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.

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!

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!

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!

Timmy

Lately I have been struck by just how old Davis is getting. Tuesday he came to me and said he thought he had lost a tooth, really what he was feeling were 2 new ADULT teeth coming in! Adult teeth! Does that mean that next time he asks for a new video game I can tell him to get a job?

So one thing builds upon another, and don't get me wrong, I try very hard to make sure he can grow up to be an independent man. I even bought jelly in a plastic jar so that he could start making his own PB&J's, I encourage independence! But this morning I lost my morning goodbye to....Timmy.

In the van this morning we pull up to the spot where I drop D off and our usual routine is this:

Mom: I love you sweetie!
Davis: I love you too mom! (Then he leans over and gives me a hug and a kiss)
Mom: Don't forget your sister.
Davis: *whine* I hugged her yesterday...ok...bye Paige.

Then with the the sun shining, angels singing, and fairy dust falling, he turns, *dramatic pause* gives me a big smile and walks into the school building ready for another day of learning!

OK, it's something like that, but today was different. We pull up the the drop off point, he sees Timmy, yells for Timmy, then runs off to meet Timmy at the door. No hug. No kiss. No fairy dust. I lost to Timmy.

Honestly, I love the boy he is growing into and I am proud of him, this same child that would cry the whole 4 hours of Mothers-Day-Out, for going out and making friends and knowing that I will be there to pick him up at the end of the day.

In a way he is weaning me a little more every day. But as long as he is still wearing Spider-Man underwear, he is still my little boy. ~they don't sell those in a 34 do they?

April 19th

Let's just start off by saying, God is good all the time and All the time God is good! Now, to really get the full effect of that you have to say it the Lynn Stringfellow way! If you don't know Lynn, you should call the Bay Area Church of Christ and ask Lynn "who is good?". Not that he is my puppet,(there is always the chance he will say, ME!) but he is pretty reliable! ;)

We have GOOD and BAD:

GOOD It looks like our concert is a go! Every prayer prayed has been answered in record time! We prayed for money to put on the show and a brother at church has offered to underwrite the concert. We prayed for Jami Smith and Charlie Hall to come on board to preform, and they have both offered to play at no cost to us! Now we are praying for people to show up, and for businesses to say yes when I come in asking for donations for the silent auction. We want this night to raise awareness of the rebuilding work Rwanda is doing and the need for good homes for the orphans.

BAD We thought the FBI background check would take 3-4 weeks, but we learned that it is more like 4-6 weeks. We are in week 4 right now, so we are praying that it shows up soon. We need to have that check done before we can turn in our paperwork to INS. What doesn't make any sense is that we are waiting for the FBI to finish our *fingerprint background check* so that we can give the results to INS so that they can schedule us for a FINGERPRINT BACKGROUND CHECK. Ugh.

Good We are getting ready for a HUGE yard sale and people have been donating stuff for us to sell!

BAD Plane tickets are expensive!! Anyone have a private jet they could loan us to fly to Africa? Anyone?

Good My mom will be here on Saturday! She is coming for my birthday the big 2-9!! Most times that would have gone in the "bad" section, but I am excited to see what this year holds for me!

Thanks for all the prayers you are saying for our family. Please keep our birth mother, her safety and health in your prayers.

Happy Easter

So, last night before bed I tell my sweet, excited kids "do not get out of bed or else you will scare the Easter bunny away". Normal mom stuff, right? Fast forward to 4:00 a.m. and I hear a noise next to my bed, so I reach out my hand...right as Paige projectile barfs all over my arm. Dave jumps out of bed, grabs towels and we try to wake up enough to figure out what just happened and why the dog is eating off the carpet. She throws up 2-3 more times then catches her breath long enough to look up at me and say "mom, I ran really fast in here so don't worry I didn't scare the bunny." then she barfed some more.

There goes my mom of the year award again this year. Dang.

Happy Easter to you!

Sat. April 7th

Good Morning! The snow finally stopped and the sun is out! Yes, snow in April, in Oklahoma, weird. It is freezing outside and Easter is tomorrow...hope the bunny brings a jacket.

Davis had an egg hunt at school yesterday...in the snow...and we have two hunts tomorrow. One at church and one at the park up the street.

We are already drowning in plastic eggs! This years eggs, last years eggs, who came up with this horrid idea anyhow?! I guess it beats that ~nasty 2 weeks after Easter stench~ we would have at my Grandmas house when a real egg was hidden too well! Nothing says spring like the smell of rotten, brightly colored, eggs.

I still need to go get a video game for D's basket. The EB is bringing P a new baby Cabbage Patch Doll. Due to all the plastic eggs in the house I think I am going to tell the kids that they have to leave the empty eggs on the front porch and the EB will come fill them up and hide them! Brilliant, I know. HA! It keeps me from having to buy more "special bunny eggs". Ugh, I'm egged out.

Nothing big going on in the adoption world. The waiting game has begun. We hurry to fill out paperwork then we wait...hurry to get birth certificates ordered, then we wait...on and on it goes. No biggie, we still have work to do while we are waiting.

All in all, life is good here in windy Oklahoma. Hope life is good where you are too!