Tuesday, May 29, 2007

May the Force be with you

This morning during our family prayer Davis was praying for all of us, then started praying for bad guys. Here's how it went:

D~ "God, please force the bad guys to be good."

I know my boy well enough to understand what he means. He's not talking about supernaturally forcing the bad guys, he's talking about Star Wars "Forcing" the bad guys.

It was all I could do not to snicker during the prayer.

Davis has been deep in thought lately about God, heaven and what happens when we die. He asked me last night if I saw my grandma die. I said no. Then he asked if I touched her body when she was dead. I said yes. He thought for a moment, started to cry, then said, "If you and daddy die, will I get a new mommy and daddy." That made my heart hurt, but I told him to the best of my ability about how if daddy or I die that we will wait for him and his sister at the gates of heaven and that we will be the second person to hug him after Jesus. I told him how important it was for him to go to heaven. And I told him that if anything happened to me or daddy that grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins would be around to help take care of him.

When he starts talking like this I want to tell him to go to sleep and leave the room, but I know he is looking for answers and I don't want him to make stuff up on his own. So through my tears we talked quite a bit.

He got quiet for a few seconds and I thought the grueling conversation was about over. Then he said, "Will people see me when the angels take me to heaven?" I told him no, that only our souls go to heaven. He thought about that then looked at me and asked in a breathy exclamation, "So, I'll be invisible? YES!!"

Yes, my sweet 6 year old boy, we will be invisible.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Sunday, May 27th

Today was so weird. I stayed up late on Saturday night to finish our dossier and this morning I handed it over to a friend from church who is going with her family to Rwanda for the summer. These documents that I have worried over, run all over town for, and waited on to be sent to me, are now out of my hands.

It's surreal to feel so exposed to people you have never met. Our entire lives are in that folder. Everything from our blood pressure to our driving record. Please pray that these papers will find favor in the eyes of whomever reads them. And that they will be protected along with the sweet people who are transporting them.

I've cried off and on all day. It's out of my hands now, but it has truly been out of my hands since the beginning. God is in control and I have the utmost faith in Him and His plan for our lives.

Please pray for our journey and all that it entails. We have had some disappointments this week and are feeling a little low.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

The Best Medicine


My husband is a goober...do I hear an AMEN? But that is one of my favorite things about him. He's funny to a fault. All day yesterday we were cracking each other up and I realized that anyone looking in would have no idea what we are talking about. Our vocabulary is full of nonsence words that can double us over. ~Strategery~ being one of them. Granted most of the words are not our own but stolen from years of SNL, Mad TV and Jim Carrey movies..."I likey do tha cha cha."

And maybe that was my initial attraction to him because my own family is full of movie one liners "Evening vear, verdy nice" that can take us back 20 years or more and no one thinks they are as funny as we do. Nothings better than being in a dressing room with my mom and her knocking on the door then hearing..."Candy gram"...another knock..."pizza"...another knock..."LAND SHARK."

I digress. Back to my funny husband. He's awesome, what more can I say?! I hope everyone has a common thread of humor in their relationships. I mean look at the back of a baboon hiney and tell me God doesn't have a since of humor.

Sweet hubby if you are reading this, you are my strategery supa dizzle and I mad love you yo! Snap London Bridge.


Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Tuesday, May 22

We were dealt a bit of a blow today about the adoption. Nothing life shattering, but a delay on our time line. Without going into much detail we found out today that it will take 45-60 days to complete the INS portion and that time does not start until after our fingerprints go through and we are not scheduled to get our fingerprints until June 15th. So it does not look like we will be going early July.

Our biggest reason for wanting to be back by the end of July was to be here for the kids first day of school. Now if we are gone in August my In-Laws will have to deal with all the first weeks of school paperwork and the shuttling them back and forth at 2 different times. It's just more work than we wanted to burden them with. And as a mom, I feel like it is my job and joy to do it. I don't want to miss out on Paige's first days of school or D's first weeks of full time 1st grade. It hurts me that I can't have my cake and eat it too.

I sound very whiny and I'm sorry. We did have some good news today. We met with a woman from the Oklahoman News Paper and she is doing an article on the 4 families from Quail. Hopefully it will run soon and will be good advertising for my benefit crop on June 2nd. The reporter was very nice and wants to do a follow up when we get home.

American Idol is on in 5 minutes, so I'd better get the popcorn ready! LY!

Monday, May 14, 2007

Paige, Sweet, Sweet, Paige

Last week Paige comes into the kitchen with a pink Barbie cell phone in one hand and her pink sparkly purse in the other. Here is the converstaion we had...

Paige: matter-of-factly "Mom, I'm leaving."

Me: "Where are you going?"

P: "I'm leaving to go dance."

M: "Oh, really. At the studio where you took Ballet?"

P: "No. Hollywood."

The child is now officially grounded from Dancing With the Stars and American Idol.

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Monday, May 14th

A friend called and thought talking to a local paper was a great idea for some advertising for my crop in June. Thought I would post the email here for anyone who might not know what is going on in our lives! HA!

