Six Months

Happy 6 month birthday, baby boys! To celebrate, we've watched a little video of you about a dozen or more times over the past 24 hours...


Last night, we got the sweetest video of our two boys. The video is about 5 minutes long, and we pretty much have the entire thing memorized by now! The first time we watched it, both Don and I were about 3 inches from the computer screen watching so intently the whole time and grinning from ear to ear. 


They are just so sweet. 


And they seem so different. And we love that about them! 


Based on the pictures we've seen, the video, and the report from this family, our big guy is quite an entertainer. He loves attention and is already a bit of a ham at six months old. He has the sweetest smile and sparkly little eyes that just light up when he is held or when people are talking to him. He might just be our little jokester. 


Based on those same sources, our little guy is more shy, more pensive, and even a little more sensitive. At one point in the video he tips over while trying to sit up and he gets this little sad, pouty face that makes you just want to scoop him right up and snuggle him and reassure him that he's going to be okay. He might just be our little lover. 


Who knows? We could be totally wrong and we're trying not to peg their little personalities when they are so young and when we've never even seen them for ourselves, but it is fun to get these glimpses into their lives and behavior now.  


We are really hoping that we'll get submitted for court soon and that our court date will be in early March (or sooner would be nice!). 


Please pray with us that we'll not only be able to go and see them soon, but also that the whole process will be brought to completion and that we'll be able to have them home by this summer (or sooner would be nice!).  

The Best Kind of News

From our new friends that are now in Ethiopia...

Hi Sara, 

Your twins look great!  We were there yesterday on a whirlwind tour but we did get pictures and video of them.  Seeing them I do not have any concerns about either boys.  We can talk on the phone after I'm back and I can give you all the details but I just wanted to write to set your mind at rest. They were happy and healthy and adorable.  Both smiled but [Big Guy] is especially smiley - he would not stop, in fact!  It was hilarious.   

Pictures and video when we get back!!

Thank you, God, for answering our prayers to send people to love them and care for them!


Thank you for answering our prayers that they would be healthy, well cared for, and happy! 


I almost cried when I read this email. God is good. 

An Update on the Process

Just in case you are wondering... there really aren't any updates. 


We are still waiting for our court date. We were told it could be about 3 months from when our paperwork arrived in Ethiopia (which for us was Dec. 24). We are hoping and praying that it will be much sooner. Please join us!


The main delay that we are seeing right now is the time between court and embassy. The US Embassy has changed some of their policies and it's really slowing everything down. For example, they used to have 5 clinics in Addis that were approved to do the medical clearance on the children before they were cleared to come to the US, and now they've reduced that number to 2 clinics. There are probably hundreds of agencies working in Ethiopia to match families with children, and all of these children have to funnel through these 2 approved clinics. It can take weeks/months for children to get appointments at one of these clinics, which means there are many additional weeks that you have to wait before you can bring your children home. 


Please pray that the US Embassy would approve more clinics or that the clinics could somehow process these cases more quickly. It's a total bottleneck... families are passing court and then waiting months and months to be approved to bring their children home. The process used to be about 6 weeks to clear through embassy, and now some estimates are putting that number at 4 months. That's just too long. 


We're praying that God will surprise us with a really SHORT wait and that our two precious babies will be home in record time! And since every post needs a great picture, thank you Jackson family for these sweet blankets! We love them and are sure the boys will too!

A Letter to our Sons

Dear Boys,


We heard you loved the blocks we sent you! We are so happy to know that they made you happy! It gives us great joy to think of you smiling and playing with them. We wish we could be there to capture all those smiles and coos and first discoveries. 


We think of you and pray for you daily (and many times throughout the day)! We have prepared a room for you with two cribs, one for each of you, but close enough so you can still peek at each other. We have books that we can't wait to read to you and lots of toys for you to play with once you get home. 


I wish you knew how loved you are already. You have a huge family waiting for you to come home! You have grandparents ready to love and spoil you, aunts and uncles that are crazy about you, and lots of cousins to play with! You have a big church family that has been waiting with us to bring you home... you should have seen how happy they all were when we showed them your pictures! You, little boys, are very precious to us and to many others!


We hate to be away from you, but we know that you are not alone. Of course, you have each other, but you also have a heavenly father who has loved you from before you were even born! We know that He is caring for you and watching over you even now. 


