Prayer Coverage

Please keep praying that the approval of our family will go through in Ethiopia. The only thing that could put us in jeopardy is the number of children we already have in our family. Ethiopia is in the middle of putting forth some proposals about new adoption restrictions - one of which is no more than five children in a family upon adoption. Obviously we have six already. There are already agencies in the States that are not taking on larger families, in case this proposal goes through.

Apparently, our agency says that we will not be approved until after a court case. What that means to us is that we will have children referred to us and then about four weeks or so later, we will go to court.

At that point, the Ministry of Women's Affairs looks at our dossier and then will approve or not our file. That is tough, but I am confident that this adoption is meant to be and all the doors will open accordingly. But prayer would be appreciated.

Oh Such a Wonderful Email!

Wednesday, we mailed our signatures to complete our homestudy to our agency, via Express Post. This morning, I called and asked them if they would please let me know when the completed homestudy (dossier) was mailed out to Kidslink. According to some red tape, it looked like the dossier *couldn't* go out until Monday or Tuesday. The intercountry worker asked me a few questions, which gave me the feeling that perhaps our dossier hadn't been completed yet.

Tonight when I came home and checked my email I was so excited to see this message:

Hi Justine,

The Purolator courier man just left the office with your dossier! It is on the way!!

Take care,

It was such an exhilerating moment!!!! And it was *so* wonderful to see how excited our agency was for us! They have worked so very fast to get things moving as quickly as possible; even working on Saturdays, Sundays, and evenings! Awesome!!

The irony of all this is I was concerned that when we were held up for those three weeks waiting for our social worker to contact us, that we wouldn't be able to get our dossier out to our intercountry agency, until the beginning of December. I knew that we would not get our file to Ethiopia until after Christmas.

It was supposed to take six weeks for the homestudy, plus two weeks for the sw to write it up, and then another week to go from sw to agency. Total of 9 weeks. But God is SO good and the whole thing was completed in 27 days (under 4 weeks)!!!

We are SO fortunate to live in BC. In our province, the homestudy is approved by the agency and that saves so much time!! In some provinces, parents have to wait up to 13 additional weeks, after the homestudy is completed, for the approval by the ministry!

Now I can believe our file will be in Ethiopia before the end of November!!! YEAH!!!

Oh, things are moving now.... *big smile*

Friends in Adoption

We live in a small town and I only know personally, one black family. I am sure there are other people out there, but I have not met them. Something interesting happened at church one day recently. I was walking to the back of the sanctuary and noticed this little girl I had not seen before. I saw her eyes. She has these large eyes with a pretty colour. This made me stop and talk to her mum. Normally, I don't just walk up to strangers and begin conversations, so this was unusual for me.

As we chatted, we got talking about our kids and how many we had, and our adoption came up. She was interested because it turned out she and her husband were about to begin an adoption from Zambia, Africa! What chance of that!!

Then this past Sunday we had a potluck at church, and we got to talking and we chatted tons about adoption. Today, she popped over with her little girls for a visit. Her little girl is used to boys so she was very comfortable playing with our two littlest.

What was so cool about all this was the fact that it doesn't seem likely that it was an 'accident' that I just happened to chat with the one family in our church who is about to adopt from the same continent as we are. They are hoping to adopt two little girls, also. They will all be in the same age range. They will have playmates that look just like them! That is *so* important to their feeling like they fit in!

It was really neat to be able to sit down and chat with someone face to face about adoption - the excitement, the ups and down, and homestudy etc - instead of just through the yahoo groups or blogs!

How good God is to line up a friend in the same situation as us!

Timing is Everything

You know, when we began this adoption, there were things we didn't even know about, and in these last few months they have come to light and shown us how blessed we are in our timing.

For instance, there is that new Bill C-14 - this is the government bill which will allow our adopted children to be Canadian Citizens upon adoption and come home within about six weeks of referral. Not after four more months of paperwork, medicals, and visas - while they are virtually held hostage by bureaucracy. That is the way it presently is!

If a person lives in the States, they can travel to get their child about four weeks after their referral!! That is all it takes to get the court date. But for Canadians, we have to wait for an additional 12-18 weeks to get through bureaucratic red tape!

But thankfully, by December 22, of this year, that will change. Children will no longer need to wait those many weeks. We are not sure yet, how exactly it will change, but we do know it will be for the better.

