Our First BIG Step

If you are one of my ten followers ;), you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in quite a while. This is mostly because we have been super busy and partially because I wanted to wait until we had some actual news. SO, the fact that I'm posting means...we have some news!! We have officially selected our country and our agency!!! Though I think it's ironic that we actually made a decision on our official last day of summer, I'm sure it is all in God's timing and that it will be very evident as to why it took us so long in the near future. :)

So, here's how it went down. As many of you know, we have been thinking and praying about international adoption since the beginning of last November (that's right, 9 months!!) and thought we were pretty sold on the mission in Taiwan. However, since the beginning of the summer, there has been a stirring and some occurances that have caused us to look elsewhere (see my "Adoption is a Journey" post) and have drawn us to Africa. We initally thought maybe Ghana was the place for us, but, as of last Monday, realize that our baby/babies are in Ethiopia.

We met with two adoptive mothers here in town who have adopted from Ethiopia this Monday. From there, we began to really feel a stirring in our hearts and all day on Monday, we researched and prayed and researched and prayed. We both had a hard time sleeping on Monday night and when we woke up, we were both confident that Ethiopia was the country!! So, we have spent the week researching, E-mailing, calling, and messaging members of groups to find the best adoption agency for us and made the decision tonight (Friday, July 30th) that we are applying to adopt through Children's Hope International: http://www.childrenshope.net/. We have the application filled out and Trev just went and printed our pictures to send with it. Tomorrow we will make copies and get it in the mail so that CHI will (hopefully) receive it Monday!

One thing is that we will be requesting siblings. Since C is so young and we want to keep the kids in birth order, it will be a miracle if we will be able to adopt siblings. If you are praying for us, please pray that this will work out as is God's will and that we will be wise to His direction in this!

Since we are working with an agency, our costs are significantly greater, so we will be doing some major fund raising. Currently, the federal government gives significant tax credits for adoptions, but even this will not cover our costs. Our hope is that we will raise enough money and then receive enough in tax credits that we will be able to bless another adoptive family when our adoption is complete.

There will be so much more to come...thank you all for your prayers and support thus far and in the long process to come! :)

Trevor and Jen

Trevor's Project

As promised...here is a picture of my amazing husband's handywork:

He has worked on this wall unit for the last several days and his hard work definitely shows in the final product! (Don't be jealous, ladies!;))

I LOVE it!

Now I just need to fill it up...any creative suggestions?!

~Jen

Summer Projects

Whoa! I can't believe it has been almost a month since my last blog post!! We have definitely kept busy this summer. We went to Myrtle Beach with Trevor's family for an 11 day trip (hopefully I will have time to post about that soon!) and when we've been home, we have been doing LOTS of projects! This post is for anyone interested in our projects (of course), but also for me to remind myself what all I did this summer. :)

Projects for home:

I bought this picture at Kirklands and immediately knew I wanted to put this verse up on the wall to go with it. Thanks to my sweet friend, Dana Wilkins, I got to use a CRICUT :) to cut the vinyl!! So fun!

I got out my sewing machine for the first two curtains (my first curtains to sew EVER!). I love how they turned out and they were SO easy! The third picture is of our dining room, which has had naked windows for the 3 and a half years we've lived here. Trev has bugged me to cover them, so I finally made a decision and we got dark bamboo shades and super cute curtains from my new favorite store, World Market. (Too bad we don't have one around here.) :(

Another cricut project (thanks again, Dana!) for our new-found love affair with library books!

I got this super cute idea from Disney's Family Fun magazine. Melia and I had a great "Girl Day" shopping for her mirror, clock, and hooks for her big girl closet door. We also got a Michael Graves cleaning caddy from Target (where we bought most everything else) for her shoes. Hopefully this will help keep us organized and get us going on those crazy mornings before Kindergarten!!

Projects for gifts:
We threw a shower for my sister (Lindsey) and her husband (Walter) a couple of weeks after they got their foster kiddos. I made these rag quilt letters (a set plus a few extras)...

used them for a bunting...

and boxed them up for the kids in this cute little cube that I bought at Michael's and embellished with ribbon.

The tutorial for the rag quilt letters is here: http://ohsohappytogether.blogspot.com/2009/07/rag-quilt-letters-tutorial.html.

Caution: these look way quicker and easier than they actually are, but they are oh, so cute!!

I also made them these crayon roll-ups, which I gave them with some coloring books...

The tutorial: http://www.skiptomylou.org/2007/04/25/on-a-roll/

and these personalized hooded towels that I gave them with a basket of bath stuff.

(I had to blur the names, but, trust me, they are cute! Lindsey said the kids LOVE the towels!)

We've also gone to a couple of birthday parties this summer.

