Sunday, March 28, 2010

God's Provision


Part of the reason I'm writing this blog is to make sure we remember all the ways God provided along the way.

I've been searching Craigslist several times a day. The other afternoon we went to look at a cute Pottery Barn Kids loft bed with a little tent that makes a fort under it. The loft wasn't very high and we thought it might be good for Joseph after he's been here a little while. The price, at $125, seemed reasonable to us.

We walked in and right away the man told us that if we wanted it, he'd give it to us for $75. The bed was sturdy, but parts were pretty scratched up.

We mentioned our adoption and he got so excited. This man turned out to be a believer who owns a bounce house place in town called Monkey Joe's. He gave us his e-mail and told us to contact him when Joseph comes home and that Monkey Joe's would love to throw him a "Welcome to America" party. Amazing. My kids love Monkey Joe's and we just celebrated Katherine's birthday there.

He told us that we could have the bed for $50; actually that he'd love to just give it to us, but he was afraid his wife might be put out with him if he did - after all, she'd taken the time to list it on Craigslist. $50 seemed more than fair, so we paid him and loaded the loft bed, piece by piece into our van.

As we pulled away, Mr. Monkey Joe's came running across his yard, jumping over the shrubbery, waving his hands for us to stop. Mike rolled down the window and the man said, "Please take your money back. I just talked to my wife and we'd like to give you the bed to help with your adoption. And if you could pull back in the driveway, we have a Pottery Barn Kids rug we'd like to give you as well."

Nesting Update


Progress on the master bath: Bye-bye pink and hello beautiful chocolate brown. I love my white towels with the dark brown monogram. They were a gift to us from Santa! (Santa even brought towels monogrammed with the kids' names for their bathroom. Add that to the list of things the kids will fuss about when they're grown - towels for Christmas!)

I also love the framed photo. Although you can't see it for the glare, it's a photo of a glacier from our 10th Anniversary trip to Alaska. I framed some of the amazing photos from our trip to use as artwork for our bath. Now we can enjoy those special memories every day!




Yea Mike - kudos for giving us a beautiful bathroom on a tiny budget! I hope you're just warming up because I'm buying paint for the living room this week.

We Sent Our Dossier!


Here's last Tuesday, March 23, in photos.






After six months of grueling paperwork, this part of the process is done! We mailed our dossier to CWA (our agency) on Tuesday.

While packing up our dossier on Tuesday morning, I yelled to Mike in the other room. "You need to write a check to CWA for $XXXX.XX" -- the largest check we've had to write so far. I heard a thud as Mike's body hit the ground. Most of you know that Mike has a seizure disorder. I raced into the next room to find him flailing on the ground. As I called his name, he looked up and laughed. Seems he decided to fake a heart attack over the amount of the check.

Isn't there an unwritten rule somewhere that it's never funny when folks with serious medical conditions fake heart attacks?

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Prayer Requests


1. Pray that God will be preparing Joseph's heart to be adopted into our family.
2. Pray that God will help us to bring home as much of his "history" as possible. We want to travel to the place where he was "found" as an infant and take photos. We'd like to get his "finding ad" from the local newspaper if possible. We'd love to have a photo of him with his foster family. We'd love to find other children who were in foster care with him at some point and have now been adopted in America.

Many of these desires are highly unlikely to be fulfilled. Many families send disposable cameras to the foster families or orphanages to get photos of their child before they are adopted. There are services that will arrange this for you. But all the parents I've talked to received a camera full of photos of their child by himself. I feel like it's such a loss to be seven years old and all of the sudden have your entire history "erased." I want to provide as many pieces of the puzzle as I can for him as he grows older and tries to understand his unique story.

Monday, March 8, 2010

On to the Consulate

We mailed our last set of documents to the Chinese Consulate in Houston today for authentication. When we get them back, we'll be able to send our dossier to China.