Five years

It has been exactly 5 years since I felt that God first put that pull on my heart for adoption. Wow. I have learned and grown so much in that time. God has done incredible things in our lives, and hearts. And I have learned so much patience. Still working on that one though! This time of year rivals Christmas in the strange pull towards family expansion. Christmas is understandable. I am guessing the Spring surge has to do with hormones. LOL Why not, all the critters are feeling the twitterpation. Babymode has definitely set in.

If you read any adoption book, site, or blog, you will inevitably find something about bonding. Bonding parent to child, child to parent, children to each other, etc. While sitting in church this past Sunday listening to the speaker, I realized there is a whole lot of Me to God bonding going on. Bonding is not a one time occurrence. It happens slowly through many events, on a daily basis as we learn to trust. That is what has gone on through these 5 years and I am so thankful for every moment.

I did it. I am a Scrapper now!

A couple weekends ago I attended my first crop party. We didn't stay the full 12 hours, but did a good 6 hours worth of work and play. It was a lot of fun and I got a lot of ideas and won some cool scrapbook prizes. I did not have any pictures to do so I just made up some generic pages that I can fill in later. I had some scripture printed and took it with me to put om some of them. I even printed my favorite verse in both English and Amharic. I love working on it, and day dream often of the photos that will hopefully someday fill it. Since the party I have gone and gotten some more supplies and started one for our family album as well. It has been fun to go through all those old pictures I have had stashed away in boxes.

This is the first page of the baby's scrapbook.


This is the second page. The coupon is what hubby gave me for Christmas this year. He diaper pinned it onto a piece of fleece (with a puppy on it, which is now on the front cover of the scrapbook) and tucked it into a sewing box that he bought me. It says " This Coupon Good For ........ Ethiopia (Make a wish, and I'll do everything I can to make it come true.) Yes". Hubby had gone around saying "Yes" over and over for more than a month so I had a good idea that this was coming. The verse I put on the page is John 14:18 "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.", which seems to fit right in with the people running on the coupon. Now I know that is not the complete context of this verse, and I am usually a stickler for that sort of thing, but God called us to be like Jesus and care for the orphans & widows so It is not that far fetched.


Yesterday we swapped bedrooms with our 4 girls so that they would have more room, as our bedroom(which held my office/studio) was larger. Still have a bit more stuff to move around, sort, and find places for. When I set up our room I kept thinking about where the crib could go. Baby fever hits me hard in the Spring, and this one is no exception. I really hope we can get started on this soon! I keep reading a few other blogs I follow, and watching their journeys, hoping ours is not in the too distant future.