Prayer Requests...And exciting HOUSE news!!

It's been another busy week around here! My dear hunny hubby is sick though, and I'm beginning to worry. I know, worry is sin...but I am concerned about him. He went to the doctor today and they're sending him for tests. They think he may have a problem with his leg and he has had a cough for a while...So...please pray that my best friend/husband will be ok!!

On another note, we put in an offer on another house this weekend! It is, unfortunately for the seller, going to be foreclosed on in a few weeks. We have offered a decent price but one we realize the bank might not be willing to accept. We might now know for sure for a few weeks but I do believe it is in God's hands. If this is not His will, there will be another house!

It is cute...in a 50's style ranch house sort of way...kind of in the country but not with a LOT of land...just 2/3 acre. But HEY!! It's enough for me to have that LONG LUSTED AFTER clothesline AND HIGHLY DESIRED CHICKEN COOP!!
It's a 3 or 4 bedroom blue vinyl sided ranch with a detached garage and trees. It backs up to a beautiful woods...not "ours" but we can pretend! The taxes alone are about 1/3 the amount our current home has! (And the best thing of all...LORD WILLING...it will be paid off!! WOOHOO!!) We will use the current family room/office as our bedroom...if we get the house, that is. The previous owner turned the 1 car attached garage into that room AND added a bathroom in it as well so THERE YOU GO!!! Our "Master Suite"!! (Minus a closet which can always be added at some time, right??)
I LOVE LOVE LOVE THE IDEA OF LIVING MODERATELY! Now let's just see if my semi-hoarding tendencies can cope with getting rid of a LOT of stuff! We will be decreasing the size of our home by at least 1/2 AND we are planning to add to our family by adoption! Doesn't make much sense, does it? But we both feel that this is what God is asking us to do to be better able to serve HIM...and that's what it's all about, right?? 13 year old Becca has always LOVED stuffed animals and she has decided to donate them to a charity. She has a tremendous amount of "Build a Bears". She worked for a food pantry last Thursday and realized that there is such a need for little children to have Christmas presents! That will lighten our load in her room considerably...enough to accomodate a new little sister...or two....
Eventually we will probably add a family room so that we can have all of our kids, in laws, and our grandkids home at one time! We are up to 19 of us (with baby Gabe expected in January to Abi and Sam AND including "Permanent Fixture" Ben...Marci's boyfriend...) NOT including our little girl who is in Africa! Yeah...we will need a "gathering place" for all of us!
The house needs a "little" work but it seems like an incredible blessing to me! There's nothing that can't be lived with and the only thing that really needs to be done is just "preferences." (Like I would PREFER that the dead mouse currently taking up residence in the kitchen drawer be removed.... Yeah.) It is what we need...and not more than that! I love the yard and can just imagine my chickens pecking the ground and my little girl going out there with a basket to help me gather eggs! There's room for a garden, too!

So, if you think about it, keep my Roger in your prayers, our house offer in your prayers, and our little girl who may or may not be born yet in Africa in your prayers! (I love her already and we are REALLY getting excited about it!! )
Blessings to you all!
Beth

Whew! Long day at work today! Since I fell a few weeks ago, I had been working at a "light" work site...NOT!! That site was really difficult as well and today I went back to my original site with the 4 special needs adults. We made a decision, though...(Roger and I)...that I will not work as many hours as I had been. I usually work 30 hours in two days and it is just exhausting. I am now going to be working "fill in" where I work where and when I want to! Much much easier hours and possibly in not as hard sites as I do now. Probably just 12 hours a week, which with babysitting the grand babies and homeschooling and the regular homemaking duties will be quite enough! ;)

I mailed off a lot of our adoption papers today. I sent our fingerprints to the FBI and also sent things to the State Police, etc. Things are moving along!

I went shopping with one of my clients today and we went...just for fun...to Babies R Us. Oh my goodness, I have gotten so spoiled shopping at Goodwill, Consignment shops and garage sales that I had totally forgotten how much things "in the real world" cost! Our soon to be little girl doesn't need ANYTHING but I just thought it would be fun to look. Goodness! I kept thinking, "I can make that...." or "I saw something like that at Goodwill..." Over $200 for crib bedding???!!!
I'm cheap. (the preferred word is frugal...)

Well, it's been a LONG day and I have to get up at 4:15AM to put in another 15 hour day so I think I had better call it a day!

Little Grace in Africa...I am thinking and dreaming about you.....XOXO!!
Blessings,
Beth

Today is Fingerprint Day for Jennie and Marci! I wonder if I should bake a cake for the occasion? I can't believe all that we have to go through to get this adoption thing going!! Roger is going to go tomorrow morning. We can only go between 7:30 AM to 4 PM so it's kind of hard for him to get there during working hours.

