Blessing and Challenge

Adoption = "the biggest blessing and the biggest challenge you will ever face."

As most of you know, today was Orphan Sunday. November is National Adoption Month. In just over a week (yikes!), I'll be posting about plenty about adoption and the process of it. But for tonight, I wanted to link to Meredith's blog about Orphan Sunday.  All of it so very, very true, and will be so much more true when we get Grace home. Thanks for reading it!

http://cornishadoptionjourney.blogspot.com/2013/11/orphan-sunday-2013.html

We have a pretty intense week coming up, not only with frantically getting ready to leave, but we have several additional appointments.  I'd appreciate prayers!  Also, please pray for my children's hearts as we prepare to leave. A few of them are having a tough time already. :-(

Luke 9:23 - 
"Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me."

The calling of adoption is not just for Pat and I, it is for our whole family.

(Hopefully, I'll have some extra time while we are in Ukraine to do very long overdue updates on Elijah and Jonathan.  You know, things like sleep study results, school, ENT, etc.)

Thanks for praying for our family this week!

BRINGING GRACE HOME: 11-11!!!!

So, 11-11...Some of you may remember I like cool dates. :-)  10-10-10 was Elijah's benefit.  11-11-11 was the final re-adoption court hearing for Jonathan. 12-12-12 was nothing big, but I prayed about adopting again, and the Lord whispered to my heart, "You will know when it is time to adopt again." And so I did. So, 11-11.  (Yes, it is 11-11-13 but who cares.)  What happens on 11-11???

We fly to Ukraine!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, that's right! We (finally) got our appointment date for 11-13, so we will leave on the 11th. WOOHOOOO!!!! 

We are all SOOO very excited! We should be holding Grace in our arms on Nov. 15th, Lord willing. I CAN.NOT.WAIT!!  We are coming Sweet Baby Girl!  We love you and can't wait to bring you HOME where you belong!

(By the way, please do not hope for court on 12-12 for us. That is way too long.  A 12-12 Gotcha Day would be an awesome miraculous thing!)

Please pray we are home with Grace before the end of the year. New Years is a HUGE thing in Ukraine. Not to mention Orthodox Christmas on January 7th, and Orthodox New Year on the 14th. Not much gets done the first 2 weeks of the year, especially in gov't offices. :-)  I have lots of prayer requests, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Thanks everyone for your love, support and prayers!

Tears...(Sleep Study Update)

(Don't worry. Blogging 3 times in one day will not become a regular occurrence. Just an update from the sleep study lab. Here's a copy of the email I sent home.)

No, not the tears you are expecting. My tears...tears of the goodness of our Lord for answered prayers.

I am still shaking my head in disbelief. Jonathan did not fuss one single time. We watched Signing Time while they did the setup. He maybe moved his head three times. No noise. No nothing. Even when they taped the cannula under his nose. Nothing. No no-nos either. This is from a child that doesn't like it when I straighten his colic out at the back of his head. It took him probably 30-45 min to fall asleep, but he just laid there on his tummy breathing deeply and sounding like he's asleep but with his eyes open. He fell asleep about 9:15. I think I got the easier bedtime tonight! :-)

Thank you Jesus!!! GOD IS GOOD!  Amen and amen. Thanks for praying. God answers prayers!!

BRINGING GRACE HOME: Dossier Update

We got word today that our dossier has been APPROVED!!! Everything is ok!  I am SOOO relieved. If they would have kicked it back again, we would have to start over with new medicals and a good chunk of the dossier. THANK YOU JESUS!!!

So what now you ask?  We wait. We wait again. We wait for a travel date to be issued. I'm believing for a miracle for an expedited travel date. That might mean the end of October.  It may be the end of November. No idea. I need to finish tying up some loose ends with school planning and then I can turn my focus back to "nesting". :-)  Oh ya, I have a gazillion more tomatoes to make into spaghetti sauce, carrots to slice and freeze, squash to bake and freeze, and basil to make into pesto to freeze...at some point before the frost comes in a week or two.  As overwhelmed as I can feel at times, I'm so grateful for this opportunity to preserve our harvest for my family.

Thanks for praying! Grace, we are coming - SOON! Can't wait to wrap my arms around you, Sweet One.

Sleep Study Update and Round 2 Tonight!