Little boys, you belong to God. He created you and you are His, even though we get to borrow you for a short time to play the part of your mommy and daddy. And do you know how thankful we are that we get to be your mommy and daddy? Well, we just can't imagine anything better in the whole wide world!


We can't wait to come and get you, sweet babies, and we pray it will be soon!

Our Eclectic Nursery

We are so thankful that we got all of our nursery furniture donated to us from Don's cousin and my sister (who no longer needed them). Of course, I had a moment of wanting to pick out all of my own nursery furniture to create my "dream" nursery, especially after having to wait for so many years! But reality (and practicality) finally set in and I am happy that I was able to figure out how to arrange two very different (but beautiful) nursery sets in a way that I think is cute and cozy. And Don was happy that we probably saved close to a thousand dollars by not buying two cribs, a changing table, and a rocking chair (that made me happy, too- though it was definitely more his idea than mine).


Plus, all that really matters is getting those two sweet boys home and sleeping in their own little cribs!


These cuddle cloths were something I found in the clearance bin at the Land of Nod outlet. The crib bumpers also came from the Land of Nod outlet (so glad I bought two of them almost a year and a half ago when I had no idea if we'd even get twins!). The rest of the crib bedding was purchased on clearance at Target over the past few years. 

The window frames are from my grandma's house, the shutter I picked up on the side of the road and spray-painted, and the rest of the frames were either moved from other locations in the house or purchased at TJ Maxx. The little bamboo animals were also in the clearance bin at the outlet. 

Some gifts from my first shower last week. Thank you, friends!

Looking cheesey and posed... but happy with the final product!

And please excuse the price stickers that are still on some of the frames. Those darn stickers at TJ Maxx are impossible to get off! I just couldn't wait and go through the whole peeling, unsticking, goo-gone-ing, windex-ing process.


The bedding is on, the dresser is filled with little boy clothing, the toys are in the bins, the books are on the shelf- and we're ready for them to come home!

A Third Package and More of the Story

We are getting ready to deliver our third package to the boys, but this time I'm hand delivering it to the family that will be bringing it to Ethiopia for us... which leads me to a portion of the story that I haven't shared yet on our blog. 


I'll try to keep this brief. Our referral for the twin boys actually came from a different agency than the one we were waiting with for over two years. It came from the agency we had been contacted by earlier in the summer, and the story of how that all happened is a post for another time.  


But, back to the care package... or even before that. When we moved forward with the referral for our boys and entered the program with the new agency, we found out that the twins from this summer were in the same care center in Mekele as our boys and (even more crazy) that they were going to a family from my home town. I emailed this family and found out that the husband and wife had actually attended the same small college as Don and I. 


When everything happened this summer with the other twins, I remember Don and I talking about how sad it was that we'd never know what was going to happen to these two little boys. We'd probably never know their family or where they were going to live. We didn't know if they were going to a Christian family or not... it seemed like they were just going to be a little blip on our life story that we'd never again have any connection to. Well, we were totally wrong! Not only have we been able to see these other little guys in pictures and see how they've grown, we're also getting to meet their future family. They are going to grow up in the same area that I grew up in! 


And it's this family that is taking our next care package! They have told us that they'll spend time with our twin boys while they are in Mekele: playing with them, holding them, taking pictures of them, and praying for them! AMAZING!   


One other crazy detail: the day that we found out that we were not going to be able to adopt the twins from this summer was July 19. When we opened our referral information for our twin boys, their birthdate was listed as July 19. So while our hearts were breaking over the loss of these other boys, God was preparing a new set of little boys that was going to be just perfect for us... and he kept us in line with our other agency for exactly 14 months to put us in a position to be ready for them when they became available. Can I say it again? Amazing. 


So, later this week, I'll drop off a gift for the other twins boys, and I'll drop off a care package for our little guys, and I'll sit down for coffee with this other family that has already become very dear to us. Amazing. 

"From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him." - Isaiah 64:4 (ESV) 

Second Care Package

We're so thankful to have another opportunity to send a package to the boys! 


They are at a care center in northern Ethiopia, and most families that travel only go to Addis Ababa, the capital city. Mekele, where the boys are, is a 90 minute flight from Addis. So, we have to take all of the chances we can get to send them things when there are families taking the additional trip!


