8 days and counting......

In 8 days we will leave our home and head to our new home! I can't wait to see what God has planned for us!! I have 77 boxes packed and still some more to go. The new house is all ready for us to move into. We have a deal with the people moving in to rent with the option to purchase. They have said they really want to buy it, so we are moving in faith that they will! If not in about 2 years my posts will be about selling our house up here! So we are at the wonderful part of the move, we have 6 days to pack up and after 7 moves we are pretty good at sorting out what we need. As of right now only one important thing (my phone charger) is in a taped up box, which we will need to reopen. I do love moving, I like the adventure of a new place to explore, the new house, the new neighborhood. I don't really like the new doctors and dentists and forms times 7 (although strangely enough I do love filling out forms). This move is different then our last 3 moves because we are moving closer to family. My sister and her family will be only 20 minutes from us!! We haven't lived that close to any family for the past 5 years! I am so excited for that.

I am looking forward to all the changes happening in our life. I am excited to move back to the south and I am excited to start homeschooling. Randy and I have wanted to move to this area for years, yet we always seemed to overshoot it or head the wrong way. For us, its like finally a dream we literally have talked about since high school coming true. Its a corny dream, but we just always loved the area and even before we knew much about it had a drive to move there. Life is going to look so different for us in just a week, its hard to believe!

The adoption...

Some people have asked us how the adoption is going. Sadly its not going nor looking close to starting. We haven't given up hope, we never will. We will pack up another package for him to send halfway around the world with treats to make him happy for one day. Its not like we have given up the dream of him coming home, but its like when I miscarried a baby, its not the end of the dream, we try again. However their comes a point when life has to move forward and you have to stop and get the pictures done without him. You have to see where your going in life without the what ifs. Like getting pregnant if it happens wonderful and then life will change then, but for now to keep my heart from being troubled, I have to imagine he won't come home and what we do then. We have waited for years for him to come home and join us. We started hoping when we first heard about him in Sept. of 07. We have prayed, prepared, walked in faith and like I said I pray he will and this will all happen. However the country has not opened and they aren't in any hurry. So because of that an orphaned boy will grow up another year alone with no mom and dad to love them and a mom and dad who love him will not get to watch him grow up....for now....

Got what we wanted!

We just got news that we will be able to rent the house we wanted the most. Its nice to know where we are going to be! Now we are just working out the details of the rent/purchase of this house. Its in the town we wanted to be in the most, the closest one we liked to my sister and it has enough bedrooms and an office for Randy to work out of!

Now I just need to learn my lesson and TRUST God and not freak out when it seems all hope is lost, because I am slowly learning thats when He loves to show up in a royal way. He doesn't leave his children to scramble He just arrives at the right time. He even promises to know what I need before I ask. Yet still I worry and stress and just like I do with my own kids He probably is rolling his eyes with a smirk thinking, this again, when will she learn. Luckily he is endlessly patient with me. Luckily he gave me a husband who is endlessly patient with me.

The second good news of the day.....Alex had written a story about how our family has come together and submitted it to her favorite magazine, Clubhouse (published by Focus on the Family) in March of 09. Today I got a call saying they had it were going to publish it in their November edition! Her dream is to be an author. She has lots of books she has started and stories she has written. She is a dreamer who makes dreams happen. She currently has a business where she makes friendship bracelets and donates all the money to orphans in Liberia and a girl in American with cancer. Now she has her first published piece and she is sooooo happy! Not bad for 12!

I am back!

Its been a long time since my last blog. Whats happened since then.....we finally got an offer on our house. Not what we were expecting by an offer to lease our house with the option to buy it. So we are moving in a few weeks back to the south, to Texas! Time to pull out the cowboy boots and hats. Start saying things like fixin and lovin on.............although I cannot bring myself to call it a sack, southerners must understand that where I grew up in the Northeast, that has an entirely different meaning and it makes me giggle inappropriately, it will remain a bag....

We are waiting to hear about a house to rent. We are in the awful time of waiting with no control over anything. My husband agrees with me when I say I have a bit of a control issue. I prefer to have it. We are supposed to head down in 3 weeks and we have 30 boxes packed and are just praying for God to work out the rest. Actually in some ways its kind of exciting. I like to pretend I am faithful enough to be a missionary and what a fraction of this feeling I get to experience, just waiting on God for a new adventure. I did spend a few days dwelling on the what ifs, and I got to play Thomas the doubter. God was faithful and pulled me right up and brushed me off and put me back on track. My eyes are solidly above me and I am determined to walk this all in faith. Not perfectly by any means, because I still struggle with the lack of control thing.

I will post more soon, I miss blogging and even if no one reads it, I like to pretend they do!

Gray hair....

So in the past couple years the gray hairs have started growing fast and furious! For the first time this weekend, Randy even noticed how many. My first instinct was to color them! I have the medium brown hair color under the sink ready to go. So whats the blog post about? I can't make myself do it! The curiosity has kicked in to see what I will look like if I don't cover it. Then it got me thinking, why do so many woman color their hair? Whats wrong with what our body already does? Why are so many women obsessed with looking younger, when the truth is we don't stay younger, we all get older? Then I thought I think too much...... So not sure yet if I will go for the color or let it go silver........I like the word silver better then gray....

Whew fun on ebay!

As we were cleaning out the basement in hopes of moving someday, I decided to put a few things up on ebay. As you can see above, we have quite a few clothes to purge! Its one thing about having a lot of kids, clothes just collect! I didn't think they would sell because my few tries on ebay in the past haven't gone far. But they sold! I was so excited to make some money and help clean out the basement! I am using the money earned to buy things for next year. We have decided to homeschool all 7 kids next year. I am super excited. Its something I have wanted to do for awhile but it just never was the right timing in all of the family's hearts. First my oldest daughter approached me a few months ago saying she was interested in it, then my son followed, then my husband too and I was so excited to see things I have been praying and thinking about be confirmed! So it will be an adventure, but we are all excited. So my hope is that this summer we will finish cleaning out the basement, have a yard sale, sell the house, pack up, move to Texas and get homeschooling underway. My prayer too is that sometime in their Liberia opens and Keith comes home to join our little school :)

Make Mothers Day Matter!!

This is an awesome organization that is run by an incredible lady. PLEASE consider donating to this cause! I know those of us who are mothers know how much love a mother has for her child, regardless of their circumstances. I was a 19 year old mom who was scared to have her first baby, I almost died, my baby could have died.... I was forever blessed to be living in a country in which doctors could save my life and my daughters. That was 12 years ago and because of that blessing, I can be a mama to 6 more children and Alex is an amazing girl! So PLEASE give these women and children dignity!

BECAUSE EVERY MOTHER MATTERS
What they do.....To reduce the occurrence of maternal and infant mortality by providing sterile birthing kits, holistic childbirth and development centers, and sponsorships of mothers in East Africa

We have no trinkets to sell. We have nothing that you can purchase to give to your mothers or women of importance in your life on Mother's Day. All we have is a vision. A vision of a holistic maternity and infant development center to be built half way around the world...in a village probably not big enough to be on a map. Because- it is not okay that 1 in 11 women in E.Africa dies due to pregnancy related causes. What do we need? Simply-We need money. What can we offer this Mother's Day? Hope. And the assurance that 100% of your donations go towards building the clinic. There are 3 Fridays left until Mother's day. We are asking 3 things. 1. Every Friday donate $10 that is a total of $30. 2. On Fri. make this your status and provide a link or address to donate. 3.Please let your mom, your friend, your wife, your daughter know that THEY MATTER!

http://www.domaconnection.org/ Please memo BEMM when donating