Thankful

So we in the Midwest are a little tired of snow in April. That being written, I wanted to share all of the things that we, as a family, are thankful for this "spring". Every morning we thank God for the change of seasons where we live. Now understand that we are ready for a new change of season, but we are thankful that we get to have snow, rain, sun, and wind. Due to the interesting weather, we were able to experience water in the basement. Now the parts that give us thanks in this experience are the friends and family that helped us various days and the friends that offered to help in any way once they heard of our adventure. Also we are thankful for the crew that is coming to fix this issue before the thaw so another big THANKS. Again with the weather, my daughter and I flew into the ditch and we are thankful that both of us are safe and that my husband was not into school yet so he and the other kids came back for us. Thankful for safety. Thankful for our wonderful neighbor and his John Deere tractor for pulling the car out and that we were able to connect with him as it has been too long. Thankful that with these events in our lives that we have not had much of our adoption process happening. We are ready for the next step, but based on our past couple of weeks, we are thankful that we were not asked to make decisions nor in need of paper work to be completed. If you glance back at the blog post, I hope that you see so many things that we are thankful for in our lives. We are in a wonderful community and work with amazing people in our jobs. We have supportive and patient friends. We have family members who help when it is most needed. And we have a God who loves us no matter what is happening. We are so thankful. As you begin this weekend, we hope that you reflect on the things in your life that cause you to give thanks and that you be sure to say THANK YOU. Thank you for reading this post and for joining us in our second adoption adventure. Happy Spring. Psalm 107:1 "Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever."

Back!

Good morning- Usually I don't write anything online at such an interesting hour, but wanted to share and couldn't sleep. It will be a short post only as being that it is 5 am and at this time I am not thinking to strongly yet. Our great adoption news is that our Home Study is complete. We were finalized on March 21 and very thankful. Now we are searching and praying for the next part to this journey. Being that we have an agency, but they don't often times work with families adopting domestic waiting children older than infants, we are moving on our own. Always trying to look at how we are learning from where we are in our lives and seeing what lessons God wants us to gain, we are continuing to be educated about many aspects in adoption and one being, which we should have learned with our first adventure, PATIENCE. We had have other situations in our lives arise so we have not focused on our adoption process as much as we may have in other times. Please pray for us as we continue to journey in our lives to see what God has planned for us.

Be thankful

Hope that you, the readers, are enjoying life. I have been away from the blog for a little while due to fun family times and frustration with the adoption. We were notified that we still need more background checks. We are thankful that the adoption process is complete, but after thinking that we will have a completed Home Study in January, we (especially I) were frustrated. Then God kicks me and says "Hello - remember that I am in control". So thankful for the kick as we were blessed with many positives for our position in the adoption. Friends asked me about the process and I was able to share (actually vent) and had nuetral views shared in the conversation. Our community has wonderful police departments as we were able to get clearance letters and finger prints and papers notarized very quickly. So God was kindly reminding me that He is in control. So now we move on to our next adventure - completion of the Home Study hopefully in 10-14 days, but knowing that it will be God's timing. So that is our life in a nut shell with the adoption process. For the family's current adventures: our girls have a basketball tourney and skills at a Girls' Varisty game, wrestling tourney the first weekend in March for our son, husband/dad is now in the playoffs with the Boys' basketball team, and I am doing the polar plunge this Saturday. We are enjoying life and at times just need a kick from above to remind use that He is in control and we are very thankful for that! Proverbs 19:21 "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand."

And another week...

So we were hoping to finish the Home Study by the end of January. We got an email yesterday that stated since we switched the country from where we want to adopt, that we need more background checks. Please know that I am adding humor as yesterday I was just frustrated. I know that He has a plan and that in His timing we will move somewhere in this process. Now for the humor, both my husband and I had thorough background checks when adopting our son. Also we are educators so again- the checks have happened. So now tonight after waiting a week to post as we had hoped to have something to share, I decided to bring some humor to the post. When asked, which of our children was the toughest in having (please note the word, "having") we can honestly say that our son is and hopefully was the toughest. He was worth every paper, redo and trial of patience! Instead of focusing on the negative, humor brings smiles to my face and helps me reflect. We are blessed with wonderful people in our lives. We spent the weekend with my parents and great friends for basketball on Saturday and the Super Bowl on Sunday. We have begun our week with preparation for Valentines Day and while we are waiting, we are smiling at the many amazing gifts we've been given and the humor that comes our way. So this week we focus on Psalm 27:14 "Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!" And we are going to do this with smiles. Hope that you have a week full of smiles.

