Beautiful night for boating

 Friday night we spent a beautiful night out on the boat.  I forgot almost everything from our sailing lessons last year so we just sort of took it slow and sailed back and forth in the river not far from the marina.  I figured sailing was like riding a bike and it would come back to me rather quick :)

We packed a picnic dinner and ate out on the boat and then just spent some time sailing around until it started to get dark.

Banana learning how to follow the compass

Me and my mini-me

My cute fluffy puppy

 More puppy

...and more puppy on Jeff's lap headed home on the dingy

I know I have to stop taking so many pictures of the dog he is just so darn cute in his little life vest.

A different kind of anniversary

Every anniversary is different.  

Our first anniversary we took a long weekend and flew to Boston to explore.  The next year I was rather pregnant so I don't remember doing anything.   Then Banana came along and we stayed home a few years and just did dinner out or went to see a play.  As he got older we would try to get away to a B&B at the beach but then Carrot came along so we stopped the weekend get aways for a time again.   My memory got fuzzy on what we did after Carrot was born.  I do remember ordering pizza on anniversary and celebrating with our kids.   I had to go search through our pictures and found we did get away one time since Carrot was born May 2010 our tenth anniversary.

Biking through the bird sanctuary.

Last year our anniversary fell on a Sunday of a church event I was organizing and then this year again the day is filled with commitments -  off-site work meeting, soccer practice, etc.  We are pretty sure we might as well not even try to fit in dinner out.

It is a little sad but I really feel more blessed that sad.

I am lucky enough to have been blessed with a great husband who loves me very much and is a great father.  He works hard and provides us with a great place to live where I can sit on my front porch and watch my kids playing with other neighborhood kids.

Our life is busy but what a blessed life it is.  We are blessed that Jeff has a job to go to today even though the meeting prevents him from getting home early enough for us to go out.  I am blessed that I have a little boy healthy enough to go to soccer practice.

On a trip, out to dinner, just ordering pizza or living a regular day......I'm super glad we can do it together.

Flowers are in

I just love this time of year.   It is hard for me to pick my favorite season.  I love fall so much but spring is equal if not better.  Everything is so green and beautiful. 

Picture of the creeping phlox before they loose their flowers.  They are always so beautiful

Bed to the right of the drivway

I always hate having to find mostly shade plants for my front porch but shade plants are really starting to improve.

Double begonia's for between the rocking chairs

Double Impatiens for the hanging baskets

Some sort of creeping hybrid impatiens plant 

The vegetable garden getting ready for planting after a delivery of fresh garden soil.  This year Jeff added a box around the garden to make it a raised garden.  Hoping this cuts down on the weeds and produces better plants.

Back yard deck I planted Creeping Petunias and Annual Vinca.  The rule of thumb is to plan after Mother's Day and would't you know it we had a little frost on morning this week.  I hope everything survives.  Some of the Vinca is getting yellow leaves :(

Some more on the deck Geraniums and Vinca.  My deck gets full sun all day so hardy plants are a must.

Garden behind the garage with the spring Iris

I can't wait for the Peonies to bloom.  I'm sure I'll add a post just for those
Bed to the left of the drivway

I decided to add all Annual Vinca in sidewalk bed this year.  I have never done just one type of flower.  I am excited to see how it looks when they grow full.

Front porch pots

More front porch 

And the garden complete and ready for planting.  We do have some corn and the sun flower seeds planted all ready.  Banana certainly has his summer work cut out for him :)

Enjoying this beautiful day and counting my blessings

Mother's Day

For Mother's Day we normally go out to breakfast and then we stop and I buy lots of flowers for the house.  This years I landed both nursery and Jr. Church on Mother's Day so we hit the cracker barrel the evening before at dinner time so I could still get my blackberry pancakes.  

Sunday morning came a bright and early.  I was roused by the cutest little girl I know coming into my room with breakfast in bed.  This consisted of a bowl of lucky charms and a glass of milk on my cookie sheet.  It was so sweet of her.  Banana came into the room a little later and Jeff ask him why he didn't make pancakes and he said he told Carrot he would make them but she was too eager and wanted to get the cereal upstairs right away.  

I am an early riser so I think she was worried I would come down stairs and ruin the surprise.  

A very happy Mother's Day indeed.  I am so blessed to have to happy healthy kids.

10 Months

I am almost hesitant to post an update as all information is likely to change from week to week.  As of right now, this is what I THINK is going on with the adoption.

I am thankful I can say there is finally movement.   Court dates are starting to be issued left and right.  I know everyone in the program is sitting on the edge of their seats hoping they court dates stay firm and we see people start to travel.  The last set of court dates were cancelled and adoptive parents were left in the dark for almost 2 months with no idea what was going on.

The first court date that I know of will be at the end of May and we are hoping we will get more concrete information after we see several of these trail blazer families go through this new process.  This is great news because no new cases have been completed since the new law went into effect last August so it will be wonderful if we see this stand-still come to an end.

As of now Korea is back to requiring families to appear in court.   I have heard that families will meet with their baby and pictures will be taken that will be added to the documents that go to the judge.  The family will appear in court and the court appearance will be 15-20 minutes (nice huh that they are requiring us to pay thousands of dollars in travel for a 20 minute court case).

It seems that families are being given the option right now to take 1 long trip or 2 short trips.

I have been told that some agencies are requiring families to leave after the court appearance and return after the 14 day reconsideration period.   I am hoping they leave it up to families to determine if 1 or 2 trips better suits them.    Our agency has yet to update us that the travel has even changed at this point. 

