Yea!!!! We're HOME!

We made it through all our travel adventures-- I feel so brave and all grown up :). The boys and I had a great time on the farm in IL... boy, it is COLD there! I am spoiled in sweet NC! And, of course, we were welcomed just perfectly to a cold arctic blast as we pulled into the driveway of my parent's farm-- negative temps and 30mph winds for the first 3 days we were there. I opted for being a yogi instead of a runner for those days :). But, it warmed up to tolerable, and even veered into mild for a couple of days! We all managed to catch the flu bug in between Christmas and New Years-- I have become good friends with Clorox and Lysol.

Boys with their favorite new toy--funny, where's the Wii?
Oh wait, that's Mommy's favorite new toy!

Santa brought a Wii this year-- they must have been making an overload supply this year at the North Pole. It seemed to be the gift of choice. Funny, the boys didn't even really recognize that they got the Wii when they were frantically looking at all their treasures! They noticed all sorts of other things and even a couple things they DIDN'T get, but the Wii elluded their attention for quite some time. It was Aunt Emily and Mommy who went wild about it, and then they recognized its existence. BTW, Aunt Emily and I LOVE Guitar Hero :) I'm really bad at it, but it is still fun. I think I can still hear "Slow Ride" in my sleep and sadly, "Baracudda" still has the best of me... but not for long-- I SHALL prevail!!

My gladiator and God-warrior... forces to be reckoned with!

Tony is doing well on the other side of the globe. He is in a good routine, getting to do some pain medicine stuff and seems to have plenty of time to eat healthy, workout a lot and read a lot. He begins every conversation with, "I'm so huge, you should see my _______ (arms, shoulders, traps, abs, etc)!" I'm happy for him. And once I can run more than 2-3 sporatic days a week, finish any one of the books I started three months ago and lose my new and ever so lovely hive rash all over my torso, neck and arms, I'll be even THRILLED for him. Until then, happy is good enough :)

Creation Museum in OH with the Harbaughs on the way back to NC-- VERY FUN!!

Last, but not least... adoption news. There is none. But this is not to be un-expected. We have been waiting 7 1/2 months now and are in a line that is a bit sporatic. The sibling group line. Right now, I am starting the process to have our USCIS approval broadened a bit to include any sibling group or two children ages 0-6 years with one or both of them being a girl. We have always been happy to be this broad, but somehow during the paper chase process, we let the wording be too narrow-- I don't know why-- it is all so confusing when your going through it. Anyway, our fingerprints expire in April and there is not a chance that we will get a referral, go to ET and get back with our kids before then. So, I have to do this whole hoop jumping thing again anyway-- might as well get the age range right this time :).

Even though there is no DIRECT news for us, there has been a lot happening in our agency's program. Ten referrals for the month of January have already been given and this is unheard of for so early in the month. That is very exciting! There is fear on the YG that this is it for the month. I don't think so. I won't believe it. I believe that more children are going to be referred to their forever families this month and I even believe that the wait times for court and travel are going to start to shrink. Why do I believe that? Why NOT? :)

Well, Happy New Year to you all!!! Thank you so much for praying for our family during this deployment and adoption time!! Thank you for leaving posts and comments on our blog and thanks for faithfully checking in, even though I am the sporatic blogger :) My love to you all!

Grace and Peace,
Shari

Mining for diamonds

Today when I came down from teaching school to make lunch, I casually glanced outside the back windows. That is when I noticed that our patio set was missing from the deck. Hmmm... I don't remember moving the patio set, and I bet the dog didn't move it... so I went outside to check it out, and sure enough it is missing along with half the chairs. The two chairs I DO see are mangled up against the grill-- uh-oh. When I walked to the end of my deck, there were the remains of my patio set, smashed glass covering the ground and the other two chairs wrapped around each other a few feet away. I guess the wind blew sorta hard last night. Later that afternoon, as I was attempting to clean up the mess-- not easy when tempered glass shatters and blows all over the side of your yard-- I tried to look at the bright side of things... I was sick of that set anyway, the glass was always dirty and I was constantly cleaning it; that set has had a "good" life-- we've kept it through at least three moves and it WAS our FIRST purchase when we bought our first home back in Texas... That got old, so then I pretended that I was mining for diamonds-- as the sun hit the teeny, tiny, glass pieces, I imagined I was somewhere deep in Africa-- let's say, hmmm-- I know! Ethiopia! So I was deep in Ethiopia in a diamond mine (I have no idea if there are diamond mines in Ethiopia) and with each glittering "jewel" I picked up, it brought me one step closer to paying for our adoption... that made me laugh at my weirdness, but it, too, got old. So, in the end I decided that if I can fill the bag enough to make it look impressive, then I will have something to write about on my blog, tonight-- which, by the way, I am becoming highly addicted, to. That one worked. I even started on the second bag, before I had to stop and go in to make dinner.

Those weren't the only diamonds I was mining for today. At some point in the morning I had this realization that there was no such thing as adopting two unrelated children from Ethiopia-- somehow, I thought we could do this, thus not have to wait as long as people adopting sibling groups. Well, that joke is on me. So now I am mining for all the "diamonds" of positive thoughts I can muster about why it will be good to have to wait so long (9-12 months). For instance, it is still a LOT shorter than waiting to adopt from most other countries-- or even in the U.S.! And we still don't know if and when Tony will deploy! There, I said it. Tony is probably (99% probably) going to deploy sometime in the next year for six months. If our wait was shorter, it is highly likely that we would get our referral/court date/travel either while he is gone, right before he leaves, or as soon as he gets home. None of those are ideal-- what is ideal, anyway? That's for another blog. Back to topic-- mining for diamonds. In the end, I most certainly feel held by the love of the Father. When life looks SO uncertain and SO unpredictable, there is nothing to do but have faith in the One who knows every single hair on my head-- even the new gray ones; cares deeply about the details and is ABSOLUTELY big enough to handle this one, too :)

That's some good diamond mining!!
Grace and Peace,
Shari