Still waiting....

We are now at exactly the 30 day mark of waiting for our appointment in Ghana for the I-600. I never thought we'd go past it. As I always tell our caseworker, when will I learn not to get my heart set on a date. We really wanted to bring the kids home by the end of January. Who knows. But we are working hard on getting the bedrooms ready. I am also tackling the kitchen....five kids! I sometimes wonder how I'll do it and at the same time, I'm excited. I have wonderful friends who have five children, sisters who have "plenty"!!! ;) So I have a lot of people to go to for tips!! We have been so touched by people's thoughtfulness lately....thanks to all of you who have been so kind to us! Maybe monday we'll hear......

Merry Christmas!

As I sit here, taking a quick break from making a delicous turkey dinner, I am thinking of "P" and "M" SOOO much and remembering that a year ago, we were still in the final decision making process and searching for an agency. We would listen to the song by Steven Curtis Chapman, All I really want for Christmas, and I would just cry...knowing there were children too many to number, wanting a forever family. Now we are (hopefully) just weeks away from bringing two home to our family. And then three days ago, we celebrated "J"'s 13th Happy Adoption Day. What a blessing he has been to us and it means so much more now that we will have two more "gotcha" days to celebrate! We are truly blessed. We have been completely in awe (shame on us) as to how God keeps providing for our expenses for this adoption. Gifts from people and places we NEVER dreamed. One family's children chose our family to share their savings of tithe to bring the kids home. Talk about humbling. What a lesson to our children. Show Hope (Steven Curtis Chapman's organization) blessed us with a grant. Just love coffee has provided for various expenses. People told us that God would provide and we did believe that, or we wouldn't have begun this process, but we also didn't know how and were a little worried. God forgive us for not having the faith. He has proven to us over and over that we are doing what He has led us to do. The real challenges are yet to come, as we adjust as a new family of 7 (yikes!), but we are all excited and can't wait to get these kids into a home filled with love, maybe some sibling rivalry even! But that makes a family real right? Thank you Lord for the best gift of all today, Your Son. Without whom none of this would mean anything. To finish off, here is "M" singing the perfect song for today!!

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

I'm finally getting around to trying to sum up our final day. It's been so crazy since we've been home. I'm doing some serious nesting and at the same time, not enough. Where will I put everything? How will I store things for two girls in one room, let alone two boys? Oh it will all work out. These are good problems to have! I keep telling "M" that we need to buy more dishes, glasses, shelves etc.....thankfully he kind of agrees! I'm excited to be a mom to 5. There are so many of you who read this blog who have already adopted multiple children from various places and it is to you I say thank you. You have inspired us and encouraged us without even knowing it. Some of you have over 10 children through adoption and I'm not saying we're doing that, but it sure is comforting to know that there are wonderful people, moms especially, that I can talk to and get advice from! We miss "P" and "M" and wish they were her with us but at the same time, Christmas can be excessive and they will already be overwhelmed. We sure are praying for a speedy paperwork trail, but we'll see. God's timing has always overruled our plan!!


Okay, our final day in Ghana. We woke up and went to get the kids....probably mid-morning. We also had to clean our room and pack a bit if we brought them back to the hotel. Both kids immediately were drawn to the t.v. and seemed to know that the remote did something! Unfortunately, we really didn't get any channels on that tv!! :) When we arrived at the orphanage on this morning, Mary saw us and RAN to us. It was quite a special moment! She was pretty much with me from that point on for the rest of the day. She napped on my lap and didn't want me to put her down. She didn't want to pass her to anyone either! I kind of enjoyed that! We didn't really eat much during the day. We met up with the most wonderful couple, Auntie "C" and her husband, Pastor "E". We met with them for a while in the afternoon and they blessed us beyond description! They helped us to communicate with "P" and "M" in a way we hadn't done since we had met them! They were able to tell us that "P" is happy to go home with us and he knows that we will be coming back to bring him home! They were also able to tell us a little more about where "P" and "M" have come from and what life was life before they came to the orphanage. I won't share those details here, but it was hard to hear but good to know. When we left "M" started to cry, because she was very familiar with this family and didn't want to leave and really, from then on, she wasn't happy. She was starting to sniffle and cough and was getting tired and hungry. We tried to spend a little more time with the kids at the orphanage before we said good-bye ....that was SO hard to do because all of the children there wanted our attention. We tried to go behind the building and hide and they found us!! "P" was still pretty patient, but getting a little tired of the other children taking our attention away and "M" had had it!! :) She can stand up for herself, that's for sure. It was so hard to leave and say good-bye and "P" was very quiet when we left, but "M" was so tired and not feeling well that she didn't even want to say good-bye. In some ways I was upset by that, but at the same time it made saying good-bye easier, than if she had been clinging to me and I would have had to pull her off. When we go back we'll be able to focus more on that. I shed a few tears as we walked down the dirt road to catch a taxi and I know it was hard on "M" too...we both were emotionally drained by that point but so glad we had come here and met the kids. God was so good to us this whole trip and we can't wait to go back and bring them home, even on that long travel day of 24 hours!!!! Thanks for all your prayers and support!

