ALMOST HOMEstudy

Since the last adoption update, we successfully passed both our fire safety inspection and (finally) our water test. We ended up getting a UV light to purify the water from our well. Quite a pain, but at least we have healthy water now. :) We received the rough draft of our homestudy report, sent in our editing suggestions, and are now awaiting the finalized version. That's all very exciting! A little disheartening is that we thought the next step (approval from USCIS immigration) was a quick one. Unfortunately, I remembered the time frame wrong, and it's actually taking 3-4 months! So I'm pretty bummed about that. But, in a couple months we should be close enough that we would be allowed to request a specific child from the waiting child list. (We have to have our entire dossier to China within 3 months of requesting a specific child.) So, maybe by the end of the year we can start watching the list for our little girl! Your continued prayers for finances, wisdom, patience, and God's blessing, are greatly appreciated.

Ethan's 5th Birthday!

Ethan turned 5 on Tuesday. We had a wonderful party planned for Saturday . . . we were going to go to a nearby farm, have an outdoor party enjoying pumpkins, corn mazes, tractor rides, pedal carts, corn cannon, etc. Planned more than a month in advance. Everything ready to go. And then. . . it rained. The day before and the day after were 60 degrees and gorgeous, perfect fall weather. But THAT day was a torrential downpour. The farm closed, so we couldn't have even had the party in the rain if we had wanted to. So, with all our guests planning to come to Frederick (and the fact that our house wasn't ready to host a party), we didn't want to move the party home. So what else is there to do nearby? The only indoor last-minute activity we could come up with was Chuck E. Cheese. Heath and I had once vowed never to go back there, but alas, that's where we ended up. Along with every other child in the county whose party got rained out. The place was a madhouse! But rather than rant about the nightmare it was for the adults, I'll just say that the kids had a very fun time, and Ethan really did enjoy his party. I know that's what matters. (Though, I must admit, the 5 year old in me had quite the temper tantrum about it.) The girl in the picture with Ethan is Miranda, one of his cousins. It's hard to believe Ethan's a five-year-old already! He's growing fast, and tells me he'll be as tall as me by the time he's six. He's starting to learn to read, he's learning so much and is so curious about the world. Most of all, he loves to be working outside. He enjoys hands-on projects just like his dad. Lately, his favorite activity is cutting down weeds and small trees on the hill behind our house. He'll spend hours out there working on it, and it really has made it look nicer up there! Ethan is a wonderful blessing in our lives, and I'm looking foward to enjoying this last pre-school year with him!

Wedding #1

Heath's brother Matt got married on October 4th to Rebekah Laughman. They make a very sweet couple, and the wedding was beautiful. Heath, Ethan, and Jesse were all in the wedding party. The boys did well, but by the end I was exhausted from trying to keep Jesse out of trouble all day! He added some entertainment to the wedding I guess, and fortunately Bekah really likes kids and enjoyed having all the kids' "contributions" to the ceremony. :) We'd been a little worried about how Ethan would do, since he didn't want to walk down the aisle. But at the rehearsal he made friends with the flower girl he walked with, and that helped him overcome his fears. He did a great job and ended up having a fun time. One wedding down . . . three more to go!

Adoption Update

We both had our individual interviews with our social worker last week. Mine took 45 minutes; Heath's took an hour and 20. Hmmmm..... But it seemed to go fine, and she should have a write-up for us to preview in about 2 weeks. Then just a couple more things before our homestudy is complete. One of them is having a fire inspection of our home. I sent the form in last June. Since they hadn't contacted us yet I asked our agency to check on it. The Fire Marshal claims he couldn't get ahold of us to schedule an appointment, so she told him to try my cell number. So Saturday he calls me at my home number, to ask if he can call me on my cell phone number! He says he gets a busy signal when he tries the home number. Perhaps that's from us using the internet, but I really think he could've managed to get through at some point during the last THREE MONTHS! Plenty of other people do! So he wants to use my cell #. I thought he meant we'd be having a series of phone calls, so I said that was fine. Then he says, "OK, I should be calling you soon to set something up." WHAT?!!! I was totally confused, and before I could even think the conversation was over. Why he didn't just set an appointment then is beyond me, but I didn't think fast enough to stop him from hanging up! So, now I'm carrying my cell phone everywhere I go--even to check the mail and stuff. No call from him yet. Heath tells me most of the fire inspectors he deals with on the job are quite arrogant, so he's not surprised this guy is acting like this. But hopefully he'll call soon, and we should have our homestudy wrapped up in a couple weeks. Patience is a virtue. :)

