Bouldering

A few weeks ago we met some good friends for lunch and then headed over to The Circuit in Portland. It is a great bouldering gym with all kinds of climbing levels to choose from. Martin and Luke had a BLAST! This was their first time and they did fantastic. If they had actual climbing shoes I can only imagine what they could do. Both our boys have been climbing machines since day one! It was fun to see them conquer what they put their minds to. It was a great day and after 3 1/2 hours of bouldering they appeared to actually be a bit tired...this is rare. Thank you Anja and Lia for a fun day.

Younger children's area. Climb up the wall, slide down the slide

Next level up. Climb up wall, walk down ladder.

Luke doing some bouldering on different levels

This was tough!

This next series is of Martin. He wanted SO badly to get

to the top of this boulder. It took him multiple tries, but he

finally nailed it. I was impressed.

Closer

Switching angles.

Almost there

He nailed it! He was SO excited.

Similar? What do you think?

When I first saw Alesha's referral picture I thought I saw a lot of resemblance to our son, Luke. As I was looking through old photos I found this photo of Luke at about 6 months old. I am amazed at how much these two really look alike. Do you see it or is it just me?

Happy Birthday Dad

Today my dad would have turned 62 years old. I can't believe it has nearly been 17 years since he passed away. I miss him so much. There have been countless times that I wished he was still here. So many milestones he has missed. I am so thankful that in the last days of his life he accepted Christ as his Savior. How thankful I am that one day I will see him again.

This is an old photo, but it makes me smile every time I look at it. My dad loved kids and did silly fun stuff kids would do, like swinging. I miss his laugh and just having him around to talk to. Happy Birthday, Dad. You will always be in my heart. I love you!

Hail and Snow mix for March!?

Last night as we were finishing up dinner we heard VERY loud drops pounding on our skylights. We looked outside to see a significant amount of hail and snow mix falling out of the sky. The ground turned white very quickly and then as fast as it came it left. The rain came and washed it all away. Luke, was SO excited he ran outside and managed to make a mini snowman in about 5 minutes flat. Pretty good work for such a short window of resources :-)

Alesha's 1st Birthday Party

Here are a few shots from our family of four celebration of our precious Alesha's first birthday. In our hearts we SO wanted to be in India to celebrate her special day with her. Since we couldn't, I prepared an Indian dinner, the boys baked and decorated a cake (pink frosting with red writing), we bought some balloons, cards, a new pretty pink picture frame to frame one of my favorite pictures of Alesha, and had a mini celebration. I held it together for the most part the day of her birthday, it was the day after that I broke down. I am just happy to say that we will be able to celebrate her 2nd birthday as a family of 5! We are looking forward to a BIG birthday bash :-)

Happy Birthday, Alesha!

HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY, ALESHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today is our precious baby girl's 1st birthday!!! As I think about not having my daughter with me on her birthday it makes me think of her birth mother. I am so thankful for her birth mother choosing life for her baby. I pray for her today as I am sure her heart is aching along with mine. We are so thankful God has given our family this precious gift. We stand is awe of how God has put all the pieces together and look forward to bringing our daughter home soon.

We are going to cook Indian food for dinner tonight and have a little party just the four of us. The boys have already baked her cake and will decorate it this afternoon. We will take pictures and I will post them in the next couple of days.

I am so thankful that we have moved on to the guardianship phase of the process. Hopefully it won't be too many more months before we have our daughter home. There will be lots of other birthdays and other special days to celebrate with her.

Alesha, we love you so much and look forward to the day when we can fly to India, hold you in our arms, tell you how much we love you, give you tons of hugs and kisses, and then bring you back home with us as a family of 5.

Love always,
Mommy, Daddy, Martin and Luke

Yellow Belt

Our youngest son, Luke, tested for his yellow belt in taekwondo this week. He had a list of skills and terminology he had to demonstrate and then he needed to break a board with a front kick. He did a great job!!! The board broke on the first try. We are so proud of him. He is now an official yellow belt. His old white-striped belt was tied in a knot and presented to him to keep. They tie the previous belt into a knot as a symbol not to forget the knowledge and techniques associated with that belt.


A practice kick before the board break.


I snapped the photo too quick. He broke the board I just missed the actual break!


Luke, with his instructor.


Proud to have broken the board.


Thickness of board


Working on another kick.

NEWS!!!!!