The second thing that has been in our favour, timing-wise, is: the American Dollar. For the first time in over 30 years, the American dollar is actually worth less than the Canadian Dollar. Do you know how that makes us Canadians feel?!! I went to the bank today to pay $6500 for our Intercountry fee and expected to pay about $7000 with the exchange rate. What a pleasant and surreal experience to be told it would cost me $6418!!! That is the feeling the Americans live with everyday when they come to our country! What a bonus - I saved $82!! I was grinning!

And the third thing: Just this year the Canadian government has brought into our taxes an adoption deduction of over $10,100!!! That means that we will be able to claim $10,100 of our expenses on our income next year!!!

Timing is everything!!! We are truly blessed!

Seriously So Busy!

People who are waiting for their first child have such a hard time of it!! I can't imagine how hard it must be. I am very thankful because my life is so very, very full!!! The last four months have just flown by because I have had so much to do!

Right now for instance, I am doing up my boys' life journals. This is something I began when my first son was born, and sixteen years later, I am still continuing. I asked my sixteen year old when he wanted me to stop his journal. He told me he would love me to continue after he leaves home. He said he would definitely read it and so would his children. He said if he had a journal of his dad or my lives, when we were kids, he would cherish it.

All I have ever done is simply write milestones on the calendar and have a document on my computer desktop, and as things happen or funny or cute things are said, I write them down. Then when I have time, I compile the lot into a document and run off a copy for myself. After this I just edit them down to suit the child who's journal it is going into.

It is wonderful for the boys to be able to go back and read their own history. Stories or little comments they made. Incidents with their brothers or me. Those are priceless memories!

So now that that job is almost up to date, I have a few other unfinished projects to complete. Plus my hands and time are so, so full with raising six boys!!! There isn't a moment to be bored! I haven't had time to notice the last four months fly by!!

And now I have this absolute wonderful feeling of bliss thinking of two little girls in Ethiopia. Now that the paperwork is done, it all starts to feel real!

Small Towns

I love my small town!!! I went to my post office yesterday and was expecting my envelope from the social worker. I always notice when I pick up important mail that the postal lady looks at me with these bright, expectant eyes. See, I told her once, that she would be handling some very important mail in the next little while. And I always tell her the good news she carries.

When I picked up the envelope yesterday, I told her what it contained and it got us to talking. I don't know how we got to talking about money, but somehow faith came up and I told her that we knew the bills would be covered and that this adoption was a meant to be thing. She showed she understood what I was talking about, and it came out that she is from the church by our house. Our boys go there sometimes, to the youth group. She then told me that she actually prays over the mail that she puts in our box!! She says she considers her job in the post office to be a ministry and she prays over all the boxes. How cool is that!!

Then, when I was at the bank today, picking up my money orders, one of the tellers came over and asked me how the adoption was going. It is so neat living in a town that is small enough that people know who you are and care to ask questions!!

Express Post - My Best Friend

Today was an exciting day. I got to spend a lot of money!! *smile* Yesterday our signature papers came in the mail. Remember the homestudy was completed on Saturday and the social worker mailed us the signature papers on the Monday and it got to us on Tuesday! So we signed those and today we were to mail them off.

First, I went to the bank to get my money orders. Boy, do I get nervous there! I mean, I am at the bank and I have these two critical money orders to get written to pay for the balance of our Kidslink fee, plus the whole of the intercountry fee. Plus I had to mail the signatures in a different direction. I knew that I had papers to go with each envelope and my brain was having a little brain freeze as it was sorting through all this. It is just the excitement of the moment. It happened when I mailed off all the dossier documents in different directions last time. *smile*

Anyhow, I left the bank and headed to the post office, bought my Express Post envelopes, loaded them up and out they went.

We are doing things HYPERSPEED!! LOL! Seriously, what the majority of peope do is get their homestudy done and approved and then move on to their dossier. That can take another month to do. I was not willing to do that and since I KNEW this was a God thing and the adoption was going to go through, I just did the dossier before I even got the homestudy completed! So today we have mail heading to the agency and they will receive our signatures and then mail it onto Kidslink - in about 4 days, I am guessing.

Meanwhile, I have mailed our final cheques ($4770 + $6500) to Kidslink. They should be in Kidslink by Friday. So by Monday everything will come together - all our hard work from the last four months: Dossier, money, and Homestudy.

What was really cool was while I was at the post office (for all of ten minutes) three people I knew came in and were able to be part of the exciting moment of FINALIZING the paperwork.

Change of Age Request

The question that our agency social worker wrote and asked about was the ages of the girls we are requesting. We had originally said two girls: ages 6 - 36 months for one and 3 - 7 years for the second. Her thought was that it would slow down our referral by having the request that specific. The easiest thing to write down is either sex child any age. We would have a referral in about 2-3 months!

