Gorgeous Mermaids

This was the first year that I didn't have a costume plan. Instead, I took the girls to a store and said go ahead and pick whatever you want (although I admit I did try to steer them toward a super cute little red riding hood costume). They spotted the Merliah (a mermaid from a Barbie movie) costume right off the bat and there was no other option for them in their minds, especially when I agreed to pink hair dye to get the real Merliah look!  (It was too hard to not give in after laughing so much at them asking if they could get their hair "dived.")

Here's their conversation as they were getting ready:
Emma Lee: "Kerri! You look gorgeous!
Kerri: "Gorgeouser than you??"
Emma Lee: "Welll, not that gorgeous."

Of course, Mommy had to make the decision that they both had the same amount of gorgeousness. Don't you agree?

And . . . just in case you're wondering . . . here are their answers to "What's your favorite candy?"

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Silly Faces

Just Plain Weird

I think that the hardest thing about being in a completely new place is not so much that I don't know anyone -  it's that I don't know anyone but they all know me!

I was minding my own business in Target today (happily alone with my thoughts since I was without the girls, which rarely happens). I guess I was focusing too heavily on important things (you know, like what type of (free!) chips to get for the girls) because next thing I know some random man with a deep voice is standing next to me asking me if I'm settling in Macon - that's it - no introduction, no "hi" first, nothing. I hope I wasn't visibly startled, but my mind was working overtime to process who this strange man was, where he came from, why he was talking to me, while it was also registering that he had a little boy standing there with him and remembering that yes, I am in Macon. I'm sure all that happened in a split second, but it felt like quite a while and I think I just smiled and mumbled something I hope was somewhat coherent as he started to walk away.

It kind of made me feel weird to think about how many people I might pass everyday who recognize me and just watch what I (or my kids!) am doing without me ever knowing it. I don't know why it made me feel weird - I don't really do anything that differently whether I'm around someone I know or not. Then I remembered that Someone is always watching how I live every second of my life, and if I'm making Him happy that's all I have to worry about.        

Smiles in the Johnson House

There's a lot of smiling, laughing, squealing, shrieking, and giggling going on in the Johnson house.

Yesterday we added a new member to our family. His name is Oreo, and he's a 10 month old yorkie-poo.

If you've spent any time at all with Kerri, you know that she is completely obsessed with animals (well, any type of creature, really, remember this??), but her absolute favorite is dogs. I don't know how long the girls have been begging for a dog, but I do know that we promised them that they could have one in May after Andy graduated from school. Well, because of all the traveling we did during the summer and then with our move, it just didn't work out. As soon as we got settled in here, I decided that one of my top priorities should be to find a dog for our family. I thought that it was going to be a lot harder than it was because we had a pretty specific list of the type of dog we wanted and a pretty low budget of what we (read Andy) were willing to spend on a pet. I found out about this one pretty quickly, and the girls and I took off to check him out. It was love at first sight between him and Kerri, Emma Lee and I were a little nervous that he might be too hyper, but he started calming down a bit after his initial overly excited greeting. (Although, I'll take our greeting over how he greeted Andy for the first time. As soon as he walked in the door, Oreo ran up to him and soaked his shoes - and it wasn't from kisses either! Not exactly getting off on the right foot!)

He's a really sweet dog, and the best thing is that he's housebroken (as long as his initial greeting for Andy won't be an everyday occurrence!) and past the stage of wanting to chew or bite on everything. He's fully grown and weighs about eleven pounds. He's got enough energy to where I'm not sure whether him or the girls will wear out first, but either way, they should all sleep good at night! He has the soft silky hair of a yorkie, but it's wavy and has loose curls because of the poodle part. He's rarely barked since he's been here, and he's not too interested in Felix, who is definitely not appreciating his solo pet status being taken away. 

Emma Lee has already invented a game called Tumbleweed where her and Kerri roll around on the floor and he climbs all over them trying to get them.

I'm definitely going to have to put a limit on the amount of treats they're allowed to pass out because they were handing them out for "tricks," which somehow includes anything and everything - even wagging his tail.  

Welcome to the family, Oreo!

Timing

I like to have a plan. I don't live and die by the plan, and it's okay if the plan changes . . . as long as I'm the one in charge of the changes. So far, our adoption has not been very cooperative with my plan. What was originally a 9-18 month wait (which I initially - and naively - thought began as soon as we applied to our agency instead of to our country) has turned into already being one year into it and being told that we have at least two more years to go.

