Baby Bucket List

As we are in our last phase of waiting to bring home Lil' A and Baby T, Brian and I have been thinking and talking a lot about how we want to make the most of these remaining months of just the 2 of us. For lack of a better catch phrase, we've loosely constructed a bit of a baby bucket list. Clarification: we do not think there's a death in parenting, just a massive change in our 9+ years of married life!

What's on the list? I thought you might ask. I don't know if we'll be able to accomplish all of what we've dreamed about for time and money reasons, but here's an unofficial list in no particular order:

• See as many movies in the theater as possible, even a few crappy ones!
• Go to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach and have dinner at Sevilla's, where we celebrated an anniversary a few years ago that launched us into a new way of partnership.
• Drive to NorCal to visit our friends who recently moved to San Fransisco.
• Overnight trip to Santa Barbara. [Brian's never been, and I only went for a day with my parents years ago. How that's possible, I have no idea!]
• Visit a couple art museums in L.A.
• Watch football all day on as many Saturdays as possible.
• Sleep as much as possible, especially on the weekends.
• Spontaneously go out with friends when the opportunity presents itself. [Brian's done that 3 times in the past couple weeks with buddies - including tonight. Love it!]
• Go out for breakfast on a Friday morning a couple times.

Any suggestions? Do you have any plans like this for your life transition?

**BTW: we got 6 more pics of Lil' A this week for no particular reason.!!! He's just really, really cute! I can't get over how in love I am with this little guy and his little sister.

The Village

Tonight I went to our church's support group for families that are adopting, fostering, or involved in caring for orphans. It's called "The Village". I love it. It reflects our value and philosophy that it will take a village to raise our 2 Ethiopian beauties. The purpose for the support group is clear and simple: "to unite, equip, and support those who are caring for children who are in foster care and orphans."

UNITE :: Though I say it's our church's support group, Newsong leaders purely host and arrange the group. Tonight there were probably 10 families and 5 churches represented. It wasn't through clever marketing that brought everyone together. It was the calling to care for orphans. AWESOME!

EQUIP :: We meet 1/month and are spending the next several months watching Dr. Karyn Purvis' video series on Empowering to Connect. Then, the plan is to read The Connected Child together and process as a group. Both resources by her rock!!!

SUPPORT :: Within 5 minutes of walking into this group of "strangers" it felt like home. Comfortable in all the right ways. Challenging to the point of discomfort. Safe. Purposeful. Emotionally intensive. Intellectually stimulating. It's the right environment for parents who are walking into the world of orphan care! It felt like a 12-step group without the steps, except maybe a shared addiction for loving kids who need a forever family.

I knew I'd found a new family when during the opening prayer I started sobbing and couldn't find a dry spot on my hands to wipe the tears. Something in my spirit opened up to these amazing men and women because of their heart for "the least of these". These are parents who are WALKING OUT THE GOSPEL in the truest form. I'm inspired by them!

If you are in Orange County and would like to join "The Village", let me know. "The Village" is an incredible environment!!!!!! If you are a Newsonger, please get ready for Orphan Sunday on November 7th. It's going to rock our worlds. My Only Prayer: that we'd be ready and say "YES!" to God's call.

It Takes a Whole Village...

For the past 6 weeks I've wanted to brag on our community a little bit because of how awesome they are! Seriously, our friends have walked us through the thick and think, pains and celebrations, every single seemingly meaningless detail - they have cared about. It moves me to tears to even think about how they have expressed such real love for us and our babies over the past 18 months.

When it came time to "announce" our referral, our small group was among the first round of people we were dying to tell. We found out about our referral on a Monday morning and planned on telling our small group on Tuesday night at small group. It was an agonizing 36 hour wait, but totally worth their reactions...

We made the announcement by presenting these t-shirts [below] to them. Brian calmly pulled each t-shirt out of a bag and excitedly announced that WE GOT OUR REFERRAL and they were finally going to be ah-gots [uncles] and ah-kasts [aunties]! Shock and awe and screaming and laughter and tears erupted! This is a picture of our amazing small group: Tony and Erin [left] and Loc and Christina [right].

After the intitial shock wore off, they wanted to know every single detail. This beautiful picture of me with my eyes closed is describing the past 36 hours and our kiddos. Erin got her kids out of bed to hear the news! You can see Christina here totally being Christina - thoughtful, introspective, totally crying, and overwhelmed at God's faithfulness.
The next morning I got to tell our staff at Newsong. I had already told my staff [minus Abe who was on vacation...SAD!], so when I made the announcement to our entire staff these guys ripped off their 2nd layer shirts to proudly display their new Ethiopian ah-got and ah-kast shirts.
This last pic is just another classic example of how supportive my girlfriends are. Christina and Erin held my hand through Babies R Us, carefully helping me select the 2 items I need from a walls of 100s of items. In a little over an hour, I registered for most everything we need for them. True love! NOTICE: I'm wearing my very own "eh-my-ay"/mama t-shirt that Erin got for my last birthday!!I have to say, we have the best village ever to bring our babies home. Though it breaks our heart not to have biological family in the area, our understanding of family is so much deeper and wider than blood...in more ways than one! :)