Monday, January 31, 2011

Our Day

I took pictures today to kind of document our day. It was a bit of a whirlwind day, the pictures make it look a little dreamy, but it definitely wasn't (other than our wonderful approval from immigration, yay!) Anyway, first on the list of things to do today, clean the bathroom. Be thankful, I didn't take pictures of that. It was gross! No matter how hard I try, black mold keeps coming back in the toilet.

Anyway, the kids were at eachother all day, the pictures don't show that. One day, I will look at the pictures and only remember the good times. Then when my children have children and ask me if their children are like they were, I will say "no, you were perfect angels, just look at these pictures". Ok, it sounds funny in my head anyway, because my mom does that. :) ( of course, I think she thinks my kids are perfect angels too)

We made heart placemats for Valentines Day. The kids loved it, and were so proud when they could use them for snack and dinner. 


 Justus tried to eat his. I think he is doing some major teething lately, because he is chewing on everything. 



This actually was a peaceful moment this morning. They were playing with babies together. 




Until... Justus decided he needed to do something more "manly" like fix something. 



 After nap, we made strawberry banana mufiins. 

Malika wanted to wear her apron and she insisted I wear mine too. We need matching girly frilly ones. 

Justus, of course, had to unroll all of the paper towels. 


Our strawberry banana muffins. Mmmm, with a glass of milk, these were heavenly. I could have eaten all of them. (Josh just had one and said they were good, but he expected sweeter, well, they are healthy muffins and I haven't had sweets in a while, so I thought they were wonderful)

Strawberry Banana Muffins
1 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. white flour
1 t baking soda
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t salt
3 ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 c sucanat (natural sweetener, but you could probably use regular white)
1 egg
1/3 c. butter, melted
1 cup chopped strawberries (I used frozen)

Prehat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, set aside. In another bowl, beat bananas, sugar, egg and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Add strawberries. Pour into lined or greased muffin cups. 

Optional crumb topping (this would probably make it sweeter, I forgot to do this, but thought they were great without it). 
Mix together 1/4 c. sucanat or sugar, 2 T flour, 1/8 t cinnamon, 1 T cold butter, until it resembles course cornmeal. Sprinkle over muffins. 

Bake for 18-20 minutes or until center comes out clean. 




Our Golden ticket!!!!

Oh my gosh, we just received our I-171H in the mail. I am so excited, I can't even think straight. I'm trying to figure out how to get everything finished to mail our dossier by this weekend.

Thank you Jesus.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Just an update

I haven't written on here in so long, because there isn't much to say. We are still waiting for our approval from immigration. I am hoping it will come this week. I called immigration last week, just because I am so anxious. They said our case has been assigned an officer. This is a good thing. But, each officer has about 80 cases on their desk at one time. I am still pretty confident it will come soon. The days have been dragging by while we wait though.

After we receive the paper, we have to get our homestudy, then send the rest of our documents to be apostilled. After that, we send our dossier to Priscilla's country! Yay! We are almost there.

We have been quite busy with things at home lately. I have thought and thought of ideas of things to write on here, but none have played out well enough to post. Tomorrow, I will take pictures of our day, and post them though, just so you can see that I don't spend my ENTIRE day by the mail box. :)

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Twin stuff

Our first twin thing! I made matching bibs for Justus and Priscilla. Of course, Justus already used his and it is dirty. 

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Down Syndrome Dancers - Awesome video

I love this video, so I had to share it. I smiled and cried happy tears watching it.


Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Aghh! I'm going crazy

Lets just say, I am probably one of the least patient people. I really am going crazy with all of this waiting. I am reading blog after blog of people going to get their babies or submitting their paperwork soon, and it is making me even MORE crazy. Why do I do it?  Even though we only started this 5 months ago, it feels like an eternity.

I have been trying to get our social worker to send me our final copy of the home study to send ahead to Priscilla's country for translation and haven't had much success with that, so that means it will be pushed back more.

It seems everything I try to do to make it go faster only fails. Our fingerprint appointment is next week, but sometimes they take walk-ins, so I've been thinking we could try to do that, but then it snowed and we have been snowed in.

I keep playing it out in my head, "next week we get fingerprinted, then 2-3 weeks later approved, then we...", oh, if only it really were in my hands. But then, I am reminded of Proverbs 16:9 "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps".

