You all rock!

Have I told you that before? Because you do. I'm going just a little crazy at this point, though I have complete faith in God's timing and I know I will be glad for this wait eventually. But I would be a WHOLE LOT CRAZIER without all of you!

H - you know this, I tell you often, I don't know what I'd do at all, adoption process or not, without you! Thank you for not getting frustrated by my current lack of focus on anything except the referral call, timing, traveling, etc!

Kelly Y - Again, I am just so thankful that this adoption journey has brought us together and made us friends! What an unexpected blessing!

My friends that are my "support group" on facebook - I love you girls and that has definitely helped me sanity! I look forward to the day when we can get our kids together to play!

Sandra and Grace - thank you! Thanks for getting together and being such an amazing source of support. Sandra, I can't tell you how much you have put my mind at ease or helped me keep my sanity many times.

My friends here who have left amazing, uplifting, and helpful comments - I can't thank all of you enough! You all have been such an amazing sense of support and I can't thank you enough!

My other IRL friends - thank you for supporting me and putting up with my insanity and lack of focus right now. Praying I can get a bit of that back soon.

My family - I can't ever thank them enough. I don't really have words for my amazing family and I love all of you (immediate and our HUGE extended family that is just fantastic!). Can't wait for M and T (<--can't wait to meet them!!!), G, K and D to all have a new little one to play with. Thanks for your amazing support.

Too much Thinking!

I remember when we started out on this process. I'd read blogs about people who were close to referral and they'd talk about dreading the weekend, and the roller coaster. Roller coaster ride: waking up in the morning, being excited that it could be today, at the same time thinking that it's not likely to be today, but still there's a bit of adrenaline and excitement. But each day I reach about 11:30 and give it up for the day. There's a bit of disappointment that it won't be that day. Sometimes it's more than just a bit of disappointment... By evening you start looking forward to the next day. Friday evenings you're a bit sad - you don't want to have to wait all weekend in order to have that possibility of good news. At the same time you're a bit exhausted from the anticipation and welcome the break. BUT a long weekend (when your husband has class all weekend and isn't around which is usually the wonderful part about weekends) is a special kind of torture. When I read these blogs, I sort of understood but sort of thought the people were a bit crazy. Well....now I'm crazy!!!

I am currently lacking much motivation and struggling to stay focused on other things. I want to see a picture of my baby. I want to know who (s)he is. I want to stop writing he or she (even though I know it's likely he I still do this b/c only God knows for sure). I want to start preparing in the fun ways - not just cleaning. I want to have an IDEA of when we'll travel and not worry about it. I want to know how the referral process will play out and not be stress about whether Brian will be around when we get our referral or how quickly he'll be able to get in so we can see our child. How quickly can I arrange care for the kids? I want to drop everything and go now!

OK - these are my desires. These are the desires of my heart and I pray about them. But I also know that there is a baby who does not desire to be with me. A baby who is being well taken care of and who isn't quite ready to be home with us. There is one baby meant for our family and I can't rush that and I wouldn't want it any other way.

I have to trust in God's perfect timing. I KNOW that God's timing is better than mine. That as I look back at my life I can see where God was in control and that His timing and His way of doing things has been amazing! It has brought us here. There is not one single area that I can say "Oh, I really wish it had been....". There are hard times but God brought good out of it and His glory shines because of it. So I trust in this timing and that He will send the child He wants in our family to us in His perfect timing.

Thanks for listening to my rambling and unloading. I am so thankful for all of you who take the time to read this and who have been such a source of support!!! Thank you!

Now a celebration!!! Jenny is going to get her little boy next week!!! He'll finally be home with his family forever and will know what it's like to have a Mommy and a Daddy. I can't begin to tell you how excited I am about this!!! It is time!!! Congrats Jenny!

What did I do this weekend?!?

I bought my first item for the baby!!! No referral yet but we're hoping soon. I'd originally said I wasn't buying anything until referral but I started thinking a bit more practically...only 2-3 months between referral and travel with LOTS to do. There are certain large-ish items that I wanted to look for on Craigslist so I needed to start browsing and jump when the opportunity arises. So....we bought a highchair! Nothing too exciting. It's fairly kid-looking, regular high chair but it met my criteria:
1. A wipe-off seat. I had both a wipe-off and a machine wash and I wanted to machine wash it every day! Not very practical for us. Probably part of my problem is that it was a replacement seat and I never thought it fit quite right either, but I just didn't like it. I'm happy to go back to the wipe clean variety.

2. A tray insert that pops off the tray and can go in the dishwasher. Big bulky trays don't fit well in the sink so I'm VERY excited about this feature! I've only used this at a friend's house and now we'll have that luxury of putting the insert into the dishwasher (or even having the insert fit well into the sink!).

