wow.

thank you LORD.
These are truly a gift from Him.





Literally - less than an hour after I finished the previous post, I had this precious face in my inbox.

Wow

surrender

 
To say it has been a tough 48 hours would be an understatement, but I think I can say that I have peace.

"Stuff" that is beyond our control has directly affected the timing of our receiving Abraham.
*****edited to take out details*****
I might share more once we actually have him, but we are literally looking at an indefinate wait ahead. We waited 3 months for Amy (after referral), 7 months for Anna and the wait looks to be at least 9 months for Abe.

SO, here is the reason for the title to this post...

I could cry (I have) and fuss (that, too!) and whine (you can't imagine) that it isn't fair (it isn't) and that I must pray for justice and a miracle (which I know God CAN deliver). But. I feel very, very strongly otherwise.

When I first found out this news, I was numb. My initial response was not of action but of apathy. Maybe apathy isn't a fair word, but it's the best one I have. I cried, fussed and whined. Then cried some more (hence the above picture with sunggles and hugs from three peeps). As I prayed through it and waited on God to respond, I began to feel a nudge.

"Do you trust me? Really trust me? Without an agenda? Are you willing to let this move you closer to me? Are you willing to surrender your hopes and dreams in exchange for what I want to do in you?" (It wasn't audible, but I know that is what God was showing me.)

After talking with Chris and some trusted friends and spending a lot of time praying for direction, I believe that God wants my surrender. That isn't really how I faced the wait for Amy or Anna. There was a lot of "rebellion against the status-quo" during the wait for both of them. At this point, I believe God can do anything. I could pray for justice. I fear that in that, though, somehow I would take credit for making God administer justice.

I want this wait to bring him glory. I want the timing to be his and his alone. Then it is about HIM and not about me (or Abe).

God is soveriegn. I believe that more now today than I did three months ago. I had to face so many questions, doubts and fears when I wrestled with how God could allow tragedy to strike the Chapman family in the death of Maria. I was not *fearing* God, but AFRAID of him. If he could allow this to happen to the Chapmans, what might he allow to happen to us? Maybe some day I will share how God brought me through that, but for now I just want to share that he did. And I think that he did because he knew I would need to trust him now and maybe couldn't without having faced the doubts then.

Pray how you feel led. I am praying for my son; for his health, his safety and his comfort.

I will try to post later this week about the "donate" button. Too much time blogging today already...

new info and the "donate" button

I am formulating a post in my head and heart to share some new information about the timing of Abraham's homecoming
and
about the new "donate" button on the right.
I will try to tackle that this afternoon.

cousins!

Grayson and Tate stayed the weekend with us and it went well. It was a great time for cousins to just play and, well, be cousins :)
I think our kids are pretty blessed to see their cousins so much. We are thankful, too!
:)

dinner for eight

 

four little monkeys jumping on the bed!

 

dressed and ready to walk out the door to church at 7:45

 

vacation

Yes - we did go on vacation :)
I know I haven't blogged about it yet.
We came home to so much "stuff" that I haven't really processed even now...
But - we DID go on vacation, so I figured I needed to prove it with a few pictures :)

On the way to down on Friday, we met some of our travel buddies from Amy's China trip for dinner. We had a great time catching up and were blessed to share the evening with them. Here is a picture of Amy and Jaelyn after supper.

 

We spent a few days at Silver Dollar City (in the BLAZING heat and humidity!!!). We saw a little Veggie Tales show there and the girls LOVED it! It's funny - because Ashleigh and Austin loved Veggie Tales when they were little and I just really never got into with the girls. Probably because all the shows were on video and we don't have a working vcr. Anyway - the girls were excited to meet Bob and Larry after the show.

 

We crammed all six of us into one little hotel room and made little pallets on the floor for the girls. They loved it and I think it helped with the transition for Anna into a toddler bed once we got home.

 

I wanted to post this pic of my sassy little 11 year old. We went to a butterfly house and watched a 3-D movie with these sylin' glasses...

 

We were taking turns making "grumpy faces" (since Amy was grumpy and we were trying to distract her) and this is as grumpy as my happy boy could muster!



