Bunk Beds and Mixed Nuts

You gotta love Christmas. We had so much fun. We got the girls bunk beds this year. On Christmas Eve after we had put the kids down for the night we assembled the beds in the living room (a 3 hour process) and wrapped them up like a huge gift. They had a blast opening them and playing on them all day.

After we had our little Christmas morning at home we went to my mom's house where the entire family gathers. It's always fun to see what happens when everyone gets together, including:

- My Uncle Mike, the bus enthusiast. He collects all kinds of bus memorabilia and even attends bus conventions. While he's here he likes to walk to the bus stop and just ride around town.

- My Aunt Karen, who is the quintessential crazy cat lady that we all know and love. I'm not sure what the current count is, but at one point I think it was upwards of 15.

- My Uncle Mark, who lives in an elderly woman's basement and eats oatmeal out of a casserole dish each morning.

- My Grandma, who consistently calls our girls Melanie and Parker.

But what's Christmas without a few mixed nuts, right? :)

We had a generous gift toward our adoption from some dear friends, and we are planning a fundraiser garage sale in early January. If anyone has any stuff they'd like to unload and donate, let me know and I'd love to take it off your hands!

Merry Christmas

It's getting pretty quiet in the blogosphere, and I've been no exception. Just busy with all the stuff that comes along with Christmas! I've seen enough construction paper and Elmer's glue in the past few days to last me through the Spring. Even with the kids' paper chains counting down the days, somehow I still feel like it snuck up on me a little bit.

Still waiting to hear from the courts for an Adoption Certification number. Once we have that we can begin applying for grants and moving forward with our international agency. I sold a couple more cds to some people and a lot more through the bookstore at church. Also sold a couple of things on craigslist, my new best friend. So, still slowly chipping away at the huge mountain in front of us.

Trying to really savor this year, and extract joy from all the rest of the stuff that goes with the season. Wanting to enjoy my family, be thankful for how richly God has blessed us, and to draw near to Him. Hoping you all have a wonderful Christmas and resolute New Year!

Who Needs New Barbie Clothes When You Have Old Socks?

Personally, I think they look ravishing.

An Unexpected Twist

It's been a little while. Quite a week at our house. As far as the adoption process goes, not a lot happening right now. Our homestudy has been submitted to the court and we're just waiting for approval from them to be officially certified. I guess things move a little more slowly in the municipalities around the holidays, but we're still hoping to be approved by the end of the year.

An unexpected twist this weekend was that Benjamin had to be admitted to the hospital because he was having trouble breathing. A cold had stirred up his asthma symptoms and we couldn't get him back to normal at home so we took him in to an Urgent Care. They treated him as best they could but said he needed to go to the ER and they had to send him in an ambulance for liability reasons. It was the saddest thing to see my little baby boy strapped to a gurney, I'm just thankful it wasn't a real emergency situation. I hope and pray that that is the last time I ever have to follow an ambulance with one of my kids in it.

At the ER they worked with him for a few hours before admitting him and we ended up staying for two days. Needless to say, it was a stretch to keep the world turning at home with me away unexpectedly for so long, but we have wonderful family and friends who helped us through it. Matthew was able to take a day off from work and then of course the grandmas couldn't help but help. We had so many calls from concerned folks and offers for meals or childcare. I told Benji that he was very blessed to have so many people who love and care for him! He is doing much better now and we have a new medication that will hopefully prevent any more episodes like this one through the rest of the winter.

I got home about an hour ago from playing at a little outdoor Christmas in the Park concert with some other local artists. It was a fun night, and a new first for me. During the opening song of my set it actually started raining on us. I couldn't help but laugh as I sang "like rain on thirsty land came the Savior of the world". It stopped soon after it started, but it made the evening a little more interesting. Plus, I sold a few cds and made another $40 toward our kiddos. Every little bit counts!

Q-Tips

Seriously Benjamin. This is the 3rd time today.

Happy Birthday Harper and Home Visit

Today is Harper's 3rd birthday! We had a cute little party at the park and it was a beautiful day. Happy birthday to our precious little girl!

Our home visit was on Friday, and it went great! Our caseworker came in and Bethany took her by the hand and gave her a tour of the house. We spent most of the time being interviewed by her about our family backgrounds and current familial relationships. She called them "genograms", kind of like a basic family tree, but she took a ton of notes and asked a lot of questions.

