Some Hopeful News!

When I said I would post an adoption update today, I basically meant I would say "We don't know anything really," because as of a couple of hours ago that was the gist of it. 

This last week has been really discouraging on the adoption front. The court website has been very behind and they had still not posted case notes for cases that were heard two weeks ago. I had asked you guys to pray for case #s 133, 134 and 135 because they were being heard on Aug 14th, but we had no idea if the cases were actually heard (there was a chance the judge wasn't there) and we had no clue when we would even see the notes from the hearings since they were so behind. 

I got really frustrated waking up every day to the disappointment of no updates. My friend, Medea, suggested that I not check anymore and let her check for me. She would not say anything unless there was an update to share. It was hard to turn over that control to somebody else but I did my best. It did help me not to get upset at the start of each day. 

On Tuesday, I got a text from another adoptive momma whose child is in the same state but a different home. She passed court four weeks ago today and she is still waiting on her written orders. This is taking much longer than either of us thought it would. We thought two weeks max! Well, her orphanage told her they should expect to travel mid November! She passed court a month ago and they don't think she will travel for another 12 weeks! Obviously, she was very upset about this prediction, but it also added insult to injury for me because it's sort of a prediction for all families in our state. I wondered if we would even travel this year! We agreed that we were not accepting this prediction! 

Monday I emailed our rep asking for an update. I know that she will call or email if she has news to share but after a month of hearing nothing, sometimes just seeing words on the screen with her name at the bottom is reassuring. You get pretty needy when you go through an adoption. Anyways, on Tuesday I received her response. She said she had talked to the home that morning and they told her they still didn't have a court date but our cases had been filed a while back. They also said things were running slow in our state. I'm not sure if they mean just in court or in general. This wasn't great news when you paired it with the news from my friend's home. 

Tuesday was just not a good day for me emotionally. I was very down, but by Wednesday I was gaining some peace again. It seems like every time we get a setback it takes me a day to grieve the loss of time I thought we would have with our girls, but by the next day I am usually much better. 

Today, I was okay enough with the situation to blog about our unknowns and discouragements, but as I was driving home from the grocery store, I got a text from Medea that changed this post from no news to HOPEFUL news! 

She checked the website this morning and they had updated the website to include the court notes from the hearings on the 14th! Case #s 133, 134 and 135 were indeed heard and they have been scheduled for the "Petition of Evidence" hearing on September 2nd! That's less than 10 days! We are not 100% sure that these are our cases, but here's why I think they are: 

A) There are three of them and we have three kids to adopt!   
B) There are not that many children in the home, so to process three separate adoptions for unrelated children at the same time would be very unlikely. 
C) They were entered into the courts right around the time the home urgently requested some documents from us for court.
D) There have been no other cases entered into the courts for our home recently.
E) The home said our cases HAVE been entered into the courts.

We should know soon if these are our cases because they should name the children in the notes from this evidence hearing. This is the main hearing and the children will be present. There is a very slim chance that this could be the FINAL hearing for these cases, but it's much more likely there will be a final hearing within two weeks. 

Assuming these are our cases and based on my friend's experience, I hope we will pass court by mid September. Once we get verbal orders we will wait for written orders which may take 4-6 weeks. I am praying it does not take that long! Once we finally get written orders, the home will apply for the girls' passports which could take 2-6 weeks. Again, I am praying it only takes a couple of weeks. As soon as the home sends us copies of all three passports we will get on a plane within a week! By these estimates, we could travel as early as late October but more likely it will be mid to late November or beyond. 

Please pray with us for these three cases! Pray for efficiency and urgency in all areas of this process! I am really praying we can travel before the holiday travel rates kick in (late Nov). 

Thank you all for your love and support! I will update again after the 2nd if not before! 

We ate Chinese last night and this was Lance's fortune.  ;-)

Until next time! -K

We've Survived... So Far!

Yesterday was the end of our first week of homeschooling! We survived!

Overall it was a really good week. We are learning about each other as much as we are learning other stuff. I got a few meltdowns from Asher but I kind of expected that. I got a bit of attitude from Brayden on one day but I really expected that (actually I expected a lot more than I got). I lost my temper on Thursday but I expected that, too. I didn't expect to enjoy homeschooling as much as I do right now. 

So far I'm loving it. There are definitely some things I will be changing up in the near future, especially for Asher (Asher is all about having fun. He just can't sit and do "work" right now), but overall it's been good. 

I'm super excited about next week, because things actually get going. This week was pretty light and we had several days which only had a few subjects to complete. Next week we start reading our "American Pioneers and Patriots" book and we also start doing the Bible devotions included in our curriculum. 

