Internet and What Adoption Is and Isn't

Well, I'm here. And not without Internet after all. The Time Warner guy refused to put in the cable line because the sprinkler system people were there. Even though his line and their lines weren't anywhere near each other . . . even though it was less than four feet long and wouldn't have taken ten minutes . . . it was extremely hot yesterday afternoon and he, in my opinion, just didn't want to do it. But we do have Internet . . . so there's that.

This post isn't going to be about the cable guy. Don't worry. It's not going to be about the house or moving either. Hear that? Huge sigh of relief from Internet land. Since I'm not sure how to segue into a totally different topic, I'll just jump right in.

People tell us we're doing a good thing by adopting. They think it's wonderful that we are "rescuing" a little girl from an orphanage. And while I always, always appreciate their kind words, I also cringe just a little bit everytime I hear them. Because y'all we're not adopting to do "a good thing" nor are we adopting to "rescue an orphan". There is just so much more to it than that.

Adoption is a beautiful thing. Adoption is the perfect picture of what Christianity is all about . . . taking us out of the world and adopting us into the family of the King of Kings. Quite remarkable isn't it? So yes, adoption of a child, an orphan, someone without anyone is amazing. But, as I've said before, adoption isn't orphan rescue. I know that there are some who would disagree with me. But if adoption is solely for the purpose of saving an orphan then I think, in the end, there will be some dissatisfaction there.

There are those in the world of adoption who would have you believe that everyone (and by "everyone" I mean EVERYONE . . . sorry . . . I'm not shouting . . . just emphasizing) should adopt. There are those that think that to not adopt is wrong, but once again, I just can't agree with this. We are adopting because we desire to add a child to our family through the process of adoption. Yes, through adopting we are in essence rescuing an orphan, but our daughter will never be our project. She will never be our mission field except in the sense that both of our children are our first mission field. She will be our daughter. Will there be challenges? That's for sure and for certain. Will there be struggles? Most likely, yes. But once she is ours, she will be ours. She will be our daughter and Andrew's sister, not the little girl we rescued from the orphanage.

To say that all should adopt, is to say that all should move to Africa or the Amazon. To say that all should adopt is to say that orphans are a project, a mission field to be conquered. If you need a project or a mission field give to an orphanage. Go on a mission trip. By all means move to Africa. If that's what God wants you to do then go for it. But if you want a child to love and cherish as your own, and you feel like God is calling you to do that through adoption, then and only then adopt.

The truth is we're over two years into this thing. The newness and excitement of it all have worn off a bit only to be replaced by patient and sometimes not so patient waiting. It doesn't win us any awards. There's nothing fun or glamorous about fingerprints, and reports, and doctor's letters, and home studies, and paying lots of money to various agencies, and then repeating it all every! single! year! It's a lot of paperwork and waiting and hoping that the FBI sends back your fingerprints approved (not so subtle hint). So if you're in it, you'd better really be in it. You'd better be committed, because believe it or not, waiting is work.

And when it's all said and done, when we finally receive our referral . . . scratch that, when we finally get our daughter home, all the stress and the waiting will all be more than worth it.

Moving Day is Coming

I haven't worked out in over a week.

I'm losing Internet connection (well I'll still have my phone but that doesn't count) in t-minus 4 hours and counting.

This is how we're living right now.

But . . . the house is on the brink of being finished. Which is good because I'm on the brink of insanity. Moving Day is coming.

Sayonara my friends! I'll talk to y'all sometime next week. Hopefully, from a more organized point of view.

A Million Pounds of Pressure

The house is so close to being done, but it's not. And it feels like there are a million little things to finish before we're supposed to move in next Monday or Tuesday.

I'm living in a house filled with a bazillion boxes. Who knew we had so much junk stuff?!? We have to get all this stuff out of this house before the 27th. One week from today.

Once we get in, I have to unpack like a madwoman and get everything settled so we can update our home study . . . again. And of course, there's the fingerprints. If someone would please just approve them . . . please!

And there a couple other things going on which I'm just not free to discuss at this point. But with all of this I start to feel slightly panicky. I feel like there's literally a million pounds of pressure on my shoulders. I don't like the feeling. I don't like being unsettled. Oh let's face it, I don't like not having control. And right now there is very little that I can control. So when I wake up at 3:30 in the morning wondering what the heck I'm going to do, I've started doing the best and only thing I can do. I give it all to God. I'm pretty sure He can handle the pressure.

⁷ casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7

Flying Solo

Patrick left to take the youth to church camp this morning so Andrew and I are on our own until Friday evening. Andrew was not happy about his Daddy leaving for the week. He told me he was going to cry every night. Super . . . I've promised him we'll have lots of fun in hopes of keeping him from having a breakdown, and since it's six bazillion degrees outside with nine thousand percent humidity, I foresee a lot of movie watching and Target shopping. Yep, I'm going to rot my child's brain and help reinforce his shopping addiction.

