Good News and Great News

Hi, yes it’s me. I’m sure you’ve long ago thought that I’d given up on this blog. It has been several months since my last post and we have been in a whirlwind of business. I started back to work FT and it just seems like our days and nights fly by with stuff to do. Both Sean and Matthew are playing baseball this spring season. Sean has had a pretty good season himself but I can’t say the same for his team, lol. He’s great at playing first base and has really show his skill at pitching this season. Now Matthew, that is some funny stuff right there. The boy who has spent his first 4 years of life at the ball fields watching big bro play, I just knew would have a clue as to what to do. But nope! LOL. First game he hits the ball off the tee and runs right through the field towards second base. It was a funny sight to see for sure! I took some pics but I haven’t taken them off the video camera yet. I will do that soon too. I promise

Now, onto our NEWS!

The good news is the WE ARE FINALLY FINISHED WITH OUR HOMESTUDY! You know that one little song that goes “this is the song that never ends, and it goes on and on my friend”? Yep I know you have it in your head now, lol. You can thank me later. But anyway that’s what this has felt like! We’ve had some things that had to be cleared up and documents tracked down and things notarized and it always seemed like there was something else we had to get but I am so relieved and thrilled to say that IT IS DONE! This means we can finally move on… and with that, we have some great news.

We have decided to host a set of siblings this summer from Latvia as part of New Horizons for Children hosting program. These are orphans that want to come to America for a few weeks and experience life here in a loving Christian home. Our girls are 9 and 10 and have came one other time and speak some English. We are very excited about this opportunity and are keeping our minds and hearts open to what it could mean for our adoption in the future. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to give their names or not (there are funny rules about that stuff) so I’ll just refer to them as the girls for now. The older of the two likes dancing and gymnastics and is a bit more reserved when it comes to people so please pray that is a barrier we will be able to get past with her. I really want these girls to feel like they are part of us while they are here and to give them the best family experience possible. The younger one is a little more outgoing and loves to read (I think she’s like me, lol). We will be picking them up on June 28 and they will stay with us through the first week of August. We've had to dip into our savings a bit in order to cover the $3800 in hosting expenses but I really feel like God put them and this opportunity in front of us and it is so far off our original direction and there were some timing things that just showed us how this is all falling into play so that was enough confirmation for me. Here is a photo of them taken off the NH facebook page. One look at this picture and these girls had a special place in my heart.

With that being said, we are still saving and fundraising for our adoption (wherever it leads us) and I had a really great idea that I’d like to try out. God calls us all to care for the widows and orphans and I realize that can be done in many, many ways but when it comes down to adopting it’s just plain expensive and very hard for the average family to come up with the funds without lots of help from others. So I thought wouldn’t it be neat to see how far your dollar really can go in this economy? I mean, times are tough right now and it’s hard to always give even when you really want to but if we all dug down in the couches or looked in our cars I’m sure we could find at least a dollar in spare change.

So I am designating Fridays as “How far can $1 go?” day. Bright and early tomorrow I’ll post a link that you can use to donate $1 (or more if you want) towards our adoption expenses. If you will share that link via twitter and facebook or any other social media that you use just think of how many $1’s that could be! I’ll update the blog as the day goes with how it’s adding up. I think it’ll be kind of fun to see how it works out. This is one of my long term ideas for after our adoption is complete too in order to keep advocating for the remaining orphans and helping their families bring them home. It’s so sad when you think of how lavishly we live, even what’s not lavish here is a mansion to these kids. I pray that America will wake up and see that we really can make a difference. I could go on and on about why it is so important to get these kids out of the orphanages and into families but I’ll save that for another post.

So, that’s what we’ve been doing and are currently doing Have a blessed day my sweet friends!