My thoughts are that God knows exactly who our girls are, and even if we open up the ages to be less specific, I really believe that God knows the desires of our hearts, and He put them there. Therefore, He will honour them!

Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4

Our hearts desire is to have a little girl to raise from tiny and an older one that is the right age to play with the younger set of 3, 5, 8 year old boys. But maybe we don't know what is best and God's idea and ours is not the same. So we decided to open it up and trust. God will send the girls that He thinks fit our family best.

So our new request is 0 - 48 months for the first child and 0 - 7 years for the second child. Mark my words, we will receive a referral with one child fitting into the 6-36 month range and one child in the 3-7 range. I just feel it. But at the same time we *could* end up with 6 month old twins! AACCCKKKK *LOL* Am I *ready* for *that*???!!! *grin* Keep saying: God knows best!!

As our 14 year old said, when asked his opinion on opening it up, "It is better that way, cause then it will really be a surprise what we get." Too true!

Things Are Just Bopping Along

We saw our social worker on Sunday, 14th October. She told us she would be writing up our file and would hopefully have it done by Saturday. After that it would be sent to our agency and through the hoops over there. From talking to them I knew it would not make it through there until this coming Thursday.

On Saturday night, like clockwork, I received the homestudy via email, for us to go over and confirm all was accurate. We did this and our SW said she would send it on to the agency on Sunday night or Monday morning.

Imagine my surprise, when I received an email on Sunday night from our contract SW with a question that our agency social worker (just to confuse you - we have two social workers; one who was contracted for the homestudy and one who will do all the home legwork at our agency) had sent to her. It was Sunday night! That meant our agency was working on a Sunday!! I was thrilled! We answered the question and sent it back to our agency on Monday morning about 7:30 am. By 8:50 am Monday morning those two social workers had done their job and had finalized our paperwork - about four days ahead of schedule!!!

Then today I received the signature papers that Ray and I, the social worker, and the agency all have to sign. It was mailed from our contract social worker yesterday, got here today, and will be mailed onto the agency social worker tomorrow. That means by Friday we will have our homestudy all signed, sealed and ready to mail!! That puts us about one week ahead of schedule!!

Last Homestudy Visit

Last Sunday, we had our final visits with our social worker. It was really rather painless, but you wouldn't have known that if you had listened to my imagination in the week leading up to her visit! LOL!!

People always clean their houses immaculately prior to the social worker, and then there are those that say to keep it 'normal' and not to clean too hard. Well, I like a clean house, so it was clean when she came. She probably figures I did it all for her! LOL!! But actually, our kids (at least those under the age of 14) are asked to clean their room before bed, and if I see a disaster at other times, I generally ask them to tidy it. You can't live in a house with six boys and not *try* to stay on top of it!!!

When she arrived our boys immerged, one by one, to meet her. We began with a tour of the yard and the house. It is rather interesting because our decorating is really quite good. Two of our boys share a room with a Narnia theme and among other things, they have actual wooden trees cut and painted, to separate one half of their room from another; another two boys have a room which is a transportation theme, and they have a real wooden train track attached to the wall and other creative things; an army theme room for our 14 year old, complete with a camoflauge ceiling; and a Times Square at night with rotating disco lights and neon signs etc is in our 16 year old son's room. Our tv room is done in black furniture with accents of each of the kids colours, including lime green, turquoise, bright yellow, tangerine in the lamp shades, bean bags, window trim etc.

And through all of these rooms she did not say a word of interest!! The other side of the coin is she did not notice any things like plug covers or fire extinguishers or anything like that either. She was more concerned with just running through and making a note of what rooms we actually have. So that was easy!

She then talked to us about the boys and asked us to describe each of their characters. We ran through financial, guardianship of the boys, and a few other of these types of questions. She then had each of the boys come in for a private interview of about 15-20 minutes each. She saw our oldest first, followed by the 14 year old, and then she brought in the 10, 8 and 4 year old. She wasn't going to talk to the 4 year old, but he really wanted to talk so he got his turn too!! LOL!!

After their interviews, we came back in, and at this point you are wondering what she asked the kids? Are we lousy parents, according to the reports by them? Who knows! LOL!