What does that spell - NO OBJECTION CERTIFICATE!!!!!!!
(in short, India doesn't object to us being Alesha's parents )

These letters are SO important to our family. This means we are one step closer to our precious baby girl, Alesha! We will move on to the Kolkata courts hopefully by the end of this week or beginning of next. This step tends to take quite a while to accomplish, but we we are trusting in God's timing. We have all been doing the happy dance around our house and rejoicing in answered prayer. We want to thank all of our friends and family who have been praying for us and continue to pray for us through this long journey. You are appreciated and we can't wait to introduce you to our little girl when she finally arrives home.

Hang on baby girl we are coming! We LOVE you with all our hearts!!

My FIRST EVER massage

Tonight I experienced my very FIRST professional full-body massage. It was AMAZING! I felt very relaxed when it was finished. I was a bit nervous going into this, because I didn't know what to expect. I am VERY modest and wasn't sure how that part was going to work out. My fears were unwarranted as I felt very comfortable and relaxed. It is apparent that I have a LOT of VERY tight spots in my shoulder/neck area. She had to work that area for quite a while. The massage lasted 1hour 30 minutes. and was just lovely. The best part was that my mom gave me this massage as a gift. I love you mom. Now I know what to tell my hubby to get me when he asks me what I want.

Celebrating 60 years of life!

My mom's 60th birthday was February 6th, and my brother and I hosted a huge birthday party for her at my house. My brother and family came down from Spokane for the weekend. It was fun to watch my mom's reactions as she answered the door to see who the next guest was going to be. We didn't make it a surprise party, but who would be attending the party was a surprise. With all the family and friends who made it we had appox. 40 people celebrate her life. The next day, she said "That was the BEST party I have ever had. I have never felt SO loved!" Mission accomplished :-)

My mom is SO deserving of a great big fun party. She is such a fun person. My mom is so special to me. She is my best friend, a follower of Jesus, she is giving, compassionate, loving, passionate, encouraging, dedicated, hard working, has a servant's heart and the list goes on and on. Anyone who has had the privilege of having my mom be a part of their life is very blessed. Thank you mom for ALWAYS being there for me. I love you so much!! I am looking forward to many more years of making memories with you. Love, Sis

Our baby is 11 months old today

Today our precious Alesha turned 11 months old. I am sad when I think about the fact that another 30 days has passed and she still is not in my arms. Everyday that passes she is getting older and I am missing her change, because she is not here. It occurred to me today as I was more irritable and just not myself that subconsciously my frustration with the fact that she is not home really gets to me.....even when I try to deny it.

On the brighter side of things, here is another photo I received. This photo makes me laugh when I look at it. This is quite the outfit and I like how she is holding her fingers. This photo is a visual answer to prayer for me. I had been praying from last month that Alesha would be able to sit up. This is a huge step for her. I was happy to hear and see that she is doing well and looks like she has gained some weight from the last photos I received....always a good sign :-). It will be fun to see how quickly she will develop once she gets home and gets lots of one-on-one attention. I am also looking forward to watching her try to keep up with her brothers.

At this point we are still waiting on the NOC "No Objection Certificate" The next step with be the guardianship step, which includes the scrutinizing of our paperwork, a court date, the judge granting us guardianship and then him signing off on the paperwork. After this step we wait for Alesha's passport to be issued and get ICPC clearance. After all this is completed we can book our flights in India!!! Our prayer has been that we would be in India for Alesha's first birthday, March 1st. We realize that this would be a miracle of God for this to happen! As we have prayed for this we believe that God has the power to make this happen. He has the power to supersede paperwork and governmental steps in order to bring Alesha home in HIS timing. We are also aware that God may not want us to be in India March 1st. We can say that if that is the case we know that God has a reason and we are trusting in Him alone.

Happy 11 month birthday baby girl! We love you so much and can't wait to have you home forever. Hang on, we are coming just as soon as we can.

Oh, How I long for my baby girl!

We received these photos the day after I posted my last blog entry. Wow, God is FAITHFUL. I am so thankful for Tami taking these pics for me. They really lifted my spirits. We got a great update, too. Alesha, is doing really well. She is eating and sleeping good. She is able to push up on her arms when on her tummy, and she can sit up on her own with just a little support. Good job baby girl! These pics sure do make the NOC a bit easier in some ways, but harder in the sense that I am not there with her and everyday she is changing without me. I can't wait to have her in my arms forever!!!

HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I LOVE MY BABY GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1


Her eyes just melt my heart!


