A Whirlwind of a Day!

Today marked the official start of trampoline meet season. Jack and I arose at 3:30 am to make it to Columbus for his first event. It was his first time competing as advanced in trampoline. He arrived, and although he would not admit it, I think he was nervous. Then, in the stretching area were four other advanced male trampolinists from a gym in Michigan. They obviously have been advanced a while through the slew of double tucks and double fulls flying off the trampoline. Nonetheless, Jack did fine. He came in behind all of them, and I think was a bit disappointed, but I reminded him he hadn't been advanced all that long. Then, on to the double mini. There he was fourth, beating out one of them. He was happy about that. Then, on to tumbling, where he remains sub advanced this year. Fortunately there was only one person he was competing against there, of course from that same gym. He lost by a couple tenths. Not bad. I think it inspired him to work harder.

The rest of the day was full of adventure for us. Off to Starbucks, our favorite hangout, chipotle, a favorite lunch spot which we don't have in West Virginia, then on to Jack's favorite mall, Easton in Columbus. We used his Easton app on his phone, and covered a lot of ground in a short period if time. He carefully picked out Lego's for Zachary, jeans and a sweatshirt for his sis, ok, I helped with that, and sugar free candy bars from Godiva for his diabetic dad. He got a few things too. On the way home, he talked about how great it will be next summer. He will drive and I can "rest the whole way!" he talked about taking all his little brothers to the Lego store and spoiling them. It made me proud that he would think about what life would be like with the babies. It didn't hurt when he mentioned rest for me! In all, it reminded me that our little adventures will one day be quite different with all the babies, then in another time, our adventures will slow down quite a bit as he moves off to college. It made me happy to have had today. I think the best part was watching him and Zachary carefully making a building out of the Lego's Jack picked out for him, and later watching Katya give voices to the characters they had built. God has given me great babies and there are days I can't believe He is blessing me with two more.

Now...if I could just wait on this whole God's timing thing! LOL!

Big News!

I spent the last few weeks trying to figure out this delay. Our paperwork was delayed with seemingly no answers. A wise friend of mine suggested that God has a reason. Maybe He had something planned? I must admit, at the time I held on to that but was skeptical. I could not understand why God would not want Nate here with us. Then, the plan started to come, little by little throughout the last few days, it came. First a call. My boss called. Not the little supervisor, but the big boss. Oh geez. What did I do? I wondered. The other freaky thing was he called me at home on a day off. Hmmm... I nervously started talking to him. It turns out he was simply offering me to work at another hospital for about three months. I live halfway between Charleston and Huntington. I currently work in Charleston, and he offered me to work in Huntington for a little bit. They were short of nurse practitioners and he thought maybe I would like to help them out. He then offered me a bonus. The exact amount we needed for something we have been praying about.

From the beginning we were approved for two children. Now, we had the exact amount we needed to do just that, adopt another child from Haiti. Somehow we just knew we needed to do it. We had the perfect child in mind. When we went there was one baby not matched with a family. It has haunted me since we were there. Why didn't anyone match with him? I asked some of my adopting friends if they would take him, none could do it. I hated it. Fifteen babies and he was the only one with no mama. We fed him, rocked him and held him when we were there. I laughed at him as he was working toward crawling and he just couldn't figure it out because he had a thumb in his mouth and couldn't use that arm to move. Today, we agreed to be his parents. Yes, another baby. A ten month old boy, yet to be named by us. We are working in that! LOL!

My wonderful friend and fellow Mama Blanc, Denise immediately sent me pictures of him she had taken in January. He was ten days old when she met him. He was in his birth mother's arms. In the other pics, he was snuggled into his crib, sound asleep, same thumb in his mouth.

Here is the thing, after agreeing to take him, we found out as soon as our papers get there in a couple days we are about to come out of social services for Nate. This will put his process on hold until the baby's stuff catches up. It will put us back a few weeks, but in the end a few weeks is nothing compared to a lifetime with a beautiful baby. Besides, I firmly believe God would have put the roadblocks up until we figured out his plan for us was this beautiful baby all along.

The Great Fixer

I believe I have proven today that endless prayer certainly pays off. Today, most things broken got fixed. First, the Internet guy came and I am happy to say during his five minute stay here he it it done. Never mind the painfully simple thing he did! I must admit, I was annoyed at spending half the day waiting on him, but that too was fruitful. I got the bills paid and a pile of mail sorted and my kitchen clean. However, I did have a small mishap there. It turns out balancing my phone between my ear and my shoulder over a sink of pine sol and hot water was probably not the best idea I ever had. Yes, phone submerged into a sink. The good news was it was TOTALLY disinfected. The bad news was, it was TOTALLY broken. That was not awful news though. I strongly disliked my phone. I was impatiently waiting for my upgrade. I was lucky though, I went to the store and I was eligible for a free upgrade! I got the iPhone 4 which I have wanted for a long time. So, that was awesome! On the way home I got the mail. In there was the official letter inviting my oldest two to the USCIS office to collect their US citizen certificates. I have been waiting for this for a long time too! As if it couldn't get any better, the person renting a house we own who has promised to get a mortgage for two years to buy the place, out of the blue has a meeting with the mortgage broker tomorrow!

Tim and I just looked at one another in stunned silence tonight. I think good news on Nate would have just capped the day. We didn't get any, but God blessed us beyond our wildest dreams today. I think we will spend some time sending up some praises for such a wonderful day and see what comes next.

