Trying to stay busy or simply going crazy?

So every year my four siblings and I take turns hosting Easter and Thanksgiving. This year was my year to host. Due to my entire family living 2.5 hours north from us I usually host the holidays from my parents house. Not this time. Nope, I have decided to host the gathering at our house. Okay people you're probably thinking so what, what's the big deal. Did I forget to tell you that my immediate family consists of 30 people ranging from age 65 to 6months old in age?

Coming from a larger family I am used to large gatherings but my house may not be too used to them. I do not live in a very large house. I do have 3 levels but it will still be a little crowded. Did I mention that they will all be sleeping overnight? I think we will be okay if they don't mind sleeping stacked on top of one and another. Just kidding! They will be trickling in on Thursday of Easter weekend and slowly leaving on Saturday and Sunday. I have a ton of food and activities to keep all ages busy and content. From egg decorating to extreme egg hunt for the older ones we should be set. As crazy as it may seem it has defiantly taken my mind off of the court date wait. Okay maybe not entirely. I have been trying to fill up our weekends until the end of May so far. We are hoping for a June court date!! So please pray we get our date soon!! Please also pray that I don't go entirely crazy over Easter weekend!

Hugs & Kisses On The Way Baby Boy

No, the hugs and kisses will not be from us but today our social worker is on her way to Hannah's Hope, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She hasn't been there yet and she is going over to check out the facility and our kiddos. I told her to be sure to give our baby boy lots & lots of kisses and hugs for us. I also told her she better take a bunch of pictures for us. I presume that many other waiting parents have told her the same thing. I just so can not wait to hold him and kiss him and snuggle him. We are still waiting for a call with our court date. I am hoping for a June court date. Right now the furthest court dates scheduled are for May 20th. I was hoping our social worker would call before she left for Ethiopia with news of a date but no luck. Oh well, maybe she will bring one back for me along with a ton of photos.

Just a little something

We are able to send the little one a small care package while we wait for our court date and wait to go over to bring him home. For the past 3 months Matt and I have slept with this cute snugly teddy bear. I think I may go out and buy another one for our bed because I'll miss seeing it and reminding us of our little boy so far away. So this is what we sent him, his bear, a rattle and a baby photo album of all of us. I'm sure he'll just chew on it and drool on it. I hope it find it's way to him soon and he will be able to hang onto it.

We then packaged it all up and put his name on the label and sent it off to our agency so they can send it over to him while he waits for his mommy & daddy to pick him up.

My 8 year old daughter Aubrey has been taking this bear below with her everywhere and named him baby A. This bear has our baby boy's clothes on and goes everywhere with her. She said she is doing it so we get used to having a baby in the house again. I'm sorry but we often leave this baby home by himself and sometimes he gets left in the car over night. This baby doesn't get up in the middle of the night and doesn't go through very many diapers.

The After Thought

This past weekend I went away for a weekend of shopping with my sisters and mom. I live 2 1/2 hours away from them so it's always nice to get together. I found some of the cutest clothes for the kids but most of all for the baby boy. I have forgotten how fun it is to buy for a baby and how cute the clothes are. The other 2 kiddos pick out their own clothes that I buy and they choose what they want to wear each day.
So the adoption of baby A was the talk of the weekend. The last day my sister asked me
"So, how much does this adoption cost all together anyway?" I thought a bit and responded honestly with the dollar amount. After all she is my sister and I don't have a problem telling people things like that. As I was driving home I was thinking about my response to her question. It bothered me that I told her the dollar amount because what I should have told her was:

The dollar amount is not relevant. What is are the true total costs......

1. You have to have ultimate strength in your marriage and be willing to have it tested.

2. You have to come up with the courage to tell others of this plan God has for you to adopt an orphan and have many people tell you a zillion reasons why you shouldn't do it and make you feel like you are going crazy.

3. You will have people worried for your choice of adopting interracial and internationally. They will ask you a million questions again and even though you have the answers they will still make you think that there will be no way you can do this.

4. You will be in constant question if your bio children's understanding of what is going on and if they are truly okay with it all even though they are acting like they are and loving every bit of it.
5. You will stay up very late filling out mountains of paper work.

6. You will have to hand over your every detail and I mean EVERY DETAIL of your life thus far and be judged on it.

7. You will need to wait and be patient, wait and be patient and wait some more.

8. You will receive a referral call and you will be so excited and filled with joy then you will be told why your referred child is an orphan and you will feel a huge drop in emotion and feel sick to your stomach.

9. You will see the baby's photos and you will oohh and aahh over them only to know that the medical records still need to be reviewed and there could be a chance you would need to turn the referral down.

10. You will wait more for a court date only to know that it still could all fall through and the court date may not go as you had wished.

11. You will need to travel half way around the world leaving your other children with someone else to care for them and worry the whole time if they are okay.