Absolutely precious. Look at that face!
"Look at me mommy, I can push up on my arms"


She looks a bit freaked out in this photo.
Looks like she has a built-in pacifier :-)

Change and Fear

After much discussion and prayer we have decided that we will be taking our boys with us to India to bring our precious Alesha home. Our boys have been in this process from the beginning and are just as invested in it as we are. As we weighed all the pros and cons of bringing them with us we concluded that the only reasons we were not going to take them was money (passports, visas, airline tickets, etc) and inconvenience (extra packing, planning, potential sickness, crabbiness, culture shock, logistics,etc) We have decided that these are NOT good enough reasons (for us personally) to not take them. They are old enough to make the trip and we believe that it will be a life-changing trip for them. They are REALLY excited to go to India. I think meeting Alesha for the first time as a family in her birth country will be a very meaningful and powerful experience that we will all cherish forever.

It is funny how you have things planned out in your mind of how things will look and then there is a change, whether it be big or small. Bringing our boys was NOT in my thought process or planning. As we plan and pursue this change I am confronted with the fact that I have a lot of fear. I am not exactly a person that gets jazzed to board a plane, I don't really like the unknown, I fear for my children's safety and health, will my daughter that I have longed for for so long like me?, and the list goes on and on. Change has always been difficult for me. It is funny that as I looked over this post how many times I used the word change (that is why I put it in bold). It seems that along with change comes an element of fear. Change, for me, also brings to light the level of control that I like to have. This entire adoption journey has really tested me in the area of control. There is only so much in this process that you can actually control. WOW, this is SO FRUSTRATING at times. I think that with the lack of control is where my fear comes in. It doesn't make sense. I know that I shouldn't fear, but I do. God is really working on me in these areas. I need to just let go and TRUST God and HIS plan. There have been so many times in my life where I have been fearful and not in control of a situation and God has always been there and seen me through to the other side. I am trying to keep my focus on His faithfulness during those times and REST in HIM during my times of fear. I guess when it comes right down to it I think that when I am in control I can do it better. What a joke! The God of the universe, the one who created me, loves me, gave His life for me, and has a plan for my life.....don't you think HE would know best? The answer is YES! I guess it is human nature to rely on ourselves instead of God. I know in my head that God will help me through this, I think that I need to allow God to penetrate my heart with this truth! I know that He is fully capable of bringing the additional funds we need, protecting us in country, caring for my precious daughter while I am not there, and working out all the details of our upcoming trips, and all the changes that will come as we settle in back at home. Please pray for me that God will flood me with peace and that I will ultimately surrender to HIM and HIS plan for my life.

I wanted to journal these feelings so that I can look back and have yet another record of answered prayer and to see God's faithfulness to me.

I read this poem the other day and it really spoke to me. Words to live by!

You Can, Because He Can

by Roy Lessin

You can ask the Lord

because He will not give you a wrong answer.

You can wait upon the Lord

because His timing is always perfect.

You can trust in the Lord

because He makes no mistakes.

You can hope in the Lord

because He holds your future.

You can rest in the Lord

because He is in control of your life.

You can lean upon the Lord

because He is completely faithful.

ARTICLE 5 so Glad you Arrived!

Last night I made my first call EVER to a US Embassy. This Embassy would be in India and it was quite the experience. From dialing a very long phone number, to a weird ring tone, to being promptly greeeted by a very friendly heavy accented voice then to be put on hold and then promptly disconnected. At this point my husband and I were beginning to laugh a bit. I then called again and this time the first scenario played out, but I was put on hold for a very long time. During this wait I was able to listen to Christmas music that sounded like it was being played off of one of those wind up old fashioned record players back in the old days.....it was playing fa, la,la, la, la , la (wind up here as it was fading) to a louder FA, LA, LA and this was accompanied by static. We were laughing pretty hard at this point. As I waited on hold I was hoping that the rest of this call would play out okay. I was greeted by a nice man who I could barely understand and he said he could help me and then put his hand over the phone and carried on a conversation that I could faintly hear with another person that must have been sitting next to him. He then came back on and said that our Article 5 was sent to CARA yesterday. I repeated back what I thought I heard him say and he confirmed. I then asked if I would be getting an email regarding the approval and he said yes and I asked if it would be today and then the conversation blurred heavily at that point. Thankfully I received the confirmation letter today and all is well. I can only imagine what our Embassy appointment will be like when we are there in person.

