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!

Poison Invasion

The mother vine!  Jeff couldn't believe it had its own branches!

The "original" vine from the beginning of the world!

Another shot of the mother vine.

Well, I don't really have anything new to report on the adoption front, but I thought that it was time for an update on other things!  Our camping trip that I wrote of in my last post was literally a washout so nothing to tell there.  The most spectacular thing going on right now is our battle to stop the invasion of the killer poison ivy.  It has earned that name because I HATE it.  I had ran into a patch of it last year while I was picking gooseberries which grow wild and abundantly in the woods surrounding our house.  I was so immersed in picking that I don't even know where it was that I got it.  Now, that I know that we have some on our property I am a little more wary and try to keep my eye out for it.  Well, as it turns out it is nearing gooseberry time again and I have been keeping a close eye on some of my closer plants so I know when I should start picking them.  Being that they are in the woods and the woods have ticks (another evil of nature!) I decided that I would cut some paths near some of the plants that are on the edge of the woods so I could keep a close eye on them without having to spray with deep woods off everytime.  So I begin to mow and as I am mowing an area I look around and notice pretty green leaves of three.  At first I thought oh they are just some other kind of brush plant, but then I realized they were getting bigger and looked nothing like the plant I thought they were.  I ran in the house and got on the internet, to double check my suspicions and correct I was!  Not only was there a little poison ivy, but it was rapidly taking over, then I noticed a vine that I had never really looked at climbing a tree in our yard and realized it was the mother of all poison ivy.  Thankfully, I have not gotten the oils on my skin, but I did take some precautionary measures and ran in the house and washed any exposed skin off with my Bert's Bees Poison Ivy soap, I wasn't taking any chances!  We have since bought Roundup poison ivy killer and Jeff went on the offensive, killing (hopefully) the ivy we had found, unfortunately as we became further enmeshed in our offensive we found more and more!  If I had found the mother of all poison ivy vines, today we discovered the original poison ivy vine that God put here during creation!  Jeff didn't even think that it was poison ivy at first, stating, "it has no branches, I don't think it is poison ivy."  The problem was he didn't look high enough up the tree!  Normally I would just let nature be, but with a dog that runs in the woods indiscriminately and I being allergic to it, poison ivy MUST go!  

Anchor's Away!

Well, our paperwork is officially gone.  As of today we are waiting!  I am excited and apprehensive and to be quite frank I don't know what to do with myself now that I have all this free time!!  Hopefully we won't have much to post in the way of the adoption until we get picked, but that is not to say I won't entertain my fellow bloggers and readers with our adventures while we wait.  We have a lot of plans for the coming weeks/months.  In a couple of weeks we are going to go camping. We haven't settled on a place yet, but we do have it narrowed down to two places which are the Buffalo River OR Taum Sauk either one offers great hiking.  We are also planning on installing a fireplace in our living room, we still have a little while for that, but it will probably be rather tumultuous when we do it.  Couple that with helping plan my mother and father-in-law's 50th anniversary party, create a scrapbook for them as a gift, mother's day, my brother's b-day and graduation (MA) and anything else that crops up I should have plenty to write about!!  Here's to hoping the time goes by quickly and we hear something soon!

Going in Baby G's Room

     Well, it hasn't been quite as long as I thought since my last post!  That being said we have been pretty busy.  I took some time away from the blog world for a awhile because I didn't know what else to write and I couldn't bear to read others blogs.  I have also been swamped with paper chasing and a much needed vacation.  We are officially nearing the end of our paper chase now just a few more pieces and we can say that we are back to waiting.  We are going domestic, in case I didn't mention that before.  We are going with Mercy Ministries, which is actually a home for young ladies that are struggle to get out difficult situations. They have an adoption agency to assist in placing babies that are born to mothers in their programs that choose to adopt them out.  We don't know how long the wait will be because it depends on the birth mother picking us, but we are hopeful.  That being said we went into baby G's room for something other than cleaning.  We had quit going in it as the wait became longer and longer with our Kaz adoption and totally avoided it when that adoption collapsed. But, I have been so full of hope and renewed excitement that I had to go in there and start dreaming again.  We are not so eager that we are ready to run out an buy things or even really look at baby things, that will wait until we have been picked and maybe even until it is finalized, but for now there are some finishing touches that need to be made to the room BEFORE we bring a baby home and we are ready to tackle those.

     On another note, since we weren't travelling to Kaz we decided to take a much needed vacation.  So at the end of February we went on a short 3-night cruise to the Bahamas.  It was so relaxing and gave Jeff and I a chance to get away and reconnect after the tumultuous weeks prior.  The weather was beautiful and we got good and sunburnt, something that doesn't happen to us Missourians in February!  

Me snorkeling, the weather was beautiful and so was the reef and the fish, but boy was the water cold!

Jeff and I after Snorkeling in Nassau, Bahamas.

Jeff walking on the Beach at Coco Cay Island, the cruiseline's private island.

Jeff and I on the deck of the ship as we departed Port of Miami.

The End of One Journey and a New Beginning

Well, it has been almost two months since I last blogged, but now it is time to give an update. About four weeks ago I sent our agency a letter asking about our paperwork and information I had received about another of their PAPs paperwork not being where it was supposed to be and there being no record of it ever having gotten there in the first place.  I just wanted to know what was going on and why our paperwork has not moved.  They sent me a response that denied knowing about this other PAP and told me in a round about way that I should pay attention to their weekly updates, which I read religiously.  Then they went on to give me hope that it was possible that our paperwork was much further along than we suspected and it was possible that we could just get a call to travel one day and never know when we reached the MOE or had a region assignment.  Two working days later we received a cryptic email simply stating that they had information regarding our paperwork and we needed to set up a time to speak on the phone about our dossier.  TWO DAYS!!  Right after you give us this hope... Well we finally connected with them to learn something so shocking I was at a loss for words.  Our paperwork NEVER made it to the MFA where we were told it was.  WHAT!  You mean for the last 8 months when we thought it was at the MFA and they kept reassuring us it was there and leaning on the slow down in Kaz as the reason, that it had never left the Consulate!  Deja Vu, this sounds a lot like the other PAP that I had heard about and they deny knowing about....

Well, that is our story, but it is not the end.  After we got off the phone with our agency we decided on our new course of action.  We couldn't go back to Kaz right now, it was just too painful and the emotions were still raw.  We had, at one time, considered getting on a list for a domestic adoption, but were dissuaded from doing so.  Now, well, now we felt free to pursue this option.  So, we set the wheels in motion for that course.  My heart hurts for that child we would have met in Kaz and I still see the face of a brown haired brown eyed child, just beautiful, but not to be.  We feel misused, misguided and basically lied to.  Thankfully, our trust is in the Lord and not in the agency WE chose to work His miracle.  Everything doesn't happen for a reason, we as humans still have free will and even the best plans go astray, but God works for the good of those that trust in Him.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."