CAN YOU HELP? even a little bit?! PLEASE! :)

Operation Giggle (http://www.operationgiggle.blogspot.com/) is doing a few things I'm REALLY excited about AND there is an urgency to this need.

Operation Giggle has partnered with our placing agency, YWAM, to provide Christmas for the widows and orphans in their current homes as well as for 25 street boys in Gimbie. You can read about these precious boys here : http://thatwemightbeadopted.blogspot.com/2009/09/street-kids-part-2.html

I DARE YOU TO READ ABOUT THEM!! their stories are heartbreaking.


**I can no longer copy/paste links into blogger! sorry for the long and messy links! have no idea what happened..and, since John is my computer guru and is out of town for the weekend, we'll have to live with it. :) **

anyway -12 of these boys still need to be sponsored for a 1 time gift of $25. If you can't afford $25, could you afford $5 or $10? any little bit you could help with would go towards giving these boys an actual Christmas....they will know they are loved and prayed for by people who don't even know them. Can you imagine what a gift that would be to children who have no-one to love on them???!!!!

The $$ for these boys needs to be received by this coming Friday, the 13th -so there is much urgency to get these boys sponsored.

please consider helping these precious boys out.

Operation Giggle is also partnering with New Day Foster Home in China! If you'd rather give to help get Christmas gifts to China, please consider donating to Operation Giggle's New Day drive. I believe there is a raffle going on for adorable gifts too. :)

and this is Duncan.

My dear friend Sarah is his Christmas Warrior thru Reece's Rainbow.
Sarah is trying to find a family for precious Duncan AND help to raise an adoption grant for him.

Please visit her site at: http://arewethereyetla5.blogspot.com/ to see the rules and specifications of her give-away to help find a family for Duncan AND to help raise an adoption grant for him.

Again, every little bit you could do -donate, tell others, whatever...is 1 step closer to Duncan finding a family instead of being put into a mental institution for the rest of his life.

IT'S ELIZABETH DAY!!

November 4, 2007 we walked into a business room in a hotel in Fujian, China.

With butterflies in my stomach and my heart in my throat, I walked off the elevator, turned the corner and saw my little girl standing with her traveling nanny/nurse at the couch.

The little girl God had placed in our hearts in November of 2005 when we began our process to China was now standing before us.

our first introduction

1st "family" photo

1 scared little girl whose world had just been rocked.


Fast forward 2 years and you have this.

1 happy little girl who is VERY proud to be from China, but who is also securely a part of our family and very happy to be here.

I never know if we should celebrate "Gotcha Day" -Nov. 4th, or Nov. 5th -the day we officially adopted her. This year it's today the 5th. :)

a couple pics of Ellie-bellie with her favorite friends in the whole-wide world. :)

This last year has been SO much better than the first. We are thriving as a family, not just surviving. I think alot of that is due to the fact we were able to identify Elizabeth's issues as attachment related and deal with them head-on.

We are making great strides with Elizabeth. Her episodes of insecurity are definitely fewer, shorter, and further in between than they used to be. Oh -for sure we still deal with stuff daily....but I finally feel like we're able to deal with them properly and thus help Elizabeth heal.


She has come a long way this year in just about everything.

She is best "buddies" with her brother and sister.

She doesn't just play with toys, but also play imaginative things.

She LOVES to draw, color and do crafty things.

Her English has exploded! She is speaking much better now. True, sometimes she is difficult to understand and she doesn't pronounce all her words correctly -but she is getting there.

She LOVES to be outside and we are finding is quite adept at sports related things..swimming and riding her bike are 2 things she has excelled at!

She LOVES to be held and snuggled. :)

Elizabeth -

sometimes the moments in China seems so far away ~ the moment I first saw you, the moment I held you and cried with you, the moment I noticed you asleep on my shoulder...and sometimes they seem like just yesterday.

sometimes I take a step back from our whole situation and am amazed at how scary those first few weeks with us must have been....but how brave you were to come to us and trust us.

sometimes I get frustrated that you still haven't come to the point of fully trusting us and our love for you...but then I am reminded of how much hurt and confusion and sadness you experienced before coming to us. it makes me so sad that even after 2 years, there is still a part of you that you keep at a distance from us.

Elizabeth, we love you.
We love ALL of you -your silly part, your sad part, your mad part, and your happy part. You can try to push us away, but we're not going anywhere! My hope and prayer is that sometime soon, you will be able to fully love us and let us fully love you.....that God will fully heal your heart.

I love you Ellie-bellie.

love -mommy

ANDREW'S 6TH B-DAY -BELATED POST

My baby boy turned 6 on October 14th.