I took the boys shopping yesterday so they could spend some of their Christmas money that was burning a hole in their pocket and found these adorable outfits while we were there. I haven't bought hardly anything for Alesha, because I don't know how big she will be or the exact time she will be home, but I couldn't resist these. I figured that I would just buy an outfit on her monthly birthday until I have her in my arms.

This is my favorite. I held it up to Luke and asked him what he thought.
He said "Oh, Alesha will look so good in that. She will look good in red."
I couldn't agree more. Our little princess already has an outfit with her name on it :-)

I love purple and this was so cute I couldn't pass it up.

Happy New Year brings 10 Months of Life

On the first day of this New Year I am excited about......

our baby girl turning 10 months old.
knowing that our daughter will be home with her forever family this year!
seeing how each of our boys will change in the coming year
what God has planned for our family
continuing forming friendships with our neighbors
and much, much more

I cannot believe that another year has passed. This last year seemed to go by so quickly. Today I am celebrating not only the first day of a New Year, but the 10 month birthday of our precious daughter, Alesha! As the 1st day of every months comes I am filled with lots of emotions. First, I am so thankful that God has blessed us with our beautiful daughter. It sure has been a LONG road, but I am thankful to now see the precious face of my daughter. Second, I am sad that it means I have missed another 30 days of her life. Oh, how I wish she could be home so I could feed her her bottles, get her dressed, change her diaper, sing to her, read her stories, rock her, give her hugs and kisses, tell her how much I love her, watch her brothers hold her and play with her, and start making memories as a family of five. Third, and most important, I know that God has this entire adoption journey planned out and sees that big picture of how the timing will play out. We continue to surrender to His timing, even when it hard and doesn't seem to make sense.

It has been exciting to start talking about our travel plans to India, finish up our adoption eduction, and sharing our adoption experience with others. I am thrilled that the people we share our adoption experience with are so excited and can't wait to have Alesha home. It is refreshing to hear such a positive response. The one question I get right out of the gates is "Why does it take SO long to adopt? It doesn't make sense." My response has been you are right, it doesn't make sense. I simply state that there is a lot of paperwork and lots of government bureaucracy that you need to wade through and I have stopped trying to figure it out. I tell them that God led us to adoption and we are trusting in Him to bring our daughter home in His timing. It is frustrating and it breaks my heart that it is so difficult, because I believe that so many MORE people would adopt locally and internationally if the process didn't take years to complete.

As we bring in the new year we are still waiting for our Article 5 to arrive. It seems that since we accepted our referral the following steps of the process have gotten delayed by Thanksgiving, Christmas and now the New Year. I am excited to receive the email that says our Article 5 has been approved and we can move on to the next step.....the NOC. Until then we will wait and pray for our daughter that she will feel God's love through the wonderful ladies who are caring for her in our absence. We love you Alesha and you will be home soon.

A Day of Emotions and SNOW!

Yesterday was an emotional day for me. I was REALLY missing my little girl. I am amazed at how deeply you can love somebody you have never met. When I look at her picture I seem to fall more in love with her everyday. Oh, how I long for her to be home so I can hold her and tell her that I love her!

After a tearful morning I decided to take lunch over to my mom's house. She has been taking care of my grandma who has bronchitis and my boys and I thought she could use the company. When I arrived with lunch my mom had set the table for our yearly "snowman" lunch. We all love the snow and snowmen and since we don't get much snow in our part of Oregon we decided we would celebrate snow just for fun every year between Christmas and New Years. I started feeling better as the lunch went on. From there I left to take the boys skating at the local roller skating rink. Right when we were about to open the front door, I look out the window and I saw the smallest snow flakes falling from the sky! My boys were jumping out of their skin with excitement!!!! A "snowman" lunch to celebrate snow (which we didn't have when we arrived) and now snow is falling from the sky! As we drove to the skate rink the snow poured down. By the time we left the skating rink 2 hours later there was about 2 1/2 inches of snow on my car. We had a VERY slow drive home, because everybody FREAKS out when we get snow and don't know how to drive in it. After a 45 minute drive, which should only take 15 minutes we arrived home safe and sound. My boys then raced as fast as they could to change into their snow clothes and head outside to start building something before it all disappeared.

As I walked around outside I couldn't believe how beautiful it was. All the trees covered with snow and everything blanketed in white. To me snow has such a peaceful and calming feeling. It makes me happy. The boys were busy for the next hour and a half building castles, snowmen, and enjoying the long awaited snow for the year. It was already dark by the time they got outside so my pics are not that great, but you get the idea. This is the first year I was able to get a picture of our Christmas lights with snow on the ground. It was a mini display this year as the strands for the house were half dead and I didn't take the time to replace them.....maybe next year.

