We have a court date!!!!!

Okay so we just got an e-mail from our social worker and our court date is MAY 4TH!! Which is extremly soon in terms of court dates, needless to say that we were stunned. That seems to be a very commin theme with this adoption. Once we finshed our part which we did very slowly everything else has gone very quickly. So now we need prayers that our court date will go through. Often these court dates do not go through on the first try and it ends up delaying the process for everyone involved. Hopefully ours will pass on the first try and we will be flying off to Addis in either early June or later June. I am so excited at the prospect of having our daughter in time for the Fourth of July celebrations, it just seems fitting to me.

WOW what and experience

Well I just returned from Tijuana Mexico from 9 days of some of the most amazing expereinces of my life! I went with our church from Keizer Oregon and another group from Canby. There were about 20 of us on the trip. We headed off on last Friday morning a group of 4 vehicles packed to the brim with food, sleeping bags, clothes, tools, crafts and honestly about 25 completely full bags of cookies and candy! (this was not a time to be watching what I ate!) We arrived at the church in Tijuna on Saturday around 6pm or so. I was a little nervous because of all of the negative stuff that we had been hearinf about on the news but honsetly the entire time I never really once felt unsafe. Infact I was astounded at how beautiful I found the city and Mexico in general to be. Of course there was a lot of poverty and living accomodations that are appalling at the least, but there was something about the people andthe sense of community and tradition that just captured me. The colors were different down there as well as the arcitecture, and the sky was also a different color, kind of like this blue color with this yellow orange thing in it that gave off a wonderful little bit of heat, I think it is called sun! The week was filled with LOTS of manual labor including lots of painting, digging carrying, cleaning and then yes more painting, but it was the most glorious feeling to look back at the end of the week and see what we had accomplished, it was amazing to see the amount of work that got done with 20 people working together. We also did VBS on 3 of the days. This was SOOO much fun. We did little crafts for the kids and puppet shows, plays, face painting, bubbles and then towards the end we passed out Bibles. Everyone was so nice there, I just cant get over it. There was this one little girl who loved having her face painted and there weren't many kids there so I did like 3 or 4 for her and then in some sort of communication invlolving hand gestures ( I barely speak Spanish and most of the kids do not speak English) she asked me if she could draw on me (a first) I was a little hesitant thinking of some of the drawings I have seem little people do, but she very sweetly took my hand and on the top of my hand she drew a purple (of course) cross and then colored it in behind with pink (of course). I immediatly got tears in my eyes because here we were down there to share the Lord with these kids and her she is reminding me that I also can learn from them. It was a very powerful little moment for me and it is one that I will keep in my heart for a long time. So needless to say it was VERY hard to leave, especially knowing that I will not be back next year, but I have decided to do everything I can to help Joe get down there next year so that he can experience this as well. This is a link to a blog that was kept by one of the poeple organizing our trip: http://kevinhohnbaum.blogspot.com/ Thanks to Kevin and Jane for coordinating this amazing mission trip!!!!!!!!

Heading for Mexico!

Well I cant believe the time has come, we leave for our Mexico mission trip tomarrow! The church (in Salem) has been planning for this trip for months and now we are finally ready to go. We will be going to Tijuana for 8 days to do whatever is needed at the church that we go to down there. The church has been doing this for like 9-10 years and this is the first trip that I have been able to go on. I have had little ones for the last 5 years that I didn't feel like I could leave for that long and next year I will have 3 kiddos and so I certainly wont be going, so somehow I have managed to make this work this year even though I don't think that I am ready to be apart from the boys (all of them) that long. I know it will be an amazing time and I am very excited about it but I am also a little apprehensive. I will tell all about it when I return! God bless

Fundraiser Plans

With our recent exciting events, many friends and famliy have asked about our fundraising party for Ruby. Well I just wanted to let you know that we are still planning on doing an event. It will most likely be in May down in Salem Oregon either at the Keizer Clearlake UMC or another location probably in that area. We would love to have any handmade (or not handmade) items donated. Please know that we are not asking people to spend a lot of money or time doing this, these things can be very simple like baked goods, or more specialty like jewlery, knitting, painting, card making, or things like that. Also if anyone has any info or special connection to a place or service we are also looking for gift certificates or things like that, ANY help would be SO appreciated!!!! I will have my bows there as well. We are going to have a dinner and maybe music (if anyone had a connection there that would be cool too) Also I wanted to add that I know that not everyone will be able to come to the event because of other commitments or because they live far away, but I am sure there will be crafts left over from the even that I will take pictures of and put on our blog and then you may contact me if you would like any of them. We want to thank everyone in advance, to be very honest it is a little hard to plan this event for ourselves and be the ones asking for donations, but just know that our hearts of full of gratitude for the support that we have recieved in this great adventure. Ruby and our family feel SO blessed to have this large group of friends and family so excited for her arrival. God bless!

