Random Thoughts

I'm supposed to be working on Tyler's reimbursements right now. But I can't really focus... I've got too much adoption stuff on my mind! I thought I'd share a few things really quickly and then get back to work! :)

We have our appointment with USCIS next week to get our fingerprints taken. Then soon after that appointment we should get our approval on the US side to proceed. Once we get approval we can send our Dossier to Haiti. Now that I know we are close I started looking at all our paperwork again that I've been collecting over the months. And as the months went by some of the papers now need to be updated and small fixes need to be made before we take them in to be notarized. On top of that I just found out today that after they are notarized we need to take them to the County and the State to be authenticated. (I don't know how I missed that step before!)

Needless to say, my mind is spinning. I want to be sure to get everything right! There are so many papers to check and double check. Signatures. Dates. Oh my! And then there are all the other needs to be met: the kids need a snack, dishes need to be done, laundry piling up. Sometimes the calling feels so great and heavy and yet exciting and urgent at the same time. Yep, I feel a tad overwhelmed. :)

Then I hear a gentle whisper. From somewhere deep in my soul God reminded me of this:

He is my Rock.
The End. (And I'm off to get the kids a snack!)

The Next Step

We have made it to our next step! One step that felt like I ran about 50 marathons and had to crawl my way to the finish line to take. Phew!!

On Friday, February 13th we received our finalized Home Study documents. I was beyond thrilled when I saw this beautiful little package sitting by our front door. :)

Our next step was to file our I-800A paperwork with immigration. We had all that paperwork ready, so I grabbed one copy of our home study and went right out to mail the paperwork. I got confirmation on Monday they received our paperwork. And now we wait for notice in the mail of our biometrics appointment. Biometrics is when we go and have our picture taken, an electronic capture of our signature and our fingerprints - as far as I understand anyway. :) I can update you on that once I experience what actually happens!

This process usually takes 6-8 weeks. Then we can send our dossier to Haiti! We are sooooo close! Once we send our dossier to Haiti we will have another waiting game on our hands. Waiting to be matched with our kiddos!

In the meantime, now that we have our home study, we can apply for grants. I'm not as excited about this one... more filling out paperwork. But this adoption stuff is EXPENSIVE!! Filling out grant applications will now become my new part-time job. ;)

And speaking of expenses; we have a super fun fundraising event coming up! (It's a total God-thing how this fundraiser came about, but that's another story for another time.) Mark your calendars! Tell and invite your friends and family!

Waiting Patiently (or not so much)

It's been 13 years since Tyler asked me to marry him. I pretty much knew it was coming. So when Christmas season began in 2001 I eagerly anticipated him asking me at any moment.

Then Christmas Eve came and went.

Then Christmas Day came and went.

I thought maybe I'd missed something... isn't the Christmas season a romantic time for proposing???

Then New Years Eve came and went.

New Years Day 2002. Tyler and I drove to the beach to spend the day. And that's when he FINALLY proposed. On the beach. That was pretty romantic too. ;)


Fast forward 13 years... I spent this past Christmas season eagerly anticipating hearing from our adoption agency that our home study was finalized.

Then Christmas Eve came and went.

Then Christmas Day came and went.

What more did they need from us to complete it? More paperwork I'd missed? More training? Oh how I wished every day that they would call and tell us we were finalized.

Then New Years Eve came and went.

The New Year began and I just kept wondering when we'd find out. It's so hard to be patient! To find the balance between being diligent and working towards bringing our kids home and being patient is definitely a struggle for me. I don't know how I would have handled it before cell phones- I'd never leave my house in anticipation that ANY DAY we could get a phone call from our agency! I guess even with my cell phone I worried that they would call when I wasn't able to answer. :)

I've spent the past 16 days trying to focus on my kids and Tyler, friendships, eating better and exercising more, my relationship with Christ and my time spent in prayer, reading new books, etc. But so often I found myself checking my email and the ringer volume on my phone.

Then today we got some great news! We are officially approved to adopt two children (siblings)!!!  I am so incredibly happy!!! We have never wavered from feeling that God has called us to adopt two children and so now to have that made more possible now is such a relief and blessing.

My sweet friend and fellow adoptive momma in process made this bracelet for me. It says: "For these children I have prayed" and so for these children I will continue to pray!!

The End of Another Year

2014.

What a year.

If someone had told me last January 1st what the year had in store for me and my family, I'm not sure I would have believed them! I have been stretched and challenged, had highs and lows, wonderful experiences and fun times.