My day ended with two very happy boys and a heart still longing for my Alesha. I am excited to think that next year she will be home for Christmas and hopefully it will snow for her, too.


I have the most creative boy. Luke built his snowman SO HUGE that he couldn't lift the second or third ball on top of the bottom one. He decides if I get the ladder that went to the tree house, I can roll it up and it won't be so heavy. His brother helped him roll the 2nd ball and I helped with the last one, because they were not tall enough to reach the final stretch. I was blow away at how they worked together and conquered the objective!

Luke, filling in the gaps so it wouldn't roll off. Check out the size of that thing!!

Finished snowman! He is dirty because he rolled it in the bark dust...oops.

Our mini light display.

Martin's snow display and snowman

Martin's snow fort. He was throwing snowballs at me while I was taking his picture.

FANTASTIC NEWS!

Hey everybody my mommy and daddy got their I-800A extension and I-800 approval this morning. This means they are one step closer to bringing me home. Can you tell I am excited!!!

Miracles DO happen!

Today my husband and I went to our local USCIS immigration office. My husband took time off work in hopes of us being able to get our fingerprints done today. Here is where the miracle comes in....our scheduled appt. is for December 21, 2009. This was WAY too long to wait to have these prints done, because at this point our adoption is on hold, because our previous fingerprints have expired and they need current prints to continue the approval process of our next step.......the beloved I-800.

We showed up at 1:00 p.m. with our official USCIS fingerprint appt. paper and ID in hand. My husband explained our situation to a very nice man behind the desk. He said "Please fill out this form and I will see what I can do. It probably won't be until after 3 p.m. and can't make ANY guarantees." We said "Thank you SO much. We totally understand that the people waiting had an appt. on THIS day and we would be happy to wait." We sat down and began our wait. I am glad I brought an adoption book to read (still working on all that education). I began to get a bit worried as more and more people began showing up. I wondered if they would be able to fit us in, but I was confident that THIS was the day we were going to get this prints.

At 2:20 p.m. he announced that we could proceed to the next station. At this point we had about 13 minutes left on our parking meter (the meter only took 90 minutes at a time). The lady said we should be out before it expired. I was happy to hear this, because getting a parking ticket just didn't sound like fun. The men were able to fingerprint us in no time at all and we were at our car with 2 minutes to spare!

I cannot tell you how relieved and happy I am that we were able to get our prints done today. This will allow us to continue with our I-800 and not fall behind 2 weeks. Thank you God for answering our prayers. I appreciate everybody who prayed along with us. God is good ALL the time, ALL the time God is good!

I will leave you with a current photo we received of our precious Alesha. Every time I look at this photo I start laughing. Her feet all propped up on the crib. She looks so easy going. Can't wait to have her home! Until then I will gaze at her beautiful face and pray that she stays strong, healthy, and safe. We love you baby girl!

Adoption Update

I haven't received any recent pictures of Alesha so I thought I would post a few other that I received with the referral. The first is her referral photo and the other one was the first picture we received along with our referral information. I absolutely love the sweet smile she has on her face. I can't wait to see her smiling face while in am holding her in my arms......soon this will be a reality!

We have sent all our acceptance paperwork to our agency on November 23, 2009. Here is a photo of us at the shipping place. I told the lady who helped me that this was paperwork for our baby girl we are adopting from India. She was very excited for us and thought Alesha was beautiful...I couldn't agree more. I asked her to take a photo of us for our scrapbook....she honored my request. Here we are holding a priceless package of VERY important paperwork.


We didn't send the photo on the box....it was just for the photo :-)

At this point in the process our acceptance paperwork has arrived at our agency. We have a bit of a hiccup in the process right now. Our original I-800A (which took like 6 months to get) expired on Nov. 29, 2009. I had put in for an extension on November 10th to make sure it didn't expire since we hadn't received a referral. I am SO happy that I filed for the extension, because we would have had to start back at square one with the entire process if our original I-800A expired without the extension.

