Beanies!!!!

Look at all the Beanies that our sweet friends have donated for the children of SE Asia....62 & counting! Ya'll are the best! Keep them coming :-)

Our Tet Celebration

Last night our family celebrated Tet for the first time. N's parents, grandfather,

cousin Katelyn (who is from Vietnam), & her friend, PJ, came to help us celebrate.

Kate made us an authentic Vietnamese dinner that was delicious.

After dinner, we made dragon puppets!
In Vietnam, everyone celebrates their birthday during Tet. No matter when during the

year a child is born, they turn 1 on their first Tet, & so on. We threw an American

twist in on our celebration & sang "Happy Birthday" & ate birthday cake to

celebrate Kate's Vietnamese birthday! Then we headed outside for a dragon parade with our homemade dragon & to celebrate with fireworks & sparklers.
We had a great time celebrating the Vietnamese heritage that already exists in our family

(via Katelyn & her two sisters) & hopefully the heritage of our soon-to-be daughter!

We are already looking forward to growing our Tet celebration in the years to come &

to including more Vietnamese traditions & more of our family & friends. Happy New Year! May the year of the "Rat" bring lots of blessings & our daughter!!!

Happy New Year!

Today marks the beginning of Tet in Vietnam. It is the Vietnamese New Year celebration & it last three days (it corresponds with the begining of the new lunar year). We are just begining to learn about Tet, but our family is going to have our 1st Tet celebration tomorrow night (we'll let you know how that goes!). Happy New Year!!!!!!

My Sweet Sister-in-law

We still have a long ways to go on our adoption journey & I know there will be many weeks & months that will go by without any news. So, during those times I'm going to share a little about how God got us going on this wonderful journey & how He has guided us along the way. My sister-in-law, Lauren, is one of the amazing people that God placed in our lives at just the right time & used to show us a glimpse of His plan. She married N's brother, Justin, this past summer. She is adopted. She has always been very open about her adoption, always speaking highly of her experience. When we traveled to Pennsylvania for the wedding, we were able to see first hand how special she is, how much she is loved by her family, & how wonderful her family is. Seeing her family interact throughout the wedding weekend, was definately one of those "God things"....she is the only girl & she has four older brothers. Many of the questions that we were pondering as far as what our family would be like with a little girl, were answered as we watched them! At one point, during the rehersal dinner, her mother leaned over to me & said something like, "I always wondered why God gave me 4 boys & then I realized that there was a little girl who needed us as much as we needed her"...I knew exactly what she meant...God had been saying the same thing to me! Lauren has been so good to us throughout the past year...putting up with all of my questions, writing a heart-felt reference for us, & more! When we celebrated Christmas with them, she gave our daughter her 1st Christmas present..."The Mulbery Bird", a sweet adoption story that her parents read to her when she was a child. I am so thankful that God brought her into my life. I'm thankful that I have her as a sister-in-law & that our daughter will have her for an aunt...a very special aunt who is special just like her!

A Tough 24 Hours in Adoption Land

Well, yesterday was a tough day at our house...L woke up throwing up & I felt like I had the flu & often wished I would just throw up & get it over with. It was one of those days that Satan has a hay day because we all know how hard he tries to get us when we're already feeling down. When I was trying to make it through the day taking care of 2 well children, 1 sick child, & our sweet, darling PUPPY, Satan kept throwing our adoption in my face..."how are you going to take care of one more???", etc.. Anyways, that's how the day went. Things got better when I was in bed with the boys & almost asleep for the night, when N came in & said there was an e-mail from Kate (our casemanager with AGCI). It was regarding the renewal of the adoption agreement between the U.S. & Vietnam. The statement that stood our to him was this, "For families with their dossiers registered this should not affect you at all. The DIA has stated that even if this agreement is not signed in by its expiration date in September they will still honor the families and complete the adoptions for registered dossiers. READ THIS SENTENCE TWICE". We rejoiced! It seemed to answer all of our wonderings about whether we would get our daughter from Vietnam. However, this morning, when I woke up to read the email for myself I read it a little more closely than N & went on to read the link that Kate had included to the "warning concerning adoptions in Vietnam" on the US Embassy website....ick! It was very disheartening. It seems that the renegotiation process has taken a downward turn over the past couple of weeks. It is not looking like the MOU is going to be renewed by the deadline. Families who are working on their dossier are being told to get it completed & turned in quickly so it can get registered with the IAD before May 1st (which is the now the date that the agreement needs to be renewed by). Since our dossier has been registered since December (well before the May 1st deadline), we are very hopeful that our adoption will be completed. Please continue praying with us about this situation. We truly feel that our heart is in Vietnam. The need there is so great, not only in the hearts of so many children who need forever families but in the hearts of all the Vietnamese people who need a Savior.