Ray and I were then asked every question under the sun, about parenting. What was interesting was her asking us if the girls would work for the family business. Well, that made me think. Naturally I would say 'yes' because they are part of the family, but then I wondered if it was 'the right thing to do' because they were girls. How are you 'supposed' to treat girls? Her anwer was that if our other boys didn't have a choice and it was a requirement for earning money for college, house fund etc, then she believed the girls should also not be given a choice. She said that a family that has all the members working in the family business is stronger for it.

She told us that she had asked our 14 year old if he thought he would have any issues with friends, regarding the colour of his sisters, skin. His response? "Give me a break!!" said with disgust. He said his friends are all looking forward to meeting the girls. His attitude was geared towards the people who would be ignorant enough to make comments - our kids are so accepting of other people and have friends of all skin colours, sizes, shapes, and looks.

They are very accepting and kind children, and to them the external look is not even something they notice. So, to find someone that actually *notices* that would so 'annoy' our son!

Our homestudy visit lasted from about 10:15 - 2:00 pm. Oh, and at the end of our visit, I said to the social worker: "So, did we pass?" Can't ever say I don't cut to the chase! She said with surprise, "Oh yes! I would never go through the whole process and at the end of the report simply write - "No". If there was anything that I felt needed discussing, we would talk about it as we go." So we passed! YEAH!!

Now, the next stage is the social worker has taken all of her paperwork and will compile it into a written 'snapshot' of our family. It will be extremely complete and tell just who we are! It will then be sent to us for us to look over. After this, it will be emailed to our provincial agency and they will go over it and in about three days have it ready for signatures. At this time, all three groups: social worker, Ray and I, and the agency will all sign it off.

It will then be mailed off to our foreign agency, where they will add it to the dossier that they already have compiled by us.

Tagged

I've been tagged by Sharla *smile*

Jobs I've had:
1. Santa's Helper - when I was 17.
2. Chambermaid in the Banff Springs Hotel. I was there 7 months saving for my backpacking trip around Europe. Now THAT was a blast!
3. Bar maid in a pub in England on my trip around Europe.
4. Receptionist in an ophthalmologist office.

Places I have lived:
1. Banff, Alberta
2. Tonbridge, Kent, England
3. Abbotsford, BC
4. Savary Island, BC

Food I love:
1. icecream - I have a bowl every night
2. chocolate - I buy it religiously and hide it from the kids
3. Chinese food
4. Most foods in a restaurant - reason? I am not the one cooking!

Places I'd rather be:
1. In Ethiopia meeting our little girls
2. In Hawaii or somewhere warm, watching my kids play in the water and dig in the sand.
3. I would love to be in Tennessee visiting my Bosum Buddy, Denise.
4. Having a chat and a coffee with my other Sister Chick friend, Renee.

Places I've travelled to:
1. The States: Florida, Tennessee, Oregon, Washington, California.
2. Mexico
3. Hawaii
4. Europe: England, France, Spain, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Italy, Belgium.

Movies I love:
1. When a Man Loves a Woman.
2. Pretty Woman.
3. The Holiday
4. The Lake House

T.V. Shows I Watch:
1. Survivor
2. Grey's Anatomy
3. I liked Jericho and they cancelled it!
4. NCIS

Books I Love:
1. There is No Me Without You. Absolutely loved, loved, loved it and cried too.
2. Anything John Grisham
3. Max Lucado books
4. Any good parenting books

Bloggers I am Tagging:
1. Tami
2. Denise
3. Renee
4. Laura H.

I Bought Myself the Sweetest Hope

Bertie Mae Watched Over Little Hattie

They sit on our window sill in our livingroom, and as I sit here typing my blog, I can glance up and see them. Our girls may not be the age of these two, but that was the age idea we had in the beginning. So, even if they arrive younger, they will eventually be this big.

Emma Jane's Remember When.. Collection are the most beautiful figurines. Each of them has a very special facial expression. Ray and I were talking about how the older sister has a look of cautious happiness on her face. That seems to match what an older adopted sister might feel when entering a new situation with her younger charge.

Hallmark Cards Helps Eliminate Aids in Africa

It's Been A While

I haven't posted for a while; the longest time since my blog first went up. It has been rather quiet at this end. I have been crazy busy with school, as well!

Our second home study went well. That was 8 days ago. We met with the social worker and we both had a separate hour to run through our life history - from birth until we met! When we met at her house she said, "I'll take Chatty first." (this is me looking over my shoulder to see who she might mean. *grin*)

So I went for my hour of chit chat and Ray went to sleep in the van. I did my best to keep my answers as short as possible, and we finished on the dot of 1 hour. Then we drove downtown to Denny's Restaurant and Ray and our SW went into the restaurant, and I sat in the van and read a book. One hour of peace and quiet; I got through 1/3 of a book!!

