US immigration approval! (and Disney!)

We had a great week at Disney last week, along with my parents, brother, sister-in-law and nephew. It was Lilla's first time there and it was so exciting to finally be able to do all the princess stuff! We had breakfast with princesses, Lilla got a princess makeover and we waited in line for princess autographs. We saw the Beauty and the Beast show and lilla got to introduce The Little Mermaid show. All fun things the boys would not be caught dead doing!

Also, Jake and Landon are old enough to ride the big rides now, so we rode Rock N Rollercoaster, Expedition Everest, and Space Mountain many times. I'll add more pictures once I find them! Not what I would call a relaxing vacation exactly, but very full of fun. Thanks Mom and Dad!

My mom is doing okay, trying to recover from a bad cold. She was a trooper in Disney. She will get a scan in February to see how the chemo is doing for her.

And big news! We received our I-797C in the mail today! We were approved in record time--56 days. The process is speeding up finally. A few months ago, people were waiting 120 days for approval. So, now we have everything we need to send our dossier to China. Hopefully we can get that done next week and be "DTC" as we say (Dossier to China). We are also reviewing files of some precious children. It is so heartbreaking to see so many children who, if they had been born somewhere else, would have had surgery as an infant and gone on to live a normal life. We are praying that God would lead us to the child he has planned for us and that we would KNOW His will for us.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1

words from the kids

Hi guys--this one is from Jake (age 9.5). We've been doing Ancient Egypt projects. We built a shaduf, which is a tool to bring water out of the river in Egypt. We built a model of the Nile. It is very fun being homeschooled because we have more science experiments. I don't like math.

From Lilla (age 4): I started doing gymnastics last week. I like when we did the bars because somebody helped us. I have a lot to tell. Who is reading this? One time we went to the Aquarium (in August-Katy). I got a Barbie for Christmas. I'm excited because because I will have gymnastics tomorrow. Next week we're adopting a baby (probably not next week! Katy) I can write my first and last name

From Landon (almost 8): I have already lost one tooth and another one is very loose. I have started gymnastics again. Legos are my favorite thing, and jumping on the trampoline, or tramping on the jumpoline. I think homeschooling is great because I get to be with my mom (awww...I didn't pay him, I swear-Katy).


We have to wrap this up because we want to go watch Man Vs. Wild, or Man Vs. Food. We like Men Vs. anything.

School, adoption and more

First of all, so far so good with our 3 days of homeschooling! I really have a lot less computer time, but that is probably a good thing! Here is a great post on someone's blog about "Me Time" that I think could have been me. I only had about 2 hours and 40 minutes of alone time most days, but it can get to be an idol if we let it, no matter how much time it is. I see already that I do much better when we are together for the whole day. Of course, they are still playing Legos, having TV time, playing outside and playing games, none of which involve me. But it feels like a much more natural shift between worlds.

And Mark is now making breakfast for the kids every day so I can do my Bible study and exercise, which is a lovely thing.

We're together, doing things together, then they're alone and I do a chore or two. Then we get back together and read or do work, then we all do a chore. We go to Target together and talk the whole time then come back and do some math. I don't have this constant feeling of a list hanging over my head that I am trying frantically to accomplish while they're gone. Or heaven forbid, shopping for no reason, wasting 3 hours of my day to come up with one t-shirt I didn't really need.

And Lilla no longer takes a nap (as of about Sunday!), but that has been a good transition too. I got her a huge pile of dried beans that is so far apparently very fun to scoop and dig through. She doesn't play with actual toys, mind you, but a hill of beans, yes. Right now everyone including me is having a short alone time.

In case you are worried about me, don't. I am going out with friends tonight to a tapas bar :-)

When my books arrive (of course all the books I ordered to start this were backordered!) and we move to a longer school day, I will report back! So far we are reading lots of library books on Egypt, doing multiplication and science experiments and working on our chore routine.

Adoption news: None for us! But we did get successfully fingerprinted yesterday and hope to be approved by US immigration in March. A new big list of Waiting Children was realeased over the weekend, but our agency said none of the children matched our checklist! I heard it was a lot of kids over 4, and boys too. I pray that they match with other families.

My mom has set up a CaringBridge site in case you want to keep up with her there. She is doing quite well! Praise God!! Here it is. You can register to get emailed updates when she posts them. Scroll down to "Journal" and click the link that says "Subscribe to journal update notification."