Go West!

Where does the time go! Nothing new to report on our adoption. We are currently exploring other options, but we haven't committed to any direction yet. While we have been waiting we have put our time to good use. The last week of May we loaded up the car and grab my 10 year old niece and headed west...well actually north and west. We took a ten day vacation up through South Dakota where we went through the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Custer State Park, Minuteman Missile NP and then we continued west to Yellowstone. It was an extraordinary trip. We also stopped off at Devils Tower, the Corn Palace and Sioux Falls Park. I could babble all day about the trip, but I will just let some pictures tell the story! Jeff is already planning our return trip when we get our own kids, hopefully that happens soon because I am ready to go back!

Grizzly Bear and cub at Yellowstone NP

Jeff and Tori hiking in the Badlands
Jeff and Tori at Norris in Yellowstone, Tori was catching snowflakes. Snow in May is a novelty for us Missourians!

Tori and Me at Mt. Rushmore

Still hanging on

Well, here it is the middle of May and no word on the adoption. Jeff has asked me if maybe we are just supposed to be dog parents...and after all things considered I have to wonder. I realize that anyone reading this is looking to hear about our adoption journey and not everything we do to fill our waiting period, but it seems so sad to just let the blog sit here and go un-updated month after month! So...

In April we took a camping trip to Southeast Missouri and visited Elephant Rock SP, Ft. Davidson SH, and Johnson's Shut-ins. It was a really great trip. It was really amazing to see in person the devastation that occurred when the Taum Sauk Reservoir broke and flooded Johnson's Shut-Ins SP. It happened about 4-5 years ago and they are still working to restore the area.

Jeff standing in front of a boulder that was carried over a mile by the water that rushed out of the Reservoir breach.

Me about midway up the scour channel beneath the repaired reservoir.

Now we are preparing to take a trip west to visit Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore and anyplace else along the way. My niece is going with us as we plan to use her as bear bait ;O)! We should have a great time and hopefully some really awesome pictures and maybe when we get back we will know what our next step or direction or plan is for building our family.

Where does the time go!

Well, as is apparent by our lack of blogging nothing is happening on the adoption front. I knew it had been awhile since I had last posted, but I didn't know it had been that long. We still have an empty room and many days fighting off the despair is difficult. We question our path, our motives, ourselves... I have been doing a study on the book of Esther and of course the most famous passage from it is, "Who knows, maybe for such a time as this you have been placed upon this earth." It serves to remind that I do not control the time God does. However, my argument to Him is that He is eternal and to him an hour is like a day and a day is like an hour. Being human a day is just that, a day and they keep passing by unmarked. The author of the study also pointed out though, "God never takes His eyes off us or off the wrist watch" and the same eye that is on the sparrow is also on the wrist watch. But is it His or mine! I can just imagine God's wrist watch and the many hands and faces it must have! Well, we still hold on to our hope (some days better than others). Until such a time!

Long Overdue

This update is long over due, but my life seems to have hit fast forward for awhile. As of October 8, 2009 Jeff and I are approved and are now among others just like us hoping that we will be picked by a birth mother and entrusted with her most valuable possession. Now what... well... we wait. I don't think it seems fair that such big news to us should end with such a disappointing sounding action, but there you have it.
It is an interesting story. For months our paperwork was with the agency and then finally we heard from them with corrections. During this time we felt moved to join some other prayer partners to pray that God would remove whatever obstacle was blocking the process. Well, we made the corrections sent them off and began waiting. And we waited AND waited. Finally, we decided to call and see what was going on. When we called and asked for the lady that we had been working with we find out that she no longer works there...can you say deja vu? Okay, don't panic... So Jeff left a voice mail and we waited to hear back. The next day we called (we learned from past experiences that the squeaky wheel gets the oil) and got the same voice mail. Finally, we tried on the third day and they returned our call. The new lady said that she had our paperwork and noticed that it had been there awhile and that they would get on it the following week (this is Wednesday afternoon) Thursday we are notified that our application has been approved! We felt that our prayers for the obstacle were answered quite completely. So now to praying we get picked! Maybe we could actually have a Christmas baby, okay that might be stretching it, but anything is possible now. We are closer than we have ever been to finding Baby G!

Baby steps

Well, it has been over a month since my last post and there has been a lot going on that has kept us busy. We received some of our paperwork back from our agency, some minor corrections, but it turned into a big fuss over two little words! It all boiled down to the petition to adopt, when it would be filed in our state and when our insurance would cover the child. It was such a mess. Jeff had to have his employer send four different employment letters defining when coverage would take place. We did finally get it defined in an acceptable way, but boy was it time consuming! We finally got all the corrected paperwork sent back in and are hoping and praying for a quick approval of our application so we can get in the system. Three years is a long time to be pregnant, even if it is only on paper! So that is the update and while it is only a baby step forward, it is still a step forward and not backward!

Sonshine, children's camp and still waiting!

