Blessings and suffering

Yesterday we returned from our family "vacation" to Huntsville...enjoying the US Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville Botanical Gardens, and Constitution Village. We all had such a great time, and the kids learned a ton!

We came home to discover that a friend of ours whose family has been waiting for their referral from Ethiopia for over a year finally received their referral for a precious little 4 week old boy! "What a blessing!" I thought. Then, I read more recent news via email..."please pray for little Judah as he is suffering from intense vomitting and diahrea". Then, more recent news..."little Judah didn't make it." Ugh...how quickly my thoughts went from blessings to suffering. My friend wrote of the intense pain she is feeling in her heart...pain for a baby she never held, but has been held in her heart for months. I know that some people may not understand how she can be grieving so when she never met the child, but when the Lord places orphans on your heart, pain and grief can be just as intense as the love that you feel for each and every child that you know has no father, mother, home, food, on and on. In His sovereignty, the Lord will use this for His glory and for my friend's (and her family's) good - He promises that. But for right now, would you pray for Allison and her family?

The passion of my heart...

I have attached a new button on the side of this blog for a foster home in Beijing. They are currently working on a new home south of Guangzhou where there is a real need for foster homes and orphanages. Check it out you guys! The work they do is amazing - the kids are beautiful, and there are so many ways to help them out!

Summer fun

Well, this summer has been busier than I had planned, but it has been fun! Blueberry picking, McWane Center, travelling to Jacksonville, guitar camp, film camp...

I wanted to post just a little note on God's faithfulness. As believers we always talk about "God's faithfulness" almost to the point of trivializing His Amazing Faithfulness. We have been home from China for over 6 months now...I feel like I am just now waking up from a dream. It has been harder than I thought - not because of Abby, simply because of me...my selfishness, my pre-conceived ideas, etc. But, because of HIM, our family is adjusted amazingly well, and I believe that He allowed this 6 months to be crazy for me in order to show me that it is He who does the working in us. He caused Abby to adjust well, He caused her not to have issues with inappropriate attachment, He caused her to love routine and to giggle for 30 minutes when we got home from our vacation (she knows this is HOME). Anyway, He amazes me.

Here are some summer pictures...Abby and Maggie playing in the crib...Abby and Maggie getting into trouble (which they LOVE to do together)...and Drew's 10th birthday party.

Privacy...

As I am sure you have noticed (if you are still bothering to check if we have posted anything :-), I haven't posted in quite sometime. The main reason for that is privacy concerns. Initially, I had a privacy setting on our blog. Then, I took it off...now, I am going to put it back on again :-) I haven't been too smart about not putting personal information on this blog. So, I am going to put a privacy setting on the blog and continue to post for friends and family who would like to view things going on in our world. :-) If you would like to be able to view the blog, please email me. If you don't have my email address, post a comment so that I can email you. Thanks so much, you guys!

Easter

Easter is my favorite...I love spring, the new growth, the flowers, hiding eggs for the kids, watching their faces as they seek in earnest for each candy-filled treasure, but most of all, I love Easter Sunday - the celebration of Christ's resurrection and His payment for my sin...all of my horrible sin. I am so thankful for my Savior and all of the gifts that He has given me even though I deserve none of them, and He continues to be so patient with me as I have to be taught some of the same lessons over and over and over again. This Easter was awesome. It was Abby's first "American" Easter with her forever family. She was such a good sport. She took the basket I gave her and held it just like the other kids. However, she looked so confused - she looked like she was thinking, "What is with all these empty baskets?" She smiled sweetly for the picture before the egghunt (the picture with all 5 of the kiddos), and obediently walked with me while I showed her how to put the eggs in her basket. And then the "Ah-ha!" moment came. I showed her what was inside the eggs. Oh my word, she was THRILLED! When I wasn't looking, she put more jelly beans in her mouth than I have ever seen any child put in their mouth at one time. At one point in time, I looked over at her, and half-dissolved jelly beans were falling out of her mouth because she couldn't keep them in. It was great!

Spring has arrived (I think...)!

We finally got to get dressed in shorts and t-shirts this morning - no jackets! It was so great to get to go out and water plants and play for a while. We have also gotten to start back with our tradition of giving the garbage men freeze pops (or popsicles, whatever we have). The girls had a great time with that this morning - it is amazing what can provide entertainment.

This past weekend we had some of our dear friends from Jacksonville up to visit. The kids had a blast, and the weather was wonderful - thank you Lord! (Keeping 7 kids inside a house all weekend might have been a nightmare) The boys' buddy, Jackson, was able to go to the boys' track meet to cheer them on. The girls had a fantastic time driving the Barbie jeep all over the yard (which might be one explanation as to why we have no grass growing). All-in-all, it was a wonderful visit, and we are so thankful that they made the trip!

Forts and Frogs..

We have had a busy, busy week! This past weekend, the boys and Mike had an amazing opportunity to go to the Eufala Athenaeum (over $13 million worth of first edition books, civil war documents, and other cool documents signed by different Presidents), spend the night on the USS Alabama, and tour Ft. Morgan and Ft. Gaines. It was an exhausting, but very fun weekend for them...cool Dad/son time! Because the boys are doing a research project on it to present to our cover school, I told Mike "Please, please take pictures!!"...he did...over 100!?? Hopefully, this is the only picture we will ever have of the boys in jail. The girls and I hit the zoo while they were gone. I thought Abby would go crazy with all of the animals there (she is a huge animal fan)...but she wasn't too impressed with anything EXCEPT the monkeys - she LOVED them!! It was so much fun to watch her laugh and scream at the monkeys and gorilla. The zoo was insanely busy because it was spring break here...it was like Disney World on a smaller scale. Did I mention that we are potty training Maggie? So, imagine me with a double stroller, standing in quite a few bathroom lines so that we didn't have any accidents - that was fun. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to post because I had to borrow a camera (mine was being abused, I mean used, by the boys at the time :-)

Today, we went to a family's home to learn about running a business and tadpoles (I know, I know...2 very different things...I mean, who would have thought you could make money mailing tadpoles?). They run "Ribbits Galore" - shipping tadpoles to kids who have habitats to put their little tadpoles in and watch them grow into frogs. The husband/wife team also have their own toy company, so the kids were able to learn about how to take an "idea" and turn it into a "product". It was pretty amazing. The kids had a GREAT time, but of course, we had to come home with 3 tadpoles of our own...."Yoda, Princess, and R2". Hopefully, they will live longer than a week.