Really and truly, I just have to resign myself to just trust in the Lord and that He knows exactly when this is all supposed to take place and it WILL take place in his timing. 

I just want to go get our baby. I wanted to go yesterday. She will be 18 months this week and I am missing out on so much with her.

Please pray with me for our sweet little one, pray that she is safe and healthy and well cared for. Pray that immigration will be quick and all will go smooth to bring her home.

Friday, January 7, 2011

accepting

Priscilla's country is accepting dossiers on February 10th! I am so excited about this, we are getting closer. Please pray that immigration will be quick so that we can send our dossier (this is the huge packet of documents we have been working on) soon. After we send it, it has to be translated, then submitted to the SDA (state department of adoption). Then we will be given a travel date, about 3 weeks after submission.

Yay! This is getting more real, and definitely closer. I have a picture of Priscilla right by the computer, so whenever I am on her, I keep looking at her sweet face to remind myself she is real and that this really is happening.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Board book

I wanted to make some board books to take with us to get Priscilla. Some for the kids on the plane and one for Priscilla to look at of our family. I looked into getting them made, but they seemed pretty expensive, so I googled how to make them and came upon two different websites and made up my own, you can check them out here and here. I thought it was so neat, so Malika and I made one. It is far from perfect, but turned out cute. I will do things a little bit different for the next couple, but will definitely make more. 

If you live near me and want to come make some, let me know. It would be fun to have a book making day. 

fingerprint date!!

We got our fingerprint date from immigration. It is going to be scheduled for the 18th. Yay!! I'm so excited, we are moving forward. Hopefully it won't take long to be approved through USCIS after this. We could be submitting our dossier next month. Pray it all goes smoothly and quickly.

Monday, January 3, 2011

A family is in need of your help...

to bring their little girls home. The Lane family has been in the process to rescue two little girls from a life without love, but they desperately need help bringing their two precious little ones home. They already have their travel dates and they know they are going. But it is all in faith, because right now they only have the money to get over there.

We have been completely blessed by all of our friends, so I just wanted to send this out to ask you to pray about giving to help them. Every little bit will count, so please pass this on.

You can go here, if you would like to donate.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

What we've been up to

I've been sitting here for about 30 minutes trying to figure out what to write, but I can't think of much, so I will just write the random things that have been happening in my life (at least the things that I don't care if the whole world knows).

Lately, I have been feeling very stuffed in our house, so I have been looking for houses. We even went out with a realtor last friday. We found a house that we LOVED, we really didn't expect this to happen. When I saw the house online, I didn't really even like it, and thought I would hate it even more in person, but that didn't happen. It has been torture for both Josh and me, because we really wanted this house and could possibly make it work. Anyway, long story short, we have been praying about it, and both of us know this isn't really the time to be buying a new house. It is hard, because we both love this house and could see it as our forever home and we could have many children there, but we also know that we would be walking out on our own if we did it. I know that if we wanted to, we could make it work and get that house, but I also know that I would regret it.

So, we took down our Christmas tree, and what do you know, it isn't quite so stuffed in our house. :)

The other day, Malika said something so funny, I'm still not sure what she meant. She said her sister was going to get in a bubble and come over here and we would pop it and she would live here. She's so funny. I made her repeat it twice, because it just didn't make sense. Since then, she has heard me say this to others, and she thinks it is so funny. Now she tells me Lilly (her baby doll) said the same thing. The things she comes up with.

I have been checking our mail everyday waiting for our fingerprint appointments from immigration. So far, nothing has come. Hopefully this week. Please be praying with us, that this part of our process would go very quickly. We are almost done. I only have one paper to redo and then waiting on immigration and we can send our dossier. It's starting to feel more real.

We are so amazed and surprised at how much money people have donated. If you were one of those, thank you so much. We are so grateful. People have been so giving and supportive. I really expected more people to question us, but really other than the couple in the beginning, everyone has been extremely supportive. I'm still in shock that we have the money and that this really IS happening. And that I really did hear the Lord about the finances. I mean, I thought I did, but money is such a huge thing today, that I thought we would be having to do many fundraisers for the money to come in. But, now I know when God says $25,000 is like 25 cents to Him, He means it. If I had just truly believed Him in the beginning, I could have saved myself the time trying to come up with fundraisers. :)