Two more cozy sleepers and some crinkly, rattling, soft blocks. 

When we send them things, we package them up in these ziplock bags and include a little picture of each of them with their Ethiopian names on it so that the families know who to give the packages to. Today I included "Jones Family" under their names. How sweet is that?!

News

Today we received some additional pictures of the boys. The family that took our care package just returned from their trip and we got to see 7 new pictures of the boys. I so wish that I could post them here, but I have to wait until we pass court... grrr! In a couple of the pictures, they have their little care packages resting on their bellies, and in one they are holding their toys! Well, the big guy is holding his toy, but the little guy is not so interested yet... he seems to be more interested in sucking his thumb. I would say 90% of our pictures of him show him sucking his thumb (do I see braces and orthodontics bills in our future?).


Honestly, I was so happy to see the new pictures, and yet as soon as I saw them I felt so sad. In every picture we have of them, they are on their backs in their crib staring straight up. I am not complaining at all about their care; we are so thankful for our agency and for the nannies that are caring for them, but there are lots of babies and not a lot of nannies. How often are they held? Do they ever get put on their tummies? When was the last time their little cheeks were kissed?


I was looking at their sweet faces and wondering how many of their wakeful hours they spend staring at the ceiling when they should be staring into the smiling faces of their mom and dad, who love them. It broke my heart in a whole new way today to think about them being so far from us. 


I thought, All I can do is pray for them and entrust them to the Lord, and then I thought, Well, that's what I should be doing all the time, even when they are home- that's the best way to parent them both now and in the future! The Lord gently reminded me that even when we have them in our care and I'm able to help meet their physical needs, I'll still need to pray just as diligently for them, and I'll still need to entrust them to his care.  This is precious training time, and not being able to care for our boys' physical needs is making us learn to be dependent on the Lord for them in a way that we might not experience if they were with us right now.  


None of this has been easy, but none of it has been wasted either. 

Christmas Mantel

Notice the two additional stockings this year? 

Looking Back...

Wow- these past weeks have been an absolute blur! There have been about a million things going on, both related to our adoption and outside of it that have kept our heads spinning. We're actually hoping to take some time in the next day or so to reflect on the past weeks/months/years so that we can record all of the answers to prayer and all of the ways that we've seen God's hand orchestrating all of the details that have come together for us recently. 

Thankfully, I had a little opportunity to do this over Thanksgiving. Our church has a tradition of having a Thanksgiving Eve service where people are given an opportunity to share about God's faithfulness to them over the past year. I've never gone up to share at this service, but this year I couldn't resist! I'm posting what I shared here because it briefly sums up how I'd describe these past years and also the past weeks since getting our referral: 

Many of you know that for the past two years we have been in the process of adopting from Ethiopia, and for several years prior to that we have been praying and waiting on the lord for children. 

We thought our wait time for our adoption would be about a year, and it was easily double that. There were many discouragements and disappointments along the way, but God sustained our hope and our trust. He refined us and used this trial to drive us more deeply into the love of Christ that was shown for us on the cross. We are different people now than we were when this all started, and I’m sure we’ll forever be thankful for these “painful but precious” waiting years. 

 Well, last week our waiting season came to an end. The Lord blessed us with the most beautiful twin boys in all of Ethiopia. They are four months old, and Lord willing, we will bring them home this spring. We love them already and are so thankful to the Lord for these precious little boys. We are humbled by the extravagant love and kindness of the Lord in all of this and feel as if we are standing beneath the waterfall of his blessing. It’s more than we can contain… we are overwhelmed and marveling at the undeserved kindness of the Lord to us. 

We always wanted twins, but we didn’t think it was going to be a possibility, and not only did he give us twins, he gave us the most perfect little twins in all the world! The following poem, written by William Cowper, was really helpful to me over the past years, and it seems especially fitting to share now in light of what God has done.

God works in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform

He plants his footsteps in the sea

And rides upon the storm

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never failing skill

He treasures up his bright designs

And works his sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy,

And shall break in blessing on your head

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense

But trust him for his grace;

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face

His purposes will ripen fast,

Unfolding every hour;

The bud may have a bitter taste,

but sweet will be the flower

Thank you for praying for us over the years and for now rejoicing with us. We are blessed!