Pumpkin Farm

Today, we met my mom, dad, and two sisters at a pumpkin farm not that far away from where we live. We try to go to different pumpkin farms in October and I must say that this farm was the best! They have an outdoor eating place that is covered with a food bar, games, clean restrooms, a wooden fortress built playground, a stage for special performances, all sorts of animals to pet, hayride, but most of all, a kiddie zipline! The kids took pictures with Granna and Poppy on the hay bails: And then went to pet the animals in the barn:

That is a pig he is petting!

Isabella said the animals were nasty and she didn't want to touch them and "then maybe, accidently rub my eyes and get an eye infection!" I have taught her too well! So this is a "posed" picture.....I made her just touch the goat but told her she didn't have to "pet" the goat!

And this hen was making all sorts of racket in the barn, so we went in to see what all the clucking was about! She kept squatting and all of a sudden, out popped that brown egg underneath her!!! I am not kidding!! (I know it is blurry, but I took it in a hurry without focusing.)

Then, we all turned around to leave and this is what we saw:It was like they were coming to see what all the human-fussing was all about! Then, we turned to leave out the other side of the barn and this was waiting for us!I am not kidding, this llama looked part human and partly animated! It was just staring a hole through us! It was beautiful but really kind of freaky!!

We all then made our way to the "kiddie" zipline (and I use the term "kiddie" loosely!) We strapped the kids into their harnesses, told them to hold on tight, and let them loose to ride side by side and they LOVED it!

Poppy and Elijah after his first ride down the zipline!

In fact, it looked like so much fun, Brad decided to try it but the harness was too little (again, this was a "kiddie" zipline) and after he rode the line, he tried to get out of the harness as it moved back and forth on the line! I don't think we have ever laughed so hard! Everybody (except Granna and Poppy) took several turns riding the zipline, and loved it so that is why we all say this was the BEST pumpkin farm we have been to so far!

Aunt Christi and Elijah reinacting 'Titanic' even though Elijah had no idea what he was doing. We just told him to shout, "I'm the king of the world!" and he obliged!

On the way home, we stopped by Cracker Barrell for lunch and rocked on the porch for a long while. It was so relaxing as the weather was perfectly breezy! It was a great day especially because it was Granna's birthday!

On the WAIT LIST!!!

Today our paperwork was sent out to D.C. for authentication and we are officially on the "wait list" for a referral!!! Here is the email we received:

Dear Brad & Kimberly,

You are officially placed on waitlist to receive a referral! I reviewed your dossier documents, and they are ready to be sent today to Washington, D.C. for final authentication. Currently, families have waited up to three to five months to receive a referral. Please keep in mind that this timeline is subject to change at any time. Congratulations on making it through the tedious dossier process!

I will be in touch with you as soon as a referral is ready for you. I ask for your patience during this time and completely understand that “waiting” is probably the most difficult (yet exciting!) part for most parents. I would like to confirm that your referral preference is for 2 children (twins or siblings), male or female, between the ages of 0-3 years.

They went on to explain about training hours we needed to complete before we traveled and any vaccinations we needed before travel.

We are so excited to say the least!!! Now, we wait.......

“Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.” Isaiah 26:8

Gladney bound!

Hooray! We overnighted our dossier to Gladney today! I feel such relief that I have all that paperwork behind me and out of my hands!! I feel like I have been working on paperwork for 18 months straight! (Well, I really have!) So, now we move on to the next phase of this process which is the "Waiting stage". And even though it may sound a little strange, I am so tired of paperwork, I oddly welcome this next step of waiting. But I know I probably will have to eat my words when I become overly anxious and not wanting to embrace the wait time!

So here is our dossier spread out with everything included:

And here are all of our photo pages we had to include: (We were able to use some of the ones we had already made for our China dossier which helped tremendously!)

Juvenile Diabetes Walk

Back in August, we were told that my cousin, Bethany, has Juvenile Diabetes. As she was getting ready to go back to Texas A&M for her sophomore year, she had a doctor's appointment where they discovered that her insulin levels were drastically elevated. She was told to get to the hospital, and within a couple of hours her entire life had changed. She is only 19 years old and has Juvenile Diabetes (Type I).