Grrr! The picture I had didn't save to my desktop only snapfish. I'll have to take another and post it later. It's the Fisher-Price Rainforest one but the funny picture is one of B and E playing with the toy that is attached! Don't know if it's entertaining to a 1 year old but my 4 and 7 year old can't keep their hands off it right now. ;)

7 months...

It's been 7 months since HSTK! There was definitely a time when I didn't think we'd wait this long at all. There was also a time when I would have been THRILLED to even be considering a referral around now. So I'm sticking with thrilled. So happy that there's a good chance it could be SOON! It may be another month, month and a half and I'm totally OK with that. It could be a lot longer, but it doesn't seem like it from the way SWS is moving (hoping not). So thankful that it could be coming up. Resting in God's perfect timing!

The hard part for me right now is trying not to think about it. I'm no longer anxious, but I still think about it every time my phone rings (but please don't stop calling me!). I still think about it when I wake up in the morning - today could be the day we learn about our child. It's on my mind all the time. It's hard to change that. It can also make time drag to think about it all the time (a watched pot and all that). So trying to concentrate on other things.

Fortunately today I had an AWESOME distraction! I got to watch my friend's girls (and E got a playdate) while she went to be fingerprinted (again - darn USCIS - prayers that this time everything is good)! Then we spent a lot of the day together! I am so thankful for this friendship that only came about due to adoption! Wow! And the fact that our girls have become such good friends - here's hoping our youngest children (likely boys) will be too! ;) Thank you K for such a wonderful day!

Got Love?

Check out Kelly's blog - the Minus 1 Project - and see the fun new t-shirts and awesome travel mugs that her family is selling to fund their adoption. Kelly is such an amazing person and she knows I've been wanting to purchase many of the things on her blog (struggling with cute things - also check out the tutus - and my lack of desire to spend money. Quite a struggle!).

새해 복 많이 받으세요! - Happy Lunar New Year!

I'm thinking of our child today. I don't know who our child is yet, but God does. And I'm guessing that our child is celebrating the Lunar New Year with his/her Foster Family. I wonder if they're traveling to see relatives? Is our child wearing a hanbok? How about our child's birth parents? Are they able to enjoy the celebrations this year? Are they thinking about our child? I pray that they feel a sense of peace. I pray for them frequently.

I'm bringing B and E to a Lunar New Year celebration near here and meeting up with Grace, Sandra, and Kala this weekend (which means I get to see Carson, "Little" Ben (as E calls him), and Matthew!!!). My friend, G is bringing her kids so hopefully I'll get to see her and I think Becky may be checking in with us too! I am so blessed by the friends I have made through this process. Having this to look forward to this weekend has really helped me through a week when I knew there wouldn't be any news. Korea practically shuts down for 3 days during the Lunar New Year.

Fortunately, I'm also at peace with waiting. I was feeling a bit anxious, but now I really feel like it's OK if it's another month or so. It will all happen in God's perfect timing. I'm at a point where I'm excited but I can wait until then. ;) Enjoy the entrance into the Year of the Rabbit!

Doing, not waiting

I've finally gotten myself out of the waiting funk that I was in. I was spending energy waiting! How crazy is that? Now I'm trying to spend it on much more productive things and it actually makes the wait much more bearable!

So what did I do?
~Our bedroom and bedroom closet are the most organized they've been since we moved in. It's been on my to do list since October. Hurray! ;)

~The baby's room is all cleared out! We have a guest/storage room downstairs. Our parents don't mind that we store things in the guest room (I have some curtains and blankets covering up most of the storage, but it's not a beautiful room, but it's private so they don't mind). When Gift, Jackie, and Hellen were coming from Uganda I wanted to make it feel more like a nice room and less like storage with a bed, so we moved most of the storage into the baby's room. FINALLY I have cleared it out - which only entailed moving a few boxes back to storage and the rest we got rid of or is actually baby stuff that is staying in the baby's room! ;) I vacuumed in there and put some of the baby things away. The nursery isn't decorated or all done - that will wait for a referral but it will be much less overwhelming now! ;)

~I STARTED going through baby clothes - getting rid of 0-6 month completely, getting rid of all but the absolute cutest 9 month, and culling out all sizes down to what I'd actually want to re-use (I mean, come one - who doesn't want to do a little shopping?!?). We're making progress and soon B and E will be able to use their closet for it's intended purpose, not storing baby clothes! ;)

~ This is something I've wanted to do for a while, but I'm BAD at it. I want to memorize scripture. Last week, my friend, J (our boys are in Taekwondo together), told me she was memorizing 2 scriptures per month. That's not too daunting. Even 1 per month is more than I'm doing. But I didn't do anything to change that right away - I did keep thinking about it though (thank you J for challenging me!). Yesterday I read Brandi's blog and finally did something. I copied down 4 of the verses that really struck me onto index cards and I'm going to memorize them. I have 1 memorized already! ;) Thank you Brandi for that extra push!!!

