Thursday, September 27, 2007

Grandma's Teachings

This has been a busy week. The family is scattered across states for work and visiting. We got our oldest at-home daughter's passport as a backup in case we get the call to pickup the kids when we're trying to move. AND we got an offer on the farm last night. I wish I could say 'whoo-hoo' about the offer. It isn't what we were hoping for but then, does anyone get what they want in today's real estate market? So we countered. I'll let you know how that goes.

Most of the kids-at-home and I went to visit my dad, my sister and my Grandma B. at the beginning of the week. It was great. We stopped by to see my daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter Mattea on the way. Mattea is learning the army crawl. Lots of fun to watch her. My uncle from AZ was visiting Grandma so I got to see him, too. In fact, we took him to the airport on our way home.

My Grandma is 95, still lives at home, still drives to the Sr. Center and helps to take care of the "old people". However, her knees are bad and we found out in June that she has cancer. Grandma is a pillar of faith and makes sure to tell everyone often that she is so thankful for all the blessings in her life. Her daughter, my mom, died of cancer five years ago and was the same way. So it is easy to see where Mom got her great attitude. We were looking at old pictures and films with Grandma. What a treat to see all our relatives again. The other saying that Grandma uses is that 'each day is the Lord's day'. She says she wakes up and asks God what he has in store for her that day. I was wondering what to name this blog and I think I'll name it after Grandma.

With this in mind regarding what God has planned, I called Donna at AOH to see if she had any ideas where we were on the adoption schedule. Because of the difficulties a few families had with their adoption and because of the new US consular in Liberia all the adoptions have been pushed back about a month. So it looks like we won't have the kids home until January. We are on the October list for finalization, then it is about 6 weeks for a passport, and another 6-8 weeks for visa and traveling. Althought it seems like forever, we got our first referral in April so mid-April to January is not bad at all. Of course, we'll see what the Lord has in store for us all! I do hope Grandma B. will meet the kids. She was already passing around the pictures I had given her. Grandma has 21 grandchildren, 43 greats and 9 great great grandchildren, if I counted right! Our new three will make that 46 great grandchildren!

Friday, September 14, 2007

Erik's birthday and moving preparations

Yesterday was Erik's birthday. It is hard to believe he is 15 already. Erik chose to make his own birthday dinner of roast duck with portobella mushrooms and Pinot Noir sauce over barley, carrots with butter and brown sugar, and potatoes and onions cooked with Pinot Noir. Craig and I made a yellow cake to put candles on and served it with ice cream. The meal was delicious.
Erik was a little down, though, because he had hoped we would have already moved by now. Plus, we had helped our daughter Jessica move into a new apartment the day before so that was a reminder that we hadn't moved yet. After a good meal and some laughter, Erik was feeling better. We are all tired of being in limbo waiting for the farm to sell and being able to move on with our life. Lord willing, we won't have to wait too much longer.
We haven't heard any more from the agency about the adoption except that the kids are doing fine and Abraham is a great dancer plus a bunch of new pictures of the kids. I figure as long as we get new pictures, we're still on track to finalize the adoption and move onto the visa. Some families haven't been so fortunate. They are in our prayers.

More Kindness pictures




These pictures are about two weeks old.

Diamond photos





These pictures are from June and July.

New pictures of Abraham...





Abraham is the next Fred Astaire according to Donna.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Kindness pics




These are pictures of Kindness taken in June.

Happy Birthday, Kindness!!

Today is Kindness's first birthday. We look forward to celebrating more birthdays with her and the rest of the kids. We also celebrated Craig and Erik's birthday on Sunday with all our kids. My dad and sister and my inlaws were able to be here as well. It was a lot of fun. We had 18 for lunch. I had planned leftovers so we had plenty of food!
Our oldest daughters are saving our granddaughters' hand-me-down clothes for Kindness to use when she gets here. And last week we received a gift of clothes for Diamond (our middle one) from the S family. The S family had adopted a little girl, too, and passed along her outgrown clothes to us. What a blessing their gift was to us! Thank you girls and S family!