Things getting fixed...

Well, things are slowly but surely getting fixed. Cable guys are mailing us a new box, then coming out for service. The Internet guys are coming too. The cars are fixed and I believe I have found a dishwasher I like for a fairly reasonable price. So, things are coming together. There really is only one major disaster left. The paperwork. I still have heard nothing, but hopefully it too will follow the rest of our disasters this week and be fixed.

On a different note, today I was treated to a comment made by Jack, my 15 year old, that absolutely made my month. We were driving along, having just left Starbucks on our way to Best Buy to fix some of the disasters. "Mom?" he said. "Hmmm?" I answered. "I wish I could go back to the orphanage." I asked him why. He went on to explain his desire to track down the woman who selected him out of all the babies there to be adopted by us. He said only this,"I would THANK her!" to have this child who has blessed me in countless ways be so grateful to be part of our family touched me in a way I cannot describe. It reminded me once again, that this process however frustrating, and difficult at times has the greatest rewards. Here is to hoping for some news tomorrow!

All things broken...

Well, everything broke. Really. I think it must have really started Sunday. I took the car for an oil change after church. The guy convinced me it needed differential fluid. He gave me a colorful description of how the gears work, and the need for the fluid. I even saw him rubbing someone else's oil on his hand to test it. He went by "Red" and was boastfully strutting his car knowledge. I explained I was in healthcare. It didn't stop him though until I was 160 dollars lighter convinced if I didn't do what he said all four wheels would fall off simultaneously. On the heels of that, I opened my dishwasher which was having issues anyway, and the whole front panel fell off and the plastic buttons skittered all over the kitchen. Now it looks like a robot that lost his steel face and the dry cycle doesn't work. Then, it was the satellite tv box in the basement. It has decided to give it up too. This was all not to be confused with the $600 repair on Tim's truck yesterday. The final straw came last night as I worked 3p-3a and I got a text in the evening that my wifi was not working. In the midst of all of this, the consulate has refused to write the letter I need saying it simply was not necessary. They are right it would seem, but now we are left to find another way through. Our attorney is working on it.

What did all this do? Well it frustrated us, it angered us, it made us crazy! Today, one wise person in our lives gave us a reminder though. It was much needed. We were reminded that sometimes when you try to listen and do the will of God roadblocks are put up to take our eyes off God and not pursue what He has for us. I must say, it worked...until now. God has sent us the incredible friendship and prayer of some amazing folks so that we can face another day. Here is to praying that tomorrow nothing breaks. If it does, I will know that no matter what happens we are one day closer to my little Nate coming home.

Got Some News

I got some news today. What kind of news? Well, it depended on what time today you would have asked me. First, I got my papers. Social Services sent me back some translations of documents to be stamped. That was bad news. Those documents are not officially notarized or sealed meaning that the consulate would likely not stamp them. I called the consulate and they said no, that they would not give me the stamps I was asking for. Bad news. They went on to say that the stamps were not necessary as the originals were already stamped. Good news! I quickly fired off an email explaining this to our coordinator. She ran it by the attorney who wanted a letter from the consulate stating that the stamps were not necessary. I didn't get that word until the consulate was closed, bad news. I did, however, check in my other consulate paperwork and I got a real live person who was working on it today. She was wonderful and gave me her name, so now I have someone to call for this letter. Good news. Up and down and up and down...thus goes the road to international adoption. I am booing to have the letter next week and will get things rolling again.

In the end, this is all better news than I thought. Our delay shouldn't be too long now that I have someone at the consulate to work with. Here is to praying that the call to the consulate runs smoothly on Monday. In the meantime, I am still waiting on an update on how my precious boy is. What a blessing he will be when he finally comes home.

More Rays of Sunshine

After my little ray of sunshine with Chris Thomlin tickets the other day, I decided that there must be more rays of sunshine around even if I have to look a little harder for them. Today, I excitedly went to the post office hoping my documents were there. They were not. I also had noticed the Fedex truck had been in the neighborhood earlier and I had left out the garage. I would drive back up the hill we live on, really more of a small mountain, to look at the front door. I went up the front hill and when I got to the top I saw two things. First a pack of wild turkeys wondering in the subdivision. There were 8 of them. OK, that is odd. It actually made me laugh out loud as to the ridiculousness of it all. I waited patiently for them to cross the street, no, not chicken to the other side, turkeys to the other side! I drove down two blocks to the empty lot next door to my house. There I saw two beautiful deer, also smack in the middle of the subdivision. That too made me smile. Odd as it may be there have been times in my life when things were rough. As I prayed my way through those I somehow knew this were going to be ok when I saw a deer. A message from God if you will. The night my mother-in-law died, there was a full on multiple point buck right on the side of the busy city street in Dayton. Tim saw it too and we somehow knew as hard as it was, we were going to be fine because we had God. My papers were not on the doorstep, but somehow I knew it was OK. God had a plan.

Later, I had the opportunity to pray with someone I know well. She too is impatient about things in her life. I was able to use those same lines from the Chris Thomlin song"strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord.". It really helped her I think, as it helped me. Although nothing has changed, we are no further now than we were yesterday in Nate's adoption, I at least have my little rays of sunshine to carry me through. I think I just needed that to remind me of God's perfect plan.