Friday Nights at Our House...

Good times with good friends! It's rare that a week passes that we don't spend at least one evening a week with either the Moodys (who happen to be relatives, too) or Rempels...and usually all 3 of our families together. And often more than once a week. Here's the big event from Friday night at our house. Took this from Marie's blog--Tyler and Justin decided to have a diaper/PJ race. Haha... Lucky for Tyler that Lincoln's PJs zipped up.

They're In Labor--Please Pray!

Our friend that I posted about earlier has gone into labor. Please pray! She's only 26 weeks along.

You Might Save a Life (and it's free!)!!!

What an opportunity to GIVE!!! Please read!
And spread word on your blog or facebook, too!

My friend's sister in Chicago has been doing a lot for the cause of the bone marrow registry. Below is part of my friend's email. Like she said, we have one life on this earth and what an incredible opportunity to possibly save a life! And the registration is FREE until Dec 31st! Go sign up! I just did, it took less than 5 minutes. You can browse the Gift of Life website for information, and info on the actual donation process if that thought makes you nervous. Did you know that the majority of the time, all they need to do is draw blood?! And in some instances it's actual bone marrow extraction, minimal discomfort...you can read for yourself on the site....spend some time perusing all the info and stories and pics, too!

My sister has set up several bone marror donor drives in Chicago this year. I just registered online to become a potential donor. 1/100 people who sign up will have the opportunity to save a life by being their donor! I think this is exciting.... And I hope that you do, too :) Usually it costs $54 to become a donor, because they have to test your cheek cells, purchase a donor kit, and other important steps in the donation process. However, through a grant my sister received, signing up to become a donor is FREE through December 31st. I know that the idea of being a bone marrow donor to some people is scary, but once you look at some of the pictures of those who lived because of the donation of a stranger.... I think your opinion may change. Especially when you look at the adorable little red head boy :)
Please look at the website below. Think it over! We have one life here on earth.... I think it's awesome that we have the chance to help others in this way.

Please go to this online registration page on the Gift of Life website: https://www.giftoflife.org/Public/Online/Donor/Guidelines.aspx
Because of a generous gift from the Schusterman Foundation, if you register before December 31, it’s free! Just enter the sponsorship code: SAVEALAN.

Once you’ve filled out the online registration form, your information will be reviewed by Gift of Life. If they determine you’re eligible to be a donor, they’ll send a sample kit to your house!

Go register, and go spread word of the free registration!

Pray for Our Friends!

Pray for our friends and their yet unborn baby girl.

A Girl and Her Daddy

*One of my favorite moments of Rick and Fallyn! He turned to look at her and she purposely had crossed her legs to try to sit just like him, and the look on her face when she saw that he knew what she was doing--oh my melting heart!
*Fallyn's sweet eyes for Daddy in Iowa this summer.
*Riding the fire truck in Iowa.
*She wanted to rock Daddy.
*Riding a slide at the Little World's Fair (pics to come someday!) in Kismet.
*Love their matching expressions with their ice cream cones!
*Using a napping Daddy as an office chair.


I love everything about the next sequence of pics--a trying-to-nap Daddy who doesn't mind being used as the source of his kids' joy even when he's worn out, a 2nd child climbing all over him, Fallyn getting such joy from her Daddy's presence, and the crazed look in Fallyn's eyes! haha!

More Fall Fun

I'm behind on getting pics on the blog, as usual. Here's some from late October/early November.

Fallyn and leftover marigolds that line the sidewalk to the porch. They stay bright yellow for SO long--love it!

The kids and I go downtown to see Grandpa for lunch in the lower level of his building quite often. The kids LOVE it! We love Kyoto Garden and the people who run it, the kids love going up the elevator, helping Grandpa check his mail, seeing Mr. Richard the shoe-shiner who always has candy for the kids, punching in the code for their office door, getting water from the Culligan spout, looking out Grandpa's window... What a blessing my parents are in Wichita now for my kids (and me) to build frequent, fun memories with!

5th floor. Just last week Calvin got to go downtown and watch the downtown lighting festivities from the convenient warmth of Grandpa's office instead of having to be out in the cold--Santa going by in the bucket of a firetruck, fireworks... "AND WE GOT TO GO IN THE ELEVATOR AND PUSH EVERY BUTTON! TEN FLOORS! EVEN 'L. L.'!"

SuperDad! What a blessing he is to our kids and ME! Calvin's expression cracks me up. He really was not in agony or anything!