I made this draw-string backpack for one of Camden's best buddies, Kenna. She's a little John Deere girl (whether her daddy likes it or not!).

Our nephew, Gavin, is having his birthday party on Saturday. I hope he likes his monogrammed backpack, MU crayon roll-up, two shirts (painted MVP and all-star with fabric paint), basketball notepad, and coloring book! Hopefully his mom won't let him sneak a peek at this picture...Lesley!!

Here's a helpful hint...if you make these for little kids who don't know how to tie a ribbon yet and you don't want to drive their parents crazy, use a piece of elastic instead of the ribbon!:) Brilliant!

And, seriously, don't I have the most precious assistant in the ENTIRE universe!?

Projects just for fun:

My awesome friend, Tiffany Jett, was here visiting and we traded craft tips: she taught me how to make these amazing necklaces that she is selling to help fund her second adoption from Taiwan, and I showed her how to make freezer-paper shirts. The black and silver one is for her cutie-pie of a son and the bright one is for my wild man. When they got together for the first time this trip, they were running through our house yelling "SUPERPOWERS!" hence the idea for the shirt. :) Check out her merchandise...you will be amazed! http://tiffjett.blogspot.com/

These next two are projects that I did just for me. I used a tutorial for both of them, but majorly altered each. I am pretty impressed at how they turned out!

The iPhone cover:

Dimensions and rough idea came from this website: http://www.dognamedbanjo.com/2010/01/13/tutorial-ipod-touch-cover/. I added a flap to the top, a pocket on the back, and a handle. :)

The laptop bag:

This idea came from this website: http://madebypetchy.blogspot.com/2009/08/tutorial-sew-your-own-laptop-bag.html

And that's all (for this post)! My husband is working on something WONDERFUL that will knock your socks off and it should be done tomorrow morning! Eeee! I'm am shreaking with excitement! Can't wait to show it off....

Oh, one more thing...I am sad to say this, but I'm afraid that I am going to need a new sewing machine in the near future. The old one just doesn't want to keep up! *Sigh*

Jen

Sarah Loves Ladybugs

Check out this new online store:

The website: http://www.sarahlovesladybugs.com/

The blog: http://sarahlovesladybugs.blogspot.com/

This is my neighbor, Sarah's, new store with jewelry and more. Sarah has an amazing story...she was adopted by our neighbors (across the street in our cul-de-sac) from an orphanage in China a couple years ago when she was just shy of 14 years old. I had the pleasure of having her in our school when she first moved here and she is such an awesome girl! She is fun, outgoing, polite, beautiful...the list goes on.

Anyway, she started this store and 20% of her proceeds go to orphan care. How cool is that!!

So, click the link and get shopping! ;)

The First Day of the Big K!

Well, it's official...our precious first-born is a school-ager! She went to her first day of Kindergarten on Monday, June 7th. She is in Mrs. Chrissy Schmidt's class and she LOVES it!! (Not surprising, honestly!) She did great...didn't even shed a tear!

Melia at home: "I'm off to Kindergarten!"

Her lunch was packed and ready to go, complete with a note from Mommy and Daddy that read "We hope you're having a great first day of Kindergarten! We love you!"

Getting all settled into her new desk

Adoption is a Journey

You can probably tell from the title, but this post is going to be my musings on the adoption process so far. It's kind of funny because we are still in such a discovery phase of adoption, but I feel like I have learned and grown so much since we first started talking about adopting internationally. Some questions have come up this week that have really made us think about our future with this process and I think (little by little) we are gaining some answers. So, unless you are really, REALLY interested in what's been going on in my heart, you might want to skip this post!

I have always been intrigued by adoption. I think intrigued is a good word for it...I have always been fascinated, yet was pretty sure it would never be a part of my life on Earth. Of course, I know that it is always a part of my spiritual life as I was adopted into my Heavenly family and certainly chosen by God (which is what adoption is really all about, right?). But, I really thought that it would end there.

I knew that Trevor wanted to have kids, but that he wanted me to bear them and wanted to have them biologically. I was great with that, and we have been SO SO SO blessed with our two beautiful children (have I mentioned how much I LOVE those two?)! After the birth of our amazing (yet very colicy) baby boy, Trevor lovingly told me that we were done having children. I went back and forth about it, going through every emotion possible about the fact that I was done having children, yet not feeling like my family was complete. In retrospect...and this is just one example of how God works in ways that I cannot see and I have to totally KNOW that His plan is so much better than I could imagine...I believe God closed Trev's eyes to having anymore bio children because He knew it would be virtually impossible to get me away from the idea of bearing any more. Thus began the process of paving the way for adoption to creep into our lives.