Having Patrick gone while we're trying to finish the house and get the rest of the stuff packed up is a bit of an inconvenience. Okay, that's a lie. It's a huge pain in the rear. Thank God for cell phones and instant communication. Hopefully, I'll survive this week!

I keep seeing all these tweets and posts about people heading off on vacations. I'm jealous. I love to travel. I love vacations, especially to the mountains in the heat of the summer. But I don't see that happening this year. We just have way too much going on. We do have a condo reserved at the beach for a few nights in July, and we're looking forward to having some quiet time to relax and unwind.

Now I guess I should get up and get moving. This house isn't going to pack itself, but if one of you would like to come pack for me . . .

Busy Days

The past two weeks have been busy. We're trying to wrap up the house by the 24th . . . say a prayer. Our home study was finally approved, without my fingerprints. We have to update again once we move, and we're hoping to have my approval back from the FBI by then. Andrew's had two weeks of swimming lessons and one week of VBS. And this week was our town's annual festival, Chisholm Trail Roundup. We're exhausted, but it's a good exhausted.

Sad truth, I didn't once pull out one of our good cameras. These are all iPhone pics. All I can say is thank goodness for our phones. Although they do make us lazy in the photography department.

This was Andrew's fifth year of swimming lessons. His teacher is awesome, and I'm amazed at how well he's doing.

 The fear factor has definitely lessened. While he's still cautious, which is good, he's not terrified, which is just as good.

This was his first year of VBS, and he loved it. The theme was "Facing Fear, Trusting God" which was quite appropriate considering Andrew, like his mama, sometimes struggles with fear. Maybe I should've attended. ;)

Thursday night, after Family Night at VBS, we took Andrew to ride the rides at Chisholm Trail. He's actually big enough for the bigger rides or at least some of them. This giant slide terrified me. He loved it.

Last night he went to his Aunt Sarah's to stay the night. He got a hold of her phone and took some pics. This is one of them.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Red Neck Landscaping

When it comes to certain things . . . okay, a lot of things . . . in my life I tend to be a bit on the OCD side. I want things done a certain way, and so insist on doing them myself (that or coercing my husband into doing them for me). Control issues? Whatever made you think that.

Anyway, one of those "things" that I insisted be done my way were the flowerbeds at our new house. Do you know what a hassle it is to change flowerbeds once they're put in? I knew that in order to get them done the right way I wanted them, with the plants I wanted, and not spend an arm and leg, I'd ("I'd" actually meaning "we'd") have to do them myself.

On Sunday morning we got almost an inch of rain, and the ground was muddy nice and soft and perfect for planting. And so on Sunday afternoon, I set out to buy plants. I spent a while Sunday afternoon arranging everything where I thought it should go, and I went and bought a few more plants on Monday morning. And then I waited for Patrick to come home to start planting. I was hoping he'd make it home around 1:00 or 2:00 so we could plant in the blazing heat, but Mondays are busy, and he didn't make it home until dinner time. Of course then we had to eat because I don't miss meals . . . ever. After we ate, Patrick wanted to go ahead and get mulch before we started. As a result of a lot of wasted time, it was 8:00 p.m. by the time we started on the front flower bed. Seems like maybe it would've been a good idea to wait until we had a few more daylight hours to work, but patience isn't a quality I possess in abundance. I was determined we were going to finish. And finish we did. When it got too dark to see anything, we just channeled our inner red neck, mounted a clip on light to Patrick's truck and kept right on trucking. I'm sure everyone in the neighborhood was thrilled.

During all of this, Andrew was swinging a rubber mallet around the yard, and very loudly "hi-yawing" a number of imaginary enemies. So there we were, light clipped to Patrick's truck, our child yelling and karate chopping the air, digging holes in the dark, and trying not to break our ankles in the holes we had dug but couldn't see. It was high class I tell you. We finally, finished at around 11:00 p.m. And amazingly enough the flower bed doesn't look half bad. Of course, I don't have a picture so you'll have to take my word for it. ;)

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Patrick told Andrew to write "Happy Birthday, Mom!" on my birthday card and then walked off. Apparently he overestimated Andrew's spelling skills. The child can't really spell . . . like at all. Not that you'd expect him to at his age.

This is was the result, and it's pretty good if you ask me!

Stuff

I thought when school was out I'd have more time to blog. I didn't take into account that I have to pack up a house full of junk just to move around the block. Because, despite what my husband may think, whether you're moving around the block or around the world, some things must be packed. That sentence is a grammatical mess. Sorry . . . Anyway, I'm almost to the point of saying everything goes with the house. We. Have. Too. Much. Stuff.

