Father/Daughter Date Night

I'm willing to share the best guy in the world with these two.

Well, occasionally, that is!
Thanks, Andy, for being such a wonderful example for our girls! I love you!

Handful

. . . in the best possible way!

Quality Fun

We provide only the best in entertainment for our girls.

Who knew flat boxes could be so much fun?!

Rejoice

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you." Philippians 4:4-9

God  has once again given us the peace that He is in control of our adoption and that He will provide all we need in His time. We received another adoption grant in the amount of $4,000 this week! Also, thank you to those of you who continue to surprise us with checks in the mail! I was adding up the totals, and we've received $12,165 dollars from friends, fundraisers, and grants in the 11 months since we began our adoption process. Adding this to what we have already paid, we have covered over half of our total adoption expenses! 

 
A special thank you to these two wonderful organizations who have generously provided grants for our adoption! 


"Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I will say rejoice!"

Hotel Beds

Hotel beds are great for . . .

breaking all the rules

by jumping on them

to release pent-up energy.

Tickle fights

and some girlish wrestling might also break out on hotel beds.

Belly flop competitions 

are the best on hotel beds,

and they are also a pretty great place to crash at the end of a long day! 

First Flight

I don't know how long the girls have been begging to fly, but their wish finally came true! 

I think it more than fulfilled their expectations. Their favorite part, by far, was experiencing some slight turbulence when we went through a heavy patch of clouds. I was fully prepared with a backpack for each full of entertainment - I should have known better! Who has time to read, color, or play with dolls when there is so much to see?!

Sister, Sisters, There Were Never Such Devoted Sisters

*Bonus points if you know that song and what movie it's from! ;)

I love these girls, and I'm so glad that my two girls have each other!

Change

Change is not something that I enjoy. I'm the type of person who loves to order the same exact thing every time I go to a restaurant. I don't rearrange the furniture in my house. I find a good thing, and I stick with it. Sameness comforts me.

Yeah, you know where this is going. For the next several weeks, my life is going to be all about change. Changing churches, changing states, changing houses . . . and the list goes on. As much as we love our church and the friendships that we have here, as much as we thought we were here for the long haul, change is God's plan for us. Thankfully, I can say that I've reached the point where, even though I don't fully understand why, I can definitely see without a doubt that this is what God is leading and directing us to do. There are so many things that we can already see that God has orchestrated in our lives leading us up to this point before we even had a clue what was going on.

Our last week here in NC is the week of October 3 and then we'll be headed to Macon, Georgia. I don't know much about Georgia, I had never even been there before until we went for our first visit to the church. I do know that from the little bit I heard while I was there, I think that every person living there is completely obsessed with football, which I know absolutely nothing about! I think football ranks just above Nascar with me (which is at the bottom!), but who knows, maybe I'll learn to like it - or at least understand it a little! :)

Fortunately, our move will not greatly effect our adoption proceedings. There are a few paperwork type things that we'll need to change and some updating will have to be done to our homestudy, but none of it should effect our timeline at all! 

Changes and all - I'm so happy that I can honestly say that I'm excited to see what God has in store for us for the next chapter in our lives!

For He's a Jolly Good Fellow

Ha-ppy birth-day to you

Ha-ppy birth-day to you

Ha-ppy birth-day, dear An-dy 

Ha-ppy birth-day to you

. . . and many more

Weekend Projects of the Cake Variety

I've spent the majority of my weekend in the kitchen doing my favorite thing: decorating cakes. This monkey cake might be right up there with my favorites! I haven't done much with fondant, and not much sculpting, so I really enjoyed molding these cute little pieces. It's basically a grown-up version of play dough (yummy tasting if you make the marshmallow fondant like I did!).

Here's the monkey (with palm tree and bananas)

Here's the whole cake

My second cake was for Andy's birthday (celebrated a tad early). I told him the cake was just like him:

Classic on the outside

with a little bit of redneck on the inside!

Things I Never Dreamed I'd Say # 2,864

"Girls, do you want to go play with your worms now?"
...and the poor things are so desperate for a pet to play with that they agree! 

Off to a Great Start

Today was amazing! Emma Lee was so excited she woke up at 5 am (but fortunately for all of us, she went back to sleep for a couple of hours!). I got lots of compliments (and no complaints) from my sweet girls who were having a blast. I hope their great attitudes last all year long!! 

 My strategy is to start off doing things like the number of the day, calendar, weather chart, verse of the week, etc. together. Then, I'll work individually first with Kerri and then with Emma Lee. While I'm working with one, the other is doing "backpack time" with a backpack full of things that they can do on their own (worksheets, coloring, books, puzzles, simple activities, etc.). The rule is that they have to stay in the other room, work on their activities, and not interrupt. After that, it's snack time, followed by some type of tactile activity (today it was finger painting letters, numbers, and names in chocolate pudding - a huge hit!). Next, we release some energy. Today, we did some silly exercises (other times we might play outside for a few minutes or go for a short walk). We finish up our time doing some more things that we can do together like experiments, arts and crafts, reading, piano, Spanish, extra workbook pages, pattern blocks, etc.

This schedule seems like it's going to work out really well for us. The way our curriculum is set up we have four days a week that follow this schedule and one day a week (Exploration Day) where we do some type of field trip or putting what we're learning into practice.

Ready, Set, Go!

September is here! Our curriculum arrived yesterday!

Our school supplies are new and fresh! (Don't you just love a box of brand new crayons?!)

 We are ready for school! Our plan is to start the day after Labor Day, and none of us can wait. We were all so excited pulling everything out of the box yesterday. I spent quite a while last night pouring over all of it, and I am very impressed and super excited! It's going to be a great year!

Adoption Update

It's been two months since we sent everything to Bulgaria - right in time for the Minister of Justice staff to be on holiday for two months! They should be back in their offices now, but I'm not too optimistic that we'll be hearing anything from them anytime soon. A referral won't likely be coming to us for at least a year - maybe up to two. I'm trying not to dwell on the timeline too much.

Whenever I get discouraged about how long it will be, I turn my attention to the internet - trying to learn things about the culture and history of Bulgaria. It is truly a beautiful country. I've also read up on some missionaries who are serving there to help me get an idea of the spiritual condition and how to pray for the country. One family talked about how even though Bulgaria now has religious freedom, most religions are considered a sect. When this family arrived in Bulgaria in 1997, there was an article in the paper stating that Baptists eat babies. Another article ranked about twenty dangerous "sects" and Baptists made the top of the list. Although things have progressed since then - in terms of reporters being held more accountable for what they write - still, less than two percent of the population of Bulgaria claim to be Christians.

Here's a video of the Bulgarian national anthem along with pictures of the country.





English Translation (first verse and chorus)


Proudly rise the Balkan peaks,
At their feet Blue Danube flows;
Over Thrace the sun is shining,
Pirin looms in purple glow.

CHORUS
Oh, dear native land,
Earthly paradise!
For your loveliness, your beauty
E'er will charm our eyes.