In early November, Trevor came home from church one morning (I was home with a sick kiddo) and nonchalantly said "There are a lot of adopted kids at our church!" I answered that yes, there were, but quietly wondered if there had been an awakening in his heart. The answer to my question came quickly as Trev began to search the Internet about international adoption and we began some conversations about adopting domestically vs. internationally, 1 kid vs. 2 kids, which country, independent vs. agency, etc. etc. We contacted our friend, Tiffany Jett, who had adopted from Home of God's Love in Taiwan and she got information for us on another mission who adopts to couples who have other children, His Hands Taiwan. http://www.hishandstaiwan.org/ee/index.php We began to research and make some contacts and found that they had a long waiting list. We were placed at the bottom of that waiting list on February 9th, 2010. And that is where we sit. We have continued to keep up with them through their website, the adoptive families' facebook pages and blogs, and correspondence with some of those families. But, as far as we are concerned, nothing is moving for us there.

So, being the impatient person that I am, and wanting to make the most of the time I have while on Summer break, I recently contacted someone to ask about home studies. I knew we didn't want to begin ours quite yet, but wanted to gather the information and paperwork so that it could run as smoothly as possible. Instead of getting answers, though, I was met with some questions and one that really stuck out in our minds: "Are you locked into that group or are you interested in adopting anywhere?" Wow! After being on the waiting list at His Hands and dwelling on adopting a Taiwanese baby for 4 months, I really thought that we were done searching for where our baby would be adopted from. But, this question reopened the conversation between Trevor and I. (An interesting note: Trevor had just mentioned this to me the Saturday before my correspondence with the home study lady. Hmm....) Anyway, after talking and praying about it, I agreed that we should probably continue our search in a non-Hauge country so that we could adopt independently, but I was totally at a loss as to where to even begin to search.

That conversation and decision took place last Wednesday and then a couple of events quickly took place. On Thursday afternoon, I was swimming at my friend, Tina's parents' house and another friend, Candice (who I haven't seen in probably 6 months) was there. She didn't know anything about us adopting, so I was telling her about it and about where we were in the process and she told me that her neighbor, Miranda, had just come back from Africa where they are adopting their 2 year old little boy. She said that the process had gone quickly and had been inexpensive. I asked her to have her neighbor contact me and she said she would.

On Friday (here is the part that had to be God's intervention), I brought my kids to Chic-Fil-A (yum! yum!) and who was there but my friend Candice...twice in two days...really?! She asked me if Miranda had called me and I told her no, but she said that she should be calling soon and, incidentally, she just happened to be in Chic-Fil-A! So, I went to her table and introduced myself and she told me that she would be calling me soon. She called the next day and we talked for a long time and she gave me some amazing information about their adoption. She and her husband contacted the orphanage in Ghana, Hohoe (pronounced Ho-hoy) Christian Orphans' Home
http://www.hohoeorphanage.com/, in March, received an almost immediate referral, and went for their first visit the end of May. They are expecting to go get their son in August or September. The whole process is going to take 6 Months!!! I could barely believe it!

So, this is where we are. We are praying, and praying, and praying for clarity about our next step. We are weighing our options. Taiwan seems like we could be on the waiting list indefinitely, where Africa could be very quick. Taiwan would be a baby, where Africa would be a 2 or 3 year old. Taiwan requires 1 trip, Africa is 2. The amount of money is comparable either place. There is no obvious decision and I know we just need to wait for God to move us in one direction or another. Until then, we will wait on the Lord and meditate on these Psalms: 5:3, 27:14, 33:20, 37:7.

Adoption truly is a journey with no easy answers, a lesson in patience, a process that will inevitably bring us closer to our Savior and open our eyes and hearts in ways we never thought possible and we are so blessed to be a part of it!

My First Quilt

My sister and brother-in-law, who I'm so proud of, opened their home to their first foster kiddos today. Due to confidentiality sake, I won't say much about the kids except to say that they are precious and we are very blessed to be a part of their little lives. Melia and Camden took right to them and they recipricated their friendship immediately. It is so awesome to see how little kids let their guards down so quickly...oh, to be in that place where we are so vulnerable and freely make ourselves available to other people. I should be so much more like that!

Anyway, Lindsey (my sis) sort of "commissioned" me to make a quilt for them that reflects their obsession, er, uh, love for their MU Tigers. So, here is the final product...

I am thrilled with how it turned out! :) I thought about posting a tutorial and even took a bunch of pictures along the way, but then I decided that others had done it so much better, so I just thought I would give credit where credit is due and post their links.

This is where I learned about doing a patchwork quilt:

http://cloud9fabrics.blogspot.com/2010/01/quilt-in-day-tutorial.html

And this is the post I used for the "binding" and some other general quilting tips:

http://cicadadaydream.blogspot.com/2009/06/simple-tied-quilt-tutorial.html

Hope my new foster niece/nephew love it! :)