Big Brother giving littlest sister a piggy back ride



Ash and Anna riding a caterpillar :)




One thing I left this little vacation with was that Branson with a family of 6 is EXPENSIVE! We spent SO much money on food that I can hardly fathom eating out for weeks now! We didn't budget so well for this trip :( I think we can really see the value now of staying in a little pricier hotel that has a kitchen and cooking for ourselves while on a Branson-style vacation. That doesn't really end up being much of a vacation for Mom, but adding Abraham to the family isn't bound to make it any less expensive (you DID see his cheeks, right?!).

:)

monumental night

a very monumental night in our home last night .
:)
first - jiji snagged her first "prey"... oh, we are so proud!
NOT!!! i tricked her with a puppy treat and got her to abandon it - thinking that bogey (the cat) or ginger (the other dog) might devour it before morning. not so. i let jiji out this morning and she grabbed it again. what kind of farm cat doesn't know how to eat a mouse?! good grief!

 

and
miss anna slept all night in her toddler bed!
so this morning i took the crib apart and moved it into abe's room.
wow.
now THAT might make me cry...

 

prayer

do we still believe that he does miracles?
i remember a miracle.
march 27, 2006.
i remember believing that he could do the impossible.
i know he can do it again.
i am asking him to.
9 pm
"where two or more are gathered", he is there...

falsley accused

i must defend myself.
i feel as if i have been falsley accused SEVERAL times in the past week of having a "clean house".
puh-leeze!
i quickly defend myself and explain that there are three levels to this home and usually our guests see only ONE of those levels and it is the one that i generally keep picked up for my own sanity. it is also the level that has the least clutter (i.e. NO KIDS ROOMS!).
it is vbs week and we are also taking swim lessons. we are home VERY little this week and as a result, it seems that we are home long enough to 1)contribute to the kitchen mess and 2)contribute to the mountains of laundry.
we leave for vacation tomorrow afternoon and i haven't even pulled out the suitcases yet! holy cow!
a few pics so that you (and hopefully the people that think i always have a clean house!) can see that everything is not ALWAYS in it's place...
(oh, why am i doing this???)

it might be getting washed, but it CERTAINLY isn't getting folded and put away!


home long enough to take the suit off and hang it over the side of the tub and throw the towel on the floor!


it might look clean now, but this is the *cleanest* it's been in over a week! i couldn't even see counters yesterday morning!

yours - again

Some of you might recall this post where I inculded a video for a Steven Curtis Chapman song that I like alot (and warned Gail she would need Kleenex). It's such a great song and... well, wow.

In the days after SCC daughter Maria died, I kept hearing that song in my heart and wondered - along with so many others - how he could ever sing it again.

Well, not only has he sung it again, but he has added another verse:
(swiped this pic of his lyrics off his manager's blog)



He performed this new version three times last weekend and has already recorded the new version. It will be released for airplay on August 1. It's a song that already made my heart skip a beat and helped me - every time I heard it - offer everything back to him. Wow. Beauty from ashes, indeed.

We are headed into day three of VBS and it has already been a phenominal week! We have talked about orphans in Mexico and in West Africa. Today we will talk about how we are all orphans - depserately in need of a Father and how he longs to adopt each of us. I am sharing Amy's adoption story this morning and praying that it will have fruitful impact. It has been a blessing to share God's heart for the orphan with these little ones. They have such amazing little hearts and they truly "get it".

Anna is 100% back to "normal" and I am SOOOO glad! I missed her :)

All four kids are taking swim lessons this week from Amber in the afternoon. Amber LOVES my kids and we all love her, too. She asked for permission to make the little s cry on Monday. It was sweet. She is trying to get them to blow bubbles and hold their breath. She kept telling her mom (Amy) that she just couldn't do it! My Amy came home Monday and said that Amber made her cry! Too funny!

Swim lessons are coming at the perfect time, as we are heading out for a mini-vacation on Friday to Branson - where we will stay at a hotel with an indoor waterpark :) All four kids are really excited! Heck - I am too (but remember - I hate the water).

:)

Chris and I were laughing as we drifted off to sleep last night about how much we enjoyed our last vacation (Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas). I said "yes - and isn't it going to be even MORE fun with FIVE kdis?!" to which he replied "no vacations with five kids!" We did agree that a vacation MIGHT necessitate a passenger van for enough space... We'll see about that when the time comes....

monday randomness

a few pics from the weekend...

beautiful AND musical

 

poor baby. really, truly, out of it.

 

big sis and little big sis playing together at grampa's 80th birthday party

 

happy birthday, grampa!

