The Weekend!

What a relaxing and fun weekend!  Marc and I started Saturday morning with some yard sales.  I must say that I do love a good bargain.  Those that know me well, know that I like to keep my shelves stocked with free or very cheap toothpaste, floss, toothbrushes, soap, etc.  So, quality clothes for 50 cents or a dollar and I'm in, even if it means getting up at six on a Saturday!


Stuff for the kids-$10



Stuff for me-$13

The best part about the yard sales? My dear husband came with me!  Sure do love that man! We had a great time finding stuff for the kids! The kids?! Our kids!  We have kids! 

Then Marc made us breakfast that we enjoyed outside on the patio.

 

Here's our little puppy, who is getting to be not so little!  She loved the morning outside too!

Failed to take any more pictures over the weekend, but we enjoyed the evening with some friends having dinner at a local Thai restaurant where I met the sweetest waitress and found out the owners have a little girl who is just 5 days younger than our little girl!  We will definitely be eating here more often and would love for our kids to have Thai friends here in our community.

 

Today, we enjoyed the morning at church worshipping and learning from the Word.  We sang this song that is so very true.

 

You are Good

 

Your kindness leads me to repentance

Your goodness draws me to Your side
Your mercy calls me to be like You
Your favor is my delight
Every day, I'll awaken my praise
And pour out a song from my heart

You are good, You are good
You are good, and Your mercy is forever
You are good, You are good
You are good, and Your mercy is forever
You are good, and Your mercy is forever

 

No matter what the day holds, He is good.  Some days it doesn't feel like He is, but I am learning to rest in this fact, that He is good, His character is good.  That doesn't mean everything that happens in life is good, but He is.

Still in Awe

Well, the excitement has not died down here!  We are still super excited to know that we are going to have a son and a daughter and are still letting it sink in! For months, years really, we have wondered whether our first child would be a boy or a girl, its kind of crazy to think that its not boy or girl, but boy AND girl!  Still in awe of God's goodness in blessing us with these two children. 

Please know though that it the midst of our excitement we are very aware of the loss that is involved in all of this too.  We are very aware that us being able to adopt these two precious children means that their birth parents are not going to be raising them and there is a whole lot of loss that comes with that.   I actually have a whole post I wrote about that that I will share with you soon.

In the meantime, I thought I would let you know what we have been up to.  Adoption grant applications, lots of them! Marc and I have been carefully saving and planning so that we could afford to adopt and we had the money to pay for everything.  Until, well yes, a boy AND a girl does mean that we will need to pay our placement fee twice.  And no amount of planning or saving on our part is going to make that much money appear as fast as we need it.  Its like God has been saying, "don't rob me of the chance to show you and everyone who knows you that I am the Great Provider. I want to show My glory in how I am going to provide all that you need to bring these children home."  And so, just like that we are reminded once again that we can't do this alone.  And do you know what?  We are glad, even excited.  We know that when we come to the end of ourselves is often when God can show up best.  So, we are excited to see how He is going to provide.

And in fact, He has already started providing the extra money.  I already have a really cool God story to tell you, so stay tuned!

Did I Say Boy OR Girl?

So about that phone call….it was a Thursday afternoon, I actually had the day off work because I was going to be working over the weekend.  I had this feeling of excitement all morning, though I wasn’t sure why. I was outside working in the yard and when I came back in I saw I had missed a call from our adoption agency.  Immediately, I knew in my heart that this was “the call”. I called Holt (our agency) back and left a message saying I would keep my phone with me and to call whenever.  I called Marc to see if he could come home from work early, which he did.  Then around 5:00 p.m. we received the phone call that would change the rest of our lives.

The director of the Thailand program said she wanted to ask us about a little three-year-old boy AND a little two-year-old girl, a brother and sister.  She went on to explain some about their situation and Marc and I just looked at each other, smiling, with our mouths wide open, trying to take it all in.  Did we want to review their files and consider adopting them she asked.  “Yes, definitely yes”, was our immediate answer. 

We knew even before we saw their pictures or had read their files that these were our children.  I can’t really explain it, but we just knew.  We checked our email half a dozen times over the next hour or so waiting for the email with their pictures and information. 

Then, around 6:30 p.m. we saw their beautiful faces for the first time.  Precious, precious children.  Soon to be our children.  Wow.  We were open to a sibling group, but were told they rarely get sibling group referrals from Thailand and not to expect a sibling group, so we weren’t! 

The verse that has been running through my head as I process all of this is Ephesians 3:20. "Now to Him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think….to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever." 

We are going to be parents to TWO precious children!  We stand in awe, complete awe, of God for giving us this opportunity. 

The Process

Last January (2012), as we neared our third wedding anniversary, Marc and I decided to start looking more seriously into adopting. (You have to be married at least three years to adopt from Thailand.)  We always thought we would have biological kids first, mostly because I was already in my 30’s, but since that didn’t seem to be happening and we had been through all kinds of testing that left us with no real answers, we decided, that since we knew we wanted to adopt, why not go ahead and pursue it.  If only it were that easy! 

We found out that the Thailand program at the agency we wanted to use was currently closed.  It might reopen in March they said.  March came and went as did the next six months.  Then, finally in September it opened!!  We sent our application in the day after we found out the program was open.  We were confident that this was the direction God wanted us to pursue to grow our family.  We heard a great sermon by Chuck Swindoll, called Short Cutting the Will of God, that was huge in helping us decide that adoption was indeed what we should pursue at this time.


September to December was a flurry of paperwork and meetings with a social worker to get an approved home study. Everyone who adopts has to have a home study.  A home study is a process that involves a ton of paperwork, everything from FBI fingerprints, to reference letters, to medical reports, to writing long autobiographies.  The result is a 12-15 page report, called a home study, on just about every area of your lives.  

There is a LOT of paperwork in adoption!  



Our completed dossier x3!

Throughout the home study we were also gathering documents for our dossier, which is a collection of documents that the country of Thailand requires for adoptive parents.  All of these documents had to be authenticated at an office in Richmond and then apostilled by the State Department in Washington D.C.  Next we took the dossier to the Thai Embassy in D.C. and then, sent them off to Eugene, Oregon where our adoption agency, Holt International, is located. 

Holt then sent the dossier off to Thailand and we were officially #16 on the waiting list to adopt from Thailand. 

In March we heard we were #10 on the wait list and told we could expect to receive a referral for a child in September or December.

On Thursday, July 25th we got a phone call, one that will forever change our lives.  I can’t wait to tell you about it in my next post!