Needless to say, this has drastically changed my plan. Aside from just wanting to have our future son with us as soon as possible, the more practical side of how the timing is not going according to my plan has been causing me to do a lot of worrying and fussing. I keep thinking about how much older my girls will be in two more years and that big of a gap in their ages does not line up with my plan at all! My mind has been busy trying to come up with another plan to fix the timing. Every type of thought ranging from "Maybe I should have a baby now before our adoption is complete" to "Let's look at the waiting child list" have been serious considerations in my mind as I try to fix my plan.

Last week, something changed. God spoke to me. I've heard people say that my whole life, but I've never understood or experienced it before. In the past, I've made decisions that went against everything I wanted because I knew through various other ways that it was what God wanted me to do, but I've never heard him speak to me before. I've even doubted others' stories because a part of me didn't think that kind of thing actually happened anymore. But it does happen. It did happen. It wasn't an audible voice. It wasn't a thought going through my head. I didn't see lights or fire or angels. I didn't hear harps playing or thunder booming. For lack of a better explanation, I heard the words in my soul, and I felt his peace in my heart. He was telling me to wait; to trust. There is a plan, I'm just not the one in control of it. In that split second, my fears, worries, questions, and doubts about the timing and my plan disappeared (and so far they haven't come back!).

In the days following, other things have reinforced the message that I'm supposed to wait on God's timing. The account of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar was brought to my mind. What a perfect example of how things got messed up because people took things into their own hands instead of trusting in God's timing. On top of that, here's one of the points from today's sermon at my church: "Jesus lived with the confidence of the Father's timing in his life, and I should too."

So, here's the new plan. It's not me trying to change my plan into Plan B or Plan C; it's not my plan at all. My plan is to wait because that is God's plan. God has called us to adopt. He has made it clear that it is to be at this time in our lives and from this particular country. He knows who our son is going to be. He knows when our son will become a part of our family. For the first time in this process, I can honestly say that my plan is to wait on God's timing. Whenever it is - I know it will be right.   

Taking the Stage

After much planning, Emma Lee and Kerri put on quite the ballet performance (complete with live musical accompaniment and a "fancy" wardrobe) for me yesterday. At the end, Emma Lee decided to give an impromptu song that she made up as she went along. At the last second, I decided to video it - so glad I did. Andy and I sure got enough laughs out of it last night (safely away from little eyes and ears who would think we were making fun of her great talent!). So, without further ado . . . Emma Lee Johnson singing, "Princess"
Emma Lee Singing from Michaella Johnson on Vimeo.
*Disclaimer: Emma Lee and I recently had a conversation about heaven and hell, which I'm afraid partially inspired a portion of her song. ;)

Little Things

Dancing feet,

leaf rubbings,

   

and an organized spice cabinet: 

Today, it's the little things that are making me happy.

Potpourri

Potpourri: a miscellaneous collection [my thoughts, in this case]  
 
We have internet!! I've seriously been on blog withdrawal - for both writing mine and reading others.

We are all unpacked and settling in to life in Georgia. I still forget sometimes and expect to see NC license plates when I'm out. Other times, I hop in the car and take off before I realize that I don't know where I'm going - thank heavens for a GPS!

 Emma Lee is already working on having a more southern accent. She now makes "down" into a 3 syllable word.

Our place is nice and cozy (except the first day/night when we didn't have an air conditioner that worked and it stayed at a solid 80 degrees! Fortunately, they took care of that really quickly.) I think we'll be pretty comfortable here for a year or so while we scope out where we want to live permanently.

October 13th marked the official one year mark of our adoption process. I had fully intended to do a one year post, but that was pretty difficult to do without a computer or internet. :) Here's a quick update for you though - things are pretty much the same right now. We are just playing the waiting game. We do have a number, and we are officially on the waiting list. They have also been having more (two in the last two months) meetings to match children with families. (Why, why, why, they don't do more than that I'll never understand!!!) They are also working on getting a more current idea/list of families waiting for children. The hope is that they will have that by December, which will give us a more certain idea of the timeline we're looking at (right now they are saying about 2 years). Of course, I'm hoping it will shorten our waiting time. It also means more paperwork (and I'm guessing more money!) for us in the future because they are requiring you to submit a yearly update of your dossier in order to stay current, and our agency suggests getting that in 4 months before the expiration date.