Another Family Just Like Ours

I must share with you all about our new friends! Long story, but after hearing about each other for the past 6 months or so, we have finally connected with a family that is right where we are in our adoption journey...& in every sense of the word. They live in Knoxville, are waiting for a little girl, have 2 boys that are very close in ages to our little guys, are using AGCI, & are two ahead of us on the girl waiting list! It is really quite amazing. Our families got together for dinner Friday night & had a great time! Our boys played sooo well together (which is really amazing in & of itself) while we shared about our experiences so far & dreamed about what the next year could hold. We are quite excited about the possibility that we may end up traveling together (maybe if we have another couple with us, N won't lock us up in our room until the adoption is final..which is, of course, not my idea of how we are going to spend our time in our daughter's birth country...I want to soak it all in! Lol!). We also laughed about how both of the dads have banned the moms from surfing around on the listservs & finding stuff to worry about! They are tackling the journey with the same attitude that we are..."we're already in it...no point in worrying...what happens is going to happen". It is so neat how God has blessed us with this family. It is so nice to be able to share our journey with this family & it will be great for all four of our children to be able to see a family that looks just like ours! All this is to say that you never know how God is going to meet the needs in your life & help you on your journey...no matter what it is! Please add their daughter to your prayer list. She may end of being one of our daughter's best friends...they may even be sharing their days in the orphanage before they come home to their forever families!

Our church & Beanie Babies

Many of you know that this time last year God was beginning to show us that our church was not the right church for us. Through a heart-wrenching experience, God moved us away from Providence & back to Fellowship (where we attended pre-kids & moved when the twins were babies only to find a church that seemed to be a better fit for our family at that time). Although it was a difficult experience, we can now see why God was moving us back to Fellowship. Besides it being a place where all three of the boys will go to their classes & we can go to worship without being called out to tend to an upset child, they have a huge heart for SE Asia (since Vietnam is communist & works very hard to keep Christian influence out of the country, much of what our church does in the country is kept quiet & referred to as their ministry to "SE Asia" instead of "Vietnam"). When we were deciding which country God was leading us to adopt from, we asked God to give us a heart for our child's birth country. We felt God was calling us to a country that is closed to the Gospel, where our child would more than likely not hear about Christ unless she was adopted. Also, we have always dreamed of fostering a heart for missions in our children, & through out the past year we have felt God was showing us that our daughter's adoption should play a huge role in showing our children about missions. We do not want our heart for Vietnam to end with our trip to pick up our daughter, we want to continue supporting the Christian work that is done in the country & hopefully to return to the country as a family on mission trips. You may say, "Wow, keep dreaming", but we can see how God is using Fellowship to do just that! At church yesterday, we learned that they are collecting Beanie Babies for the children of Vietnam (the youth & college students are also going on a mission trip the country in June). Would it be cool or what if our daughter ended up getting one of the Beanie Babies?!!? So, if any of you have Beanies you would like to donate, please let us know. Also, spread the word to others.

#12!!!

We got a call from Kate this afternoon to update us on our placement on the AGCI waiting list. My guess was that we would fall somewhere in the upper 20s. I was absolutely shocked to hear we are #12! Whoohoo! In addition, 4 of the families ahead of us on the list are open to a boy or a girl, so they will most likely end up getting to the top of the boy list & getting removed from the girl list before they reach the top of the girl list. So, with that in mind, we are probably more like #8 in line for a girl. This is especially exciting because last week 2 baby girls were referred! A few more rounds of girl referrals & it could be our turn. We are praying that the new year will bring continued referrals & stability for Vietnam! We are optimistic of this because we are confident that God called us to this amazing journey!