TA is Here!

HOORAY! Our TA arrive on Thurs. December 9th. We are now in the midst of travel plans. I decided to create website for our journey to Our Brown-Eyed Boy. I had heard that you cannot post to Blogger in China therefore you can follow along as we travel to bring our sweet boy home

HERE

NO NEWS!

As we approach this Thanksgiving Holiday I give thanks to the Lord for He is good. I am so very blessed with goodness in my life and I must always remember to give things for the large and small blessings that fill my days.

No news to report on our little brown-eyed boy. Still waiting for our TA and praying that it arrives SOON so that we can travel well before Christmas but as each day passes and we don't have it I realize that it may be January before we can leave. I have to admit that I am filled with anxiousness right now as I anticipate getting me and Mike ready to travel to China for 2+ weeks as well as preparing for our kiddos to stay here with my friend Sara during that time. I am no where near ready to go and with an insane work and school schedule (for the kids) between now and Christmas I am going to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off from now until we set foot on that China bound plane. I have "spa moments" as I think about my sweet friend Sara. She is so faithful to call and encourage me, share in my excitement and help me sort through the millions of thoughts racing through my mind. And did I mention that she is keeping our 3 kiddos while we are in China. Yes, this saint of a woman is keeping our wild and crazy kids for 2 weeks. With this said I am resting in the goodness and provision of the Lord knowing that He has all things ordered according to His purposes. Despite the anxiousness, we are so excited that very soon our little brown-eyed boy will be snug in our arms. We are praying like crazy for God to prepare his little heart to receive the love of his mama and daddy and that he will be fully ready to be a part of our family as well as prayers that we will be ready to meet his needs, whatever they may be.

I just did a massive catch - up on "Six Pack + One" about the "happenings" of our family and how we have been passing the time while we wait. So if you are up for a marathon of our family hop on over. I hope all is well with you and that you have a blessed Thanksgiving.

Continuing to Wait

Patience is NOT one of my virtues and I hate to wait. In fact I am a rather impulsive woman. Therefore I always seem to find myself in forced seasons of waiting. As I sit here today I really thought that I would be frantically running around like a chicken with my head cut off preparing for travel but alas no TA....UGH. But I will rest in the fact that God's timing will be absolutely perfect so I will continue to wait. To make my heart ache even more for my sweet boy we received these precious photos last week. We had sent a package to him and the orphanage was kind enough to take some photos of him with the package. Finally, he smiles and I do believe that he is already a pro on the cell phone and evidence that "he loves snacks" is proved in the pic (look at that face with the grapes). I certainly hope that the hotel has some grapes for my boy.

Tommorow it will have been exactly one year since I saw his face for the first time. It has been a very long wait to have him home but I was thinking this morning that his wait for a mommy and daddy has been much longer. I ache for all I have missed in his little life but I know that my God will redeem those years that we were seperated. We only have a short time before we are together and I cannot wait for that day when I see my precious son face to face. So as I approach the one year mark of when my life's path unexpectedly collided with a little brown eyed boy I rejoice at the gift that I have been given once again to be a mommy. The goodness of the Lord overwhelms me!

WELCOME!

Welcome to Our Brown Eyed Boy, a blog that I started to record the events, my thoughts and the emotions of my heart which are birthed from the joining of a little 3 year old boy with beautiful brown eyes to a family who has already fallen in love with their son, brother, grandson and great grandson. I am honored and thrilled that you have joined us and hope that through this journey you wil be touched by the hand of God in some special way. It is always my greatest desire that God would be glorified in my words and expressions and I hope that you will see Him shine through this journey.

We find ourselves walking this path of adoption once again as a result of some pretty miracluous circumstances. You can read details about our story as well as our little guy in previous posts. I have also listed them for easy reference at the top of the side bar entitled "Previous Posts". You can click on a post and it will take you directly to that entry I will continue to post updates as we wait for our Travel Approval as well as during our trip to China. You can also check out our family blog at Six Pack + 1 here where I chat about our family and our daily life. Thanks again for visiting us and be sure to leave a comment and letting us know you stopped by.

LOA!