Fallyn got the camera and told us all exactly how to pose (including our expressions). It was pretty funny. She's never done that before. If we had all 4 of us in it, I think we'd have our Christmas card pic.

Calvin posed us. I'm an alligator and Fallyn's supposed to "do like a tiger".

A Fundraiser for Our Adoption

I have several brand new Vera Bradley handbags on Ebay as a fundraiser for our adoption. If you need a nice gift for a good cause for a lady on your list, please check it out! Details are on this post at Sugarplum Boutique. All proceeds are going to our ongoing adoption fund! With the Kyrgyz delay, we have to be prepared for document update fees, home study updates, etc., so we are still raising what we can! Thanks for looking!

Any New News?

To answer that question we get often (and appreciate!), NOPE! There are often reports of movement, albeit very little. Very little is better than none at all, though. Mid-February is on the radar for more developments.

Rick and I had dinner together a few days ago. I broke down a little; it all felt so HEAVY. It usually does, just moreso that night. Rick reminded me that it will all be so worth it. That was after I said something like, "Can we just get pregnant again? It'd be SO much easier! We have time!" I wasn't serious--I don't really want to be pregnant again, and we know that's not the road that God's called us to. I was just lamenting. Although we're waiting much longer than we ever thought we would before adding more children to our family, there have been many positives to that, which I'll save for another post. We just never thought our youngest would be 4 before we had more in our house. That's been a big adjustment for me, although I am thankful that we have this extended time with just 2. Waiting a long time for another child is hard, but usually it's OK... It's the unknowns that are the hardest.

We decided a couple months ago that all our eggs will continue to be in one basket. We won't look at other options (like a concurrent adoption) unless in a few/several months from now, there has been absolutely no progression. We're *this* close (fingers an inch apart) to the end of our adoption process, yet that one inch is taking *this* long (hands as far apart as they can go).

We continue to pray for the families who have a referral, and of course for all the kids. I say it often, but I mean it--I can't imagine their heartache, knowing the toll that this has taken on us, not even having a referral.

Well that's that. Not looking for a pity party, just sharing...

Mommy-Swap!

A friend of mine and I have been doing a mommy-swap for quite some time now...a year? She has 2 small children, also. So about each week, I have her kids for half a day or she has mine. We've been doing 8:30-12:30 and recently we decided to swap FULL days! 2 half-days a month is just not much time to get a whole lot done, although it has been extremely helpful to both of us!

We're excited to both have about 2 full workdays a month now! Notice I haven't called it a "day off"....I'm sure every one of you who is a mom COMPLETELY understands that! Both of us have enjoyed being able to get much more work done than if we had our kids with us for that time. We crank out the housework, catch up on laundry, get a workout in, I get focused computer time in for Sugarplum Boutique and such... I hope I can get to the point where I'm caught up on Sugarplum Boutique stuff and other things, and maybe eventually I'll be able to include some "fun" time on my workday....to sew myself a skirt, or make another dress for Fallyn or something for Calvin's room.

Even when I have 4 kids or she has 4, we each still can get some things done since they play well and keep each other busy.

So here's one of my best mommy-tips: Find a friend with a similar number of kids as you and start a swap day! I'm so thankful that this worked out for both my friend and I!

Do any of you do some sort of swap with a fellow mommy? What's your favorite thing to do during your kid-free time? I'd love to hear your thoughts or experiences if you've done something similar...or if you like the idea but just haven't yet.... Leave a comment!

p.s. Be ye warned....swapping with a gal who has girls, and babysits an extra girl sometimes means that your BOY who has been with FOUR little girls (Fallyn's 3 yrs old, and the other three girls are 2 yrs old!) all day might mean that you pick him up and he's all decked out in princess dresses and tiaras! Wish I had a pic from this week when Rick picked them up on his way home from work! :)

Fall Fun!

These are in reverse order. Too lazy tonight to fix 'em.

Our tree in the backyard--a pistachio we're told--always gives us a good show. Starts hot pink/orange/red up top and the colors creep downward for 3 or 5 days or so....Eventually it turns all yellow and the backyard is entirely covered in tiny yellow leaves, which isn't too hard since it's really small....but still so cool! So cool to see the tiny leaves raining down!

Fun at the Moody's. Tyler and Justin are getting ready to wrassle, as usual. And Calvin has his first babysitting job.