This afternoon I went to Walmart to see if they had any plants for our flower beds. I know, Walmart??? But my choices are limited (read: nil) here in Lockhart. I was looking for some specific, heat tolerant, drought resistant plants, and surprise, surprise, they had them. And they weren't pathetic. Second big surprise. I just need y'all to know that I was dripping with sweat by the time I loaded everything in the back of my Expedition. Literally, dripping. And I turn around and there is a couple from our church. Them looking all cool and calm and collected. Me with sweat dripping in my eyes. It was a classy moment.

We're closing on our house on the 27th. While the new house is incredibly close to being done, I'm not sure that two weeks is enough time to get it completely finished.  It's possible, but everyone has to do their job in a timely manner in order for us to move in on the 24th/25th. I'm praying everything works out. Essentially, I'm praying for a miracle. I need to stop thinking about this. It's stressing me out. Deep breaths . . .

I'm watching The Little Couple right now. Bill and Jen are adopting from China. And right now they're at the Pediatric International Adoption Clinic at Texas Children's. Which is super cool because I think it may the only one in Texas. Okay, that was super random, but it was interesting.

And now I can't focus because I'm watching t.v. so I think I'm going to say, "good night". Have a good Monday y'all.

Fingerprinting for the Sixth Time

Yes, in just over a two year span, I've done six sets of fingerprints.

Yes, that's crazy.

Since we began this adoption journey, everything with the exception of the FBI approval has gone fairly smoothly. Not all of it perfectly but at least without too many hitches. But the FBI fingerprints make me almost hyperventilate.

In order to adopt from Bulgaria you must receive clearance from the FBI CJIS division in West Virginia. The state headquarters are not adequate. The clearance must originate from West Virginia. And this is not a one time deal, but a yearly ordeal . . . for me anyway. In order to receive that clearance you must send fingerprint cards to WV which, up until today, I believed could only be done in ink. My fingerprints are notoriously hard to get . . . okay maybe not notoriously . . . I mean it's not as if they're talking about it up in Washington, but they're hard to get . . . and not many people (read almost no one in the state of Texas is trained to correctly take ink fingerprints). So I've asked over and over if they could be done electronically, and over and over I was told "no".

After having another set of prints rejected because the quality was too low, I decided to go to APD headquarters in Austin, and get them done by someone who, hopefully, knew what they were doing. When I got there this morning the lady told me they don't do ink fingerprints any longer, but they do livescan which prints on a card just like ink. Cue premature meltdown. I'm good at those . . . premature meltdowns. I was almost certain that wouldn't work. But Patrick was there, and he told me to call the home study agency. I took it one step further, I called both the home study agency and the FBI. If you've been following this adoption journey for any amount of time you know that Patrick hates when I call the FBI. And at this point, the FBI may or may not also hate it when I call them. But call them I did, and both the FBI and the home study agency said that livescan would be fine, and so we did them.

Now, I don't want to jump the gun so to speak, but these fingerprints are done on the computer and then printed on the cards, and I think they turned out substantially better than anything I've done so far. I've already over-nighted them to WV, and I'm praying that I get a positive, timely response. We really need it because, we have to have our home study approved in order to apply to be fingerprinted by USCIS in August. If we don't get our USCIS approval done and sent to Bulgaria on time then we are removed from the waiting list. So, as you can tell, it's kind of important.

So that's where we stand. Our home study isn't approved yet because my we're waiting on my fingerprints. Once we have approval on those we're good to go.

Now, if you'd be so kind as to not tell Patrick how many government agencies I mentioned in this post . . .

Good News . . . Bad News

The Good News? Patrick's FBI approval arrived yesterday!

The Bad News? Mine is still MIA.

We're hoping mine arrives (approved) in the next couple of days.

We also are having some communication issues between our home study agency and our adoption agency which is frustrating. Our home study agency isn't solely a home study agency. They also do domestic adoptions, embryo adoptions, and some other stuff along the same lines. They're really good, but they're growing and constantly adding new employees. We've literally had three different social workers and four different case workers in just over two years. Sometimes there is lack of training and things get lost in translation. Often times one caseworker will ask for something that the previous caseworker didn't need. Even more frustrating, they won't ask for something they do need which delays things. So that's what's going on with our home study right now. Getting both of our FBI approvals in hand would solve the problem.

In the meantime I'll continue to run interference and question everything. Which I do . . . question everything, that is. I know I drive the caseworker nuts with questions, but I've learned questioning now often saves us stress and mistakes in the future.

Have a great weekend everyone!