Our LOA...Letter of Acceptance arrived on August 13th! I have been so incredibly busy managing our crazy life that I haven't had a chance to post this big news. We are so very excited as it seems that our travel is now within shouting distance. Now just praying that our Article 5 and TA come in lighting speed. I have lots of news to share but will have to wait until I have more than just a couple of minutes to post. I am BELIEVING GOD for great and mighty things which I know He has planned for me!

LID!

No news to report other than we received our Log In Date which is;

July 13, 2010

We have been busy as bees around our house trying to get all of our projects completed before school starts. To see what we've been up to check out our family blog here. Brown-eyed boy's room is just about complete and once I get a few more accessories I will post some pictures. The girls agreed to move to our guest room giving their room to their new brother. I am excited about the new rooms and can't wait until our boy is here enjoying his space.

DTC.....finally!

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pur and fautless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

The other day while in a store with Emily, a stranger asked me why I adopted Emily. I never quite know how to respond to those "out of the blue" questions from people whose intentions I don't know. Sometimes people can be rather hateful so I am very careful as to how I respond. I am usually quick and to the point but I got the feeling that this lady was truly interested so I shared a little more than I usually do. It ended up being a nice conversation and throughout the day I found myself dwelling on the intentions of my heart as it relates to adoption. It is a passion that runs deep and I am so honored that God has birthed within me this love for orphaned children. We are all instructed to care for orphans and widows but not all are "called" to bring them into their homes and call them their own. How creative is our God that He builds within each of His children different gifts and talent as well as passions so that His purposes can be accomplished. I guess I was just thinking about the fact that I am so thankful that He has gifted me with a passion for His precious children who haven't known the love of a mommy and daddy and I have the joy of being a mommy to 2 of those little ones. This lady asked me, "how did you grow to love her?" My answer was, "well I didn't actually grow to love her, I just loved her." I could tell that this woman was baffled at my response but as I thought about it I could see how she would be confused. God gave me a love for Emily even before I knew her and it was supernatural and cannot be explained in human words so although I try I don't believe that it can ever be understood by someone who has never experienced this incredible love for someone. That love has been once again duplicated within my heart for my sweet little boy. I think about him, I even dream about him and I cannot wait until my hearts desire of holding his little body in my arms is real.

Finally, I am thrilled to report that we are DTC (Dossier to China) as of yesterday, June 22, 2010. So we are one step closer to our boy. Now the second leg of the wait begins. The process has been exhausting and frustrating simply because we so desperately want our brown eyed boy home where he belongs and everything seems to have taken longer than necessary. Nevertheless I am confident that God is orchestrating every little event and will complete our journey in His perfect timing. As I look at time-lines we are hoping that travel will be around October/November which would really be nice considering the fact that we will have him home before the holidays.

On another note, we were surprised with some updated photos of our little guy. It is so good to see him. I am still wishing to see that smile which I know he is hiding. My favorite photo is this one...

It is obvious that he is really checking out his brother and sisters. I am amazed at how much he has changed....must be the haircut. But then I am reminded of how fast time is passing and all that I am missing in his life. Oh I can't wait to snuggle him.

USCIS Approval

On Tuesday, June 2 we arrived home after a little mini-vacation and waiting in our mailbox was our USCIS Approval. For all of my non-adoption friends that is the approval from the immigration service stating that we are approved to adopt our brown-eyed boy. I quickly packaged it up and Fed Exed it to our agency right away. Once this document is authenticated and certified our dossier will be on its way to China and we are in our final leg of waiting. I was thrilled to know that we are one step closer to our boy!

While we wait....Fingerprinting Day

I haven't posted in a while simply because we have been lying in wait. Something that I do not like at all. This process seems to be taking so very long and I miss my little brown-eyed boy. The hardest part about this leg of the wait is that I have had nothing on my list of things to do which makes it all seem less than real. In fact there are times that it seems like a faint dream that I have a son in China. I think about him every day but the hope of having him in my arms is so far in the distance that I have to really work hard at thinking about him being a part of our family. It is my great hope that we will have him with us for Christmas but I just can't get my hopes up and if the first part of this process is any indication of wait times, we may be spending another holiday without our boy....triple UGH! BUT, I will remain faithful and keep my hope steadfast that in God's timing our little guy will be home with us.