I thought it was really fun! I can see why come people like going to counselors. It's nice to sit there for an hour and have someone ask you questions about your life and you basically just get to talk about yourself to someone who really wants to know! Really though, your past is sort of this thing that you carry around with you and while it totally informs the present, you don't necessarily talk about it that much or get to share with people other than your spouse or very close friends. Not that I have anything dramatic or haunting in my past, but I feel like it's such a part of who a person is. So I enjoyed that.

After the genograms, she asked Bethany and Harper to draw a picture of our family so she could ask them questions about it and assess the pictures. Harper traced her hand and drew H's all over so I'm not sure how helpful her picture was, but Bethany did a really good job. She drew herself, then Harper, then Daddy, and then Benjamin, but she ran out of room for me! "Why don't you draw Mommy on the back?" we suggested. And so she did. I, however, was the only family member with an associated prop. What does my 4-year-old associate most with me? The stove. She drew me cooking at the stove. We all thought that was hilarious, and pretty accurate. So while the rest of my family is hanging out on the front of the paper, there I am on the back, cooking. But seeing as cooking for people is one of the primary ways I show love and affection, I'm alright with that association. :)

What Can You Get for Two Quarters These Days?

I like to spread the word about good deals, so FYI a vending machine in the Basha's on Pecos and McQueen is selling Hope and Inspiration for 50 cents! Grab that one up while it lasts.

Home visit was switched to this coming Friday, so that's why I haven't posted about it yet. More on that later!

Off To A Great Start

The final numbers are in! On Friday the 7th the cd sales totaled $1,773.00! We have sold a few here and a few there since the release party, and have something in the works with the bookstore at our church, but we are so excited to be off to such a great start just from Friday night. Thanks to everyone who was there!

A friend suggested adding a way to purchase cds to this blog, so just to the right is an "add to cart" button that links to our paypal account (too bad we can't just adopt through eBay). It took me forever to figure out how to get that little button there, and I must say I'm quite proud of myself.

Tomorrow is our home visit! Thanks to all of you who have filled out reference forms and written letters and prayed for us. I'll let you know how tomorrow goes.

Catching Up

Over the weekend we saw a beautiful display of candied apples. They were $5 a piece, so I told the girls we would make our own when we got home. Here is a picture of the finished product! I made them eat the apples standing in the bathtub which turned out to be a very good decision.

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I missed a couple of weeks and it seems like a lot has happened! We had the "I'm Telling" meeting with our caseworker and it seemed like it went really well. We basically answered questions about ourselves and our marriage and family for an hour each. There were several "on a scale of one to 10, rate your...." questions and it was encouraging to honestly rate everything pretty high. God is so good to us, and answering all those questions was a nice reminder of that. We compared answers on the ride home and I think we matched up pretty well too. This week we both have our physicals and lab work which I'm not looking forward to, but it will be good to have out of the way. Then Friday is a big day because it is our (hopefully) final homestudy meeting which will be the actual home visit. I don't want to go nuts on cleaning or anything. I'll be interested to see if I stick to that.

Last Friday night was the CD Release party! It was so much fun and a great night. I'm not sure how many people came out, but it looked to be around 300 or so. We had just about the right amount of food (which to me means some leftovers) and we sold 120 cds in one night! Luke was running the cd table and he said a lot of people said "keep the change", so that was a real blessing. None of the money that came in on credit cards has been counted yet, so I don't have a total amount to announce, but we're off to a good start. The cds are for sale in the Commons Bookstore at our church if anyone missed the event but still wants one. They turned out great.

I have to say, I am pretty exhausted. After the release I was up with a sick Benjamin two nights in a row and we had a pretty full weekend. Thankfully my wonderful mom took the girls to church with her on Sunday morning so I was able to get a nap and a shower. It's going to be another full week, so we're gearing up! In a couple of hours I am looking forward to meeting a family in our area that recently adopted two from Uganda. We are meeting at the park for a picnic lunch and playground time.

As for where we are at emotionally, we are still planning on Uganda but are very much open to a state adoption should the right opportunity come along. We will also have to look at how much we are able to raise. Once our homestudy is complete, I can begin applying for grants from different organizations so we will hope for the best from that.

Well, I must go pack lunches and put away laundry! I hope to check back in once we have a total from the release party.

Rescheduling

First it was Pink Eye, now Strep Throat! I'm beginning to think we're hazardous to our caseworker's health. Rescheduling on Monday...

I'm Telling!

Does anyone else remember the game show from the 80's "I'm Telling!"? They would take teams of 2 siblings and they would ask one of them questions while the other sat in the "Freeze Zone" where they could not hear their sibling's answers. Then the two would switch places and answer the same questions and see which team could match the most answers to make it to the Prize Arcade.