Official acceptance

Today we officially accpeted our refferal! Yeah, we got the paperwork yesterday in the mail, we had a tone of work to do and things to write and sign and get notarized but I was able to hand deliver them today! Thats right there is no messing around here, we want this girl home! A little later in our social worker called us and told us everything looked good and she was contacting the agency in Ethiopia and that we should know our court date in about 2 weeks or so. We are hoping for a court date in late May or early June and then it will be 4-6 more weeks after that until she comes home, ehhh seems so far away, I feel like a little kid, maybe even little whiny...."I want her now." Our social worker is actually heading to Ethiopia next week I believe and so I was able to send a care package to Ruby in which of course I gave her some of my clippies (not like she has a whole lot of hair right now but maybe soon) I also sent a few clothing items and a little blanket that I made for her. As I got off of the phone with my social worker I told her to "make sure to hold my baby." I am a little jelous that she gets to hold my baby in a few days, but I know our day will come when we are together.

Today is the day!

Well I thought that the day that our call would come may never happen, that it was only this dream that I thought about every day, but today that dream came true! We got our call, we know our new baby girl. Let me start at the beginning, I have to paint a picture of how this day was going, forgive me if I am a little scattered as I am almost gaining the feeling back in my legs but my brain is a little farther behind. Well our day actually started off last night around 11pm when Wyatt awoke throwing up, and not just a little bit but like grown up stuff...everywhere! Ahh the joys of parenting. So we cleaned him up but I slept with him on the couch as he continued to throw up most of the night. Needless to say that we were all pretty tired by the time morning time came. And then at 5 am (notice the scattered brain!) the school called to say that school was delayed which for Wyatt meant cancelled but he wasn't going anyways. By the way it was sunny and beautiful by the time 8 am rolled arond which is when school was supposed to start, apparently there was a little bit of snow and they went a little crazy, okay enough of the tangent...so as the morning went on Wyatt continued to throw up to the point I though I may have to take him in to the doc, he wasnt drinking or eating and just laying around, so about 3 pm Owen remembered that he has went #2 on the potty yesterday and that I had forgot to give him a sucker so of course I gave one to Wyatt which somehow gave him supernatural energy and he wanted to go outside to play, mind you this is a snow day, although it wasthe most beautiful afternoon ever. So there we were outside I am sitting on a chair with the sun on my back (snow day?) watching the kids play and I get a call from Megan my social worker. Here is the conversation:
Megan: Hi is this Candace
me: Yeah whats up (I actually said that)..at this point I still didn't think that this was the call.
Megan: Hey I got your e-mail and I wanted to call you ( e-mail regarding general questions)
me:okay......
Megan: I wanted to let you know that today is going to be an exceptionally wonderful day for you
Me: heart starts to pound, legs go numb...."shut up!" (again I actually said this)
Megan: we have a little girl for you, lets get Joe on the phone

and from there on we got Joe on the conference call and she gave us all of the info about our new baby girl. She is about 4.5 months right now and is a very small 7 plus pounds. That is about all of the info that I can think of to give that is not confidential. We of course know about her past and have seen the most beuatiful pictures that I have ever seen, even more beuatiful and perfect than I had imagined. We are not at this point able to send out the pic or post it on the blog, there is a lot of legal issues we have to abide with and everything is confidential. But I just wanted to share this wonderful news. We feel truely blessed that God has put this little girl in front of us and we are praying that everything continues to go smoothly.

I know...so sad

I Know it is so sad that this is the topic of this post but it really is all consuming.....potty training! I am very excited to announce that both of my children are now in underwear!!!!!!!!!!! Wyatt is finally ready, and we are very excited, he has been wearing underwear for about 2 weeks now and the accidents are getting less and less as ne learns that the goal is to stay dry. And Owen's latest success is that he when #2 for the first time oon the potty yesterday, this had been a big stumbling block as he has been trained with #1 for a very long time now, so we are making progress. I cant believe that we could have both kids potty trained by the time Ruby comes. I though Wyatt may go to high school in diapers (not really but it seemed like it may never happen) Any was we told Owen that if he went #2 in the potty that we could go back to the place where we had their b-day party and that he could also have ice cream. So last night we took the boys the the play place where they had their party and they had a blast, well it had been like 5 hours since we had talked about the ice cream and I though myabe Owen would forget....forget ice cream I must be crazy! On the way home from the play place at about 8:30 (bedtime is 8:00pm) Owen asked for ice cream and so of course they got to come home and have ice cream (really rice ice cream but they dont know the diff) It was a very exciting day for all of us.