Sorry for the delayed update, but Elijah's sleep study went very well - amazingly well - miraculously well!  Thank you Jesus!  And thank you all for praying! He only fussed a bit while they stuck all the wires on his head.  We put the no-nos (arm boards) on his arms right away so he didn't think he could start yanking off playing with the wires. Just 2 things really bothered him. It wasn't the canula up his nose or even his mesh "hat" holding all the wires.  It was his hospital wristband and the thing on his toe to measure his oxygen levels (I think).  I took his wristband off. I figured it was the least I could do. :) I'm not surprised about his toe either. He HATES, I mean HATES to have his toe nails trimmed. Very sensitive feet. Anyway, as he was falling asleep, I took his no-nos off and he was asleep in 5 minutes. I was shocked!! He did GREAT! He didn't even fuss at the finger poke the next morning. Frankly, I was shocked - that was a good thing!

He set the bar pretty high for his little brother. Jonathan is much, much more sensory "defensive" than his brother. I joked with someone I was going to have to pray and fast for a long time before Jonathan's test for it to go as well.  J's was scheduled for October 4th in Milwaukee, but after being at the New Berlin sleep lab, I wanted to go back there. It was very nice w/ a private bathroom.(Plus it was the night before our DS walk.) So, I rescheduled it for Oct. 30th and put him on the cancellation list.

They called this AM with a cancellation for TONIGHT! So, Jonathan and I are off this afternoon for sleep study #2.  Please pray his nose stays clear. (Both boys have sniffley noses but Jonathan's was fine this morning when he woke up.) Please pray he tolerates this well and can fall asleep. I would keep the no-nos on him but he always always falls asleep with his right two fingers in his mouth. I'm not sure how this is going to work. Prayers I can sleep too would be appreciated. 

Thanks so much everyone! I appreciate you all so much!

(Here's the link I posted last time about sleep studies in case you missed it. http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/986521/sleep-studies-for-children-with-down-syndrome)

Sleep study x 2 - Comin' right up!

Yep, both Elijah and Jonathan will be having the notorious sleep studies.  I'm heading off in a few minutes for Elijah's and Jonathan's will be in a couple weeks. I'd appreciate prayers tonight for all to go smoothly for both of us. :)  I'll try to update tomorrow, which happens to be Elijah's 6th birthday! Fun way to start a birthday I'd say.

Sorry it's been so long since I've update here. We've been too busy livin' life to blog about it I guess. I'll try to update more soon!

Thanks everyone!

Happy Birthday Sarah!

Happy 15th Birthday, Sarah!  How did my first baby get so old all of a sudden?  Guess that makes me pretty old.  But Pat and I are SO very proud of Sarah and love her very, very much. She is a pretty special young lady.

Sarah is a very hard person to buy gifts for. She is NOT your typical teen and really doesn't "want" anything that I can buy her.  (Her birthday list included being healed from Lyme disease and a family for "Jacob" - if I remember right.)

(Bunny trail here.) This is Jacob. (No, they don't make bumpo seats bigger in Asia. When Jonathan came home at the age of 12 months, he was TOO BIG for a bumpo seat. He got stuck in it. Jacob is 3. He needs out. Like yesterday.)

Ok, so I can't heal her (although I pray everyday for that) and I can't bring Jacob home (no, I really can't), but I will share her birthday wish with you. Stolen Borrowed right from her blog: 

++++++ Sarah's birthday wish ++++++

I put out a plea on facebook today.

It's my birthday today, and can I ask you a favor? This is Sutter. Like me, he is also turning 15 this year, he has cerebral palsy, and he is waiting for a family in EE.

I was at his orphanage, I was at the institution he will end up at (when he ages out next year), and no person should ever have to live in either of those places. I'm also pretty sure I met him. He needs out ASAP before he runs out of time!

Would you be willing to donate just $15 to his grant? As a present to me, and as an effort to save his life.

And if you donate today, let me know and I'll enter you in a drawing to win a free custom hat of your choice (see here). Email me at forhisgloryhandiwork(at)gmail(dot)com or comment here.

The link to donate is: SUTTER and THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart!

+++++++++++++++++++++

Thank you so much for your consideration! (Sarah will leave the drawing open through Monday since I'm so late in blogging this.)

I am WAAAY behind on blogging our family events of the past few months.  ALL 10 of us have our birthdays between April and October, so lots of parties and not much time to blog about it.

Here are a few quick pics from Sarah's little party tonight. Sarah's traditional cake for her birthday is "Dirt Cake".  Except we forgot to get more Oreos when we ran to town to get the fair projects. Oops!  It still tasted great though.

30 candles
15 for Sarah
15 for Sutter

Yarn is always a safe gift for Sarah.
These colors were handpicked by her two little sisters.