I am trying to write something either on my blog or in a journal every day regarding our lives and adoption. I would like to know what we were doing and how were were feeling... JUST IN CASE our little girl isn't born yet...on the day that she is born. If she is already born, I've been praying for her and thinking about her all the time...kind of like a mother who is wanting to be pregnant or is pregnant already loves her child even though it isn't here yet. It's kind of a strange feeling to be so infatuated with a little person you know nothing about.

Yesterday was our oldest daughter's birthday. (Roger's daughter, Abi.) I love the relationship we have together. Not quite "mom" but not unlike "mom" either. She is mommy to Seraphina and expecting Gabe in January. She is VERY much supportive of our adoption!

I'm very grateful for the relationships I have in my family. I am blessed.

I have lots to get done today and Little Miss Seraphina arrives here shortly. I'm sure she is expecting her cookie she asked for late last night. I promised her she could have it today because Mommy and Daddy said she didn't need any more last night! She is such a cutie!!

Blessing to you all!

Beth

What a crisp fall day....election day...it is in central Indiana! Roger asked me to get up and vote first thing this morning with him. I kind of wanted to stay in my nice warm bed and vote later but when my husband WANTS my company, it isn't something I want to say NO to! It's so nice to be loved...

Anyway, yesterday I was fingerprinted by the police for the beginning of our home study for our adoption of a little girl from Lesotho, Africa! Thursday is our first meeting for our home study! It's actually happening! Amazing, don't you think????
Roger, Marci, and Jennie will be fingerprinted tomorrow and then I can mail the forms to the FBI. Sounds kind of ominous...I wonder if I'll find out that I'm REALLY somebody else...I think Roger thinks I am sometimes!! :) Everyone 18 and older needs to be fingerprinted. Jennie will be that old by the time the adoption is done so I am sending hers along as well!

I'm not quite sure just how long it will take to get our little precious girl. One place I saw said once they get their paperwork til the time we go to get her will be 6 months. Another place said 6 months until the adoption agency processes it, 6 months for Lesotho to process it and then we will travel to get her. So, anyway, I guess I will just wait and see. Once we get all the paperwork turned in I'm sure we will get a better idea. I'm thinking somewhere between 6 and 18 months. I wonder if she is even born yet. I've started praying for her circumstances and her birth mother.
I've been praying for our little girl for quite some time. We are pretty sure her middle name will be Grace. It depends on how old she is whether or not we change her first name. She might have an "English" name already so who knows!

Well, lots and lots to get done today. I'm also babysitting little grandson Brody. He's soooo adorable!
Blessings,
Beth

A little bit of "cohesion"...

Today I was quizzing Rebecca in preparation for her Science test. A word she had to define was "cohesion."
The definition in her book said it is "The phenomenon that occurs when individual molecules are so strongly attracted to each other that they tend to stay together, even when exposed to tension."
"Wow!" I thought. "That sounds just like our marriage!"
I decided that it would be a wonderful object lesson for Becca...and me.

"It's just like Roger and I are the molecules and we love each other so much that we will stay together even when we are exposed to tension."

We have lots of tension sometimes in our home. I'm sure most families do but it is how we handle the tension that determines how well we are "cohesive." (THAT was Roger's word for ME tonight when I told him about our science lesson today. Ummm...I had to look it up after he went upstairs just to make sure I understood what it meant...)

He said, "Now that we have had cohesion we are cohesive." (Well integrated or unified.)

Most of the time we ARE unified. It hasn't been easy with two separate families living in one house. It is easier NOT to be unified because it takes WORK for our marriage to be COHESIVE. (I like that word...I think I'll use it more often...!!!) We could just go on our selfish lazy way and not make the effort it takes to be successful!

The thing that makes us more COHESIVE....if I dare call it a "thing"... is Jesus Christ. We are led and guided by the Holy Spirit and He is the One leading our marriage. God is the Foundation on which our marriage is built. After that is the love, companionship, friendship, and commitment that we share.

This is something that I did not have when I was married before and I am so grateful to have God as the focal point of our marriage...although it isn't perfect, God is, and we strive to better ourselves every day!


Blessings to you all!
Have a lovely day!
Beth

A Little "Slice" of Our Lives....

Isn't this just the cutest thing EVER?? When I went downstairs one morning, I found this piece of cake on a pretty glass dish. We had decorated a HUGE cake for an anniversary reception for the company Roger works for and he had decided to take the rest of the left over cake to the office to share. He put a few pieces aside for us for supper but I found this extra special one on our island with a note in frosting. I couldn't "have my cake and eat it too" so I decided I'd do the next best thing and take a picture THEN I could EAT it! If you can't quite make out his lettering...it says "Beth's piece cuz I love her" Isn't that sweet? (Literally...it was very sweet....) How romantic!!

