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Adoption Update & O.C.C.
ADOPTION UPDATE:
We have been given the tentative travel date of May 4th. We have travel approval for all three girls. The last bit of paperwork for Eli is his Article 5 and then we will have Travel Approval for him too. Everyone has been exceedingly kind and expedited his paperwork. He really needs to get here and get checked out and it looks as if God is going to allow that to happen. We have been so blessed that everyone has been so open to looking out for his papers and proceeding as quickly as they can. There are so many hoops to jump through with adoption and so many bureaucratic stops along the way. It boggles my mind sometimes. I was so surprised that we had to start from square one again considering it had only been a year since we started our last adoptions, but after hearing story after story on the STUCK tour, I am counting my blessings that it has gone as smoothly as it has.
I love God’s sense of humor with the travel date of May 4th. I have always had a hard time from April 30th (Codey & Kyle’s birthday) until May 4th when Kyle died and a few days later for his funeral. It isn’t like I’m severely depressed during that time, it just breaks my heart that things didn’t turn out the way I had dreamed. Some years are better than others, but there are always many, many memories that come with those dates. My water broke on the way to our second Lamaze class and I was life flighted down to Des Moines. My whole life changed in that instant. We never went home, moved to the Ronald McDonald House, and spent the next 14 months in the hospital with Codey. When you are dreaming about your life and the joy of carrying twins, that is not the fairy tale ending you had hoped for. We had to bury our son and we didn’t have the money to do that. I’ve talked about all of this before so I won’t go into details. I’m pretty sure you can clearly see my dislike for that first week in May, but now I am looking forward to it. I actually want those days to arrive. I want to go get my girls and my little boy. I am so ready to be their mama. God’s timing is perfect and I love that delays ended up to us being blessed with all four of them and leaving during that week. As one of my Facebook friends said, “It will always be bitter/sweet from here on out.”
OPERATION CHRISTMAS CHILD
For those of you who don’t know what O.C.C. is, here is their site. Operation Christmas Child Since 1993, 100 million shoe boxes have been delivered in 130 countries. Isn’t that amazing? Initially I got involved through our home school tumbling group, but I was really moved hearing a young girl give her testimony at a Women of Faith Conference. She was talking about how she had never had a gift until she received her shoebox. I was thinking about my kids and how they probably couldn’t even remember what they got on their last birthday. It just really touched my heart. Ever since that time, the kids and I spend our year looking for bargains. We buy the toys in Targets $1.00 bin when they are 50% off. I’m that person you will see with a cart full of stuff. We buy shirts that are $1 at Wal-mart. We buy tablets, crayons, pencils, pens, pencil sharpeners and stickers after the back to school rush is over. I love that my children always keep their eyes peeled for bargains to put in the boxes.
These past two weekends have found me packing shoe boxes. (I have a feeling my life is going to get a little busy when we get home from China.) Being the dears they are, Mom and Linda (my mother-in-law) came down to help me with this monumental task. (Yes, I’m one of those lucky people whose mother-in-law is wonderful and her and my mom are actually friends. I am blessed!)
Why would packing shoe boxes be a monumental task you ask? Well, when I was sorting through old boxes in my storage room I found 100 plastic pencil boxes that mom had bought me a couple of years ago that I forgot about. We always buy them on clearance after school starts, I put them aside and we pack them for delivery around the middle of November. Like I said I forgot about these, add those to the 77 pencil boxes mom already bought to do the shoe boxes that I usually do, and that’s a lot of boxes. We have always done our shoe boxes in honor of Dan’s dad who passed away a few years ago. Terry liked the number 7 for Biblical reasons. First we started out doing 7 boxes in the 3 ages groups for boys and girls or 42 boxes. Over the past couple years the kids thought it would be fun to do 77 boxes. Oh boy! During the last couple of months, we’ve bought crayons, pencils, pens, etc. and had the pencil boxes all ready. Mom is a great bargain shopper and she bought a ton of stuff. We set to packing and we have 150 done. Isn’t that amazing? I thought it was a task to big to be completed and here we are almost done. Only 27 more to go. I gave my friends permission to buy those shoes they want so I can have the boxes. I hope their husbands don’t mind. 🙂
If you have the opportunity to participate in this amazing endeavor, please do so. I love how it takes my children’s eyes off themselves and puts them on others. Ben was super sweet today. He kept asking why we were doing it, I’d explain, and he would tell me how great it was to make other kids happy. I love watching them give of themselves.