I can't believe he's getting so old! :)

We had a little party for him at home with just us on the 14th, and then the following Sunday we had grandma & grandpa and auntie, tio, and the cousins over.

pics from his actual birthday

getting a kids' pitching machine from John's mom

blowing out his candles



pics from his "big" birthday party

he wanted a "bak*ugan" birthday so he received a few bak*ugans and then I put them on his cake.

the boys found one of Andrew's light sabers. :) Josiah loved it...see the expression on Jeremiah's face? I don't think he was too thrilled his brother had it!

my sister had done french braids in her little girls' hair so while she was here, she did Becca's and Elizabeth's hair the same way. It was TOO cute!

I know this is late, but didn't want Andrew and his birthday left out. :)

Andrew-bug,

I love you so much. You are such a sweet little boy.

I love how much you love your sisters...and how you are always playing with them....even if it's "mommy's and daddy" and not "boy" things.

I love how much you love learning.
You really are a smart little guy and I love seeing you "get" what you are being taught.

Most of all, I love seeing your understanding and love for God grow.

I pray that you will continue to fall in love with your Savior and that you will follow hard after Him ~that you will be a light.

I love you son.

love-

mommy

LOOK AT THIS MESS!

the above pics are just 1/2 of what we had for our gi-nour-mous garage sale on Saturday. :)

we had 10 tables and 2 clothing racks FULL of clothes, 80+ pairs of shoes, 10 boxes of videos and books, etc etc.

we are SO thankful to our friends and family for giving us stuff to sell!

our day was a HUGE success and we were able to sell about 2/3 of the stuff.

PRAISE GOD!

not only was our sale a huge success, but I LOVE that quite a bit of the leftovers are going to people who really could use it.

the books and videos were donated to a gal trying to raise $$ for her son to go on the mission field.

all the stuffed animals, blankets, shoes, and men's & women's clothing are going with John down to Mex*ico this weekend (he's going on a missions trip) and he is going to give them away.

all of the baby stuff -blankets, bibs, etc and most of the kids' clothes are being shipped to YWAM for them to take over to Ethiopia when the staff or other families travel. I told John last night as I folded clothes to ship, "wouldn't it be neat if our referral pic had our son in one of the outfits we're folding right now?!".


**I have a few more posts coming this week, hopefully! I still have pics of Andrew's b-day to get up and also a way you can help make a child's Christmas wonderful ~for just a few $$

so stay tuned!!**

AND YET ANOTHER GOD-STORY FOR THE DAY!

About a month ago we sent off our request to the State of Cal*if*ornia for John's birth certificate. Early last week we received a little post card stating they had received our request, were working on it, and we'd have it within 12 weeks.

12 weeks?!!

oh my! that is the longest I've ever heard of. My heart sunk, I nearly started to cry, and was just so sad. We were hoping to have our dossier to Ethiopia by Christmas, early December if at all possible...and if we had to wait 12 weeks just for John's birth certificate...well that meant our dossier wouldn't go until late Feb/early March.

I rested in the fact that God is in control and that if this was His timing, well, I would need to be OK with that.

I went ahead and called the office last week...spent nearly 2 hours waiting to talk to a live person. :)

As nicely as I could, I explained that we were requesting the certificate in order to adopt from Ethiopia and that 12 weeks seemed so long to wait, was there anyway to expedite the process?

The lady I spoke to was SO nice. so so nice. She explained that sadly, there was no way to speed the process up as well as that we probably wouldn't be waiting 12 weeks...the wait was more like 12-18 weeks because of the holidays.

She could tell I was dejected and so placed a call for me (how nice was that?!) and found out the county John was born in could provide us a certificate much quicker....so we sent off for that today.




BUT............GUESS WHAT JOHN FOUND IN THE MAIL TODAY?

His birth certificate.

Somehow.........his request was processed immediately.

I had to keep myself from jumping around the room like a crazy person. :)

Isn't that just like God to surprise us with fun things like that?

IN AWE OF WHAT HE IS DOING

This post has been swirling around in my head for a few days now and after our last 24 hours, I just have to share.

About 2 weeks ago I posted here that we were adopting from Ethiopia. Along with this blog post, I emailed our friends and family to share the news of our upcoming adoption as well as to inform them we were having a garage sale this coming Saturday, 10/31.


John and I were hesitant to even have a garage sale but thought we'd at least give it a whirl. As of yesterday, one of the stalls of our 3 car garage was completely full....so John is going to be parking our Yuk*on in the driveway so we can organize and expand into a 2nd stall of the garage.