So far, I think my biggest issue with homeschooling is my own OCD. I'm kind of a perfectionist about things (except my house... no perfection there). For example, we went to the park yesterday for a nature walk. We will do this throughout the year. Each child is supposed to find something interesting in nature and then draw it. Once we get home we will write down some interesting information about the plant/animal/land feature and they will paint their drawing with water color paints. We will put these into a notebook and at the end of the year we should have a nice collection of interesting things!

In my head this sounded awesome! I mean I envisioned a leisurely walk in the woods and lovely little paintings with educational info blurbs we would treasure forever. We even had a fellow homeschooling friend join us! Perfect, right? It didn't go that way so much...

Crossing the bridge!

First off, it was like the hottest day ever. Pretty much as soon as we got out of the van I was sweating. Yuck! Our friends got there and we began to walk into the woods (mainly to get out of the sun). As soon as we got into the shade, we told the kids to start looking around for something interesting to draw. 

Weary travelers!

I'm convinced Brayden had his mind made up before we ever got to the park. He was going to draw a squirrel and that was the end of it. I pointed out flowers and bugs and fish and birds and shells and all sorts of stuff but the only thing he wanted to draw was a squirrel. 

Asher didn't want to commit to anything but finally settled on a rock. Yes, a rock. I think he dug it up out of the mud so we had to spend 10 minutes getting all the mud off of the rock and his hands. At this point was really excited about the fact I had just paid to have my van washed and cleaned out.

I gave up trying to direct them to more interesting and less common things, and I gave all the kids paper and pencils to draw their items. Brayden was done in less than 2 minutes. He's a very good drawer but this was not his best. I wanted his best, but how can I say "This drawing looks a lot more like a prehistoric creature than the cute little squirrel in the drawing in my head... please redo it." I kept my OCD thoughts to myself. 

Brayden's squirrel. The sun actually felt that close!

Asher started his and I decided to coach him through. His rock was jagged, oddly shaped, with black flecks, and yet, even though I was sitting there "helping" he drew a circle. Ta Da! Rock done! Then he colored it in with pencil and I said "Asher, you aren't supposed to color it in with pencil because you're going to paint it when we get home." He got upset and I happily assured him it was perfectly ok because we had more paper and he could draw his rock again! He had another chance to draw the rock the way it was drawn in my head... he drew another circle. When I pointed out the rock was not a perfect circle, he simply drew a little bump on the side of circle. I'm just thankful he didn't draw the bump in the middle of the circle... 

Asher's rock. :-/

Just to satisfy my OCD, I found a pinecone and drew it for myself. At least 1/3 of our nature walk folder will be how I want it to be.

My well drawn pinecone. Thank you, I agree... it is lovely.

Well, I guess I should go catch up on house work now. Maybe one day my OCD will spill over into that aspect of my life. I may post a quick update on our adoption this afternoon or tomorrow. 

Asher says "Namaste!" 

Until next time! -K

Another New Adventure Has Begun

 As if adopting three children at once wasn't enough of an adventure, we made the decision toward the end of the last school year to homeschool our kids this year. Yes, all five of them once all five of them are here. I've picked up on the raised eyebrows and "good lucks" when I've told people we are homeschooling.... I know... we're crazy. But I thought that was already settled with the whole adopting three kids at once thing. 

Honestly as the summer wore on, I was really nervous about homeschooling. I just didn't know how it was all going to pan out. What if we hated it from day one? What if I couldn't stay focused and keep to the schedule? What if the kids had horrible attitudes? I mean the possibilities were endless really. 

We made this decision fully believing it was the best decision for our family. It may not be what we choose to do in years to come, but this year, it just seemed really important to have all of our children at home getting as much of our love and attention as possible. It didn't feel right to send the boys off to school (which they hated) and keep the girls home. It also didn't feel right to shove the girls off to school after such a huge transition. Homeschooling might be crazy and stressful and hard as rip, but it felt right for us for now.

Today, crazy or not, we had our first day of home education. I diffused some essential oils and didn't even wear a bra, so I guess we are officially hippie-fied. ;-)

After day one, I believe we have absolutely made the right decision. I recognize it was JUST day one, and I recognize it was JUST two of the five kids, but after fleshing it out it still felt right. Did it go flawlessly? Nope. Did I want to thump a kid on the forehead? Yep. Am I excited about getting up tomorrow to spend half the day teaching my two dudes? You better believe it! 

So here's what we are doing this year...

Our main curriculum is My Father's World Adventures In U.S. History. This is a Christian based thematic curriculum that focuses on key figures in U.S. history and on learning all the 50 states. I love it because I can teach one thing and then tweak assignments for each child based on their current education level. I also love it because all the work is done for me – which is just about the only reason we are homeschooling! I don't have to put it all together from scratch!

I'm supplementing the main curriculum with Spelling Power, Language Lessons and Singapore Math. I'm also using some Horizon's worksheets for Asher but I'm about to ditch those because they aren't floating my boat. 

