to let her know the good news. Pray that our referral will be here by Christmas!

Item 2: A while back I told you about a friend of mine that wanted to adopt my "Mother of Love" son Randall. Her husband needed to get a new job with amazing adoption benefits if they could make it work. Well time went on and I lost hope of her being is forever mommy. Today I learned that her husband got that dream job and they are seriously considering adopting Randall! God is amazing! You can still pray for them and that God will make it crystal clear but I just keep thinking how amazing it would be to tell Randall that I found him a family in PERSON! To see the look on his face, oh it makes me tear up...

Belated Gotcha Day!

Because it was Thanksgiving I forgot to post that the girls' 3rd Gotcha Day was November 24th. In case you don't know the adoption lingo of Gotcha Day it is the day in which an adopted child comes into your care (not the day they were adopted). I truly can't believe it has been 3 years! I am too tired today to write the story (long day at D'land) and I really don't feel like getting teary-eyed right now so maybe I'll find some time in the next few days. Happy Gotcha Day my beautiful princesses!

BTW, prayers are still needed for Jonah. He went back to work today and is not doing well at all. His lungs are completely tight and he can hardly stop coughing. NOTHING seems to be working for him, even antibiotics. Please pray...

Butterflies

Right now all 3 of the kids are downstairs watching 5 cocoons hatch (is that the right word) into butterflies. It is the most amazing thing I think I have ever seen. They are rocking their "shell" back and forth and you can see the change taking place right before your eyes! The cocoon takes on a more "humped" look after being quite smooth and then the wings start to very slowly appear. Amazing! God is such an amazing creator! Only one of the butterflies has emerged completely and is now feasting on some sugar water covered flowers. Such an easy science lesson that is fun and amazing too and teaches the kids the wonder of God's creation. Sarah asked, "How did God think of that?" I don't know but I do know he has quite the imagination!

How 'bout some prayer warriors?

Anybody want to pray with us? 2 things...
#1 Jonah is really sick, again. He went to work today and is working 5 days straight. Pray that he will get better as he has been sick TOO much lately and he does not want to have to come home, we can't afford for him to take any more sick days.

#2 Our homestudy went out to USCIS on October 31 and the estimate time for getting our I-171H back is 4 weeks. This is the last thing we need to get before we find out who our baby is! That would put us to getting it sometime late next week taking into account Thanksgiving. Could you all pray with us that we will get it next week! We would REALLY like to know who our son is by Christmas.

Thank you so much for your prayers!

Early Christmas presents

We decided to get Disneyland annual passes this year as our big presents to the kids. It all works out great, we bought the cheapest ones but go on Monday's when Jonah is off and there is hardly any crowd at all. The longest ride I waited in has been Roger Rabbit for about 15 minutes. It is a bit of a drive for us but we are having so much fun with it too. So far we have gone to Disneyland 2 times and California Adventure once. I have the cutest picture of the girls with Sulley from Monster's Inc. but for some reason it won't post here. It might be too big. Thought I would share my cuties. Above are some pics of Kai's first time to Disneyland, and some of the girls too. Enjoy!

Watching Mommy and Sissy on the roller coaster 

Mr. Incredible. Kai didn't want to touch him but got out of the stroller and waved. 

So Cute!

My kids are so cute. I just got out of the shower and hear Alana say, "Daddy, I need you to help me" and Kai say, "Deah (yeah), doday(okay)" (can you tell everything starts with a "d" sound?). Playing house and they are having so much fun. It's so nice when they play nicely together.

My 29th birthday, sigh...

Today is my 29th birthday and I am not to sure how I feel about it. This one has been hard, never thought I would say that until I reached my 40's or 50's but here I am saying that my 29th birthday has been a hard one to swallow. I think it is a mixture of many, many things and the fact that there is only one more year until I am out of my 20's for good. I guess it's time to grow up now, huh? ;) It is seems strange to me that I am the mother of 3 children and one on the way, I'm too young for that, aren't I? Am I really responsible enough to be caring for these young souls and nurturing them in the way of the Lord like I am supposed to be? Am I already almost 1/3 finished with my life (God willing I'll live to at least 90). What have I done? Not much really when I think about it. I think that there is only about 16 years left for me to get pregnant, and yes we are believing still in that miracle even though it seems as though it may never happen. I just pray that God's promise to us will be fulfilled and that we won't have to wait like Sarah and Abraham until I am old.

All that said, I am having a wonderful day with my children. Sarah belted out Happy Birthday first thing this morning followed by Alana and Kai telling me it was his birthday and not mine. We watched Mary Poppins (my favorite) and then went to Wendy's for lunch. There weren't any birthday frosty's available (machine broken) so we went over to Costco and got some of their yummy frozen yogurt. We came home and I got to take a WONDERFUL nap with the littles while Sarah watched a movie since I let her (and me) have the day off of school. We will go out to a birthday dinner tonight and then to see Jonah at his station. Not such a bad day, spending it with my kids. No school, no cleaning, just fun. Lots of fun, not too bad :)

GREAT NEWS!!!