Pat and Isaac were extremely privileged to go to the Packer pre-season game Friday night. Isaac's jersey (birthday gift a couple years ago) was still out so Elijah put it on himself and was dancing around.  

Yes, we were watching "Star of Christmas" in August...

Isaac's hair before the Packer game on Friday night. Summer buzz cut! 

BRINGING GRACE HOME: Well, we have news...

Sorry it's been so long since we've updated.  Well, we have news.  Unfortunately, it is bad news. We found out a few days ago our dossier had been rejected due to a tiny date error. I may have mentioned a hundred times once or twice how picky the adoption authority is over in Ukraine. So, I spent the day in Madison yesterday getting the new documents apostilled. The documents are already in Paris as of 12:30 this afternoon on their way to Ukraine via FedEx. I think it may have helped a bit sending them from Madison instead of here, but I'm not sure. They should be there in time for my facilitator to get them notarized and submitted on Thursday, the 15th. (Yes, Rochelle, I know UPS would have them there in plenty of time. :-))

So, what does this all mean??? This is the very hard part.  Once our dossier is resubmitted, we go back in line with everyone else that was submitted that day.  Right now, submission to travel time is almost 3 months. (Families submitted same day as us in June got dates for 2nd week in Sept.)  The thought of Grace having to wait 3 more months is something I can't even think about. She has waited SOO long. I feel so bad for her. My heart is breaking. After we got the news, all day I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. Plus, if you do the quick math, 3 months puts us at mid-November. Add a possible 6 week process. Ya...I swore I would never do Christmas in Ukraine again, but I may not have a choice. For those of you that are newer here, I spent the whole month of December in Ukraine to bring Elijah home. We knew from the beginning that it most likely happen and we were prepared (or I thought I was). It was very, very difficult. BUT, having said all that, we, as a family, will do whatever it takes to get her home.  We can always celebrate Christmas when the Ukrainians do on January 7th. :-)

I know none of this is a surprise to the Lord. I am finding peace in this, as difficult as it is. We would appreciate prayers for quick approval of our dossier this time and a speedy travel date.  Also, please pray for smooth "travels" for our documents and smooth submission on the 15th.   (Ugh...when we started this process, "I" was hoping for court on August 15th. sigh...it would have been my grandma's 100th birthday.)

I have to go cut/freeze some beans, but if I get time in the next few days, I'll share a bit more about my day in Madison yesterday with some tips for families coming behind us.  Some interesting things too...never a dull moment around WI's capitol.

I'll leave you with the verse the Lord gave me shortly after we got the news. (Couldn't help but smile about the word "submit" in the verse.)

Proverbs 3:5-6:

⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.

BRINGING GRACE HOME: No news

Well, I have no news to share about Grace's adoption process. We are waiting. When we were submitted in mid-June, travel dates were running about 8-9 weeks out. Now...well...they are at least 11 weeks!  Good grief.  That timeline puts us in the last week of August. UGH!  But, the only thing I can do is pray for the Lord's perfect timing.  We want Grace home as soon as we possibly can, but are trusting in the Lord.  Hopefully we will hear something in the next few weeks about our travel date as they are issuing them at least a month ahead of time. I'll keep you posted! Thanks for praying!

TWO YEARS HOME!!!

 Jonathan two years ago...

Two years ago today, I took this scared, floppy, and actually quite mellow little boy with chronically red eyes out of the orphanage FOREVER!!!

Jonathan, my dear son, I can't believe it has been two whole years already. What fun we had trouncing around Kyiv!  And mommy was so blessed by the "angels" God sent her on the way home.

You have grown and changed SO much in just two years.
You have transitioned from size 12 mo to 2T/3T clothes

- from not putting any weight at all on your legs to now climbing onto the table AND the high stools

- from no communication at all to the many speech sounds, words, expressions and signs you have now

- from having no opinion about life whatsoever to having an opinion about everything

- from having seemingly no interest in your surroundings or toys to being "curious" about everything

- from drinking out of the bottle to the straw cup

- from stage 1 baby foods to thick and chunky purees (ya, we're still working on that one)

(You have no idea what a miracle this is!)

- from having zero interest in books to sitting for 30+ minutes looking at books all by yourself

- from not knowing the love of a family to eating up every hug, kiss and snuggle you can get.

You have become one of us.  You have melted our hearts. We all love you SO much!!!  I can't imagine life without you!

Sarah made this video last year for Jonathan.  I thought I would share it again. Enjoy!