An Exerpt from Grace's File

"She can say “baba”, “mama”, “shu shu” (“uncle”), and those kinds of simple titles. She is clever and can look at adults and see their expressions. She does what she wants to do. She can understand praising words and critical words. She can accurately point to all five facial features in a picture of a doll, and she knows the names of all the other children in her class. If she drops her shoes, she knows to take her shoe and put it on her foot. She pushes the toy car around the activity room, running quickly. Sometimes she helps the other children pick up the toys. She can walk all around while holding a hand, but she is scared if you let go of her hand and she won’t dare bravely walk on her own. As long as you give her a little help, she can bravely walk ahead. She likes to mimic things adults do. She is also extremely polite; when guests leave she will say goodbye. Sometimes when she is naughty, people like her even more. She likes to play with toys with the other children, and she gets along peacefully with the other children."

It warms my heart every time I read it.

School kicked my tail today so to top it off, because my house wasn't trashed enough, I decided to make playdough with the twins. I love making playdough, and I love the playdough stage. I'm so excited I get to have a preschooler one more time. Will thinks Grace will be a great playdough maker, and will probably make Chinese dragons out of playdough. They talk about Grace a lot. They know that China is exactly 24 hours ahead of us it's cool that at bedtime we can pray for her as she's waking, and at breakfast for her as she's going to bed. Sam figured out today that dad and mom are going to be exhausted after traveling to China for two weeks and then back.

PS One time when I was teaching I had an evaluation by my principal and I was exhausted. Paul stayed up very late making tons of playdough for me to use. He's the best.

First Day of School!

We had a great first day of school! Pictures forthcoming! The boys had banana splits for breakfast (hey fruit and real ice cream couldn't be any worse for you than poptarts right?) They opened up their new school supplies, and worked through our schedules well. I read three chapters of Homer Price (great little boys book!) and we are getting ready to top it all of by swimming with friends. We had a few bumps in the road. One child got sassy with me wailing over an MP3 player. One I handled really well, the other I had no idea what to do. Other then that things went really well, I think we all had fun while learning.

Planning and the Next Thing on My List

I had a weekend to myself to plan for our school year while Paul and the boys spent time with Grandma. This was my 4th annual homeschool planning weekend. My friends Stacey and Deborah - fellow homeschoolers- joined me again to plan on part of the day Saturday. We had a great time eating, laughing, walking and planning. I spent the rest of the weekend in solitude, which was wonderful for a time, but I was really happy to see the men on Sunday afternoon. I seriously don't know how I could do it without these planning weekends it's amazing the thinking and praying and wrestling with decisions to be made that can happen when given some uninterupted quiet time. I felt like I finally had clarity on some issues that had been frustrating and stumping me for a very long time.

Now that I have delt with our upcoming school year I feel free to work on more adoption stuff. The next thing I need to focus on is filling out applications for grants. They are daunting for some reason, and I would appreciate your prayers. I have some beautiful necklaces that my sister made just for me to sell to help with adoption costs, and some other fund-raising ideas in the works. Through all the paperwork I don't want to forget that we have a very real little girl waiting for us in China.

What I don't always tell.................

I posted the last post kind of toungue in cheek. I meant it to be funny, and actually I really do say that when people ask. But my conscience has gotten the better of me. The truth is I did teach that many children (and at times more) and honestly, I think I did it well. But as Jodi or Shannon or anyone who worked with me will tell you, it wasn't easy - AT ALL. There where many times I complained and sometimes I even cried. I loved the job, but I didn't love it every minute of every day, and I made lots of mistakes. It's the same with homeschooling. I truly feel called to homeschooling (for many reasons maybe someday I'll get into that), and I think I do a decent job of it - I'm not going to give it up because we are adding another child to our home. But it isn't easy - AT ALL. As any of my homeschool buddies would tell I complain. As Paul would tell you, sometimes I cry. I love the job, but I don't love every minute of every day. And I make LOTS of mistakes. So by the grace of God I plan to homeschool five chidlren, and my prayer is that he will give me the wisdom and strength to do it well - and maybe I should be little more humber too :). Because, in my own strength and pride I would (and have) fallen flat on my face.

My standard answer..........

whenver I am asked how I could homeschool five kids:


"My last year of teaching I successfully taught 15 precocious preschoolers, at least 9 of them with autism. I can handle my own five. " :)

For Fun.....

This picture made the adoption file.

This one did not.

Waiting.............

We are in another waiting stage. I am not good at waiting. But, waiting is probably good for me. We got a text at 1:00am saying our USCIS paperwork had been recieved and was on it's way to being processed. Why they sent it at 1:00 in the morning I am unsure. Then they sent an identical text about 5 minutes later, after I had fallen back asleep. Maybe they think it's a good idea to prepare me for having to wake in the middle of the night again after several years of kids sleeping through the night. The government...sigh.

Must.Stop.Buying.Girls.Clothes!

They are so cute and so hard to resist. I have been getting really good deals. Today I bought CUTE jeans from the Children's Place at Goodwill for 50 cents. The Classy Goodwill for those who know what I mean, not the normal one ;) they where the half off color. Last week I couldn't resist a clearance shirt at Old Navy that said "Daddy's Sweetheart." I think buying clothes makes it all more real to me. I need to take a picture next week of all the clothes we've been given and bought and the super cute comforters my mom bought us.