This has been a whirlwind these past several months, as she has had to accept this new medical condition, quickly educate herself about it, learn how to cope and balance a new diet, medicines, exercise, and documenting when and how much she exercises and eats all while trying to be a "regular" college student! I know it has been overwhelming to say the least, but she loves the Lord and knows He is in control. What a blessing to know the Lord and have hope in Him when we experience heartache and trials!

In an effort to show our support for Bethany and others with Juvenile Diabetes, we all were invited to participate in the Houston Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Run/Walk early this morning! Of course, we were late and heard the gun go off to signal the start as we were walking up through the gate! We were a motley crew (Mom, me and the kids, Trey, Reagan and their kids) all eager to get started and almost every corner we would pass, Mom (with her two brand-new knees) would ask if we could see the finish line!! We brought a 2-seater wagon and a little trike that the kids fought over, as Reagan had a 2-seater jogging stroller with Isaac and all of our bags in it. Since the whole walk was contained, we kind of just let the kids run free as long as we could still see them up ahead and they loved it! Elijah's favorite part were the "break tables" stocked with water bottles and fruit! We really took our time just visiting as we walked and taking rest breaks, and at one point we actually stopped to watch the kids roll down a steep grassy hill on the way. We were pretty oblivious to the others passing us until we looked around and discovered that we were literally the LAST people in the walk and we still had a long way to go!!! We started laughing as we passed each "break" point because the volunteers would clap really hard trying to encourage us to "keep going"! Then they would dump all the leftover apples into our little wagon! Elijah decided to hang with the food and would bite a row all around an apple and then throw it off the side of the wagon, only to do it again to another apple. Trey and I had to keep picking up his barely eaten apples and throw them away. (Even with all the apples Elijah consumed, we still came home with over 50 apples!)
As we were approching the end of the walk, there were signs posted on both sides of the path with pictures of the kids who had Juvenile Diabetes and it was pretty sobering to say the least.
We crossed the finish line so late, that most everyone had dispersed! We were so glad that we went and were a part of something to encourage Bethany. We met up with them under their tent where we received our T-shirts they had made for everyone and got to visit with more of our family for a while. It truly was a great time and Bethany's team alone has raised over $10,000 for Juvenile Diabetes Research (with more rolling in!) Oh, and as we were walking to the parking lot to go home, we (just Mom, the kids and I since Trey and Reagan parked elsewhere) not only realized that we were the absolute LAST people left, but that we had no idea where we were parked! There were a bazillion lots all color coded, but do you think either one of us ever looked up at where we parked this morning? No. We were running late, so we jumped out of our car and blindly followed the other "sheep" through the parking lot and between the cones to the starting line! We didn't even know what COLOR lot we parked in, so as we meandered around the lots and going with our "gut" feel, we found our lot! It was the only lot with a car in it and we felt like we were in the desert and seeing a mirage of our car!

We felt a little like "TweedleDum and TweedleDee".

Birthday Photos

Okay....so, this year I have been running soooo late on getting the kids their birthday photos. Since they both have summer birthdays, I am more than a couple months behind but better late than never! So here are a few of the pictures:

Isabella's 5 year old picture

"Mommy made this dress and hairbow for me!"

Elijah's 4 year old picture

"Granna made this reversible dinosaur shortall for me!"

Sister and Brother...

.....cute as can be!

These next pictures were taken inbetween takes:

"Gimmee a kiss, please?"

"Come here and give me a kiss!"

"I've got you now!"

"Mom? Are you seeing this?"

This is one of my favorite pictures!

They truly adore one another!

Little Violinist

Ever since the kids were much younger, they have LOVED the Little Einsteins show on the Disney Channel. The show is about these little animated kids who go on journeys with their rocketship and it is all set to classical pieces of music and art. They teach the kids about all the classical pieces and their composers and the scenes in the background are of the different art pieces. When Isabella was around 3 years old, she began to notice every time a violin was played in each episode. Then, she began to notice a violin playing in other music she heard everywhere she went and would get really excited about it!

She began to ask for a violin to play on last summer, so we waited to see if her interest changed to something else before we started looking for one. Last year for Christmas, she was totally surprised to find a violin especially for her!
(side note: notice how Elijah wants NOTHING to do with Christmas!)




We had bought the cheapest one I could find for $25 and she played it all the time never losing interest! So, this summer, one of the gifts my parents gave her for her 5th birthday was.....vioin lessons! It took us a while to find a teacher who would teach a child so young, but a few weeks ago, she began her violin lessons!