Sweet girl with her acorn bow! (shameless plug--get one here!) The 4 of us hung out outside on a perfect fall evening!

I turned 28 in October! Ah! Here's my BFF and I at Sugar Sisters before we went to a holiday shopping thing, but we did very little shopping--we were just there for a free goody bag (and we will never talk about that incident again except to say that grown women should know better!) and walk around and have free samples! They were out of salted caramel cupcakes, but these were scrumptious, too.

This was a fun little craft that kept the kids busy for a few days! Mostly Fallyn (Calvin lost a lot of interest)...my word that girl can do detail work for a loooooong time! She probably did 10 of these, and wanted every tiny speck of "frosting" covered with a "sprinkle". Spent well over 20 minutes on each one.

Cupcake bases and frosting were cut out of cardstock and glued together, sprinkles and cherries were cut from scrapbook paper scraps.

Calvinisms

Compiled from May through today (October 27):

The day Justin came home from Iraq, Calvin asked me why we're having a party. I said, "Because Justin's been gone so long, and we're so happy he's back!" He said, "Yeah! He's been in Iraq ALL DAY!"

Looking at pics on the computer of Justin's BBQ, I was showing him which bus Justin walked off of on a
short video. Calvin saw him walk off and said, "There's Justin! And he brought back the Wii!" In the following days/weeks/months, whenever we mentioned Justin being back, talked about how much people missed him, and the like, he'd quickly add, "Yeah, and he brought the WII!"

"I like Ashley better than Austin!"

I asked Calvin who his best friend is. "Fallyn. . . and I have another best friend. . ." [I was really anxious to hear who he would say--Tyler? Vail? Austin Ashley?] Me: "Who?!" Calvin: "Andrew!" (Andrew is our nephew, and they do have lots of fun together!)

"Mom, do I have a pimple on my BUTT? Because I think I have a pimple on my butt! Do I? Is there a pimple on my butt? I felt a pimple on my butt, is there a pimple on my butt?!...etc. etc." Takes a 4 yr old to say those 2 words that many times in 1 minute. haha! (Sorry, we try to stick to "bottom", but it doesn't always happen. We grew up saying butt, and we knew how to be plenty polite as kids, so...we're not militant about saying, "bottom".)

"Mom, how do I win with 'Uncle' Tyler? Do I sit on him and fart on him?" Why yes, son, yes you do! That's exactly how you win with Uncle Tyler! haha, Payback time! Tyler lived in our basement apartment for a large portion of Calvin's life (infant through age 3)....just the time when it's sooooo fun for Calvin's big friends to teach him all kinds of fun things :). We've warned Tyler it'll be payback time someday.

"Spangles is even more beautiful at night!" (it's a fast food restaurant native to KS)




Calvin is on a mac and cheese kick. I gave him mac and cheese inside a tortilla and he lit up with pure delight (impressive, because he's never been excited about any food or treat, really) and said, "MMMMM! This is the best thing EVER!"

Calvin came home with a binder from his preschool, a compilation of a page for each kid with basic info, so parents and students can look at each child's picture and information....a get-to-know-you type thing.... Apparently he told his teacher his favorite food was steak. ???



Calvin has been complaining about going to AWANA lately...he finally said, "It's all that dancing and standing they do!!!"

He loves his new bowties from Auntie Bobbie (3 vintage bowties--they're awesome!). He wore one to church, then we had to spend a good amount of time after church searching for the 2 others, which he had stuffed in his pockets (unbeknownst to us) which had holes.

Life with a 4-yr-old boy definitely is a huge source of entertainment! Such randomness, humor, insightfulness, inquisitiveness.... I need to be better about recording more Calvinisms, since notable sayings are almost daily. I just forget so quickly! That's why I have this blog for our family!

The Diamond Story - A Twist

So, the playground got put in at the Kyrgyz orphanage, but not with the diamond money. Read John's post to read the twist on all this, and see a sweet little boy in a new family room at the orphanage! Praise God--He saw to it that the kids got their playground, as well as a comfy place to be inside the walls of the orphanage. Before this, their only option was a room with wooden stools around the edges.

To read the diamond saga, click here.

Click the above photo to view it larger. I love looking at the faces of Central Asia, dreaming of the day we will get to see what our Central Asian son or daughter looks like! There's so much diversity in Central Asian people, I just love it!

A Big Blessing, and I Mean BIG

We heart Craigslist!!!

Meet the newest addition to our household. It's 8 feet long!