The funny thing is Ray took *over* an hour to answer his questions! *laugh* See, since I wasn't there he *had* to talk!! *grin*

Our next and final meeting with our SW is on Sunday, at our house. I hate to think what the cost will be. We have to pay for her time and given she lives 2 hours away, I think we are talking about an 8 hour day, plus an additional $200 for travel. It is a shame they don't have a closer SW to us!

She will come in the morning to meet and interview the kids and do a house tour. She has to interview any child over the age of seven. All the children have varying feelings about this meeting, ranging from nervous, to excited, to 'what a pain!' LOL!

After her time with the children, she has kindly offered to go for lunch, while I feed the kids and then put the littlest to bed, and send the other four or five off to play at friends' houses. She will then return and we will have the last of our six meetings. Here is where we will discuss parenting. Should be interesting. I always think that adoptive parents that have no biological children have it so much easier than those of us with children already. I have heard stories of some of the antics that little ones get up to while the social worker was visitings: slapping mommy across the face!, having temper tantrums, pouring out a jug of milk on the floor, etc. Should be interesting. I mean you will do what you normally do, but you will feel like you are under a microscope! Our littlest ones especially, *love* visitors and will probably be all over her! :o/ Tonight I found out that Cooper thinks the SW is bringing the girls on Sunday. Ooops! Going have to deal with that one!

Bye Bye Birdie

Tonight I received the most exciting phone call!

"Hello, this is ___ of ____ Performing Arts Society. I would like to congratulate Cassidy Lafreniere, on winning the role of Randolph in our upcoming musical, Bye Bye Birdie!"

Oh! Was I excited!! I asked the lady if she could give Cassidy the good news herself. This is so very wonderful for Cassidy. He really sacrificed when he decided that his way of helping out the adoption fund was to put his acting on hold. That would mean no auditions because given where we live an audition will cost us about $150 each time in gas. When you go to an audition there are 10's and even 100 kids trying out for the part. It is really a shot in the dark. But he really enjoys it and has enjoyed a few small jobs.

When we put his acting on hold I told him that I would look around our area for something for him. I hadn't even had a chance to begin looking when I saw the ad in the paper. He will also have an opportunity to be part of our homeschool group, which will be doing Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, with rehearsals starting in November. Cassidy has had a role in the homeschool productions for the last 3 years.

When this performing arts society musical came up, I called the woman and was informed that 'yes, there is one child's role - a ten year old boy'.

I knew that it was no coincidence that the one role would happen to be one just for his age!! Thank you, Lord, for your goodness to a little boy who sacrificed his desires to help bring his sisters home!

While we were waiting for his audition the other night a boy signed in who was just Cassidy's age and had big bright eyes with long lashes, like Cassidy. Cassidy gave me this look - like - 'Oh, boy!' I just whispered in his ear that if it was meant to be he would get the part, and if he did not get the part it was because God knew he had other things to do this year.

We heard the boy sing "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog" - just a piece of it and I thought, 'uh oh', because he sounded good to me. LOL!

This was Cassidy's first attempt at singing in public. Thanks to his friend, Tessa, in Tennessee, who taught him this little move, he has a little flair on his second little piece. He was to sing "Do Re Mi", but since the coordinator had suggested singing "Happy Birthday" since he was not a 'singer', Cassidy decided to take them up on it. He knew it would be short and sweet and simple.

At his audition he very sweetly sang his four lines and then after the final line, he threw on a - "Cha Cha Cha!!" and gave a little swing of his hips. They burst into laughter and loved it!

He also had to do a dialogue. He did a wonderful job of being 'The Great Brain' - and did a dialogue about about a way to make some easy money. They told him he was brilliant.

Cassidy begins his rehearsals next week and will be rehearsing twice a week, for 2 1/2 hours each time, until March, at which time it will be daily for two solid weeks. They will then have 6 days of performances!

Anonymous Posters & Background Music Info

If you want to leave a comment on my blog, that is great - I welcome them. But if you are going to do so, please do not post as Anonymous - I do not publish Anonymous posts.

Also, for those that are not aware of this fact - when you go on my blog you do not have to listen to the music - or you can turn it down.

If you wish to see a posted video and can't hear it, due to the background music, then you need to turn down my music on *your* computer. To do this you go to the bottom of the screen, where the play box is and hit the pause button.

Mom Overture

This is hilarious!! So for all you first time mums, hang on!! *laugh*