I was really struggling with trying to decide if we should switch to the China WC program for many days.   Part of me is thinking lets just wait this out and see what happens before we decide anything but the other part of me was fearful that we may get a referral while we are waiting and if that happened and I had to turn the referral down because we felt like we could not handle the travel I think I would be heartbroken.

I decided I needed to think about the worse case scenario and decide if I was ALL IN.  I have not heard anyone saying BOTH parents were going to be required to stay 4+ weeks and that was the situation we COULD NOT handle with Jeff's work.  Still with my phobia of flying I could not imagine having to get on that airplane 4 times probably without my children, and possibly 2 of these on my own, one of which I would be traveling with a screaming toddler who I just took from his foster mother (the only mother he has probably ever known). 

I think that is the worse case scenario and I feel like I have come to terms with that as an option and even though I DON'T want to do it - AT ALL - I can do it.  God is not going to let anything happen to me that is not in His will and I have to trust that if that plane goes down with me in it that is how I was meant to go.  (Geez I'm still shaking a little typing this out)  I seriously spent a sleepless night feeling pretty sure I could not do this LOL

If one trip is allowed and Jeff is in agreement I would prefer to take one long trip.  On Friday, I talked to the kids principal and was asking her more information around how it would work if the kids were off school that long.  She told me that what work was available could be given to us to take along.  E-mail was also another option for some work.  I told her we still were not sure if the kids should be taken out of school this long especially my son since he will be moving to middle school and she told me that both our kids do great in school and they would have plenty of time to make up the work when they got back from the trip.  She said, in her opinion, that they would learn so much more in Korea than that month they missed of school.   After she said that I thought I would look for furnished apartments and found some that could be rented weekly and the rates were reasonable.  It may even not be too much more to rent the apartment for the month than we would have spend on one week at a hotel.  

I am feeling pretty good about staying in the program right now and watching and waiting to see what will happen.  Hoping and praying we see people traveling in the next month.

April catch up

April came and went and I did get most of the pictures up but just realized I missed some awesome moments.

John became a licensed driver and bought his first car.

Who is smiling more?  John that he has a new car or Jeff because John can drive himself :)

Banana had his 5th grade field trip to Washington D.C.  I was lucky enough to take off and the weather was just perfect.  

Had to snap a shot of just some of the beautiful tulips we saw

In front of the capital building.

Some classmates 

Not sure why they all liked this tree so much

Air and space museum

Finally finished

Most of our weekends in April were spend working on the boat to her ready to be put in the water.  Finally after many weekends we are finished

Before

                                               

We did get out on it for the first time last weekend quickly.  It was a beautiful evening and I was reminded how to start the motor and use the radio.  Very important.

 Skipper on the dingy headed out to the boat

 Enjoying the view 

 Silly faces

 So cute in his life vest

Carrot in the sunset

 Banana bringing us back to shore

 Must be nice to be a little girl and get towed all the way up to land

We said Yes

I'm sure it is not coincidente that yesterday this was on facebook.

It is awesome to say the least so so true.

"When you say YES to adoption, you are saying YES to enter the suffering of the orphan, and that suffering includes WAITING FOR YOU TO GET TO THEM.  I promis you their suffering is worse than yours.  We say YES to tears, YES to the longing, YES to the maddening process, YES  to the money, YES to hope, YES to the screaming frustration of it all, YES is going the distance through every unforeseen discouragement and delay.  Do not imagine that something outside of "your perfect plan" means you heard God wrong.  There is NO perfect adoption.  EVERY adoption has snags.  We Americans invented the "show me a sign" or "this is a sign" or "this must mean God is closing a door" or "God must not be in this because it is hard."  but all that is garbage.  You know what's hard?  Being an orphan.  They need us to be champions and heroes for them, fighting like hell to get them home.  So we will.  We may cry and rage and scream and wail in the process, but get them home we will".

Back to the beginning

Why continue with this journey???  That is an easy thought when life apart from our adoption is grand and you don't HAVE to go on with this in uncertain process.

In and effort to remind myself why I am on this journey I need to go back to the beginning and remind myself why I am where I am.

Not everyone was called to adopt but I do truly feel this is something God has laid on my heart.

Here is to a series of remembering what brought me here.

Compassionate Christian living compels us to care for the orphans and to respond to the injustice levied upon millions of vulnerable children.

Our response does not mean that our lives will be pain free and without difficulty.  Perhaps in some cases, our lives will become more difficult.  And for some, their journey will become exceptionally hard and onerous.  Only the Lord knows.

What I am confident of is this biblical reality.  Our Father will reward those who live that righteous life.  He will replace what the "locusts have eaten" and He will redeem those who hear and respond to the cry of the orphan.

Journey to the Fatherless

Don't worry my burden is still down

Disclaimer:  This is not me picking up my burden this is just a update with what is going on in the Korea program.

My husband came home the other night and said, "wow I read your blog post today and it sounded so depressing".....so I hate to feel like I'm a "Debbie Downer" in my current posts right now but it is what it is.  It is not my fault the situation is so sad.

My life is actually so blessed.  Just last night my FB post was this:

"Could life get any better....eating M&M ice cream and mowing my lawn"

I love to mow and I love ice cream :)  My life is really awesome and I am so blessed

....but when my brain goes back to our adoption process the reality of the situation right now is just sad.

I am still laying my burden down but laying it down and explaining the Korea situation and having heartache for these children are two different things (Jeff) :)