Everything is so nice and closed-off now. It really makes the room feel more like a nice room and less like an assortment of garage-sale hodge-podge... Slowly exiting some of the college-furniture/garage-sale/jumbled look around our house... Not that there's anything wrong with that--that's practically everything we own (cheap, bargain, or free) and that's how we like it :)

But it is a big blessing that the room we spend 90% of our time in is much more inviting and warm now, and functional. It really does something to your mind (maybe only if you're a woman, I don't know.). The night after we got the mess cleared out and got this all set up, I found myself just sitting in the family room on the couch. I just sat. Not consciously thinking how much cozier it feels in this room--I wasn't aware of that for awhile. After I had been sitting awhile, I realized I was staying just because it felt/looked...pleasant!

It makes our small TV seem even smaller :) But it is wide enough for a decent-size screen if we upgrade someday. That was one thing we were looking for in a piece of furniture.

This also solves a few minor storage problems, which really make a huge difference in a small house. I now have a place to display special things, like my painted ostrich eggs (from my Dad's and Grandpa's birds), souvenirs from my trip to China, and other sentimental things that will be put on these shelves... Like all the lovely arts and crafts my children will make in the next few years :) We have an enclosed place now for throw blankets. All the electronic paraphernalia is closed-off, and that's SO nice. And there's still some room to spare in the storage cabinets!

This is how the main wall in our family room looked before. I'm not sure where I was (probably in the basement doing laundry!), but Fallyn took this picture and captured the little sneak in action. He's not supposed to get up there and reach for stuff. :) They also turned on some infomercial. Niiiiice. ANYWAY--I'm glad she took this photo because I didn't have a good shot of the "before".

All the things on this shelf (close up below) were relocated, which meant lots more rearranging in Calvin's room and the hall shelf. The hall shelf was full of our (Rick and I) books, so I had to empty the shelf of all those...which makes our book-storage problem even bigger. Right now all our books are upstairs, in piles, in boxes...only a FEW are on a shelf upstairs because there are already a lot of books on shelves upstairs. We've weeded and weeded out books, but still have a lot. And no good storage solution. I want Rick to build built-ins in our living room!Here's the hall shelf now, between the kids' rooms. I kept my cookbooks on one shelf because there's not enough room in our small kitchen for them and I didn't want to have to trudge upstairs for cookbooks. All the items on the shelf that has coloring books/paper/notebooks were previously stored in the kitchen....so that meant quite a bit of time organizing in the kitchen, too. PHEW! (I fear I may have lost you by now with all this run-around.)

The Craigslist story:
-Kept an eye out for weeks for something to maybe take care of the problems on this wall.
-Only one armoire really caught our eye, and it was out of our budget. Rick politely offered a lot lower than they were asking, saying it definitely is worth every penny of their asking price, but this is all we can offer. They politely declined.
-A couple weeks later it was listed again, for a lower asking price. Rick contacted them once more, and they took our offer.
-Went to pick it up, chatted with them as the men got it loaded up... they're a really neat family (an adoptive family even!) and were praying that it'd be a blessing to someone who needed it.
-The seller even drove part of it to our house for us and helped unload it, even though we insisted on coming back for the last piece ourselves. My dad's truck and our minivan with the seats removed couldn't hold the 4 pieces!

To the Craigslist sellers, if you ever see this post: Thank you AGAIN for such a good deal on a great piece of furniture that has made such a difference in our home!!! We're truly blessed and it was so nice meeting you!

Two Years Ago Today...

...I was turning 26! Today I'm turning 28, but that's just a sidenote. :) My birthday will always be an extra-special day from now on!

Two years ago today, we officially started our adoption journey! We had prayed for months prior, but October 9 2007 was the fateful day we turned in our first piece of paper. Little did we know that that was COMPLETELY God's timing.

We thought we'd officially get started Dec '07 or Jan '08. I had told Rick it'd be the perfect end to my birthday to just send in the one, little, initial application. We'd chosen our country and agency already, and after months of praying, I REALLY wanted to take just one concrete step. To feel like we were doing something tangible, taking our first exciting step toward our child who was already in our hearts. Rick said OK, and we turned it in about 9 or 10 pm that night. A couple days later we saw an announcement on our agency's homepage that as of OCTOBER TENTH (the day after we submitted the app online!) they are no longer accepting applicants to Kyrgyzstan--any more interested families would be put on a waiting list (because the country is so small but the program was getting REALLY popular, REALLY fast).

