While we wait....

We are done with our home study visits as of 1 1/2 weeks ago, so now we are just waiting for our home study to be written up and then approved by our agency so we can go onto the next step of sending our I-800a application to immigration for their first approval. We are still hoping to have our dossier sent off to China by the end of the year.

But while we are waiting (which by the way, is really hard, especially when most of the waiting is completely out of my control!), I thought I would catch all of you up on the past couple months.

We went for a week long camping trip at the end of August, spending a few days at Sunset Bay and then met up with David's family at Honeyman State Park, near Florence, OR. We made lots of memories and just had a great time!

Beautiful does not even begin to describe this beach that we found.


All four kids and one big kid (David) got buried in the sand. One of us just "had" to take a picture!

Wouldn't be a trip to Honeyman without a run down the sand dunes!

Joel was so proud of getting up the nerve to hold this newt.

Hannah holding a crab, Olivia even held one too!

Joel and Hannah's first day of school. Joel is in 3rd grade and Hannah is in 1st. My, how time flies!


My little girl, Olivia, riding the bus for the first time. She goes to a speech group at a local developmental preschool one day a week.

Olivia turned 4!

Josiah turned 3!

Now Josiah is going to school too at a speech group. He goes on a different day than Olivia, cause he needs to work on communication in addition to articulation. Olivia communicates just fine (too good sometimes!) and just needs to work on articulation.

Hannah has been in soccer this Fall, and of course loves it. She is on a co-ed team and often runs circles around the boys. She is not afraid of being right in the middle of things!

We went to get pumpkins last weekend.

Josiah has surgery coming up on this Thursday at Shriner's hospital in Portland. He is going to have a nose and lip revision. It is supposed to be a day surgery, so hopefully if all goes well he will be home Thursday night. Please pray for him, for health, and for the surgery and recovery to go well.

Also, we found out last week that Olivia will need a hearing aid for her left ear. Her hole in that ear drum is causing hearing loss.

Thanks for your continued prayers for Ai Lang and for our paperwork to go quickly!

The whole story

April asked me to write out how I got from "our family is complete" to "lets adopt again". So here we go. Each life in this world is necessary, needed, and has value. Often however individuals do not treat each other in a way that exemplifies these values. As a result our perception of the world becomes negatively skewed. About three months ago I noticed April was reviewing the available adoption lists again and at that point I started to pray about if this was the best for our family. Honestly, the answer was no. I compiled a list of reasons why it was not the best choice for us, house is too small, we are spread thin emotionally, financially, school work, activities, etc... you know all those "reasons". We started as a family to be praying for a variety of kids who were in need of a forever family. Guess what, all four are being adopted and we continue to pray for more children. April approached me with a couple of kids, specifically a little guy by the name of Samuel. The part that surprised me was that he wasn't a cleft lip special needs..... I didn't expect the spiritual struggle this would cause me (so much for the "no" answer). Here was a little boy without legs. In the US this type of disability would be somewhat challenging, but in china it would mean he would end up in the streets. Thus entered into our discussion is "saving" a child from a bad life and is giving an opportunity the "right" reason to adopt? Good stuff, especially since, one of my "church" principles is to provide opportunity. Beliefs collide. Long story short, I got the impression to pray for one week about Samuel. Within the week, another family decided he was to part of their family.

Fast forward a month, and April and I started to review files together and discovered "Aiden" (we haven't picked out a name yet). First thing I did was hope on the internet and googled no arms... and discovered youtubes mariad of videos of people without arms who are highly functional. Then I listened to Nick Vujicic's message and website "No limbs, No limits". It was pretty impressive... but all those reasons not to.....then wouldn't you know...

I scheduled a meeting with my co-pastor to play the "devils advocate" and try to tell me why we shouldn't adopt. On the way there the song played which is basically about how you only have one life and what are you doing with it (turns out it is called "One life" by 33 Miles). Is your life all that it should be? You only have one chance, do you want to live it for yourself or for God? I didn't know the song so I went to their website and on the front page was a picture of Nick Vujicic..... Nick was planning to come to Bend on September 25 (April's birthday). Pfift. So much for human reasoning.

The Holy Spirit is a powerful aspect to our lives which we often leave out in our "enlightened" era. Hope. We need to provide hope to everyone in our lives. One... person... at.... a.... time.

Watch this.

Our family is growing again!!!

Yep, you read that right. We have decided to adopt again! David will write later to tell about how we got here, but just wanted to put out a quick announcement. We just got Pre-Approval from China to adopt a little boy! His name is Gao Ai Lang, and he just turned 1 on August 27th. He is from Gaozhou SWI, in Guangdong province (pretty much as far south as you can get in China). We haven't picked out a new name for him yet, but will probably keep Ai Lang as his middle name. Ai means love, and Lang means wave (as in ocean wave). His special need is listed as congenital absence of both arms, but his true special need is the love of a family of his own! It's going to be a looooong road with the paperwork process, but we are going to try to get everything done as fast as humanly possible, with lots of prayers that every step will go fast and smooth so we can get this boy home as fast as possible.

Here's a couple pictures we just got last week - they were just taken last week:

Don't those eyes just scream "Mommy and Daddy, come get me soon!"

Summer time fun

I know it's been a while. We've just been having too much fun this summer to take the time to post. Here's some highlights of our summer in pictures:


We've been on many camping trips, really enjoying the camper!