A week later

Hope that the week has went well. We have enjoyed the past week and weekend. We were able to celebrate our second daughter's birthday with the girls' friends. She chooses BOWLING. Everyone, even our son, had a great time. It is awesome to see how our girls and their friends work with our son. We are blessed. Then we had basketball and sickness for the rest of the weekend. Actually there are no complaints as my husband had a younger boys' basketball tourney on Saturday and a Special Olympics basketball tourney on Sunday. Thankfully those of us that needed to stay home did and the rest went to watch basketball. We do love basketball in our family. We were thankful for no girls' tourney this past weekend. Then Monday arrived and we were off to school and the start of 2nd Semester. The day went well even though I was stressed due to schedules. It taught me to go to Him right away instead of trying to figure things out on my own. Now that leads me into this week. Struggling a little as our Home Study should be done soon. The wait is challenging. I was hoping to get news today that it was completed, but we can wait until Thursday or next week. I need to keep remembering that it is His timing, not mine or ours! So today we enjoyed the day being off because of ice. We were given the gift of time today - true blessing as long as it is used correctly in my opinion. As a family, we went to town as we missed the "no school" call and thought that we had only a "2 hour late". Honestly it was a blessing. The kids and I played in the gym as we were at school anyway and my husband got most of his grades done for last semester. So we accomplished things at school and ran some errands. Then this afternoon we, as a family, watched the "Dukes of Hazards" series. We have the seasons and are huge fans. My husband and I went for a walk in the woods and just enjoyed being outside and together. So this evening we played games and now are ready for some quiet before tomorrow. See all of the blessings and didn't think much about the Home Study. God is good and the day was good too. Hope that you, readers, have had a good weekend, start to the week or that this week is great. Next post, we hope, will share the news about our Home Study or maybe it's not in His timing yet:)

Birthday

Our second daughter celebrated her birthday yesterday. We are so proud of who she is and what she does. She has an energetic attitude and yet can quietly sit with her brother. She is a wonderful blessing in our lives. We tried to celebrate her birthday on Saturday as Gramm was up watching both of the girls play basketball. Although the evening ended well by watching Butler and Gonzaga basketball with cheesecake, the attempt in making it special didn't go so well. She was patient and just asked if we could get cheesecake so we did and the birthday evening was good. On her birthday she opened gifts, brought treats into her class and ate Subway for supper. Hopefully for her it was a nice day! That was our birthday adventure...In regards to our adoption adventure, no news. We are pleased to share that our friends are picking up their twins and should be home soon - PTL! So tonight we'll leave you with this: "This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118:24 We rejoice in celebrating a special girl.

Unexpected

When you don't expect wonderful "pick-me-ups" they happen so much. This week we've had a few...former students came in to visit, which I love! Laughter was happening everyday with our kids, coworkers and friends. High school friends are planning a get-together, which are always fun. And great friends of ours took two of our kids overnight so that we could get to our other child's appointment early this morning without extra stresses. We are so BLESSED. We've had a good and busy week. The other unexpected situations are in relation to our adoption process. We inquired about some children and already we have received some communication. Now we are almost done with our Home Study -we just need our agency to complete it (and they have many so I am not being impatient) and then we can move onto finding matches. We have decided to adopt domestically. So I wrote a few emails in order to ask some questions. The wonderful piece to adopting is that you learn something new everyday, whether about yourself, your family or others. So we have at least started in the right direction, we feel. We are trusting that He will place the correct children in our family and if that is not the plan, we will have grown stronger as family through this adventure. So just wanted to share that "unexpected" things can bring smiles to your day, sometimes we just need to recognize that the unexpected things are blessings! Hope to be writing in about a month or two on the next step in our adventure. We'll share more about our family as we have basketball tourneys, wrestling practices, and fun family times coming up, but hopefully we will be able to share news on where we are being lead. May your day have unexpected blessings so that you can Praise Him for what He is doing in your life. Have a great weekend!