12. You will be very tired and may also get very sick.

13. You will meet your child and they may not want anything to do with you and they may also be sick.

14. You will need to get their visa to leave the country and the paper work may not be correct and you may need to stay longer than you had thought.

15. You will return with this precious baby only to tell family members and friends that you are cocooning for attachment reasons and once again they will think you are crazy.

16. You will struggle with if you should parent your adoptive child differently than your bio child.

Total Cost Being: Putting your ultimate faith in God and trusting in him.
Because without his guidance there would be no way you would be able to do it.

The amount Faith my husband and I have gained through the adoption process thus far defiantly out weighs any dollar amount listed.

SNEAK PEAK

Okay, so I can not post his full photo until he is legally a true Knitter hence the smiley face, but I thought I would give you a peak of his huge hands. I just can't wait until I can have his little hand wrapped around my finger and give him lots of hugs and kisses.

Hello, Are you out there?

Has anyone out there seen my last blog entry??

Nope, me neither.

This past weekend I decided to write a new post of what has happened post "THE CALL" and I decided to save the post until I could finish it up and check it over before posting it. I wrote and wrote then I hit save. I went to go post it and it vanished. So if any of you have my last blog post could you kindly give it back.

Okay I really haven't lost it at least not yet. Here I will try to recap what I wrote before it rudely vanished.

Thursday, March 5th at 1:50 pm my phone rang while I was at work. The phone said AGCI. I had thought it was just a monthly update and thought Christy (our case worker) would tell us that we were officially #1 but instead she said " I have a referral of a baby boy for you, would you like to hear more?" I said "yes of course I would" and then I remember mumbling a bunch of other things that most likely didn't make any sense and I remember Christy laughing at me. She then asked me if we should call Matt as he was at work. I had her call his company cell phone to throw him off a bit and make it even more surprising. He was shocked and very happy.
Christy told us all about this beautiful 3 week old baby boy. As we were on the phone she was converting his weight over to lbs and we were shocked that he was 9lbs 4oz and 22 inches long at birth. This is huge for an Ethiopian baby but this also meant that he is pretty healthy over all.
So I had to work a bit more to get some things done before I could leave work early which was very hard for me to do. Matt had to take the other 2 kiddos to their dentist appointment and I told him I would meet him at home as soon as he was finished at the dentist. We had promised each other that we would not open the e-mail of photos until we all were together and we could open them up and see him together for the first time. The kids were so excited. We opened them up and were all in amazement on how adorable this baby boy truly was. He is a true gift from God and beautiful. We then spent the rest of the night calling family and telling them over the speaker phone of our newest family member. After all the excitement we dropped off a photo disk at Walgreens to get developed and went out for Thai food at one of our favorite local restaurants.

Before I left on Thursday and before I viewed the photos or records I sent all of his records to the International Pediatrician's office and all came back in the clear so we officially accepted the referral on Friday March 6th.

We wanted to make sure we worked as fast as we could so we have a chance of getting a court date prior to the courts closing in August. It may seem like a long ways away but the court dates are filling up fast and I wanted to do all I could on my part to get that date.

So we are now in the waiting process again, waiting for our court date.

WE GOT THE CALL

We received our referral call today for a beautiful baby boy. He is 9lbs and a big healthy boy. He is 3 weeks old and looks fabulous! We are so excited and over joyed. I will post more about the great day tomorrow but for now I need to chill out because we're a bit emotionally drained!

WAAAAHHHHOOOO #1

Okay I really didn't want to be #1 on the list.
I just wanted the call to come through before I would find out that I was #1.
I can say that I am more than HAPPY to be #1. After all how many times can you say that you are #1 for something SO GREAT! Finding out that we were #1 brought tears to my eyes and complete awe.
WE ARE VERY HAPPY TO BE #1.

Solo Ensamble Here We Come

J has been working very hard and practicing a lot for his solo at Solo Ensemble coming up in 1 week. This is his first year playing the Viola and he has blown us away on how fast he has picked it up. His teacher has convinced him that if we buy the Bass Guitar for him he will teach him that as well. I think our home will definitely become even more noisy then it already is. I would rather it be noisy and full then quite and empty.

Great Job J!!

IT IS UNOFFICIAL / IT IS OFFICIAL

It is unofficial that we are now #2 on the boys list and the girls list has been pretty much forgotten. I have lost track of the girls list all together.

It is official that I will be the only one to miss THE CALL. I started to carry around my cell phone at all times because we are due for an update any moment to receive our official numbers or even maybe the referral call itself. But this morning on my way to work my cell phone went dead and I forgot my charger at home. So I have been calling my voice mail a good part of the day to see if Christy from AGCI has called with an update. No one has called yet. Except my mom and my hubby.