So I'm focusing much less on waiting and more on doing things. Our snow days have been productive! Wow! We've built forts, done some baking, played lots of board games (Ben learned to play Risk!), played in the snow, built a snowman (that I'm trying to upload pictures of but failing), cleaned out some closets, and memorized at least 1 scripture. We've song songs and read books! I'm feeling good. On top of that we all had some downtime and we're ALL excited to get out of the house today!!! YAY!!! :)

Thanks for the ideas! Great day!

Today has been a good day. I woke up in a better mood, not anxious, just ready for a fun day with the kids.
First of all - to everyone who recommended fort making - thank you! That's something my kids love and I hadn't thought of it. So for your viewing pleasure:
You actually can't see all of it in the picture - there's more on each side and this is what my living room is going to look like for the rest of the day. But I have 2 happy kids! ;)

We also made blueberry muffins from scratch this morning for breakfast. Lots of fun. Of course, I ate them, but it was fun. I have not been very successful with healthy eating this week, oh well.

After the fort was built we went outside to shovel/play. Ended up seeing friends from the neighborhood and B is now on over there playing and E is napping! Getting out in the fresh air was good for all of us!

I'm thankful that I feel much less anxious. I know I mentioned this before but I'm not waiting for the phone to ring (though I still wonder for a second when I answer it and get very unhappy when it's telemarketers on the other end!!!). I've prayed and feel like God has given me a sense of peace. I know it will happen in His perfect timing! Thanks for bearing with me.

Zingo!, Mancala, and Trouble, Oh my!

We are snowed in. Oh wow - it JUST started to snow for real. We had a snow day today (who knows why - it was slush) and we are almost guaranteed one tomorrow. We have played several games of Zingo! and Mancala as well as a game of Trouble. I have vacuumed, cleaned the kitchen and all the bathrooms and I'm working on the closets upstairs (a bit of nesting...come on referral!). The kids have been spies with their walkie-talkies and B's cool Spy Gear (spying on me while I was cleaning upstairs - very stealthy!), played Wii, and basically exhausted my creativity at this point.

HELP! I need ideas for tomorrow to keep 2 kids and 1 Mommy busy and happy tomorrow. Today it was raining all day during our "snow" day so going outside was not a possibility. Hoping for real snow tomorrow (if we're going to have the day off) so that we can play in it and get outside for a bit!

Stay warm!

We did it, we did it, we did it, Hurray! :)

OK, other than the shout out to Dora, we told our kids that we're adopting! I'm so happy that they know!

I really think it's good that B knows ahead of time. He's my child that needs processing time on things. He does better when he has time to wrap his head around things and I think now when we show him our new child's picture he'll be excited rather than processing then. He can do that now. Initially he had a lot of questions (good ones that we were happy to answer). Then we let him be for a bit (I guess Brian talked to him about it while I took E to a birthday party but then it was dropped for a bit). This evening he brought it up on his own asking about naming our child. He had a couple of suggestions (Fritz is one - we're reading Swiss Family Robinson right now - lol). It was fun to see him starting to get excited. Also, B is REALLY hoping it's a boy. We told him that we'll be happy either way with the child that God chooses to make a part of our family. He agreed readily and said he'd be happy either way. We did not tell him our child is likely to be a boy because on the very remote chance that we have a referral for a girl we don't want him to feel disappointed.

E is currently designing the nursery in her head, coming up with every single way she can help and be the second Mommy to our child. She is fully excited. No hesitations. Only a couple of questions. Overall just thrilled. She did state that she'd like a sister (she has a brother and thinks it would be fun to have both) but seems pretty ready to accept another brother too (afterall she LOVES the brother she has). Thankful for this since our child is likely to be a boy. ;)

That's the excitement here. I loved the idea of Big Brother/Big Sister shirts and wanted to do this, but I haven't ordered any yet and I didn't want to wait another week to tell them. I think I need to get on that so that when we actually have a referral and are ready to show the kids, we can give them their big sister/big brother shirts. Although I don't want them to wear the shirts too much b/c I want them clean and in good condition to wear to the airport! :) I think it actually worked out well to make this part a discussion and they'll be ready for a more creative celebration type of announcement when there's an actual picture of a child. Thanks for all of your support!!!