Becca, Gideon, Jennie and I took a day and drove to Anderson, Indiana where there is a nice State Park called "Mounds State Park." It has all these Native American built "mounds" all over the place where they most likely built them even before the time of Christ for religious or seasonal observances. To be honest, the kids weren't terribly impressed because to them they just looked like small shaped hills. But when I explained to them that they knew the seasons and the placement of the stars and that the mounds lined up with certain stars during certain times and that they had primitive tools to use to create those "scientific and religious" mounds, they were a "little" more impressed. However, the area was just gorgeous and it was a perfect fall day!

Gideon and Becca did NOT want to cooperate with getting a good picture of them! BUT, more importantly, they did cooperate behavior-wise and we had a great day!!

Gideon, Jennie and "Precious" playing in the river. Precious loves to get in the water as long as it isn't up over her chest or a BATH. She hates baths!!

Earlier in the week Becca and I took little grandson Brody to a country market where we bought some Golden Delicious apples and some cornstalks to decorate our house. Brody is a wonderful little guy!

We got eighth grader Becca's first grades for the period last week. For those of you who don't know, she is going to a one day a week "school." (It can't REALLY be called a school but it is a homeschool organized tutelage and they take a "classical" approach to education.) There is a LOT of schoolwork and she is busy almost every minute of the day. I really like it and so does she but we're trying to figure out how to whittle it down a little bit so that we can still enjoy a free moment or two during the day to spend together baking, sewing, etc. (The things that we love to do together!)

Anyway, her grades are good and I'm so delighted that I don't have to keep track of all her grades anymore!! I wasn't sure how to do that so I was very excited to show up at her open house and to find out that they already had them compiled for me! (I have to keep her records but they will give me her grades!! Woo Hoo!!)

We're still working on getting our adoption papers all filled out. It's a big step...kind of scary but we both feel that God is leading us this direction. Hopefully in a year or two we will have a little girl from Lesotho, Africa. A new friend that I have made at Becca's "school" has adopted a little girl from Africa as well but she is from the Congo. She is supposed to be travelling on FRIDAY to come home and join her family!

That brings tears to my eyes because I know that somewhere in Africa is a little girl who belongs to me. (or WILL belong to me.) She may not even be born yet and maybe her birth mother is doubting whether or not she should carry this baby. But she is mine and her middle name is Grace. (We may decide to keep her first name to honor her heritage and not to confuse her if she is an older child when she comes home to us. But we have decided on Grace for a very likely middle name!) It's so strange to be completely in love with someone I don't even know anything about yet, isn't it?? She has more clothes already than any little girl I know! Most of them are gorgeous little dresses and jumpers that I have purchased from Goodwill......of course! They look brand new! I have them in all sizes from 2T up to some size 8's. I'm not getting my hopes up to adopt a baby under 2 years old. I'm praying that God will give us the child He wants us to have! I even have bins full of shoes...Stride Rite, etc....things that are almost brand new but that we most likely won't be able to afford once we get her home! She's going to look like a wealthy little girl...who's gonna know the difference???? I love the Goodwill Store!! It is a real blessing to have such a nice one so close by. UMMMM....Roger thinks it's a CURSE.......crazy man.

Have a lovely fall day!

Blessings!

Beth

Birthday Season at a Close....finally......

Another busy weekend here at our house! Roger's "Birthday Season" continued through Sunday. His actual birthday was Oct. 7 but we celebrated all week! We went to a 4 star downtown Indianapolis on Oct. 5th and 6th. By the way, if you have never used Priceline or one of those kind of discount online places, it is really worth the effort! We have used this numerous times and usually get a $200 hotel room for $50 to $65 a night!
It was nice although we like our own cozy bed much better! We went shopping at Circle Center Mall and then went to a large antique mall for the rest of the day.
Sunday we had all the kids over for Roger's birthday! It was really wonderful!

Friday and Saturday I spent at work...and at the Emergency Room. I was pushing a wheelchair into a client's room when I slipped on some "Febreeze" another worker had sprayed. The "fall out" from the spray had made the floor very slippery and I fell on my right knee and then back on my left elbow. I spent the next few hours getting Xrays! Nothing broken but a lot of pain. The doctor said I sprayed my knee and my elbow. My knee is painful but not as bad as my elbow. However, I am VERY glad I didn't actually break anything! Today I go to "Associate Health" to be examined since it happened "on the job" and they determine when I go back to work.

We're continuing to fill out the lengthy adoption papers and to try to get our paperwork in order. When I go to Associate Health today, I'm going to get some shots that I am behind in and I will need before I go to Africa! (I'm ALMOST as afraid of shots as I am of FLYING!!!!) I won't travel for a year or so but there's no need in waiting to get shots, anyway! (Yuck...I could probably find a LOT of reasons NOT to get the shots now but since my arm is hurting anyway, I might as well get the shots now, right? I tend to get really sore with Tetanus shots....)

So that's about all that's happening in our house right now. Tomorrow I hope to post a "how to" on inexpensive and easy pumpkin decorations for your house...
Blessings to you!
Beth