It is amazing how quickly that last 3 months have flown by!!! While I am aware that we are waiting and do certainly notice as each week goes by, I can say that I haven't felt the wait. Actually, in the first month or so, I did. And then, once I made the decision that I couldn't watch the clock or calendar, but must instead fill my time with what needed to be done to cause the time to go faster, the days have whipped by!
I have such a long list of things I want to accomplish before the children come home that I fear I might not get it all done. And then, I know it will not get done for *years*!! When I was due with our fifth child I decided to take all the photos that I had taken for the previous ten years - the years since we had been having children - and scrapbook them. This was a big job, but as anyone can attest who knows me - it was not a problem getting it done! I sat on the couch with my scrapbooking equipment set up around me and proceeded to pound through those pages. I got four albums done - 236 pages - in under a month. The only thing I didn't finish was labelling 1 1/2 books. That job has sat languishing and I have been constantly reminded that I haven't done it for the last five years!!!
So now, I knew this was the time. Five years have gone by since I have done photos. Not that I didn't want to - I just always had more important things to do.... like: giving birth to two babies, taking a month long trip to Tennessee, a road trip to California, selling our house, building (family built) our new house, not to mention schooling four children.
So in this last two weeks I have done the following: I have labelled those two albums! Yeah! Done! I have gone through about 8 albums from 1986-1991 and disposed of all those photos that a person really doesn't need - landscape, landscape, landscape, before kids party pictures, etc etc. By the time I was done I had reduced those albums to about 2!!! And they are now neatly in envelopes, so that one day I can give my kids copies of the ones that are really important!
As well as that I have now begun my fun adoption project. I am making special 'hands on' albums for when the children come home from Ethiopia. When each of my boys leave home I will be giving them a nicely scrapbooked journey of their lives. I have already begun the older children's books and the two oldest boys will have theirs brought up to date before our girls are home. One day I will also make those books for the girls. But in the meantime, I want them to have an album that they can handle and pour over. An album that shows what came before them. So they can see their new roots.
This album will not be the fancy one that will be their adoption journal. The adoption journal will have less photos and will journalize our journey to them. This book is more of a photo journal of the road before they came.
I began these journals last night. Last week, I went through our pictures and found photos that date back to when Ray and I got married. I then continued forth with photos of each time a baby was added to our family and photos in the intermittent years. Photos that show the child(ren) growing up. The album shows aunties, uncles, granny, memere, grandad, grampa and friends. And even special dogs in our lives. This way when they see the people that are important to us they will know, "That is Aunty Mandy' or "I know that Dog!" The people will be familiar. Obviously most of these people they will meet before the books become theirs, but in later days when they don't seem them (because they live so far away) they will be able to identify them and become familiar before the next visit.
It is odd. I think about these children as *ours*. We have been praying for them and believing for them for the last 8 1/2 months, but I *forget* that they are also my sister's and my mother in law's. They are *their* little nieces and grandchildren!! We do not live in a cocoon, but I easily forget that there is a world outside of our little home. It will be exciting to know that our family acquires new children "just like that". Mind you, for anyone adopting, they know it is not 'just like that'. *smile* Though they arrive out of infant stage, there were certainly growing pains to bring them home!
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