We have the second of our three Homestudy meetings tomorrow, and it sounds to me a lot like "I'm Telling". Of course, it won't be my sister with me (though we would have cleaned up on that show) it will be my husband. The Freeze Zone will be the Pei Wei across the street and the grand prize will be checking off one more stepping stone on the way to our child/children!

Oh, about the backslash necessitated there, please keep praying about the one child, two children decision. As we've been crunching numbers we are now questioning not whether we could afford the adoption for two, but could we afford to raise two additional children. Pray that we would find a balance between wisdom and faith and that we would not make any decisions out of fear.

Hey, Are You Free on November 7th?

I took back the backyard today. All summer long it has been disintegrating into a wasteland of sun-eaten plastic toys nestled in overgrown crab grass and patio that makes the kids' tetanus shots worthwhile. As the weather has turned, we've been “playing” out there a little bit. “Playing” being the kids running around completely oblivious to the hazards at every turn and me chasing after them saying things like “Watch out!” and “Don't touch that!” and “There might be something living in there!” Friday morning one child was clotheslined by the barbecue grill and an enormous spider skittered out of a box of sidewalk chalk and sent us all fleeing for our very lives. For their safety and my sanity I made it my goal for the weekend to make our yard livable again. A little weed whacking, a little trimming, a lot of sweeping, and one large garbage bag full of junk later, it's back to a habitable environment.

Our calendar has already hit that Holiday season spiral where every weekend until the end of the year is marked up. It's all great stuff, so we're looking forward to everything though we'll have to be sure to schedule in enough rest and downtime. Matthew officiated a wedding yesterday and we have another one this weekend, then it's the seven:ten Fall Retreat, and then the next weekend we come to the November 7th square which reads “CD Release Party”. This is part of the answer to last week's question of how in the world we are going to pay for this adoption.

The musical side of my life goes in roughly 2 year cycles of writing songs, recording songs, and putting out a CD. This will be my forth one and I am more excited about it then any of the others before. First of all just because I'm so passionate about the songs and everything sounds incredible (thanks Ryan), but also because this year two of my passions in life will converge on this one night. We've done a release party for every album, but this year we will be highlighting adoption throughout the night and will use all of the proceeds generated by CD sales to help fund our own adoption. We're not expecting to raise all of the money that night, but we hope to raise a good chunk out of what we need, as well as hopefully a good measure of awareness.

So, please be praying for that night- Friday November the 7th, 7:00pm at East Valley Bible Church. Pray that the CDs would come in on time, that people would show up, that hearts would be stirred for the fatherless, and that we would sell a boatload of CDs. Oh, and one other thing: Come! Bring your families! Bring your friends! Bring your enemies! We'd love to see you there and your support means so much to us. We'll be announcing the date at church as well as by email, but if you still have an open slot on your calendar for 11/7/08, we'd love to fill it up.

Two Are Better Than One

It's amazing... the day I mention "Uganda", two families pop out of the online woodwork who have adopted from Uganda. That is two more families then we knew of before! Uganda is a very new program so it has been incredibly helpful to email back and forth with them.

Still working on paperwork. We have all of our home study meetings scheduled as well as our physicals for the international agency. I try to do one adoption-related task per day, otherwise it just gets too overwhelming. Yesterday I took pictures of our house and head shots of Matthew and myself for the dossier. The day before that I worked on getting bank letters with our account balances. Today I hope to get some time to work on the autobiography they require. So many little things, just one step at a time!

As far as decision making, we are obviously still on course for Uganda, but open to divine detours. When I last posted we were considering whether to adopt one or two children and that seems to be coming into focus as well. We had a common sense theory that adopting two children would be better for the adopted children. Because they would be coming into a strange new country and the will always look different then the rest of their family, having a sibling who can relate to and understand them as well as simply look like them, seemed like a good idea to us. Besides, we talked about adopting again down the road, so why not just adopt two together?

We came in contact with two different organizations that place Ugandan children and both of them will not place children one at a time, only two at a time. The agency we are looking at right now does place single children, but just the fact that these other organizations have that policy confirmed for us that adopting two children is the right path for us at this point. So, thanks be to God for directions and guidance, and thank you for your prayers for those things!

Some of you may be wondering, isn't adopting expensive, especially for two? How are they planning on paying for this??? Ah, a very good question with an exciting answer that I will discuss in my next post.