We start our day at 8:00 and on most days we should finish shortly after lunchtime. Fridays are also a short day. 

Brayden did awesome! I was really worried he may have a bad attitude, but he was great! He said he loved it and was asking to do more schooling! I may add some extra challenges for him as we go on! 

Here's a picture he drew. I'm kinda tripping out about mini Obama as well as Abe and Washington's cozy relationship.

Asher did fair. He did better than I expected. My biggest concern after our first day is finding appropriate activities to help him learn easier. I really want to get him reading small words by the end of this school year. He just would MUCH rather play than learn, and he shuts down quickly if he messes up on something. He requires a LOT of praise and encouragement. He's hard to figure out. 

Mom did pretty well I suppose. I was able to stay focused and we finished on time. God gave me a lot joy and patience this morning. I think taking a break from FB/computer really helped me to prepare. I'm basically not touching the computer until the afternoon. I was actually on it way more than I should have been this evening while I tried to figure out some adoption stuff.

I'll give an update later this week and let you guys know how things are going. Hopefully I'll also have an adoption update regarding court!

Until next time! -K

Praying for 133, 134 and 135

Just a quick little court prayer request...

The three cases that we are currently tracking in court and hope are OUR three cases are officially on the dockets for August 14th (which for us will be tonight). They have finally assigned case #s so we can now pray specifically for:

Case #133 
Case #134 
Case #135

We were hoping we would know by Monday when the next hearing is scheduled for, but it appears they are behind on updating the website (the website is our only source of information right now). They still have not posted the notes from cases heard a week ago. Usually it only takes a couple of business days but they are very behind. If they continue to be behind, I have no idea when we will see the case notes. Please pray they catch up!

We trust whatever timeline God has chosen will be the perfect timeline. We truly believe this, but we are petitioning the Father to be gracious and grant us a QUICK second hearing. In fact I'm praying for either the 25th or 26th of August! 

If you pray for these cases, please pray for favor with the judge and  for there to be no delays. Also, please pray for me and Lance as we wait for our next small sliver of information. It can be discouraging to wake up morning after morning hoping to have an update only to find none. 

Thank you all for your prayers and support! I will post an update as soon as I have one!

Until next time! -K

Happy 3rd! Happy Last!

This evening at our small group, we celebrated R's 3rd birthday and her LAST birthday without her family! We had cake (with her name spelled right this time) and we blew out three candles for her. We got a vanilla butter cream cake, but I'm betting she will probably like CHOCOLATE (like her mamma)! 

Tonight as we sleep, I pray that our little R gets a little extra love from the aunties. I hope she knows how special she is. I'm really, really hoping we get some "birthday pictures" like we did for K & K! That would just be icing on the cake! Lance says he would rather them just expedite our case so we can hurry up and take our own pictures! Haha I like the way he thinks!



Court Update:

I don't think I've mentioned court since this post, but the last case that I was tracking during July (#106) turned out to NOT be our case. God had prepared my heart for this news several days before we found out for sure, but it was discouraging none the less as it pushed our travel date out by at least another 4-6 weeks. 

There is some hopeful news though! There were 3 identical cases registered in the courts on July 21st. I saw these cases entered just before the second hearing of Case #106. It took some time for things to register in my brain but it finally hit me that we have THREE children, and the lawyers asked us for THREE copies of everything, so logic would tell me we probably have THREE separate cases (one for each child) instead of just one case for all three. Are these our three cases? Maybe, but we have no idea. No word about court from the home. No other cases have been entered into the courts. 

These three cases have their first hearing on August 14th... so THIS Wednesday night! At this hearing they will enter the scrutiny report (whatever that is) and schedule the second hearing for the petition of evidence. This second hearing is the important one that will tell us if these are our cases or not. Supposedly the children will be present in court and they will mention them by name in the court notes. We should know when this evidence hearing is scheduled for by next Monday. Once again, I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but everything in me says "These HAVE to be our cases, right???? I mean they just have to be!"

As I mentioned in my last post, God has given me a lot of contentment about things. I am truly at peace with things right now. I ask God daily to continue to give me peace and strength as we wait. While I am at peace, I still long for them to be in my arms, and we are still praying for movement on behalf of the girls! 

Here is what we are praying right now:

• We are praying these are our cases!
• We are praying they will schedule the second hearing for these cases within the month of August!
• We are praying that IF these are our cases they would be passed within the first week of September so that we can hopefully travel mid to late October. (This would be an awesome birthday present for me, and I would LOVE to be in India for Diwali!)

I will update you on the blog as soon as I find out when the next hearing is scheduled for. I'm still on FB break. I had to reactivate my account this morning to deliver some pictures and have just logged out for the time being, so if you send me any messages or notifications I won't get them until probably Saturday. Thank you all for your prayers and for asking us how things are going! It means so much!