We worked very hard with our agency to get our I-800 in and have it logged into USCIS systems before my I-800A expired. If this happened we wouldn't have to worry about the extension and just move onto the I-800 portion of the process. Wouldn't you know it that USCIS logged our I-800 paperwork on NOVEMBER 30TH just ONE day after our I-800A expired, which included our fingerprints not being valid after the 29th. This delay was due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Since this happened they cannot process our I-800 without having valid fingerprints. Our fingerprint appt. isn't until Dec. 21st. At this point we are delayed in our entire process until we get our fingerprints redone. With valid fingerprints USCIS can process the I-800A extension FIRST AND THEN the I-800.

I am praying that we might be able to walk into the fingerprinting office with our paperwork on Monday or Tuesday of this week and they will fingerprint us without an appointment. If this happens we can continue without a 3 week delay. I am documenting this as it will be a move of God if this happens. I will just do everything that I can do to help move this process along and then wait on God for His perfect timing.

I'll keep you posted on what happens next. The journey of adoption is full of twists, turns, miracles, and surprises.

BEAUTIFUL!

We are beyonds words! We now have the privilege of introducing to you our daughter Alesha Mugdha Pfeiffer! She was born on March 1, 2009. We feel so blessed!!!!! God has answered our many prayer and we are SO thankful. I had prayed specifically that when I saw our referral picture I would know without a shadow of a doubt that this baby girl is who God had planned for our family. When we opened up the photo to see our first glimpse of our future daughter our entire family knew deep in our hearts that this was indeed our precious Alesha!

We accepted a referral for this precious Indian princess on November 17, 2009. The wait to post her picture has been killing me. The policy is to wait until we receive the acceptance paperwork package. The FedEx man delivered the package this morning at 10:20 a.m. as I was watching out the window to make sure he didn't drive by our house. He was supposed to deliver by 10:30 so I was ready with open arms to receive "the package" . This package contains a TON of documents that need to signed so our weekend plans have just been made. A date with a massive stack of papers and a few ink pens. Let the signing begin.

You may be wondering when we can travel to India and bring our daughter home. We are told that it can take anywhere from 6-8 months to complete the remainder of steps and paperwork. We are trusting that God will bring our precious daughter home in HIS timing, whatever that looks like. We will continue to trust and wait like we did for our referral. Although this wait is going to be much harder when we have this beautiful face to look at every day.

Our hearts are bursting with joy! We are praising God for his faithfulness to us and trusting HIM for the remainder of this journey.

Alesha, we love you SO much and we can't wait to have you in our arms!

Love, Mommy, Daddy, Martin and Luke

Taekwondo

I signed Luke up for a beginners class in Taekwondo this term for school. Triforce Northwest Taekwondo offers classes at our local homeschool campus. It has been a great experience for Luke and we are already signed up for the next term. On the last day of class Luke took his test to advance from white belt to white stripe belt. For this test you must break a board with a single kick. Luke did GREAT! He broke the board on the first try and then broke it in half again! It was so cool and everybody was really excited for him.

Luke with is Instructor. He is holding the pieces of the board and his advancement belt.

Practicing some round kicks

The board break!

The kick that broke the board

Adoption Update

Just a quick update on our adoption process. First, on, November 6th, we moved up to #2 on the waiting list for our precious Alesha! Gidget and her family accepted a referral for their precious Maiya. I got the news on my son Martin's 11th birthday. We are so excited for her and to finally see some movement on the upper portion of the wait list.

On November 10th I completed and mailed our paperwork for our I-800A extension. We are the very FIRST I-800A family to go through since they switched from the I-600 and we had a tough time getting our original I-800A approval. I pray the extension will go smoothly.

I am so happy to see that the passports are finally coming through so all my adoption friends can go and pick up their precious babies! We continue to pray for God's timing and perfect peace.

BIRTHDAY BOY!

Our son, Martin, turned 11 years old on November 6th! I can't believe it has already been 11 years since I first saw his precious face. I am so proud of him. He is growing into a wonderful young man. His heart that seeks Jesus makes me smile. I love to watch him with small children. He is so gentle and patient with them and they just love to follow him around. His little cousins always want to know where Martin is. I long for the day when I can watch him play with his sister. I appreciate his creativity and energy. There is never a dull moment around my house :-) Martin we love you very much and you make us proud to call you our son.

They sure grow up fast!

85 years old!

My grandma turns 85 years old today. She is the only living grandparent I have. I have enjoyed spending more time with her over the past few years as she is living closer with my mom caring for her. God has done a lot of work in my grandma over the years. A couple of years ago she was baptized. This isn't something you see everyday. God is faithful to continue a good work in His children. Grandma, I wish you a Happy Birthday with many more years to come.
I love you!