Counting Blessings

I've had plenty of days where I run errands and everything goes wrong. But today was the opposite! This morning the boys and I went out to get some things for the upcoming weddings. I don't know why everyone we know has decided to get married at the same time (6 weddings within 6 months, 4 of those between October and December, 3 within 55 days of each other; Heath and/or the boys in all 4 this fall, plus 3 bridal showers). So anyway, we had to get 3 wedding/shower presents today. Fortunately, they were all registered at the same place--Bed, Bath, & Beyond. And I had 3 coupons--two 20% off, and one $10 off a $30 purchase. So I saved a lot! And they even gift wrapped it all for free. Then we went to the mall to get the boys dress shoes for the weddings they're in. I figured it would be a major pain because it's always hard to find shoes that look good AND fit well AND don't cost too much. (Ethan needs wide sizes, which are hard to find sometimes.) So we went to Payless, and the first shoes I laid my eyes on in the kids section were exactly what we needed, and in 13W--Ethan's size! They fit great, and then we easily found matching ones for Jesse. Perfect! Just before I paid I remembered I had 2 coupons that I'd gotten on my last purchase there (one was for doing their phone survey). I didn't think I could use both, but the cashier let me, and then she said "I can do even better!" And she proceeded to give me another coupon they were running for another $5 off. So the shoes would've been $35, but I paid only $21!

I wasn't going to buy lunch at the mall even though it was getting late, because I'm trying to stick carefully to the budget. But I happened to find cash in my wallet (which I rarely have)! So we went to Subway, and had a Buy-One-Get-One foot long coupon. So we got that, and even have a leftover sandwich for tomorrow's lunch. The boys were great the whole time we were out, which is never guaranteed. On the way home Jesse fell asleep, and--miracle of miracles--stayed asleep when I brought him up to his bed! Jesse has been refusing naps for weeks, so this was a true blessing. They both slept for over 2 hours. When they got up they were happy! (Imagine that!)

They played outside for awhile, but we also needed to go to the grocery store before dinner. We stopped at CVS first to use some "Extra Care Bucks". Between coupons and their sales, we got about $42 worth of stuff for $27, and then got $14 back in extra care bucks! (I may go back to use some of that for the great Diet Pepsi sale they're having.) Then we went to Weis. Nothing too spectacular there, but we should have enough points to get 15% off in a couple weeks!

The boys were well-behaved all day. Dinner was easy and tasted good, and now Ethan's at AWANA and I'm using the library's NON-DIAL-UP internet!

I often post about life's frustrations and complain about everything that goes wrong. But this day was just a nice blessing from the Lord. We've been a bit stressed about finances lately, with the adoption and the house situation on top of regular life, and this morning I was praying about that. (You'd think I'd be praying about it all the time, but usually I think of worrying first, and prayer is just an after thought.) Anyway, God answered in a very tangible way and caused all these little things to add up today. It's more than just financial savings. It's a little reminder that God does care, even about the small details in our lives. And He'll take care of us in the big things too.

Quote of the Day

I always seem to come across things that I want to remember, but never get around to writing them down, so of course I forget. So I thought I'd record them here on this blog. That way I can't lose the paper I write them on, and whoever reads the blog can enjoy the quotes with me. So, here's my first one:

The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.

I love this reminder, and I hope I can get better at living it out. I seem to alternate between pride and self-pity. But in Jesus, there's no need for either of those. The quote is from The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller. Great book for Christian and non-Christian alike. He answers lots of questions that thinking people wrestle with. I highly recommend this book!

Ground Breaking!

No, we haven't started building our new house yet. But this Sunday we had a Ground Breaking ceremony for our church. Mountain View Community Church (Urbana, MD) has been around for 11 years, and we've been going there for almost 6. All this time we've met in a high school. But we have purchased land about a mile away from the high school, and the building will be going up soon! We're all very excited about the new building--not only for the convenience on Sunday mornings, but also to have a place that we can use throughout the week for all kinds of activities, and to be more visible and accessible to the community. The ceremony was really neat, and even the kids got to help dig. I think Ethan was expecting us to actually dig the entire foundation out, so I had to explain that the big machines would come in to do that. We were just giving them a little help getting started. :) After the groundbreaking, we had a church picnic, and got to meet our new Pastor of Discipleship, who will be starting next month. It was a very exciting and encouraging day for our church.