How to Cure Those Adoption Blues

We've been silent on the blogging front because we have really not had any news to report. Of course we had hoped we would have had our little ones home by now, but that was not part of His plan. So Kim decided to take out her frustration on our bathroom and began destroying it this week. We live in a wonderful 94 year old home with lots of character. But with lots of character comes lots of old "stuff" that needs modernizing. Our downstairs bathroom was one of those things. When we first moved in 9 years ago, the first thing we did was redo the bathroom upstairs. But it was finally time to do the downstairs one. It was a full bath, but just a bath tub and old fixtures and tile and the works. So we are putting in a wrap around tub shower to meet the needs of our expanding family. I grew up in a house with 5 kids and just one bathroom and no shower. So you couldn't always wait until the last second. And our kids our just realizing that. I've seen them run to the downstairs one, before remembering it's out of commission and then running even more frantically to the upstairs one. But in one short week we are down to studs, have insulation up, and some basic framing. Tomorrow we are getting it re-wired, and on Saturday the plumbing. We are switching the location of the toilet and sink and building in a small closet for towels so hopefully it will continue to progress quickly.

As part of adopting from Liberia, we are required to earn 18 credit hours of classes to prepare us for adoption. Each country has it's own requirements. To this point we have 14, but we were kindly reminded by our Foster Care agency which did our home study and is responsible for seeing that we meet those requirements that we still needed 4 more. So we've signed up for 2 classes on-line - With Eyes Wide Open - A Preparation Guide for International Adoption and Medical Issues in International Adoption. We thought we could knock 1 off a week, but it's more work than we bargained for. 20 chapters and each chapter has a homework sheet of about 15-20 questions, and some have multiple homeworks. But in all honesty it's gotten me to think about some things that i hadn't thought of up to this point. My focus has been on how wonderful of a dad i'll be and how much i'll be able to give to Josiah and Gabriella. And in the long run I believe they'll discover that, but the whole adoption will be quite a shock to both of them. Everything they've known will be gone - smells, sounds, their nannies. And even though a family and home are better for them than the orphanage, they will miss that place and greive the loss of their biological family, their homeland, and the orphanage. So you can pray for that adjustment, and that we won't be hurt by any of that, because it's a natural process they will have to go through. But pray that we would be sensitive to their needs.

It is our understanding that the US Embassy will be closed from December 20th through the end of the year, and that after that the US Consulate has a two week vacation scheduled through January 14th. So please pray that we would indeed travel by February. I'm afraid if we don't that Kim will destory more of our house :)

Thanks again for your support, encouragement, and prayers. We certainly couldn't do it without you.