Treading the Atlantic

We met with our caseworker Wednesday night, the first of several meetings in the home study process. She seems like a great caseworker and we really enjoyed talking with her and as far as we could tell everything went pretty well! We're both emotionally stable (just barely in a few areas) and we feel like we have a little more direction than we did a few days ago.

It feels very odd having so many choices about who your next child will be. With the past three, there's really only been one decision to make (wink, wink) and then the rest has all been decided for us. We trusted God through the pregnancies knowing that whatever child was born to us would be the perfect child for our family. With this process of adoption, it feels like we are more in the driver's seat, which is a very scary place to be. Again, it feels like it, but of course in reality we are no more in control than we have been with our three biological kids. So the past few months have really been a constant plea for God to guide us, direct us, and make a path clear to us. We know that, as with our pregnancies, whatever child we bring home will be the perfect child for our family.

As of now, we have narrowed our focus to two paths. One is a domestic trans racial infant adoption. That is basically where a birth mother from Arizona who wants to place her child for adoption decides that she wants us to be her baby's parents. We would also then have the opportunity to continue that relationship with the baby's birth mom, which is an exciting prospect. The other path is an international adoption from Uganda. This is definitely the scarier more intimidating option, thinking of dealing with a third-world government and with there being so many unknowns, not to mention sorting through the 437 pages of information I received from the international agency. But Uganda seems to be the direction we are heading at this point, although we are keeping our eyes and ears out for domestic opportunities that may come up. Obviously there is a point financially where we would have to commit to Uganda, but until then we are keeping as many avenues open as possible.

Those of you praying for us, thank you! We have felt your prayers as God has narrowed our focus. Please pray now for continued direction as we tread the Atlantic, and even as we think through the possibility of adopting siblings.

Also, might want to throw one up there for us this weekend. Matthew and I are tent camping for pretty much the first time ever while we ride in the Tour of the White Mountains bike race. Judging from the fiasco of killing a mosquito in our kitchen last night, we need all the help we can get!

Just a Quick Update...

Our caseworker was sick last week so we've rescheduled for Wednesday. I did ask her when we were on the phone if this meeting was standard or if there was a problem and she said it's standard for starting the homestudy process. So, I'll post again after Wednesday! Thanks everyone for asking how it went. :)

Meeting Tonight

We have a meeting with our caseworker tonight. I guess the agency looked over all of our paperwork and wanted to talk about some stuff. I'm not sure if this is standard procedure or if they're concerned about something, so I'm a little nervously curious about what she'll say! We had to take a pretty extensive personality test and we were totally honest even when it exposed our ugly places, so I hope we didn't score as psycologically unstable or something. We do have our moments... :)

The great thing about trusting God and His sovreignty is knowing that we don't have to worry about what happens because He has the best for us no matter what. But hopefully we're not nuts.

How it All Began

At 17 I didn't want to date. I didn't want to get married. I didn't want to have kids. I thought that getting married and having kids was an automatic disqualification from any adventure and all intense forms of ministry, not to mention a death-sentence on personal freedom. It was from this frame of mind that I was operating when Matthew decided to pursue a relationship with me. Needless to say, it didn't go so well at first.

He tried the typical tactics... told some friends that he was interested and let it trickle down the grapevine. I made it clear that I was not interested and sent that right back up the grapevine. He got the message, but was not deterred. He showed up wherever I was, always sat next to me, and just basically hung around until we had built a really strong friendship. How we got from friends to boyfriend and girlfriend is kind of complicated. I would say it started with a Diamondbacks game that he thought was a date and I didn't. It lasted 7 awkward innings and ended with a very long conversation in the driveway of my parents' house. I can't remember everything we talked about, but it involved dating, labels, marriage, individuality, and freedom for ministry. I don't know how long we sat out there, but I do remember whatever CD we were listening to repeated itself several times before I went inside. There were several crossroads like that in our relationship, and eventually I came to trust Matthew that he would not let us become what I feared: self-focused, cautious people with small dreams and fading identities.

We married in 2001, at which point I still wasn't sure I'd ever want kids. I did know, however, that if we did have kids I wanted to adopt. I'd even have been happy to only adopt and not have biological kids at all. Somewhere along the line that changed, but the desire to adopt did not. God placed the passion for the outcast inside me years earlier and it only grew stronger as I saw our marriage growing. I was frustrated that Matthew didn't share that passion and for a time it was a source of dissension for us. But God, who uses broken things, turned it into one of the biggest milestones in my journey as a wife as He taught me to let go, trust Him, and trust Matthew's leadership. I also started praying about it. My prayer was that God would change one of our hearts. Either He would give Matthew the desire to adopt or take mine away. To my delight, He chose the former.

