Letter to our Future Child (June 2014)

I realize its been a while since I've posted a letter from my journal.  But after my first letter was shared on BraveLove's website, I decided it was about time to post another.  Here's one from my journal earlier this month.

Dear Precious Little One -

Its summer time and our days are filled with Big Brother's tball practice, fun at the park, playdates, swimming, ice cream, camping, and so much family fun.  Yet you are never far from our minds and always in our hearts.

Big Brother has been imagining all sorts of thing you might do in a future summer -- play catch, go down the slide backwards, catch frogs and find turtles, to name a few.  He will be a super big brother.

Though our adoption journey to you has been long (over 2 yrs now), we still trust that God will bring us to you.  And even if we don't meet you in your first months and you live the first part of your life in other families, maybe your birth family or foster families, know that we are praying for you ever day, before we even meet you.  We love you and we always will.

Praying for the day you join our family summer adventures,
Mommy

Of course, feel free to continue to share our profile or website to help spread the word that we are hoping to adopt... you never know if a friend of a friend might be considering adoption.  

Blessings Friends!

Five Minute Friday: Lost

After missing several weeks, I'm again participating in Five Minute Fridays hosted by Lisa-Jo Baker, encouraging bloggers to write on a prompt unedited for five minutes.

The prompt: Lost

GO

Long lonely drive home in the dark, on a  road I didn't know well.

The GPS was telling me I was lost... specifically that I was on no road at all.

I knew not to believe it, to not trust the voice telling me I was lost.

But I wasn't certain of my next few turns either... this new bypass (not on the GPS maps) that I'd only driven a few times, during daylight and never this particular route.

Thankfully my husband was already on speaker phone, catching up on our respective days, keeping each other awake on our separate drives (not even to the same destination).

He knew this road.  He could warn me of the corners to watch for in a way that made sense to me... much easier to watch for the A&W and then the big dealership, then the small Hwy 4 sign and on ramp turns.

So often life is like that too.  Books, maps, articles, and technology are certainly helpful but nothing compares to the wisdom of someone who has taken the road before you.

And when voices are telling me I am lost (or behind or off the path), I need to be sure the voice is trustworthy.  I need to stay connected to His Voice and community that hears it when I don't.

Having community to lean on and learn from can be what gets us from a place of feeling lost to feeling like we can take the next step, turn or pause of the journey.  And when feelings of  lost-ness threaten to overwhelm, I pray that same community can pray in our place and hold us up before our Father God who sees all the lost.

I'm so thankful for the friends and community we are finding since our move to our gravelly road and on this long adoption journey, in addition to the family and longtime friends that continue to encourage and pray for us.  We are so blessed.

STOP

Books While We Wait - June 2014 Edition

As you know, we are buying a new children's book each month while we wait. Since the original post has gotten rather long to keep reposting.  I will still update the original list and have added a link near the header, but each month I will only post about the new book.  If you want to see the entire list, please feel free to click on the link at the bottom and review the other ones :)


The Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale by Grace Lin

This book tells a beautiful fairy tale based on the Chinese belief that there is an invisible red thread connecting all those who are destined to be together.  The story tells of a king and queen that one day began to feel a terrible pain that no one could explain, until magic glasses showed each had a red thread tied around their hearts.  They follow the red thread on a long perilous journey that leads them to a baby.  The illustrations are beautiful and the story is told in a way that conveys the love of parents while waiting and searching for those they are (and will be) forever connected to.

Link to the full list of Books While We Wait

Water and a Bucket

He was entertained for a long time... and so was I (behind my camera).  Afternoon of smiles!

Smiles and simple fun on the Gravelly Road.

Rain keeps falling

We've had some big rainfalls here lately... Last weekend, midweek and then again this past weekend.  The result is flood watches and plenty of standing water.  Thankfully the garden is still ok... just some minor washout.  But we have more standing water in the yard than I think we've had since we moved here, and the entire yard is "squishy" as our son describes it.  The neighbor's pond is also outside its banks.

Its slowly going down but if we get all the rain that's in the forecast for the coming week, we might have a wet and muddy yard for a while.  Boy am I glad we got the mowing down on Friday when it wasn't raining!

Of course that also meant we needed to check out the "yard puddles" as he calls them (since usually our puddles are just in the gravel driveway).  And yes, he did end up with very wet feet since the puddle was deeper than his mud boots!

Extended Family Weekends

This is our first weekend at home in a while due to some wonderful extended family gatherings over the last few weeks.  I'm a bit behind in blogging though so instead of a big post about each (with lots of pics), I'm just going to share a little -- too many pics to go through from all the fun.

The last weekend in May we traveled to celebrate a grandma's 80th birthday party.  It was going to be an outdoor BBQ and pool party (great-grands were excited) but pouring rain during most of the party tried to spoiled the fun.  The party was moved indoors and there was still lots of fun had by all.  The kids even ended up able to do a little swimming toward the end of the gathering.  We enjoyed visiting with everyone and ate way too much delicious food.  I think a good time was had by all!

Then last weekend, we spent a long weekend at a family reunion.  Everyone stayed in cabins next to each other at a resort on the lake, with meals rotating between cabins, game nights, swimming, boat rides, kids crafts, and so many memories.  The weather was gorgeous and it was so fun to spend time with so much extended family that we don't get to see often enough.  I took a ridiculous amount of pics over the weekend and just starting to really sift through them all.  Here are a few of my favorites:

We have one more big family gathering yet this summer to look forward to.  We are so blessed to be able to spend time with our extended family!

Beginning of Summer Tball: At Bat

The beginnings of another garden

Summer is here and our garden is growing!  I'll try to do a few posts about our garden again this year as its always fun to "see" the garden grow.  We have new residents in our garden birdhouse, a pair of blue birds (I think) who even posed to have their picture taken.

I started some seedlings inside mid April (when the remodel project started winding down).  Our new bay window is a wonderful place to start a few seedlings.

We started the outside garden earlier this year than previous which was helpful.  My husband tilled the garden before Mother's Day, and we started planting the following week and weekend.  The beans, snap peas, squash, cucumber, zucchini, and of course sunflowers are up.  I think I spotted a watermelon seedling too.  The carrots are just starting to appear and the lettuce is still MIA.  I also bought some tomato plants, pepper plants and an eggplant (just to try).

I'm not sure if I spilled some seeds, had more washout than I thought off a few of my squash or cucumber hills or had something leave behind seeds last year, but I have what appear to be cucumber or squash growing in several strange places in the garden.  We will have to wait and see.  Of course I have cilantro coming up again -- planted it once 2 yrs ago and its reseeded ever since.  I only save a few plants but its always a surprise to see where they show up!

Not truly garden related, but the little chickens have their own outside coop now.  My handy husband built it in an afternoon!  (Can you spot the left over siding supplies?)  While the two groups of chickens tolerate each other during the day in the yard (mostly by avoiding each other), the young ones are not big enough to fend for themselves when penned with the larger birds.  This will work for now.

Do you garden?  What is your favorite thing to grow?