Today it seems that all this stuff about a new baby just might come true after all. I got a phone call from Donna who is the woman that orchestrates all the state side parts of the adoption and just tries to keep everyone filled in on what is going on. She called to let me know that she got our homestudies and will send out our dossier (a fancy word for all the required docs) to Liberia later this week. I also talked with her about Jonah and I going in February and she said that it would be too soon to pick up our child. I told her we didn't even plan on that and weren't even expecting a referral by then and she said, "Oh, you should hopefully have your referral in December!" I was so happy to hear that as I wanted so much to know who our boy was before Christmas. She also informed me that if we did get our referral before we go over to help not only would the adoption process be done in Liberia (meaning our boy would be ours) but we would be able to cut 2 months off the wait time and bring him home in April or May! I have been so discouraged lately because there have been some major waits with the passport office and things have been taking a LONG time. Even though he will be ours when we are there (assuming everything will go as planned and no surprises) we have to wait for his passport to be signed and right now it is taking around 3 months. There is a possibility that they could be moving faster than that by next year but I have learned never to hold your breath with the way Liberia works. They are trying very hard to get their country back on their feet and that means that us waiting may have to wait longer so that they can keep corruption at bay.
Also, it looks as if we probably won't be taking Sarah with us for this trip. Maybe when we go to pick the baby up? Donna is going to talk with the head of AoH (Patty) and see where Jonah and I would best be able to help. There is a new maternity ward that AoH is opening up and I would love to help out in there with the babies and maybe watch one be delivered? Oh I can hardly wait, now the anticipation is really building!

Being called

Yesterday at church Brian (our pastor) gave an awesome message about missions. Needless to say, it left an impression on us and we have been thinking about it ever since. Jonah and I have been telling God, over the last 2 years, that we are willing to go wherever he wants us too to share His word. As of yet we do not feel called too long term missions but our hearts are willing and it is up to God now. Because of yesterday's talk we are wanting to make missions one of our families priorities and spend at least a week a year in the mission field somewhere. Of course right now the country of Liberia is deeply on our hearts and so we thought that would be a logical first place to go and serve. We are wanting to do anything we can but Jonah would love to use his paramedic skills by working in a medical clinic and I would love nothing more than to just go and play with the orphans and love on them. Maybe I will be able to use my teaching skills too? Sarah will also be going with us as we think it would be an amazing experience for her and teach her about serving others and the way most of the world lives.
Please pray for us as we consider the best timing to do this. We are praying we can go early next year but need to find a contact (trying with AoH and another orphanage Children Concerned) to be affiliated with, find someone to watch the little kids for up to 2 weeks, find the money to travel which will be a God thing for sure, and maybe have some others come with us? It's a great surf spot as there was just an article in "Surfing" magazine about it and Jonah is thinking about the possibility of bringing 2 boards and teaching some of the young men at Shepard's Village (where my Mother of Love son Randall is) to surf and build relationship. If any of you are interested in the possibility of going with us please let me know. The more the merrier!

Homestudy mess has been taken care of

After many calls and talks with our social worker we realized that us not having our homestudies was not his fault, it was the fault of our agency. He had sent them to the director to have notarized and she had misplaced them (which she was not honest with me about). So our wonderful social worker Joe said that we would have them in our hands by Monday 11/13. Imagine our surprise when our doorbell rang today and Joe was standing there with all 4 copies of our homestudy! That was a blessing to have them 3 days sooner than we expected. I packaged them up, along with $3,500, to send to AoH. Sarah and I took a bike ride to the postal Annex and sent it off. Now the ONLY thing we are waiting for is our I-171H approval from immigration which is estimated to be here the week of the 27th but hopefully sooner. Pray for us. When that gets here we will send it immediately to AoH and then our wait for the referral of our son begins. Pray that it will go quickly and that we won't have to wait too long! I can't wait to see his sweet face! I have been begging Jonah to let me go to Liberia once we get his referral to spend a week or two with our boy but he says no way. It will be the hardest 5-8 month wait of my life...

Some confusion about the homestudy

I have been calling our agency everyday for the last week asking where my other copies of the homestudy were and why in the world I dodn't have them yet. I was nice in all of them except for yesterday's as I was so frustrated that no one would call me back! I got a call today from the director of the agency saying that there must be some confusion somewhere. She was under the impression, after talking with our social worker, that he had sent one homestudy to immigration and one to us. If this is true then that is great news because that means we should be getting our I-171H approval within the next couple of weeks! If that is not true then I don't know what to think. I sent in our homestudy on Monday this week because the address the website kept giving me was wrong :( The only question left to ask is, where are the other 4 copies of our homestudy that I requested? It seems that no one is sure. I pray that I get them before our I-171H approval comes in because that is when we will be on the waiting list for our referral! Without the homestudy, however, AoH can't refer us a child. Sigh... I thought this was going to be easier than our other adoptions.