 

Somehow I have misplaced my memory card for the camera. I will continue to look for it, but am bummed because I wanted Chris to get a pic of me and my peeps this morning as we were leaving for VBS. We were all in our matching Outrigger Island t-shirts! Four more days of VBS to catch that picture, I suppose.

We finally got our LID (log in date) on Saturday night (apparently our agency works nights and weekends). We were logged in on July 3. My best average guess puts us traveling early November at this point. Surely not soon enough for a momma whose son is half the world away, none-the-less, I will trust in the Lord to bring us together at the time that will bring Him glory.

monday

well. it's monday morning. so much has happened since friday morning...
i took anna to the doctor.
she just wasn't getting better.
antibiotic incjection.
oh, that was fun.
she continued to be out of it for another 24 hours, but
she's back!
oh, how i missed her!
her and amy were back to the antics of writing with marker on the wall yesterday afternoon. yup. normal.
i think i am coming down with it.
super fast call made.
mom on antibiotics.
bible school starts this morning. my kids are SUPER EXCITED!
it's going to be an amazing week... if we survive.
:)

(i will try to post pictures later. my grampa celebrated his 80th birthday on saturday and we got some fun pics!)

strep

ugh.
anna has strep.
all 6 of us had strep swabs.
thankfully, it appears that anna is the only one.
sadly - she is hurting pretty bad.
antibiotics.
hopefully they kick in soon.
i miss my spunky, happy, smiley, silly girl.
poor girl.

decorating

Since I have had a few comments left on my blog about my decorating style (as well as a few emails and conversations in person), I decided to share my "decorating philosophy" in a short post and maybe follow up with some pictures (littles are napping right now and I don't want to wake them up shooting pics in their room).

I used to decorate with Home Interiors stuff and it always looked nice. But something was certainly missing. There isn't much of a personal touch when hundreds of other people have the same grouping on their wall.

People and ideas guide my decorating.

A quick walk through our home should leave you thinking that family and faith are important to us. A friend of mine - when writing a reference letter for Amy's adoption, said that one look at our decor will show what is important to us.

Lots and lots of pictures and snapshots. More snapshots now than there used to be, but the point is that people are important. Most of our pictures are of our family. I have a LOT of "old" pictures displayed in our sitting area downstairs - pics of Chris and I as kids, of our siblings, of neices and nephews as newborns, etc. We have so many that I have been considering rotating them in and out so more pictures can be displayed. I don't generally buy expensive picture frames, but love getting fancier ones at Hobby Lobby for 50%. A lot are from Wal Mart. Some are spraypainted older frames. I like to cluster them; sometimes in small groups of 3-5 and sometimes in much larger groups of 10-20.

In the master bedroom I have printed black and white snapshots from trips Chris and I have taken together (without kids) and paired each pic with an artsy print of some sort representing that destination. All the pics are in black frames with white mats (all from Wal Mart). It is very simple, but it is uniquely Chris and I.

The littles room is decorated not so much with a theme, but as a reflection of them. I have letters spelling their names on the walls in "their colors". I have their referral pictures framed and on the dresser. We were given a few books that are special (and that we have extra copies of), so I have those in a small cabinet on the wall. I have hung a few of their silk dresses on cute wooden hangers (picked up at Target last summer - 3 for $1.00) and put those on the wall. Right now I am eyeing a cute shadow box/frame that I would love to use to preserve each of their "gotcha" outfits and display on their walls.

Austin's room at the old house (still working on it here) had posters of things he liked tacked on the wall, but also a few framed snapshots. One special one was a scrapbook "page" I made of the day he was born. As he (and Ash) have gotten older, I have allowed them to have more and more influence in their decor; after all, isn't that what I am modeling?

We have picked up a few things from China that are displayed throughout our home, but not as the theme; merely meshed with other items. While I want the girls (and Abe) to know that we want to honor their birth heritage, we also want our bio kids to know that their heritage is equally important. It's common to see a Swedish tile in the kitchen and a Chinese piece of pottery 10 yards away :)

I have always had words on my walls. I love the verses from Dueteronomy 6:7-9 that talks about impressing the Word of the LORD in our children. It seems natural that if you want to be reminded of something - scripture or otherwise - that it would constantly be in front of you. Before the kitchen remodel of our old home, I hand-painted the words about Christ being the vine and we are the branches on our kitchen walls. We wanted to bear much fruit for the Kingdom and it was a good and sonstant reminder to us of what we must do in order to be fruitful. Of course, a theme of sorts evolved from that and it fit well into the kitchen.