Whether or not if they were waiting for just one more family to sign on to the Kyrgyzstan program, or if they had set Oct 10 as the cut-off doesn't matter. It was definitely a God-thing. The waiting list got SO long, SO quickly, so that they had to quit taking families on the VERY LONG waiting list. They shut down the waiting list in very early January!

Something we thought was just random was part of His sovereign, unfolding plan. That was one of the first big ways God showed us that He was very involved

If we had waited, we would have been on the really long waiting list (waiting for families to complete their adoptions so that more families could move into the program)....or we would've had to choose a different agency. We had prayed for a long time about CWA/Kyrg, and they have the best relationship with Kyrgyzstan (which has proved to be EXTRA crucial with these delays). We felt for sure that Kyrgyzstan was our country and CWA was our agency, and God was gracious to provide that confirmation--we got in!--because it was such a BIG decision.

Or...If we had waited till January, we might not have even made it on the waiting list!

If we had waited till December, we probably would've had a LOT of people in front of us and would not have been able to proceed....we would've been practically at the end of the list, and with the current delays with Kyrgyzstan, everything would've been up in the air and we'd have MAJOR decisions to make. Decisions that many people, unfortunately, had to make and our prayers are with them.

I'm SO thankful God's timing was perfectly at work, even when we thought little steps along the way were just happenstance. We'd realize later what a God-thing it was!!! That was the beginning of MANY perfectly-timed steps during this journey.

Now, because of God's perfect timing, we're "stuck" in the delays which is a GOOD thing. Our dossier had made it through the Kyrgyz embassy and had made it to Kyrgyzstan in time before Kyrgyzstan announced that they would accept no more dossiers. There are families who went through the entire process, was gathering every piece of paper, paid every fee up until that point...who had no choice but to either switch countries or stop and try to start once Kyrgyzstan reopened (and lose lots of time and $ with either of those). We're also thankful we did not have a referral yet. There are 65 who do, and my heart aches so much for them. I just don't even know how hard that must be. So while I'm thankful that God "spared" us from that heartache and hardship....I feel SO badly for those families. I'm glad we got stuck where we did (paperwork in country but no referral yet), although the unknowns and what-ifs are a bit unnerving sometimes.

Good thing He's given us these confirmations...it puts our souls at rest amidst these unknowns. We know that He's been involved in the nitty-gritty details of this journey and the timing of everything... and He will continue to be!

Now we keep praying, keep waiting for His perfect timing... He's brought us this far. I don't know if I'll be a mom to more children before I turn 29, but hopefully we don't have too much longer to go!

And now, we go celebrate God's goodness--and my birthday, hehe--and EAT SOME CAKE! ...

...after a conference call from 10-11 am this morning with the U.S. State Dept and such, the kids and I are going to Sugar Sisters so I can get a salted caramel cupcake. A big one! Because I've been pregnant for TWENTY-FOUR MONTHS!

Story of a Diamond Part III - The End

Except it's not really the end. Because God had other plans for the diamond I won--plans that would be a blessing to many and last awhile...

Go read Part I and Part II real quick if you're just now reading about all this, then come back and finish.

My parents and we decided that part of the diamond-money should go toward the adoption of one of Grandma and Grandpa's grandkids. The other part provided a playground at an orphanage in Kyrgyzstan as well as a hydrocephalus surgery! Praise God! A couple of our extended family members also donated money (THANK YOU!) for the surgeries/playground!

So what a good (better than good!!!) trade-off, eh?

• A place to just PLAY for kids who have to live within the walls of an institution....it's not a matter of life and death, but should all kids just have a fun place to play, for pete's sake?
• A desperately-needed operation for a precious little one. And praise God that their entire back-log of hydrocephalus surgeries (16 I believe) have since been provided for!!! So now the team can meet the needs when new babies develop hydrocephalus. They won't have to wait till there is irreversible damage, they can take care of it as soon as they learn of a new need.
• And like I said in Part II, our family now has an heirloom diamond with a special story behind it.

Isn't God good? I was shocked that I won the diamond, but now, not really...I shouldn't be shocked when I pray for God to help us help orphans and He answers! The fact that the story AND the diamond will stay in our family is just above and beyond, though!

Thanks, Dad....Thanks, Mom...Thanks to our other family members who donated also...Thanks, John........Thank you to Our Father and Theirs!