Dear Grace,

Dear Grace,
In 6 months or so (Lord willing) your whole world is going to change. Two strange people are going to come and take you away from all that is familiar. You are going to be really scared. I don't know how you'll respond; if you will scream and cry, or totally shut down. Sometimes it only takes a few hours to get used to the idea, other times it takes much, much longer. I can't lie though, it won't be easy for you. You will lose your nannies and all your friends. You will lose your familiar surroundings, your culture and your language. Everything will seem so strange and unfamiliar. We are praying that somehow God will prepare you for this huge loss. You'll go from being one of 600 to one of 5. You will have wide open spaces to run in, clean air to breath and clean water to drink. You will have all the food you could ever want. You'll have your own room which is already filled with clothes and toys from friends and family who can't wait to meet you. You will have 4 big brothers to wrestle with and who will be there to defend you, you will have seven first cousins to play with, 3 aunts and 2 uncles to watch over you. Including greats, you'll have six grandmas and five grandpas to spoil you rotten. You'll have a church that values children, and many, many wonderful friends. And, you'll have a wonderful daddy who will keep you safe and provide for and love you, and a mama who isn't perfect but who already loves you ferociously and can't wait to have a little girl. We promise that we won't forget the loss you have suffered and will do our best to help you heal, even when it gets hard.
Love,
Mama

I thought it would be fun to share some of the pictures we are sending in our dossier. Of course we want to put our best foot forward. However there are MANY more pictures that show our less then perfect sides here are two pictures:

Here is a picture of our family for our adoption file. I know J is cut off a little and W looks scared, but do we look acceptable? It was taken last year at Myrtle Beach.




Here is a picture that was rejected from the adoption file. It was actually taken by our neighbor in order to be included in the file - but didn't quite turn out the way I had hoped. I don't know what in the world J is doing to S in this picture. Nor do I know what type of manual labor P was doing before this picture was taken to cause him to sweat so profusely. One good thing that came from this photo is that I now know I should wear a little make-up and brush my hair for all future adoption file pictures. :)

What I Did on My Summer Vacation:

Right now we are in the process of compiling our dossier to be sent to China. A dossier is a stack of papers about two feet tall that divulges all your most private information to the adoption officials.

In June and July we Completed or Gathered:
Medical Exams for entire family.
Financial Statements
Police Clearances
An adoption petition
Birth Certificates
Marriage Certificates
A Homestudy
Employment Verification
Non-Employment Verification (For me)
Passports
Lots of pictures of us


This morning I overnighted:
Immigration Paperwork (You have to wait for your homestudy report to be completed and approved before you can send this in.)

So now we wait for an invitation to get fingerprinted. We are praying (and would appreciate prayers) that this comes before Paul has to be somewhere for work.

After we receive approval from Immigration we will have all of these papers notarized (we've already done most of this.) Then they must be sent to the Secretary of State to be certified (already did a lot of this too). Next,they are all sent to the Chinese consulate to be authenticated. Then we send it all to our adoption agency and they go over it all with a fine tooth comb and FINALLY it is all sent to China!

I haven't fully grasped what happens after it gets to China. I will be familiarizing myself with that process soon. BUT it is said that once you are logged in you travel in 3-5 months!!

We are hoping to be logged in by early October.

(Bless anyone who read this post.)

Our Adoption Timeline:

May 20, 2010: We decided for sure we wanted to start the adoption process.
June 5, 2010: After much research we chose CCAI as our adoption agency and sent in our application.
June 10, 2010: CCAI accepted us into their program.
June 14, 2010: We saw Grace's picture on CCAI's Waiting Child photo listings and chose her to be our daughter!! - For anyone who might be interested this is where our adoption differs greatly from most, and why it has gone so much quicker than usual. The wait for a healthy baby from China is currently four years. However there are many older children and children with mild to more severe special needs available at all times. A match with a child with special needs can take up to a year - but often is much quicker. We absolutely fell in love with Grace through her pictures and reading her file. Even if it wasn't for the wait, we would have gone this route.
June 28, 2010 We received pre-approval from China.

Gift of Grace

I've attempted to start this blog many times but for some reason or another I keep putting it off. Everyone knows that every good adoptive parent has a blog! I must be lacking. But, I do want to have something that I can read to remember this journey and something for Grace to read when she is older as well as away to keep friends and family informed. I am an open book most of the time, but for some reason sharing feelings and not just facts about this adoption has been difficult. Honestly, ten years later, reading the daily notes I was required to keep during our first adoption is difficult. Adopting makes you vulnerable in so many ways. I think I fear that if I show weakness I will be a poor representative of large, adoptive, homeschooling, southern transplant, strange families everywhere. But, the truth is I am weak. I don't deserve to be blessed with another child anymore than I deserve to be blessed with my four boys, my husband or my salvation. All of this is by God's grace - nothing that I did or can do. He is strong when I am weak. The further we get in this adoption the more I appreciate the significance of the name we chose for our daughter and the gift of abiding in God's grace.