Honestly, part of me is sad that another year has passed. There will be moments that I can't get back, mistakes I've made that I can't fix. 

Yet, as I look forward to 2015 I have such an excitement and hope! I get to look forward to the memories I will make with Haley, Logan and Penny. I will get to press on in growing my faith. I will get to learn how to love Tyler better. I will get to continue to watch how God works in our lives. And I will get to continue to step out in faith as we eagerly work to bring our kids home from Haiti.

And speaking of our adoption... I heard yesterday that our home study has been preliminarily approved, but will now be reviewed by a leadership team for final approval. I feel like this approval process is taking WAY longer than I had anticipated, but because we are asking to adopt two children there are just more hoops to jump through. I am hoping and praying that next week we will get our final approval so we can take our next step!

I also wanted to share that in the last six months we have been so blessed by others in our fundraising attempts! With our garage sale, our Thirty-One Gifts sale, money we saved, donations to our Pure Charity account and other anonymous donations we have been able to save a substantial amount towards the adoption costs!! It is so encouraging to see God's provision. We will continue to work at putting together fundraisers this next year. We have ideas for another garage sale (if you're spring cleaning we will take those unwanted items off your hands!), a pancake breakfast, a barn party, selling coffee, and other possibilities! 

As this year ends, I am so thankful for all my sweet friends and family. For all your love and support. I am praying blessings for you all in this coming year!

Stacey

Thankful

I've been thinking over how to share about my trip to Haiti. There are so many details about the day to day experience it seems difficult to summarize it all. I could go on and on about what we did, who we met, what the weather was like, what the surroundings were like, etc.
I will say, however, that I have have learned a few things that have seemed to take hold of my heart.

I absolutely love Haiti. It is a very difficult place to describe. The best description I can think of would be "tragically beautiful." There is so much poverty, sickness, and pain. Yet in the midst of it all there is so much beauty! The people, the flowers growing up amongst the rocks, the hope, the community, the spreading of the Gospel. I am so incredibly eager to go back! I knew Haiti would forever be part of my life, but I had no idea how quickly it would grab hold of my heart.

While in Haiti we visited the Wholehearted Orphanage. This orphanage is unlike most orphanages. It is set up family-style. They live in a home where a husband and wife are the dad and mom to the orphans there. They are family now. The love, joy and life that is felt in that home is amazing. When they have visitors each child greets each visitor with a hello in Creole and a kiss on the cheek. They sing songs for the visitors. And when its time to leave everyone stands in a circle holding hands and they pray. While we were there it was the job of one of the teenage boys to pray.

It was the prayer of this boy that struck a cord with me. His prayer was nothing but full of thankfulness. From a purely American perspective, how can this child have so much to be thankful for? I hear people talk about how blessed Americans are. And yes, I agree to some extent. But then again there are many negatives to that blessed life. Constant busyness, discontent, greed, selfishness, isolation... Those thing were not evident in the lives of my brothers and sisters in Christ in Haiti. They had hearts full of thanksgiving, a passion for Christ, and lives spent living in community with those around them.

I will admit that I had a difficult time coming back home. Hours of travel, a nagging cough and jumping right into the Thanksgiving holiday wasn't easy. I've been trying to process my experience in Haiti. It's still overwhelming at times. My mind will randomly slip back to different events that happened. I wish Tyler had been there with me to experience it too. I have so much to be thankful for. 

I truly do eagerly look forward to visiting Haiti again. Maybe it will be another mission trip. But maybe it will be to visit our children!

First World Problems

I've been mulling over how to put these last few weeks into words. I think I'll put a lot of pictures into this post because I'm still not sure I have all the right words.

In late August, just before Labor Day weekend, we went on vacation with some friends. Before we left we had one issue with an upstairs bathroom. No big deal. We still had another full bathroom upstairs and another half bath downstairs. We were leaving town for a few days so by the time we got back the bathroom in need of repairs would mostly be taken care of. The place we went to was amazingly beautiful. Breathtaking. We had a great time swimming, hiking, sitting around the campfire and just relaxing.

To find a place like this you have to be pretty much in the middle of nowhere. And in the middle of nowhere there is no cell service. For our vacation it was so nice to be "unplugged". For the coming home, it was a whole different story entirely.

Once we were within cell service again my phone and Tyler's started going off like crazy. It was text after text and voicemail after voicemail. And guess what? While we were gone our other upstairs toilet decided to break. Yep. The water ran and ran until our neighbors saw water coming out of our front porch ceiling. When we got home this is how we found our house:

Down to the studs in half our living room, part of our master bedroom and now our master bathroom. So we tried to make the best of it. That's Logan on the subfloor. He colored a race track and was playing with his matchbox cars.