Until next time! -K

The Final Pieces

Some of you may remember that I've been working on a huge puzzle. I've mentioned it a few times. It's a 2,000 piece puzzle of a beautiful picture of the Taj Mahal. I absolutely love it but I had no freaking clue how big this thing was! This puzzle is over 3 feet wide and over 2 feet tall! It's been sitting on my rather large coffee table for many, many months waiting to be finished. When I started, one friend had said "DONT DO IT! You will do all that work, get to the end and there will be pieces missing!" but it was just too beautiful not to take the risk. Honestly though, it has been there for so long and covered with so many toys and knocked so often by arms, legs, butts and cats that I really wasn't sure if it was all still there, and I wondered if she was right.

The other night my friend Lauren and I sat down and worked the puzzle for a good hour or so. I had thought the thing would never get done, but her help gave me just the right amount of momentum to get back to work on it. 

Yesterday, the boys and I had a movie day. We had rented a couple of flicks and started watching them shortly after breakfast. I sat next to the puzzle and worked on it while we watched. Not long after The Guardians had defeated The Boogeyman, the pieces just started to fall into place. It was as if it was just meant to be finished that day... and so it was. And not a single piece was lost! It was miraculously all still there!

As I was putting the last few pieces in their destined spots, I realized how much peace and contentment I have over our adoption right now. It's like I can see that our puzzle is coming together just the way it should. I know that shortly all the final pieces will just fall into place and I will be standing in awe of the finished work. It will be finished and no pieces will be missing... I can just feel it! I am settled about it. 

Five days ago I was not this way. Rather, I was frustrated, down and feeling like this was all just make believe... none of this was a reality. I have no idea what changed. Maybe it was getting rid of some distractions so I could get some things done, maybe it was realizing that I just don't have any control over it, maybe it was just the pure mercy of our Father in Heaven (I'm pretty sure it's at lease this one), or maybe it was all of the above. I don't know, but I am so thankful for this peace as we wait for the final pieces to fall into place!

Until next time! -K 

Weeds

Weeds... nobody likes weeds. Nobody plants weeds. Nobody tends to weeds. Weeds grow naturally and quickly. Weeds will overtake your garden or your yard if allow them to. Nobody likes weeds.

This spring, we planted a small little raised bed garden and also planted some shrubs and flowers around the house. While the weather was cool and when summer was young, I enjoyed going out to tend to the garden. Occasionally, I would find a little weed here and there and I was able to quickly uproot it. I was on top of things, and my garden was growing and was fruitful (except for the broccoli which I planted unknowingly out of season). 

Back in June, we went to the beach for 7 days and during that time my garden went untended except for being watered. That one week of letting things go was the beginning of the end of my little summer garden. I became lazy in my gardening. The heat and humidity made gardening a chore that I grew weary off. It was much easier to ignore the tending. 

Today, I went out to water my dreadfully wilted potted flowers in hopes that they can recover. I went and surveyed my little garden... or what was left of it. What I found was surprising and sobering. I found weeds – not little weeds but HUGE weeds! There was no fruitfulness in my garden only the remnants of what used to be... and weeds. 

In order to grow and maintain a fruitful garden, I have to constantly tend to it. I have to seek out the weeds and uproot them when they are small because if I let things go, those small little weeds will consume my garden and my yard. As I stood next to these waist high weeds, I realize how much work lies before me to get my garden back to the way it should be. 

Weeds also grow in the gardens of our lives – our relationships with our spouses, with our children, with our friends, with God. Nobody likes weeds here either, yet if we fail to be diligent in tending our gardens, we will turn around to find they have been overrun with weeds. Because remember... nobody plants weeds, nobody tends to weeds, weeds grow quickly and naturally. Our relationships take work and attention, and when it gets hot and we grow weary we must continue on. We have to because weeds don't rest.

I feel like I've let a lot of weeds grow up in the gardens of my life. I've been so distracted by this and that and I have neglected the tending of my gardens. 

Yesterday, Brayden and I had a rough morning. He had a poor attitude, and I was just not in the mood to deal with it. Around lunchtime he complained about being bored and said we didn't do anything because I had been on FB all morning. Well, this set me off because I actually had NOT been on FB all morning. We had done our devotion,  I had done spelling with Brayden and flash cards with Asher, I had put our bathroom back together (I just painted it), I had paid some bills and I had ordered all of our homeschool curriculum. His accusation was false but the fact I was so defensive about it made me realize there were quite a few weeds in my garden. 

We only have two weeks left before we start school and maybe only a few months before the girls come home. I decided I needed to minimize my distractions and focus on getting things done for and with my family. I need to tend to my gardens. So if you need me for the next couple of weeks you can email me (krisogden@hotmail.com) or call me or text me or stop by for a visit but you won't find me on FB. :)

If we have any adoption updates to share I will blog about them and Lance can share them on FB.  

Until next time! -K