Wednesday, December 9th

Well, I'm finally sitting down again trying to organize my thoughts!  We woke up on wednesday, ready to go, slept in a bit, had an interesting breakfast of mystery vegetables and mystery sausage, but I finally got a cup of coffee, which I had hardly had any of since I left Chicago!! At any rate, we went to the orphanage and spent a while there with the kids. They seemed happy to see us that morning. "P" was in school so we took "M" with us, as we went and delivered donated supplies to two other orphanages. We also gave plenty to our orphanage. It was really neat to be able to do that and we thank everyone again for sharing with us and those who received these donations!  We really enjoyed the time we were able to spend at the other two orphanages. The people serving in these orphanages are just incredible. We just have too much here in the U.S.   Anyway, "M" went along with us and was so good. She eventually fell asleep on me...I quite enjoyed that! It was awesome!  We took her back and I took a bunch of videos for the other parents and lots of pictures too, of all the other kids. It was fun to be there but really hard too because they were all wanting attention so much that we really couldn't spend any time with our kids alone. We left when they were having lunch and then sat down to wait for our ride to the embassy for our 2 pm appointment. Let's just say that an hour later it was 1:40 and no ride! Apparently traffic was to blame for the hold up, but we were to have left at 1 pm. God took care of us though, as He has this entire experience, and we arrived at the Embassy with no minutes to spare! We were ushered in and then proceeded to wait a half an hour! But we walked in, handed in our paperwork, they looked it over and said thanks. We'll let you know in 30 days! Okay! So now we're praying there were no errors and that all goes well. We'll keep you posted on that one! We headed back to the orphanage (and I am constantly leaving out the crazy cab rides by the way) and spent more time with the kids. It was hot and we were getting quite tired so we headed back at dinner time and promised them w e'd be back in the morning!  We had dinner at the hotel again and then just crashed. We really didn't use the pool or go on the beach at all like you would think I would, but neither of us were in a vacation mode at all. Overall a good day and glad to have that appointment done!!  We were able to call home a couple times over these few days too and that was so wonderful. It was very hard to leave our kids, but they were brave and mom took awesome care of them!

All I Really Want for Christmas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnRNP0Qipws&feature=player_embedded


Steven Curtis Chapman's Interview


http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Entertainment/steven-curtis-chapman-healing-death-daughter-album/story?id=9329578

Tuesday, December 8th

We arrived in Ghana around tuesday, 8 am and had left our home at 3:30 am on monday morning. We had wonderful first class seats thanks to an amazing friend. Stand by worked out great despite the seeming risks! God was in it!  We were SOOOOO tired and even starting to get hungry, and got off the plane right onto the tarmack. It was HOT and HUMID. That coming from someone who has lived in Florida. My hair did things it never did in Florida! We were picked up by a representative from the orphanage who took good care of us by getting us to our hotel and then to the orphanage. In hindsight, we probably should have slept and eaten first before we went, but we were also anxious to make the most of our three days there. We got to the orphanage and it was hard to see it honestly. I think we had major culture shock already. It's a good reminder for us that these kids, when they come, will be experiencing culture shock far beyond what we went through! We were brought into the home and sat down and they brought the kids to us, both whom gave us hugs and then left. It was a little hard and strange knowing that these are our children, these two little ones. We couldn't communicate too well and we were just not feeling good. But we had brought some things so we did that right away. Our kids had bought things for them and so we gave them to them. "P" got a rubber snake and a hotwheel at first and "M"  took that snake as her own right away! It really broke the ice because she loved it and it made her laugh. We had really not seen many pictures where she was smiling or laughing and we saw that a lot on this trip, which was awesome.  We showed the kids pictures and that got "P" talking and smiling and he was naming the kids in the pictures. "M" got very animated also. It was fun. We then left them to have their lunch and caught a taxi (that's a whole other story!) to go back and sleep at the hotel. It was a strange ride back. We were so overwhelmed, terrified, not feeling well and just in general, not sure how to feel. It wasn't what we expected, not that you can really know what to expect. After a good nap, a little food and caffeine :) we went back to get the kids. They had both just napped and so we took them to the hotel and went down to the pool. "M" would have nothing to do with it but she certainly was happy to run around and throw the balls back in the pool, eat candy and dig in her little purse that "M" gave her. She made us laugh so much. "P" was willing to go in the pool but only the little one. He stuck his face in the water a couple of times with his mouth open. It was clear they had never been in a pool before. They both seemed to enjoy it. We went to the room again and played with them a bit and then down to the hotel restaurant. After AN HOUR of waiting they finally brought us our food. By that time "M" was SOOOSOO hungry she was starting to get really blah, fussy and unsettled. Peter waited perfectly.  As soon as she started to get food into her, she perked right up again and was full speed again. We took them back in a taxi to the orphanage in a taxi at night that had no headlights. When you ride in a taxi, they drive fast and very close to each other and go when they can go. The taxis are also quite rickety! But no accidents! There are goats and chickens everywhere. Thankfully this animal lover never saw one being hit by a car!  It was a good first day by the end of it. A rough start but it just got better and better. We all really enjoyed the day together! It was evident people were praying, so thank you!! We went back to our room and even though it was 4 in the afternoon Chicago time, we went to sleep and slept until 9 the next morning. A good 12 hour sleep!!

Pictures and Videos

I will take time soon to write our experience down, but first I'm putting pictures up! Enjoy! It will take me much time to figure out how to put this experience into words, but I will!!
I can't figure out how to put videos on! Sorry!