We did make some progress though and had our USCIS Fingerprinting appt. last week. We were so excited to finally be able to DO something so we loaded up the gang and headed to the Immigration Office. The whole appt. was lightening fast, we arrived at 8:00 am and were done by 8:20....AMAZING! Our fingerprinting for Emily took us at least 3 hours. Well, given that things went so fast, foiled our plans of doing something special for Cody's birthday because it was so early in the morning so we hit Bass Pro Shop which was a treat in and of itself. We are not hunters, fisherman, we do not like camping or really anything outdoorsy. An occasional day hike is the extent of our outdoor activity. I guess you could call us "city folk" but this was such a treat for everyone. Knowing that a post isn't complete without a few photo's I just had to post a few shots of our excursion to commemorate fingerprinting day.

Now this is as close as we will ever get to a moose.

I think I just might have some hunters in my family after all.....but the guns just have to be pink.

"Emily get your gun"

Yee Haw!

A Room for Our Brown eyed Boy

Oh how I wish that I had some wonderfully exciting news to share. Like we were DTC but alas we are still awaiting our request for fingerprinting. Our I-800 was FINALLY filed last week and I am told that it can be anywhere from 2-3 weeks before we are called for fingerprinting and then it can be another 3-6 weeks before we receive our USCIS Approval. For all of you non-adoption folks, this is a very important piece of paper that says your family is approved by the United States Immigration Department to adopt a child. (I am hoping that the recent events concerning the Russian adoption don't mean longer waits for this document) Anyway, we are not having a hard time passing the time as life is beyond busy as I have been overwhelmed with trying to catch the kids up with their schooling coupled with day to day activities of taking care of a house, husband and 3 kids. Despite the busyness I have found that I have no problem brainstorming and planning a special place in our house for our newest member.

When we purchase our home 2 years ago, I was convinced it was absolutely perfect for our family. It was a far cry from living in a high rise condo with 3 kids and while I still think many aspects of the house plan are perfect there are a few things that I have discovered are less than ideal. For example, we have 3 floors and only 2 bedrooms on each of the floors. I would absolutely love to have all the kiddos and their playroom on the same floor but that isn't possible without a major renovation of this house. I really dislike having the kids (and their stuff) scattered from one end of the house to the other but we can't do a renovation right now and we aren't even sure it would ever be possible therefore my wheels have been turning about where to put our brown-eyed boy. We currently have a room that is on the main level of our house and close to our master bedroom that is being used as a school/playroom. We decided that since we aren't going to be homeschooling next year we could transform this room into our little guys room. However, I am in a bit of a dilemma. I have a beautiful Pot*ttery Ba*rn type entertainment unit that my daddy made for the kids that will stay in this room and I love the cornice over the window which is black and taupe colored. I would love to keep the cornice but am having a hard time finding bedding that is suitable for a little boys room that matches. Also, I want to mix some furniture as I wouldn't want white furniture for a boys room. Sooooo here are a few of my ideas. I would love love some input on what you think.

Here is our school/playroom currently. (Lighting was super bad for the photo)

This is the bed from Pot*tery Ba*rn that I love in the espresso finish. Hopefully they won't discontinue the Tho*mas Furn*iture and I could get additional pieces when we are able to move him to another room.And I absolutely love this bedding. My favorite!

Found this picture online and love the layout of the room with the shelves. Thought it might work well with our room by putting the bed up against the wall across from the entertainment unit. I also like the idea of putting a trunk or chest at the end of the bed for toys and stuff.
Not my favorite but kind of liked the "western theme" Thought the black bed was nice but I am afraid that I may get tired of the black over time. Would have to do quite a bit of searching for fabric for the bedding however accessories would be easy as we have tons of western stuff out here.

This was my least favorite but again thinking that accessories for a fishing type room would be really easy.

We also love golf and I have looked at some golf themed bedrooms....nothing jumps out at me as super cute so if you have any ideas or links for those types of room please share.