We brought the violin that she got for Christmas to her lesson and quickly found out that it was something that "real" violinists call a V.S.O (violin-shaped object)! So, she had to be measured for her very own violin that we rented (you do not want to know how much they cost to buy!)and these pictures are of her getting fitted with her new violin at her teacher's house!

A little shy, a little nervous....but a whole lot of cuteness!!

You can see her "old" violin has been "retired" for display on top of our piano.

I must say that she is the most adorable little violinist I have ever seen! And, she is so proud of her new teeny-tiny violin!

It's Here!

Today, we finally received our updated I-171H form from the USCIS! This is the last document we have been waiting for so we can send it off to the Secretary of State in Austin to be certified which we will do tomorrow! When we receive the document back, we will then overnight it to Gladney with the rest of our dossier! We are almost finished with the paperwork portion!!!

Robel's Journey Home

A family's journey to get their little boy, Robel: (one of my favorite videos!)

Many Ethnicities, One Race

I have posted an interview with this same man, Thabiti Anyabwile, earlier in September. He has now written an excellent article called Many Ethnicities, One Race. He breaks down the way we, as a culture, have developed this idea of "races" and that we can't find a biblical grounding for this nor the way cultural tradition allows race to define people, the church, etc. Thabiti Anyabwile is a pastor of a church of FBC Grand Cayman and used to be an elder at Mark Dever's church. Here is just a little section of the article to whet your appetite:

The fall of man into sin is the reason racial animosity, hatred, and divisions exist. Apart from the corruption of man and man’s view of himself, God, and the world, we would not have witnessed the scale of misanthropy we have witnessed through the centuries. And this habit of racial thinking, hatred, and action belongs to the nature and disease of sin from which we need to be redeemed.

The question is, has God done anything about "race" and racism? (And it is both "race"—which is evidence of unbiblical thinking about man—and racism we should be concerned about.)

The Cross and the New Humanity
Perhaps the best place to see God’s answer is the letters of Paul. There we find that God has indeed answered in Christ, and he has done something more profoundly wonderful than most people have imagined.

Consider the apostle’s words in Ephesians 2:13-17:
"But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law and commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached to you who were far off and peace to those who were near."

Here the apostle holds up for the church at Ephesus, which is comprised of both Jewish and Gentile believers, the implications of Christ’s completed work for a doctrine of man. What’s his main point in these verses? Through the completed work of Christ on the cross a new humanity is created, one involving all nations and making them into "one new man" through union with Christ. Christ has taken the old race of Adam and made them one new spiritual race or ethnicity. We are no longer Jews and Gentiles in the earthbound, fleshly, divisive, and hostile sense; we are now God’s workmanship, a new nation and household, and a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17).

Open House

My friend, Cindy, had asked me and her daughter, Amy, to have an Open House together a couple of months ago. Cindy graciously opened up her home as it featured products from Mary Kay, lia sophia jewelry, Once Upon A Family, and my small business Heavenly Heartstrings that includes embroidered burp cloths, Bunsies, and matching socks! We had the Open House on Thursday morning and Friday evening and we had so much fun! Since I have been selling these items to raise money for the adoption, I was very pleased with the turn out! And since Cindy lives close to Brad's school, he even had a chance to swing by (I love that he is so supportive of whatever I do!) and pick out some cologne from Mary Kay that smells sooooo good! Happy Birthday to him! Here are some pictures of my Once Upon A Family products:
And these wonderful silk Tradition books:
And my Heavenly Heartstring items:
Embroidered burp cloths:
Burp cloths with names embroidered: (notice the bears are wearing the Bunsies!)
If you would like to see more examples of my burp cloths, Bunsies, and socks, click here!

William Tell "Mom" Overture

I am sure that by now, many have seen this clip, but I think she is truly clever! You can never have enough humor when raising children. Of course, this is the 21st century version seeing as I was raised in the 80's and we didn't have cell phones or the ability to "text", but it works nonetheless.

Children's creativity

This is what happens when your daughter decides she is going to decorate the bathroom:(and when I said, "you used up all the dixie cups!", she replied, "what are dixie cups?")

And this is what happens when your son says he is going to be taller than Daddy:(by the way, after he was finished with these cushions, he told Isabella to put them back on the couch.......and she DID!)