Thursday, November 19, 2009

God is the Invisible Red Thread in Our Lives!



Thankfulness sometimes seems to flow out of us and other times it is a choice. I am thankful to experience the Biblical implications of this picture, which is probably my favorite. Though the future is unknown to us we trust that God is in charge of the timing of everything we will experience as we bring Joy into our family. I am thankful for the opportunity to parent all of my children as they grow up. As we prepare for them to be spread out between both sets of grandparents I'm grateful for helpful and generous parents that can care for them when Joshua has surgery Monday. I am thankful that I live in country where my child can go get surgery he needs. I am thankful that no matter how hard the surgeries are on us we always look back and can see God working in our lives. I often wish that I could have Joshua as my child without the seemingly endless speech and doctor appointments and without him having to undergo all these surgeries. But then I remember that without those things we wouldn't have met some of the most amazing families I am priveledged to know. For those of you that have climbed the Great Wall you know that it is not the easiest set of stairs to climb. What some don't see in the above picture is that it took that little girl work to get there. It reminds me that our lives and our children's lives are at times messy and hard but in the end God can redeem any life and though the road may be hard it is always worth it. I am so thankful for the hard times and good times. They have made me so much closer to the Lord and in the end nothing else matters except our relationship with Him!

Saturday, November 7, 2009

DTC!!!!





What an exciting time for sure! Here are some photos of the fun things we did in October!

As of November 4 we are officially DTC (Date to China). As I type our paperwork is in Hong Kong. It's too cool to watch it travel to Beijing hopefully to be logged in the the Center for China's Adoption Affairs soon.

Now I get to go into nesting phase. We have decided to play musical rooms yet again at our house so next week we will be moving all three girls into the big bedroom in our house. The boys were actually excited to get a "new room". Isaac's first question was, "Will Joshie be with me?" There is not a day that goes by that I don't thank God for those two brothers. Especially given the very rough 6 months they had "getting to know each other." It's funny to us that they rarely fight now and absolutely LOVE having a brother. Grace wrote a paragraph at school the other day that had to compare two things and their similarities and differences. It was so cute because their differences included their appearances but their similiarities were that they LOVE to run around the house shooting guns and yielding light sabors!! And how true that is!

I am in the process of gathering ideas to send to Joy for Christmas. One of my ideas is to send her more photos but this time of the pictures of her around our house and once we get the girls' room settled I will photo that too. I want her to start to realize that even though we don't know each other yet she is part of our family FOREVER!

In November Faith is celebrating her 8th birthday and Joshua will have surgery to revise his p-flap. I dread that but we hope it will help him close off his nasal passageway from his mouth to push more air out his mouth instead of his nose when he talks. Please pray for him and us! Surgeries tend to be hard on us all!