So here it is nearing the end of July and nothing new to post as far as the adoption, but don't think I haven't been busy!  Starting at the end of June I spent a week as a counselor at my parents' church associational camp.  My niece is diabetic and is not yet at a point that she can manage it completely independently so without someone there she wouldn't be able to go, so I went.  It was a fantastic week.  At the start I was a little dispirited because I ended up not having my own cabin of girls as I had been expecting, but then I read Gal. 4:27 "Be glad or barren woman, who bears no children; break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband." Yes, I have a husband! LOL.  Yes, I know that Paul is speaking allegorically.  But it spoke to me at that moment and I realized that each and everyone of those children at camp are mine to cherish and love on for the week that we are together.  So that is what I did.  Seeing those kids smile and light up knowing that many of their homes were far from perfect was deeply satisfying.  I didn't have to preach to them about God or Jesus or try to convince them to become saved, I just loved them as Christ loves them.

My niece, Tori, playing Truth or Dare with her cabin mates.  Razzberries up the arm!

Bus ride to the pool, we sang the entire way there and back!  I was leading of course!

So, then after an fun and exhausting week at camp, I spent the Fourth of July at my parents house celebrating my sister's birthday.  Jeff and I went home the following Monday and spent a week at home.  Then we headed back to my parents on Sunday and Jeff and my dad layed ceramic tile in their bathroom.  On Tuesday evening I hopped a train and headed to my brothers home(less) --he actually moved out of his apartment in Warrensburg, but had to stick around for a few days afterward-- and the next morning He, five teenagers from his youth group and myself, loaded ourselves into a 15 passenger van and drove 11 hours to Minnesota and the Sonshine festival.  There we spent four cold, but none-the-less awesome days camping and rocking out to Christian bands, such as Skillet, Toby Mac, Hawk Nelson, Matthew West, Barlow Girl and that is just a few!  We experienced three very different kids of preachers and locker room showers with strangers and many other strange and new adventures.

The youth group with a wandering preacher man, Bart, front and center.

Less than half of the tents that make up what is referred to as Tent City at Sonshine Festival.

HAD to stop in Auburn, Iowa and get a picture with the "World's Largest Bull", Albert!  My brother, Jon and I holding up the bull.

During the Hawk Nelson Concert, Toby Mac's band--Diversity and David Crowder were standing off in the wings watching and Hawk Nelson called them out on stage.  I only got a video of part of it with David Crowder, but I don't think David Crowder quite knew what was going on!

So now I am home and not real sure what to do with my time, but I am sure something will come along, it usually does.  Until then I will just keep on waiting and watching.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."  Hebrews 12:1 

Memorial Day and Other Nonsense Ramblings

For the first time since Jeff and I relocated we actually celebrated a holiday with our friends.   Normally we would either visit my parents or if he had to work, we stayed home and it wasn’t much different from any other day.  But this year we celebrated!  We spent an enjoyable afternoon visiting and eating and going from sitting outside to sitting inside while it rained then back to sitting outside.  I can’t really complain except that the homemade ice cream didn’t set up so that was a bust.

     One of the families that are our friends have an 18 month old daughter and are expecting their second anytime.  Their oldest, Adi, is just as cute as a button and it is always a joy to see her, but there is always a hint of sadness mixed in as probably many PAPs can understand.  She played in Baby G’s room today and I actually had to go in and straighten it up after they left, not that they left a mess, just restoring it to its normal state.  It felt nice to see that the room had been played in and enjoyed by a child, it made the room feel less empty and desolate.  I walked with Adi down our hallway, which is almost as long as a bowling lane and the quick little pad pad pad of her bare feet on the wood floor is a sound I hadn’t really realized had been missing.  Well, some days are harder and some are easier.  We are just waiting to hear something and that is okay, but if someone had said three years ago that we would still be waiting for our first Baby G, I would have thought they were crazy and told them so.  The Gobble Family has a poem posted on their blog called “Wait” and while I won’t post it here, if you are waiting as we are I highly recommend reading it.

     Sometimes, I think to myself, why is this taking so long and I am ready now, don’t delay!  But other times I find myself thinking am I ready?  Are we ready?  maybe it is okay that we have all this time and we should be taking more advantage of it.  While still at other times I think, what if we just stayed the two of us?

     I ran across an ad the other day on craigslist that was looking for women to donate their eggs and so I clicked on the link to see and it was going to pay $5000 for each harvest, and I thought WOW! that is even better than donating plasma!  LOL!  Only the max age was 30 years.  I am going to be 32 this September, I guess my eggs are too old!  I never really thought I was that old, but I guess it isn’t too far off, according to a nurse friend of mine you are a high risk pregnancy if you are 35 or older, hmmmm, that oughta make any momma to be feel good!  

     I am really just typing these thoughts as they come into my head with no rhyme or reason.

     My mom came to visit this weekend and we went shopping at some baby stores.  Didn’t buy anything for our Baby G, we actually bought a baby gift for my brother to give to his friend and wife.  They are the proud new parents of a bouncing baby boy.  It was fun to wander around and look.  Two of the stores we visited were boutiques, but the third was Baby’s R Us, which is an exciting thing here because they finally put one in with the Toys R Us.  It isn’t quite as impressive as the one up in Chesterfield Valley that I have been to, but it is way better than not having one at all!  Not to mention that now we can get stuff bought online shipped to the store.  Well, I guess I am going to quit rambling for now!  Happy Memorial Day, may we never forget why we are free!