Just today my sister called to say a friend of hers (and they're aquaintances of mine too) had some things for our sale and to give them a call so we could pick the stuff up. I just got off the phone with the gal and she said she was with a group of friends this weekend and one mentioned she had a pile of things she was taking to go*od *will...another said the same thing....so our friend mentioned "hey, I have a friend having a garage sale to benefit orphans in Ethiopia...would you want to donate your stuff to that?".

Guess what? they're bringing their things to us too!


And last night, we got home from our neighborhood's Hall*oween Carnival to find several boxes of things on our doorstep. Later found out they were from some new friends of ours from church....donating them to our garage sale too. You know the neatest thing? They are just a few weeks ahead of us in the Ethiopian adoption process. And yet they were selfless enough to donate to our endeavor.

AND -As if this wasn't enough, last night I placed a large order for coffee and cocoa at 963 Coffee. If you look at our blog -the upper left hand corner -there is a button for 963 Coffee (and cocoa). We became "affiliates" and a portion of every order will be given back to us and we will in turn, be giving that $ to YWAM's Ethiopian Adoption Ministry. We had several friends and family contact me, wanting to order coffee and cocoa thru our affiliation with 963 Coffee. What a HUGE blessing.

I am in awe and humbled at what He is doing.

IF YOU GUESSED.....

that we're adopting a young boy from Ethiopia, you'd be correct. :)


We are most of the way thru our portion of the paperwork and are waiting on the Dept. of Hom*l*land Sec*urity to process our I600a ("orphan" visa), then our paperwork can go to DC for authentication, then on to Ethiopia.

We are hoping our paperwork is in Ethiopia by December...Christm*as at the latest.

We are using YWAM's Ethiopian Adoption Ministry ( http://www.ywamethiopia.com/ cuz I couldn't get my copy/paste to work on this post!). Their blog is http://www.thatwemightbeadopted.blogspot.com/ -they have a really neat 3 minute video right at the top of the blog, showing the work they are doing for the widows and orphans of Ethiopia.

We've already fielded alot of questions about:another adoption? why Ethiopia and not China again? have you thought about how this will impact Elizabeth?

So let me answer a few of those now. :)

*yes, another adoption and no, we didn't just wake up one day and say "hey let's adopt again". :) We have been praying over this decision consistenly for over a year now.

*Ethiopia instead of China was a tougher decision than some might think. We truly believe this is the Lord's leading and it did take awhile for me to let go of MY wanting Elizabeth to have a sibling that looks like her. When we made the decision to start another adoption, we fully thought we were heading back to China for a boy....then thru a series of circumstances, God halted that path and continued to put Africa on our hearts. We started researching various African adoption programs and felt that the Ethiopian one fit us the best.

I do still want Elizabeth to have a sibling that looks like her. She seems to struggle enough with things, I don't want her to feel "different" in our family...so we'll just have to see how the Lord handles that one.

*have we thought of how this will impact Elizabeth? YES. She is one of the main reasons we didn't start this 2nd adoption sooner. We wanted to make certain we were on our way with attachment counseling, that she was getting better, and that we felt she could handle a sibling.

let's face it, any child is going to have some adjustments to make when a sibling is added -that's just life. With Elizabeth, we are accutely aware of how this will affect her, that this will probably set our attachment work back a little bit.....BUT we also have 9-12 months before a sibling is added.....9-12 months to continue to help her heal and give her tools to better deal with her insecurities...we also are going to be heightened to her cues of insecurity when the new son/brother comes home and will hopefully be able to act upon those cues so as to minimize her insecurity.



For those familiar with the China process, the Ethiopian one is a bit different. We still do our paperwork and submit it to the country and then receive a referral. From here, the process is a bit different. The simplified version is: Once we have been matched with a child, our paperwork will go to court where the child will become legally ours....then we get an Embassy appt and travel to Ethiopia to meet our child, go thru the Embassy process, then bring him home.

We will have medical information and pictures of our boy, but we can not post them publically until we have passed thru court, because he will not legally be ours. So, I will post when we get a referral but no pics...isn't that a bummer?! But as soon as we pass court you can bet your bippy a big ole pic will be on the blog. :)

The kids are all very excited, Andrew especially. Since Elizabeth came home, Andrew has been praying for a younger brother, then he added in to the prayer "an older brother too" and now his pray is "a younger brother, an older brother, and a brother my same age". :) He may have to wait awhile to get ALL of those requests, but we love how consistent he has been in praying...for nearly 2 years.

Thanks for hanging on for this long post, but wanted to get all the info in 1 instead of having to do 2 or 3!

We'd appreciate your prayers as we go down this road again. For the Lord to prepare us and ready us for a new child and sibling...and for our boy in Ethiopia -for God to comfort his little heart and prepare it for the huge change he has coming.