Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Meeting Our Kids (Virtually)

This Friday, we get to Skype with our children for the very first time! We are busting at the seams with joy and anticipation! We are beyond excited (and to be honest, a little nervous).

I hope they like us. I hope they are as excited as we are. I hope I don't cry too much. Shoot, I am already tearing up. I tell you what, adoption is not for the faint at heart; that is for sure!

Please pray for our family as we meet one another this Friday for the first time. Please pray that God would cover over us with His grace, mercy, and love.

I can't wait to tell you all about our first conversations! 

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Pumpkins

Today, we enjoyed a lovely Sunday afternoon as a family at our farm.
One of the perks to living on a farm is we have our own personalized hayrides and pumpkin patch. :) 
The kids were excited about the hayride.






 Everyone has their pumpkins.  Now, we get to decorate them!



 Audriana said she would rather paint hers.
Mayah didn't seem to mind.


Happy Harvest Season from our family to yours. 
We can't wait until next year when we will have all 13 kids on these porch stairs.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

We are FULLY FUNDED!

Based on the latest invoice from our adoption agency, We are COMPLETELY FUNDED for our adoption INCLUDING estimated travel expenses (plane tickets for the 7 children to come home and for Dustin and I to go get them). ALLELUIA! Praise the Lord! (for the complete breakdown of adoption expenses click here.)

We started this adoption process less than a year ago, and in that time, there has been over $40,000 raised to help bring our children home. That is absolutely INCREDIBLE!!! God has moved the mountains.  There has been $20,000 just since May which is totally a God thing! It has been such an amazing experience to see God at work through so many people.

The envelope fundraiser was a humongous success, and we are grateful to each of you who gave so generously. We could not have done this without your help, and we cannot thank you enough for joining us in this journey! We thank the Lord for each of you and pray blessings over you for your support and your prayers. We hope you will continue to follow our adventures and updates on our blog.

Now the question is, "When do those precious kiddos get to come home?"  Right?

Since we started this process, I had thought that the children would be here by this Christmas. However, it doesn't look like that will be the case. 

Some of you may have seen my post that we got a video of our children in the Philippines (I discuss it: here: in the blog post immediately before this one). The family that was kind enough to make the video just traveled to pick there children up this month. They were officially matched 5 months ago. We have been matched for a little over 1 month. Our agency also informed us that the Filipino government offices where our paperwork will be headed no longer accepts new paperwork after December 15th; therefore, it does not look like our children will be home before Christmas. While this saddens us deeply, we are trusting in the Lord's perfect plan, and we are eagerly anticipating the day when all our children will be together under one roof.

Based on the other family's timeline (though nothing with adoption timelines are exactly the same), we are looking at maybe January of February for the children to come home.

Join us in praising our Heavenly Father for His provisions for this adoption and for His perfect plan. Please also pray for the hearts of all of our children as we await our unification, that God would comfort them (and us) and draw us all closer to Him. Our prayer is that He would use the time between now and when they come home to prepare our hearts and minds for the transition ahead, that He would give Dustin and I wisdom as to how to best parent a family of 15. I pray that the Lord would hold my children in His loving embrace and give them peace as they wait, (and that He would make the time go quickly for all of us waiting to be united). 

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Precious Video

In our email this morning, was a precious video of our children in the Philippines. What a gloriously precious gift!

One of the other families that recently adopted, took a couple pictures of our children and made a short video of them saying hello to us. It was the first video we have seen of them since they have known they had a family.

I wish I could share the video with you, but Hague rules do not allow this. Nevertheless, trust me when I say the video was SUPER ADORABLE!!!

They were absolutely precious, and they were laughing and giggling as they tried a couple times to all start all together and say, "Hello family. We love you!"

Oh my goodness, what joy! Thank you Jesus for this glimpse of our children which is a ray of hope as we wait without knowing when they will be united with us. We trust in Your plan and in Your timing Lord, and we are thankful for that ray of hope.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Colonial Williamsburg

We are studying the early 1800's this year in our home school curriculum with Tapestry of Grace (Cycle 3). We have loved studying this time-frame; so, we jumped at the chance to take a trip to Colonial Williamsburg for some hands-on-learning and bring to life what we had been reading about.

We didn't make it to the home school weeks at Williamsburg, but they still honored the home school rate (praise God). The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and we had the best time there. (A special thanks to Marlo who stayed at our farm to take care of the animals and milk the goats while we were away). While we could only stay for a day, we would have gladly stayed longer (and will definitely take a trip back there).


Getting a tour of the Magazine.

Playing with toys from the time-period (we picked up a couple of these hoops to play with at our farm). Other people were taking pictures of our kids playing (true story). 
 Here the kids helped look for cabbage worms and helped tend the garden. 

 Audriana really loved the women of the time, and the actresses were so kind to her calling her by name  whenever they saw her throughout the day. 
 We really enjoyed seeing how they made the equipment of the time. These people had to be so skilled in their jobs, and they took such pride in their quality work.

 Traveling by horse and carriage, while not the fastest choice, seems more and more appealing as the price of gas continues to soar.

 Well, this is one way to keep the kids from getting into trouble. Ha! I am sure the real people of the time would find it odd that we want to "try out" their form of punishment.

 The actors read aloud the Declaration of Independence, and we got to witness it as if we were actually there!
 The enthusiastic actors carried out dialogue about what it would mean for slaves of the time and for possible equality for women as well in the future.

This is the inside of the jail.



 The tents were in the Military Encampment. 
 Here you can see part of the inside the kitchen of an old farm house.

 One of the actors who helped tell us about what the day in the life of a slave was. Sad that while we were "declaring" that "all men were created equal" there was still slavery in much of the United States.
 We also went on a tour of inside the capitol building.
 Then, the military band performed, and there was a march of arms.

They fired their weapons and even fired a cannon. It was quite the performance!


If you have never been to Williamsburg, I HIGHLY recommend that you put it on your list of things to do. Only, make sure you allow more than a day or two because there is so much to see and do.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Finishing Out the Envelope Fundraiser

DRUM ROLL PLEASE.......TOTAL MONEY RECEIVED SO FAR.....$8,265.00 has come in so far for our envelope fundraiser! Alleluia! Praise the Lord! 

THANK YOU SO MUCH everyone who was a part of this fundraiser! You are such a huge part of this journey, and we are so grateful to you for your support! 

Today is the day that we had originally aimed to have all our envelopes returned, and we have received 100 envelopes back! So many of you included notes and prayers of encouragement, and some of you even included more than you signed up for! We are so blessed to have had such a wonderful outcome for our fundraiser! We thank our Heavenly Father, and we thank each one of you who made a sacrifice to help us bring our children home! 

ALL OUR ADOPTION FEES HAVE BEEN COVERED, and OUR (estimated) PLANE TICKETS HAVE BEEN COVERED AS WELL!!!! How absolutely MARVELOUS!

This fundraiser, has been such an emotional journey from anxiety and issues of having to lay down our pride to get started, to standing in awe of the shear number of people who stepped up to help us, to crying tears of joy as each of the envelopes came back full of blessings.

Though "Thank you" cannot fully express our gratitude and appreciation for all your help, we thank you, and we continue to pray God's blessings and favor for each one of you who gave so generously. Please stay tuned to our blog for updates on our adoption and for pictures (once we are allowed to post them). 

(If you haven't had a chance to get your envelope returned yet, that is okay, we can still send them in when you are able to. I know some of you let me know that you were just mailing yours out)