Amy's room had her handpainted border with descriptive words of her new life with our family.

Our new kitchen decal is a wonderful example of this, too.

Our foyer in the new house had a great wallpaper border already in it - with several verses repeated throughout.

We also have several plaques and pictures with scriptures that we have displayed in nearly every room in the house.

I do like to add "articstic" flair to our home, but it is almost always meant as a compliment to the personal touches and not intended to be the center of attention.

That may be just too much of a bunch of stuff you don't particularly care about, but being a home - maker is very important to me and since a few of my readers have commented about my decorating specifically, I decided to address it :) Heck, I am toying with starting a blog about. More on that if I decide to...

a good thing

it's a good thing she's so cute

 

or else the chewing, barking, peeing and expenses would be a pain...

united

(I have never had a "true" migraine before, but I am struggling with one today. The light and just feeling like I might throw up... Ugh. I am not sure why I am blogging... but I just saw this news and thought it was worth posting.)

Coming down the pike today:



This makes me more than a *little* uncomfortable.
:)
I know my step-mom will know why immediately.
See - a LONG time ago, I was a HUGE fan of Michael W. Smith. Infatuated. I watched the Dove awards one year - cheering on MWS - and waiting for him to sweep the awards. But this new guy - someone named Steven Curtis Chapman - was *stealing* all the awards from my MWS! I was in such a funk about; angry!

Of course, as time went on, I fell in love with Steven Curtis Chapman's music. I have long said that the seasons of my life have follwed SCC - as his music has always ministered to me right where I was at. That continues today with his most recent album "This Moment".

And since we go to every SCC show and tour, well, you can certainly understand why this might be difficult :) I guess it's time to grow up and realize there is room for these two to SHARE a stage. Hmmmm.

And, by the way - haven't been a big fan of MWS in recent years. His music is catchy and pop-y, but I just haven't seen any substance to the lyrics... No disrespect intended.

chocolate, pink and orange

My three favorite colors!
I love the combination of them; they just make me happy!
Working with mauve countertops and dusty rose tiles inset in the bathtub, this is what I came up with...

 

 

 

 

:)
Don't you feel happy?!?!

the 4th - p.m.

This first picture is for Jody -
Amy did this for hours yesterday! Anna didn't. So I guess *some* little girls can sit for hours and quietly color :)



Chris is such a pyro.
We have a wonderful friendship. A few things cause *disagreement* in our friendship.
Fire is one of them.
I am more than a little afraid of grassfires (maybe it was the one I started when I was 13???).
I am convinced that the only reason he wanted to move to the country was so he could burn his trash.
We were told "If the house is on fire, call ________, but if the field is on fire, call ________"
I already forgot which was which.
I think he was safe last night, though.
Mow the area down. Check.
Soak the area with water. Check.
Build a bonfire. Check.




Did I mention that Chris is a pyro?
Did I mention that kids are facinated with fire?




(But it sure made for some cute pictures!)

I am not real sure what was so fascinating, but
this





is what Amy, Grayson and Anna enjoyed doing last night.
:)
Silly toddlers.

After shooting off fireworks at the burn pile and making smores for a few hours, Joy and I took the four littles back to the house to... well... get away from the fireworks :) We walked in the door and Amy was *begging* to take a bath. Well, that WOULD kill some time?! I of course left the camera out at the bonfire, so you will just have to take my word for it - it was cute! All four of them in my big bathtub...

the 4th - a.m.

We *try* to attend a local Independence Day parade every year and we managed to arrive just in time yesterday!

Amy's a flag-waving pro by now, but she needed to teach Anna how it's done.

 

Just like his Daddy - but with more hair!

 

A rare pic of Ashleigh (why don't 11 year olds like getting their picture taken?!)

 

My nephews Grayson and Tate. Grayson does NOT like parades. Or clowns. Poor kid.

 

the 3rd

We spread our celebration of Independence out over a few days.
On the 3rd we celbrated with my Dad and two brothers (and family).

Amy can dish it out, but can't take it. I tried to get video of her, too - screaming when Austin shot her with the water gun...

 

Oh - that SMILE!!!

 

I know she's just drinking water with a blanket wrapped around her, but it is one of my favorite pics of Anna - ever!

 

My bigs and my Dad playing with fire. How special...