This Adventure Called Life

I am aware that my blog has been sitting very neglected lately. It isn't because I have a shortage of funny stories about my children. Just today as I was going through Tristan's drawers I happened upon the last pair of dirty underwear in his drawer. You read that right. Unbeknownst to me he didn't realize that upon getting new underwear you should place the dirty underwear in the laundry basket. So for a while now he has just been rewearing dirty underwear. Now, this is all funny until I stop long enough to realize that it has taken me this long to notice I have no clean underwear to put away in his drawer after folding the laundry. We sat down and established how often he should be changing his underwear and where he should put the "dirty" ones. I guess to him dirty is relative because if he didn't visibly see dirt on them they were still clean. I thought I had looked through his whole drawer and retrieved all the worn underwear but today I unearthed what I hope is the last pair. My goodness!!

One of the main reasons my blog has been neglected is my hands have found a new hobby which I find more desirable than typing. My hands would rather have the feel of knitting needles and yarn now. It is true - I am becoming even more domestic and there are many grandiose plans for when my knitting becomes more refined. I am accumulating patterns that are being tucked away in hopes that I can find time to get to them eventually. I really is pretty therapeutic. Although after the first day I was ready to throw the needles away and give up. I am so predictable. If I can't do it perfectly right away why continue? I pushed through my frustration and have been knitting nearly every evening. Mark has already dubbed them my "crack needles" which I don't find as amusing as he does. Although secretly I think it is kind of funny.

The other reason I have been a little preoccupied is because I have been scurrying around trying to get 10 months of preparation and nesting done in a matter of days. Do you catch my drift? We have been tossing around pursuing another adoption for the past year now. On the days that things go pretty well I think why not? On the days that are hectic (most days) I think we are crazy! But in December we decided to go ahead and send in our preliminary application for going back to Ethiopia. We haven't signed a contract with the international agency yet because we were waiting on reference letters. Over the past year we have also looked into domestic adoption. We have talked at length with our homestudy agency about African American adoption here in the States. Did you know there is a need for families to adopt African American children? I wasn't aware this was a need until talking with our caseworker. So, while we have wrestling with where to adopt we decided to pursue Ethiopia and believe God would make it clear to us. We were contacted twice in the past 6 months about possible domestic cases but we didn't feel peace with either situation. I started really questioning how obedient we really were to His leading if we were being approached about cases and saying no to them.

Fast forward to last Wednesday. I was driving around running errands, taking Tristan to the doctor and on a lunch date and thinking maybe we should just not pursue anything right now. Maybe five is our number and we should just settle in. I love our five kids and things are finally hitting a place of what I consider relative ease. Nobody in diapers, kids that can get themselves dressed, go to the bathroom, etc. I was thinking specifically of a woman I know who has raised 5 children and now is getting to enjoy life with her husband. Not that she didn't enjoy her life before but I was just dreaming about life in 20 years. Does anyone else do that? We arrive home from our errands, I check my email and see that all our reference letters have arrived and it is time to go ahead and schedule our phone interview. An hour later as I am finishing up dinner preparations my cell phone rang. I glanced at the number and answered without it registering. It was our caseworker who has done our homestudy. My heart skipped a beat, my stomach churned and I just knew this call was going to be different. I just knew somehow! While we are choosing to keep some details to ourselves and to our families I will share a few with you.

Tomorrow around lunchtime a beautiful little girl who was born on February 20th will be arriving at our house in the hopes that within the next year she will become a forever part of our family!! How is that for crazy awesomeness?!! A dear mother who is an African refugee has chosen us to be the family for her little girl! This woman has endured tremendous things within the past few years. She has been in the States for a little over a year now with her other 11 children. She is from The Republic of Central Africa. Our little girl (ahhhhh) has been in respite care for the past 2 weeks and is doing great! Her first and older sisters said good-bye to her today and are at peace with this decision. The 30 day period of waiting goes into effect as of yesterday when her mother signed release papers. She assured the agency she isn't going to change her mind but we know it is a possibility. It is a tough position to be in. Our hearts are completely invested and we wouldn't have it any other way but knowing her mother has 30 days to change her mind is a bit nerve wracking!!

One of things that really held me back from wanting to pursue domestic adoption was the whole open-adoption concept. I just wasn't interested. Suddenly, we find ourselves in a pretty open adoption situation and we feel peace about it. We will have ongoing contact with the mother and sisters, especially over the first year. All the details will be sorted out over the next little bit.

We have been blown away by the events of the past week!! I cannot even put into words the emotions I am feeling. I am excited, nervous, scared, feeling anticipation, crying that Heidi won't be my baby anymore, worried about the transition on the girls and on and on. Heidi has been especially needy the past few days and I am sure it is because she knows what is happening. She is excited about the baby one minute and the next denies that there is a baby coming. I have so much I wish I could could get of my head tonight but this is probably enough for now. We are so grateful to our families and our friends who have prayed with us over the past few days and shared in our excitement! We have been so tremendously blessed by the outpouring already and for that we thank you! To the throngs of people who have wondered what they can do to help: the biggest thing is commit to praying for us over the next weeks. Particularly the next 30 days! And I mean commit! Send us emails of what God is speaking or verses that you feel He is speaking. Secondly, gift cards for meals over the next couple of weeks (which translates pizza since my kids would be thrilled with pizza nearly every night) or target so I can buy formula for the baby. We already have lots of diapers, formula, wipes, onesies, bottles.....I had given every single baby item away. I am sure God is laughing right now at how adamate I was that we were past the baby stage.

So tonight we go to bed as a family of 7 and tomorrow we become a family of 8!! Good thing I overheard Shane informing Eden a few weeks ago that our family isn't big. "We only have 5 kids and some families have like 11." His exact words! I am okay if we stay a family of 8 for a good long time. Possibly forever! We are not settled on a name yet. Have you tried naming a child in a few days? Kind of difficult. Hope you are all still breathing because I nearly passed out when I found out!! I will do my best to at least blog briefly tomorrow evening to let you know how our first day went. And give you a sneak peak at our daughter! She is pretty stinkin' sweet!!