Just a little note to say...

TA!!!!!!!! We got TA on Friday...amongst a little bit o' excitement across the board. As a friend of mine so wisely said, "The Enemy would love to steal your joy." But he just isn't going to do that this time. We should hear whether or not we got our Consulate request by Monday morning. If we do, I will post the link to our travel blog, which is on Shutterfly, and I will post our travel dates.

Right now, we are just enjoying a sweet visit from Grammy and Grandpa from Florida, and eagerly anticipating our upcoming trip to bring our 2 precious additions home! More soon! Thanks, dear praying friends for ALL of your support and encouragement!!

A little bit o' cute and a little bit o' crazy...

This weekend we went to a birthday party for a sweet friend of ours, Jonathan....his family just brought him home from Ch*na last year with his brother, Josiah. Well, little Maggie and Josiah just really hit it off. They love playing together. I captured a really cute picture of them as they paused in their play for some cake (you can always get Maggie to pause for cake :-)

Maggie and Josiah

Abby really enjoyed checking out the chicks.

Now, for the crazy. Drew has always wanted a mohawk. I don't know what it is with boys and mohawks? Since we have moved to Alabama, he has been sportin' the 'Bama do...flippin' the extra hair in the front. Well, it is getting much warmer these days, so Dad and Luke convinced Drew that he should just buzz his hair for the summer. It broke my heart, but I am learning to keep my mouth shut. Daddy is bald, but somehow he still thinks that he is the "hair specialist" of our family :-) Again, I have learned to keep my mouth shut. The guys decided that before buzzing the hair all together, I needed to give him a mohawk...so, for about 15 minutes, he got to live his dream...a mohawk.

Don't worry, Grammy. We didn't leave it this way.

Whoo Hoo!! Waitin' for TA!

I cannot believe that we are this close! Our Article 5 was picked up last night (as far as we know...). Our agency basically said that they aren't normally informed unless there is a problem. So, here we are...waiting for Travel Approval.

I will not be able to access our blog while we are in Ch*na unless I do a VPN, which we aren't going to attempt. So, I have set up a privatized Shutterfly site. I will post the link as we get closer to travel, and if you guys want to follow along, please email me at symasekfab5@aol.com - I will be happy to send you the password!! We want tons of people following along - I just am not going to make it an open blog. And for all my bloggy friends out there who I don't really "know" - please don't hesitate to email me for the password...this isn't any attempt to be exclusive, this is so that we can post what we would like to post in a sensitive area of the world. :-)

What We've Been Up To...

My Aunt Barb was a high school math teacher for years. Every once in a while when she comes to visit, she spends a teaching day with the kids. They always have a BLAST! She helped the boys with some math concepts that seem to be giving them some trouble :-) and had activities for almost the whole day - boy, was it a wonderful break for me! :-)

She kept their attention so much better than I ever can! :-)

We, also, have been having a little small group at our house with a couple of other families. It has been a fantastic time of Bible study, fellowship, prayer, and worship! One of the families is also in the process of adopting their second child from Ch*na. Their daughter, Julianna, is starting an orphan awareness "club" of sorts for raising orphan awareness and doing multiple projects to help different organizations in Ch*na. She is 16. I absolutely love it that she realizes that although we aren't all called to adopt - we are all called to "take care of the widows and the orphans".....it was a great reminder that there are things that we can do even after we get home with CJ and Landon to take care of the widows and the orphans...things that you can do, too! Check out this link for another great organization that was started by another friend of mine...another fellow New Day adoptive mamma http://www.waitinginchina.com/ It has great ways for you and I to help care for orphans!

All the small group kiddos - Julianna in the middle with some things we collected to send to Maria's Big House of Hope!

Asking for Prayer

Some of you may remember an older post (sorry, I am not blog savvy enough to know how to post a cute link saying "here" :-) where I posted pictures about my friend, Laura, who is battling metastatic breast cancer. Well, she is still fighting. She has said on her CaringBridge site that she doesn't see herself as "amazing"...I beg to differ because during all of her treatments, she is constantly pointing to Jesus and bringing the Father glory - all while being Mommy to 3 young kiddos. On Monday, Laura begins 6 weeks of a chemo AND radiation combination treatment...apparently, chemo and radiation aren't normally done simultaneously. Please pray for her...pray for her body to respond well to this treatment, pray that this will knock the cancer out for good, pray for minimal side effects, and pray for strength for her whole family during this process.

I know that there are some GREAT prayer warriors who read this blog! You guys have emailed me and been a huge encouragement to me. So, let's all get on our knees and lift up Laura over the next 6 weeks and see how the Lord works!!

Oh, and if you want to check out her CaringBridge site - she is listed under lblack. :-)

Second Little One Cabled!!! YAY!

At this point, we are just waiting on Article 5, which normally takes 2 weeks, and then TA! :-) Come on TA!

Cabled!!! (well, one, at least!!)

So today we got the fabulous news that one of our little tykes has been cabled!! YAY!! One step closer to TA. I was so excited to get this news that I called our Ch*na contact at Villa Hope to ask her some questions. She and I have gotten to be pretty good friends through this whole process, so while we were chatting, I told the kids to get into the car so that we could run to Sam's. We were talking about all kinds of fun stuff...travel, changes to the program that the CCCW@ has implemented, etc. I hop in the car, shut the door, get ready to pull out...only to hear Maggie and Emily scream - "MOM! We don't have everyone!" I won't mention any names....

but everyone better start getting REALLY good at listenin' to Mom, or we are going to be in real trouble when we are trying to navigate through multiple airports and there are SEVEN kiddos!