We are getting out and about in Macon. We attended the chick-fil-a breakfast for dinner night and all wore our pjs for free food. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture) It was crazy! Before we got there, I was having those "are you sure we were supposed to wear pjs" along with the "what if we're the only ones in pjs" kind of thoughts. I didn't need to worry though, the entire placed was packed (and I mean packed! - we had to wait for a table) and those in clothes were definitely the ones out of place! :) 
We also drove about 30 min south of us to Perry for the Georgia National Fair. It was great!! Along with the traditional (at least for the NC state fair) fair things like insanely priced rides and food with an unimaginable amount of calories and all kinds of (smelly) farm animal and petting zoos (wait a minute - why do we like this so much?? . . . who knows - but we do!) and pig racing and fireworks, they also had a free circus and a Sea Lion show that the girls really enjoyed. We were there from 3:00-10:30! Yay for older kids who don't need naps and can stay up late and then sleep in the next morning!! I only got pictures of the first half of our time there because my camera battery died. I think I need to get a back-up because I'm constantly forgetting to charge it. The rest of the time I bugged Andy to take some pictures with his phone, and a few of them turned out okay. We had a perfect ending to a great day doing our traditional family Ferris Wheel ride, which just so happened to be timed perfectly with the fireworks show.

In other news, after two weeks of sleeping on the floor in either sleeping bags, air mattresses, or regular mattresses, the girls finally have a bed!!

Georgia Here We Come

Goodbye to all our sweet friends and family in Durham and in North Carolina! We'll miss you!

Special thanks to the Hambricks who kept the girls ALL DAY while mass chaos was going on at our house. They had a blast, and I'm glad that they were with people who could handle things like Emma Lee taking their new wheels and running over their three year old or Kerri trying to get bonus points in the scavenger hunt by bringing them a dead bird. Ah, memories! :) Check out Jen's post to see some sweet pictures of the girls playing together through the last five years.


On a side note, we spent our last night in Durham having a sleepover with our great friends the Taylors(who I think now can officially be considered family!). We had so much fun, we wondered why we don't do adult sleepovers more often! Put the kids to bed and have a blast staying up way too late - what could be better?! Especially when one of them is an insane morning person who doesn't mind getting up early the next morning and fixing the kids pancakes (thanks, Keith!!). We introduced them to Tim Hawkins (via youtube) and laughed so hard. Here is one of our favorite clips of the night. :)

Johnsons Unedited: Emma Lee and Kerri on Moving

Well, they started off talking about moving, but they might have lost sight of the topic toward the end - at least they didn't go into the whole Nemo story! Here are a few of their thoughts on moving -



Johnsons Unedited: Emma Lee and Kerri on Moving from Michaella Johnson on Vimeo.

From a parent's perspective, Kerri is taking it really well. In classic Kerri form, she just goes with the flow and everything is matter-of-factly fine (to be honest, I don't know if she completely "gets" it or if she is just focusing on the positive . . . or maybe its a little of both). When we visited Ingleside, she really surprised me by not caring a bit about me leaving her in her new classroom or even by the fact that Emma Lee wasn't even on the same floor with her! Maybe her long-lasting separation anxiety issues are officially over!! Emma Lee is reluctantly excited. She is looking forward to the "newness" of everything, but she also is really aware of what she is leaving behind. If you ask her, she says she is happy and excited and she talks about all the good things, but on the other hand she comes up to me crying on a regular basis talking about a friend or something she is going to miss. We talk through it though and it doesn't last long. It's not too concerning to me because I know that she is my little drama queen overly emotional one ;) (I've never met anyone who can turn on and off genuine tears like she can!!). I really think that she is learning a lot of valuable life lessons this year, and I'm seeing her become more and more spiritually sensitive. Overall, I'm happy about the fact that they are still young enough to be in the stage where making best friends is as easy as spending an hour playing together with someone whose name they don't even know yet.

Pause

Today was too perfect a day to go without spending at least part of it outside. Sometimes you just have to pause the boring stuff and get out and play (or take pictures of playing!)

Welcome cooler weather!! (You can see more pictures here.)

Signs of the Times

It's not a very fun place around here!