Hi Steve,

I'm Melissa Osborn, we spoke on the phone about our family adopting from Rwanda. Here is a little bit of the story.

On March 11, 2007 our preacher Mark Henderson stood in the pulpit of the Quail Springs Church of Christ and gave a summary of their recent trip to visit our missionaries in Kigali, Rwanda. They spoke of an orphanage in Kigali with 46 babies in one room wearing rags as diapers and the 6 sweet nuns who were trying to care for them along with all the other children in the Home of Hope orphanage. Our preacher said he tried to rationally find a way to help them with things, but all these children needed were families. My husband and I agreed, and so did 2 other families. So our four families have been working with the US government to adopt a total of 7 babies from this orphanage by the end of this year.

Our preacher Mark, his wife Sharon, my husband Dave and I are trying to get to Rwanda in early July. The other 2 families are looking at going over in the Fall. We all already have children, some biological and some adopted. We were not looking to increase our families, but feel called to help raise these children with a chance for life. Since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 where 1 million people were slaughtered, the country has been trying to rebuild. But the number of orphaned children is staggering. We know that we can not save the whole country, but if we can make a difference to one or two children....well, we just have to try.

Each family has been fund raising to buy the costly plane tickets, cover government fees, and lodging while we are over there. We had a yard sale, we've been selling on ebay, offering to do extra work for people, whatever it takes. We have 2 more fund raisers planned. One is an all day Scrapbooking event being held at the Church building on June 2ND. It will be from 7am-7pm and the cost is $30. Another is a child field day on Sat. June 9Th.

The ROC foundation (Rwandan Outreach and Community)is helping us by providing a place for tax deductable donations to be made in our name. Mike O'Neil from OC is on the board.

I guess the biggest story would be the growing Trans-racial community that we are bringing to Edmond and the metro. People are going to see us all over town and we would like them to be educated about who we are and why our families look the way they do. We keep calling our selves "The New Normal".

If you think this is a story and would like more information all the families are open to talking. We are excited and chatty...you have been warned!!

Thanks for your time!

Friday, May 11, 2007

Bum, Bum, Bum Another one Bites the Dust....

Another step in the adoption process is behind us! We recieved notice that our fingerprints were done at DHS and now we have sent our paperwork to INS!! Today I am mailing our noterized documents to the Rwandan Embassy in DC so that they can charge us an arm and a leg to put another stamp on them. MAN, ADOPTION IS EXPENSIVE!! But worth it!!

Speaking of $$. We spent $540 yesterday to get shot in the arm 7 times a piece. The woman at the health department was a ton of fun and had us laughing through the tears. Our arms are sore, but our hearts are happy. We go back in 30 days to get the boosters. I feel like I could eat off the McDonalds floor and not get sick with this much medication in my body!


Gotta go take kids to school. I even have Davis' friend Taydin this morning. It's good training for having 3 kids in the house! WILD!

Monday, May 7, 2007

All Yard Sale All The Time

The blog was quiet last week due to the mother of all yard sales going on. The Henderson's and I asked the church family for donations and man did they deliver. We had so much stuff donated that Sharon's 3 car garage was busting at the seams all three days.

I was over at her house Monday, and Tuesday all day, then Wed. am we were looking around and I told her that we just had to open the doors tomorrow for shoppers because we didn't have any extra space to put all the donations that were in her house. We made the newspaper deadline with minutes to spare and our signs went in the ground later that evening. The weather was fun to work around! All in the same day we had cold/rain/cloudy & cool/blazing sun & heat/more rain...We were constantly running around with plastic tarps trying to cover everything, then slathering sunscreen on our faces. Weird.

What's amazing was the outpouring of support from the church family and friends. People showed up to help, showed up with stuff, showed up to shop. At one point we were looking at a pile of garbage bags filled with clothes trying to figure out a way to go though them when the phone rang and our sweet friend Pam was at the other end asking if there was something she could come help with! God filled our needs before we could even verbalize them, over and over.

Another God thing was the amount of families who showed up with adopted children. We had some signs up around the garage letting people know what we were doing and they would come hug us and let us hug the kids. With open eyes you can see adoption everywhere. I believe it was God allowing us to interact with these people who have been on the waiting end just where we are, but are now squeezing these precious babies & toddlers.

I have a huge pile of items to list on Ebay this week. There were several times that I would put $3 on an item, but start to second guess myself, one of these items was a pair of Z-Coil shoes. So I took them inside and checked it on ebay and they are selling for $80 a pair...for used shoes!! Freak Out! So there is more money to be made this week!

Speaking of money, I guess you want to know how much we made....did I tell you we were on the news? Channel 4 and 9 came out and interviewed us, OK, so the final count on money was...did I tell you we have enough stuff left over to have another one?? Ooops sorry, I forgot I was about to tell you....$4,500.00!!!!! Have you ever heard of a yard sale raking in that kind of dough? It's a total God thing!

I'm off to take Davis for a hair cut, but I will fill you in on the rest later!