SNOW Day!

We woke up to a lot of snow on Thursday morning. Usually if it does snow it doesn't stick but not this week. I cancelled class on Thursday and Todd had to cancel going out since the roads were so bad. We bundled up the kids and ourselves and went outside to play in the snow.

Elijah wasn't a fan of the snow sticking to his boots. He didn't like to walk it was pretty funny. Ev didn't like the snow on her boots either it was really funny to watch them. We took the slide to our indoor play area and transformed it into a sled. Todd pulled them in the sled, we took pictures in the snow and built a snow man.

Busy busy busy....

We are well into the paper work trail for our adoption. So on top of our already full schedules we have split the work up between the two of us. We are currently getting our birth certificates and marriage license from America. I guess we have all of them except Todd's birth certificate. I guess Texas is so big it takes forever to get anything from them. (j/k!)

Yesterday Todd went to our local police station to get a letter of criminal history for both of us. That went amazingly smooth. My tutor was kind to help me translate all the information and they did it exactly how we needed it done. See, we have friends here in town who went to get the same thing done and they refused to do it correctly. So they had to go through some other hoops and they just sent theirs in and will have to wait and see if the adoption agency will accept it. I feel bad for them they have had a long hard journey.

It is crazy how many questions you can come up with. I have been emailing questions and trying to find someone in town who can do our health exams. The form is in English so we are looking for an English speaking doctor to fill them out. Or we may have to take the English form in and have the entire thing translated. Which would mean we would need to bring along a friend to do. The paper has to be notarized so we are not sure if an local notary would notarize an English document! Possibly we may translate the whole document and then have a local doctor fill it out and get it notarized because all of our paperwork will be sent back to the States and ironically it will all be translated back into Chinese anyway! We will see.:)

So we are hoping over this week and next we can get all the paperwork we need so we can have our Home study done.

Our Adoption journey

I have been excited to post about this topic but at the same time I haven't quite known the words I want to express. In the past months as Todd and I have begun this part of our lives we have talked and shared with a few people about adoption. We have been able to ask two families in our city specific questions and hear their stories and in turn have them ask us questions. I think through those conversations and others I have been formulating my own response. I think Father has been growing the idea of adoption in me for a while as we have experienced various things and situations in life to get us to this point. It is wonderful to see how individually Father confirmed adoption in our hearts.

For me I can pinpoint some things that have left impressions on my heart. One of those came last year when my friend aborted her child. One thing I never shared on the blog was that another friend who had originally talked her out of abortion had been asking me if I knew of families that would adopt the baby. We were not at the place we are now and even if we were you can't just pick a child and adopt them in this country.

I have also heard a few stories of what goes on at the hospital where I had my prenatal care done at. We are fortunate to have a foreigner as an OBGYN and she is faced with some very sad and horrifying situations. Just in the few that I have heard it has given me a greater desire to do something.

One thing that I love about being a mom is that I get to love my children. And as I began researching about adoption the more I learned that there are so many children just needing someone to love them. As I became more educated I came across a website of a church back home who have a ministry to educate, encourage and support adoption. One of the sermons I listened to the pastor asking the people how do they fit in to Father's plan for the orphaned.

As our hearts grew towards adoption Father has been faithful to bring along people who understand adoption. We have 2 families in town who have/are using the same agency as we are so we can ask them tons of questions as we go through the process. It is such wonderful thing to have people who have been and are going through the process right here in our city. Another friend of mine who just moved here a couple of months ago adopted her daughter who is a couple of months younger than Ev. So in our immediate community we have a wealth of understanding.

As I write these things something else came to mind. Way back in college Todd and I were part of a small group of people who trained the students younger in getting ready for a trip over this way. The weekend's purpose was to put them in as close as cultural experiences as they could. One of those was through taking them through some physical situations and simulations. My role was to play an orphan. The end of the night they group would find me and we used the picture to portray how Father adopts us into His family.

So these things don't fully explain our hearts. I do believe it has been a journey to get here and it will only continue as our story develops.

Now we do have some challenges, but what adoptive parents don't? We believe that Father closed doors and pretty much opened the door for adopting from the country we currently live in. That it itself is its own story but as the doors were shut and this one opened we have been excited about adopting from here. We are also wanting to adopt a special needs boy. We love girls, don't get us wrong but we feel we want a boy. And there are so many special needs kids that get overlooked because of their conditions. It breaks my heart that they were abandoned in the first place but to also have a special need seems like another strike against them.

We are currently in the paperwork process and awaiting to hear when we can have a home study done. Since we are adopting a special needs child our timeline is completely different than the process of adopting a healthy child.

So that is our news and we are excited.

I have been trying to grow out my hair for about 5 months now. I am really getting tired of it. I know it is just the growing out stage but I really don't like it right now and usually just put it up somehow. Should I hang in there and stick with it or should I just cut it all off? I have to talk myself out of cutting it every week. I figure it will take another 5 months or so to get it this long again and that is the only thing keeping me from cutting it right now. So do I hate it for another several months or just cut it? What do you think? IF it does get longer I want to style it differently but now with longer hair I have to spend time blow drying it (hardly ever did when it was short) I have to actually fix it (didn't really have to do that when it was short) I have to use conditioner (never had to up until kids and with my hair longer it takes longer to shampoo and condition.) So it was so much more convenient to have short hair. Do I keep up this junk or not?

More Birthday Pictures

I love the pictures of Ev and Todd on her birthday. I see a lot of him in her. It is fun that when I took pictures of Ev opening her presents from our family that the tv and computer screen where in there and you can see them watching her over skype. Too fun. Ev loves to layer dress up clothes so she is showing off her 3 Disney dresses and the doll and her princess dress all at once.