Oh! And in the midst of all this, I must share, school started! Now Haley is in 2nd grade, Logan is in Kindergarten and Penny is in Preschool.

For our first week of living in the midst of a remodel we held it together pretty well. The kids managed to get to school with all their supplies, they started soccer and we had our third home study visit! Our sweet social worker came to our house while it was all torn apart. I guess it was a good thing she saw our home before! 

THEN that same afternoon we rented an RV to move into for a week or so. Just living the dream right? :) Our home had become so stressful to live in that we needed a peaceful place to retreat to. Friends of ours let us park the RV on their property. It was really fun to be neighbors for awhile! 

We plugged along with trying to get our home study training done, but the long days were turning into long nights and we knew we had to push pause on something. We are just a few small steps from completing our home study. But for the next week or two we are setting it aside. It makes me sad. It really does. To know I could be working on something to help the process along but am not. But as I am reminded and reminding myself, God knows when our kids are supposed to come home. And all this is in His time.

And so now we are back in our home. It is nowhere near finished, but the work that needs to be done now requires us to be at our house so much more working on it. As I stand at the kitchen counter writing this here is what my house looks like:

If you know me at all you will know that I thrive when there is structure and order. My life has none of that right now. It's a struggle, it's stressful and I'm tired. There are moments when I can laugh at all this and moments when I just want to cry. I am way out of my comfort zone and element. But in all reality I know God can work this for His good. I know that as I learn to move past my pride and allow people to help me or to ask for help that God is growing me. And truly, this is all just a first world problem. I still have plenty of food to eat and a roof over my head. 

One day, instead of the rest of the house, I hope to be painting the kids bedroom in preparation for their siblings to come home.

Home Study - Part 1

We had our first home study visit! It seemed a bit surreal. I, of course, was on a cleaning frenzy the 24 hours before our social worker came. Even though she reassured me it was not a "white glove" test, I was not about to let my house look less than what I would consider appropriate. :) Don't worry, my garage kept me humble as it is still holding some remnants from our garage sale!

Our social worker seemed very sweet. It will be really great working with her. The part I love about our agency is that they take the time to pray with us. Its a good reminder that no matter how much paperwork, organizing, and interviewing we do, it's still ultimately up to God. 

After our visit we had to wait a few days before we received our checklist for what documents we needed to gather and forms we needed to sign. The waiting days are always the hardest. It's hard to feel like you should be doing something and can't. It's hard to feel like things are out of your control. It's hard to not get discouraged. So to be honest, last week was hard. I think that I'm still learning the waves of emotions that come with this process. Sometimes I will be able to complete a step and there will be great joy and it will be easy to praise God. Sometimes I won't be able to do anything. And it's in those times that I am learning it's easy for me to get discouraged and begin to grumble. I'm really hoping that will change!

And so now I am gathering documents, signing more papers, writing an autobiography and ordering things like my third child's birth certificate... that I should have ordered more than three years ago...

It has been interesting and challenging to write my autobiography. The outline for it involves so many different times in my life, so many different people and so much analytical thought! I think it would be much easer to write about someone else. And the fact that I hardly remember anything that happened before 6th grade doesn't help! I'm powering through though because as soon as we get them in to our social worker we can schedule our next interviews. They will be one-on-one interviews and take about an hour each. I can't imagine what we will talk about for an hour!

We are also wrapping up a fundraiser that we have been doing over the last few weeks with Thirty-One Gifts. (You could still order something tonight if you're interested!! http://www.mythirtyone.com/shop/catalog.aspx?eventId=E4747929&from=DIRECTLINK )

It has been so fun to do this one! I've even got some Christmas shopping done! I might do another fundraiser party this fall as there are new fabrics and items coming out. :) I'm also thinking of doing another fundraiser that is near and dear to my heart... it has to do with COFFEE! :)

I do have to say, it's hard to know sometimes if our kids understand the whole adoption thing. But they talk about their brothers or brother and sister every day! Sometimes Penny will look up and me and ask, "Are our brothers or brother and sister coming home today?" It's so sweet! And every night when we put the kids to bed, we get to pray with them for our kids who are not yet in our home. We pray that God will protect them and show them His love even before we can. I think our kids get it. And somewhere in my heart I am praying that they will know that we are all orphans waiting to be adopted by a heavenly Father who desperately loves us and chooses us for His forever family.