Playing with some friends at Prineville resevoir

Visiting the Portland zoo by Nana and Grandpa's house

The kids loved watching this seal swim by so close

Josiah's first time on a pony ride at the fair. He loved it and was waving at the end!

Joel and Hannah performed in Coppelia. Joel was a jester and Hannah a flower girl. They both did great!

Cooling off in our backyard. Yes 4 kids can still have a great time in a tiny baby pool!

Last weekend we went on an all girls backpacking trip with my sister Holly, my niece Leah, Hannah, Olivia, and I. Here the girls are before starting off on our hike, all clean!

This is Hannah the next day, enjoying being my dirty princess!

The girls enjoying the view from our campsite.

The only negative thing was that we found out that Olivia is allergic to Mosquitos and her face swelled up a ton where she got bites. Lots of benedryl and 4 days later she is back to normal.

We only have a few weeks left of summer vacation and are trying to enjoy every possible moment!

Past 1 1/2 months in review

OK, so I admit it, I am terrible at blogging. I haven't even downloaded pictures to our computer for over a month. It 's not that I've been terribly busy (as busy as any family with 4 kids!), I guess I have just been lazy.

So what have we been up to? A lot, I guess. I'll try to remember. Josiah had his cleft palate repair done on April 23rd. He had it done at the Portland Shriner's Hospital for Children. They are excellent there, and his care was wonderful. The first week home was really really rough, with a lot of regression. He was just not a happy guy and was mad about wearing the no-no's (arm restraints so he wouldn't put anything in his mouth), mad about not getting to eat what everyone else was eating (he was on a pureed food diet) and just mad about everything. Prior to his surgery, his way of self soothing was putting his right hand near his cheek/lips and lightly rubbing there. With the no-no's he couldn't do this, and this made him MAD!!! So needless to say, he spent the first week after surgery crying and screaming more than not. But it got better each week, and I am happy to say that now, 1 1/2 months after surgery, we have the happier version of Josiah back. He had really bad night terrors for the first month, but those are better now too.

Josiah with his "happy" drugs before surgery

"What did you do to me???"

Trying so hard to be brave.

My cousins, Leah and Brady, visited me while at the hospital and took me on a ride! What fun!

We only have a week left of school here for the older two, and are really looking forward to summer vacation. In my last post I said spring was finally here, but that ended a couple days after I wrote that, and just this week we are finally getting into the 60's and 70's! Yah!!

We broke down and bought a used travel trailer for camping. Up to this point, we have been tent campers, but we decided it was time to upgrade, and found a really cool hybrid type trailer, that has a hard shell in the middle and two "pop out" kind of things. It sleeps 7. Anyone think I could talk David into filling it up with another kid? Yeah, right. Doubt it!

We have tried out the trailer on a one night camping trip so far and LOVE it! We're going again this weekend, and hopefully lots more this summer.

Joel helped set up the trailer. He knows how to do more of the set up than I do!

Playing in the dirt: the best part of camping!

Oh, and can't go camping without s'mores!

Cuddle time in the morning

Passing time on some cold spring days

Wow, we have a strong Daddy!!

Spring is finally here!

Here in the high desert, Spring comes later than lots of lower elevation places around the country. Our trees in the front yard started to bloom pink this week, the grass is trying it's hardest to turn green, and finally this weekend it started to warm up. So we are making the most of it, and trying to get outside and enjoy the warm weather. Because inevitably, it will probably snow later this week!

Josiah's surgery is this Friday at Shriner's Hospital (for his first palate repair and tubes). We go on Thursday for a pre-op appointment, then Josiah and I will spend the night at the hospital cause his surgery is scheduled to start by 7:30 AM. Please pray that he stays healthy inbetween now and then, and that the surgery and recovery will be a success.

Here's a few pictures from today's hike along the Deschutes river.

Having fun throwing pine cones into the river

All the troops!

I just had to put this in - thought it was cute of Olivia. Joel's the photographer.

2 years with Olivia

Our first glimpse of Olivia on April 13, 2008
















Trying to be brave
















She clung to me like this almost the whole time we were in China


Today marks 2 years since we first met our sweet Olivia. In some ways the past two years have flown by and in other ways it seems like Olivia has been part of our family forever. I can't even imagine life without her. She is such a sweet, smart, active, cute girl. We love you, Olivia!!!

It is amazing to think about how much she has grown and changed since that first day we saw her 2 years ago. For the first few days we had her, we were even wondering if she could smile!! She was such a scared, timid, sad little girl. In a matter of days, we started seeing her true
personality come out. Now Olivia is just about as far as you can get from timid, scared, and sad. And she is SMART! Here's a story of what happened just yesterday: We go to AWANA's on Monday nights (it is a club where the kids meet friends, play games, learn about the Bible, and memorize Bible verses). On Sunday, Hannah and I were working on her verses for the next day. Olivia was playing in the same room, not really paying attention to us, or so I thought. Then on Monday, Olivia was sitting in her car seat and I hear her saying "By faith Abraham, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going." That was one of the verses from Hebrews that Hannah was practicing! And Olivia said it word for word. This girl can memorize!

It also amazed me how much I learn from my children, and in this instance from Olivia. That verse really struck a chord with me. Cause that is how we are supposed to live. By faith, even if we don't know where we are going. Because God knows, and that is all that really matters.