As our family has grown, our passion for adoption has grown with it. For Matthew it has been a gradual process of being drawn in to the heart of God for the needy, the broken, the defenseless and the fatherless. For me it has been watching our family unfold and wanting to share that incredible blessing with a child who is without it. We have been waiting, waiting, waiting for the right time and we feel like this is it. We're seven years down this road now and I am so thankful that I was wrong about marriage, wrong about kids, and wrong about what it really means to be free.

Something New

Obviously, blogging has not been a very high priority for me lately. I've been considering just taking it down and being okay with saying “I had a blog once” and looking off fondly into the distance. An idea from our friend Luke, however, has brought new life and purpose to this neglected page.

Something that has been a high priority for me lately is navigating through the process of adoption. We're in the very beginning stages, so much of what we are navigating is our own hearts, our thoughts, our fears, and our desires. We have come to the point where we know with as much certainty as possible that we will adopt, and we will adopt relatively soon. Everything else is totally up in the air. There is a lot to be thought through and a lot of decisions to make and we'll surely need some help. That's where this will come in.

Our friend Luke is living his dream and planting a church here in Arizona, Second Mile Church. He also is doing some major navigating, thinking, praying, and decision making. He has a blog for the church, email updates, and most importantly, a prayer team. He suggested to Matthew today that we do the same thing for this adoption. So, this is effectively becoming my blog about the adoption. Suddenly I have plenty to write about.

Now what we need is a prayer team. Anyone who reads this can just pray for us as you keep up with what's going on, but if you'd like to formally “sign up” and really commit to pray us through this, you can leave a comment or just email me and we'd love it.

Much more to come....

Just Checking In

Okay, so it’s been a really, really long time since I’ve written anything here. I think I've actually been pretending that I don't even have a blog. I guess I’ve been busy with other things. Good things. We’re working on the next CD which I hope will be released this Fall. I love how it’s turning out so far. We’re working with a really talented engineer this time and it’s fun just to watch him work. So that’s been a bit time consuming, but well worth it of course. I get people who will come up to me and tell me they listen to my cd like every day and I just think to myself, “man, I’ve got to get something else out there for these poor people to listen to!” So hang in there, all you who are ready to jump off a bridge if your kid asks to hear the intro to “Daughter of the Lord” one more time. Something new is coming.

We start classes tonight at Christian Family Care Agency to take the next step as we look into adoption. I’m excited to get more information and hopefully come to the point where we can really make a wise, educated decision about if and when and who and where.

We’re still fighting with Benjamin’s eczema, and Bethany was pretty sick last week. Between the two of them I think I was at a medical establishment 4 times in 3 days. That was a rough week. I can’t imagine being a parent of a child who is really sick, like sick all the time. Be thankful for healthy kids, and pray for those that aren’t.

I hardly recognize my front yard! The Tru-Vine crew just finished up an all-day project revamping the landscaping. Our drip system and our sprinkler system were totally dysfunctional so instead of repairing both we just repaired the drip and ripped out the lawn. Well, we didn’t rip out the lawn, they ripped out the lawn. The kids and I sat at the breakfast table and watched one guy with a shovel go at it for 5 hours. They said it was his first day on the job. By about 11:30 he looked to me like he was already considering a career move. Bethany said she wants to do that when she grows up, but she wants to be a girl landscaper, not a boy one. They did a great job and Bret is a great guy so here is his number if you live in my area and need residential landscaping: 480-330-5711.

The outlook for the rest of the summer is fun! We have a bunch of trips scheduled, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves earlier this month when the two of us got away to northern Arizona for a little biking and hanging out. I’m into making videos out of the photos now because it’s more fun to look back at, so here’s a link to the one I made for that trip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgV1W8QlU8g. I’m not savvy enough to actually post it here. So then next month we head back up north with the whole crew to support Daddy as he rides his bike from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon. Then a few weeks later, we head west to Del Mar for a few days. Then, in September, we’re doing the big one: Disneyland! Top 3 reasons for going in September: 1. Low Attendance 2. Lower temperatures 3. Harper is still two and gets in for free.

So, now when you check in down the line and see that Kristie STILL hasn’t blogged, at least you’ll know what I’m doing instead. :)

Priorities

My 3-year-old was on the potty doing her business the other day and it was taking her a little while.

"You know Bethany, you could always flip through a magazine while you're sitting there," I suggested.

"Well Mommy," She explained, "I can't hold a magazine because if I let go of the toilet seat I'll fall in."

Good call, kiddo.