Seeing with eyes wide open

Exactly.

What a day!

Today has been a day of super highs and very low lows. But God is sovereign and in complete control. Thus, we trust Him in the good and in the "bad".

So, to focus only on the positive:

Today we received our passports back with our visas! Perfect timing! The visas are dated so that we can go back for our 3rd child in 2012! We are planning to adopt a little girl through China's Special Focus Program, and we have already named her "Hope". God will work the details out the way He wants and in His perfect timing. We completely trust Him.

Also, we received two new pictures of Andrew--who is definitely at the Luoyang Children's Welfare Institute now. These pictures were shared by a mom who is also adopting a child from the same orphanage. I praise God for sweet people who understand the wait and the longing to see one's child, and thus, are willing share photos.

So, here's Andrew! He's the child in the middle:

There he is again behind another child:

Here's what the last picture looked like before being cropped:

See him just peeking out around the other little boy?

From these pictures it seems Andrew may be shy and comfortable simply being "in the background". Also, he is significantly smaller than the other children in his age group.

WE. ARE. SO. IN. LOVE!!!!!

We have our tickets!

We were given notice yesterday of our travel dates. Thus, we began working hard to find tickets that weren’t astronomically priced. With many people praying for wisdom for us, over the next 28 hours we were given ideas of flying out of various cities and using the train to connect city to city. Thus, in the end, we were able to shave off thousands of dollars off our originally quoted price.

God worked. He answered prayers for wisdom.

Initially we were going to have astronomical prices or choose multiple days traveling with multiple stops with long layovers (up to 20+ hours). God is good! We now have a much better schedule than we even thought possible; and the price? much less.

God cares for His children. He answers prayers for wisdom.

We are flying out on December 13th and arriving home on December 30th. Strangely enough, we flew out December 12th and returned on December 29th when we flew over to get Cherish.

We are awed by God's grace and kindness. We are looking forward to what He has planned ahead.

Our Cherish is 5-years-old!

I promise, I just blinked a few times. How fast time is slipping through my fingers!

Strangely enough, I want time to fly by so that the wait for Andrew and Hope will be over quickly, but at the same time, I want time to stand still so our children will stay young.

One-year-old:

Two-years-old:

Three-years-old:

Four-years-old:

Five-years-old:

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

For my little son

Dear Sweet Andrew,

I am so excited that our family finally gets to come and get you! I can hardly wait to hold you in my arms and whisper, “I love you!”

Daddy is so excited, too! He carries your picture around in his wallet and shows a lot of people! Every chance he gets, he talks about you.

Daddy is sick right now, but he’s trying to get well. He wants to be able to hold and kiss you on “Gotcha Day”. ♥

Cherish jumps around the house, because she is so excited. She says that all she wants for Christmas is you! She doesn’t want any toys; only a brother! She loves you already.

Cherish has helped set up your room. Some sweet ladies gave you lots of toys, and she has put them in your room. She says you are going to fly on a plane and think you ended up in Toy Land. She can hardly wait to play with you. (She’s been pretending you are already here and pretends to play with you J.)

Now, about your momma. I just want to say up front: I’m pretty crazy.

Daddy gave me a gift for my birthday. I got to go see a special lady, and I asked her to make my hair dark. I told her I didn’t want you to be scared of me—since my hair was blonde. So, she told me she could help. I was so happy, because I didn’t want you to be scared of me like Cherish was of me when we first got her.

When the special lady was finished with my hair, she was right! My hair was darker. I have green hair now. Yep, green. Not lime green, more like Martian green. Yep. And she didn’t know how to fix it. So, another special lady said I could wash my hair with purple shampoo almost every day. Pretty cool! So, now I have green hair and purple hands—since the shampoo stains my hands. It is way cool!

Oh, and guess what else? I got my ears pierced just so I could come get you! Well, what I mean is: I got tubes in my ears. Think straws. Well, now the coolest thing happens: I can blow air out of one of my ears! Yep, and when my ear is wet (like after a shower), I can blow bubbles out of my ear! I know! I’m special! Well, my other ear is pretty boring. It can’t do fun stuff like that. But, maybe it will be able to whistle one day J.

One more thing. We are a family of snuggle-bunnies. We LOVE snuggling. Cherish told me last night that she wishes she could snuggle with me “all day and all night”. So, we’ll try not to scare you at first, but we hope you will find a nice, warm, cozy spot in our snuggle-bunny family.

Well, crazy or not, here we come! We don’t know our exact travel dates yet, but as soon as the last appointment is made, Daddy and I are going to buy our plane tickets! So…get ready!

I love you, Little One! I’ll be there really soon.

Love,

Your green-headed, purple-handed, bubble-blowing Momma

P.S. I am going to try to sneak a string of Christmas lights into my luggage, so that we can surprise everyone and have Christmas lights up in our hotel room for Christmas. Shhh. It’ll be our little secret. J