Transferring...A Beautiful Thing!

I've had a number of you ask me over the last few weeks for some of my DIY recipes. In order to save time, I'm simply transferring some of the original posts from my previous blog onto here. It's as simple as Copy & Paste, which is a beautiful thing in my book!

It will mean there will be about a week of regular posts from me, which hasn't happened in a looooooong time! LOL. I hope that the posts give you ways to save money, have some fun, and encourage you to try something new!

If you have any questions on ANY of them, please don't hesitate to ask!  First up tomorrow, Homemade Fabric Softener! Enjoy!

All I Can Do

So much in my head. So much in my heart. So many things I wanna say and yet all of these words just seem to be jumbled up in my mind!

First, I should say that we did NOT receive a referral last night. While that is disappointing, it is not surprising. And we are still hopeful! Hopeful that we will receive the file of the specific girl we are praying for to be sent directly to our agency. It doesn't happen often, but it DOES happen! So we remain hopeful.

Second, I've said it before and I'll say it again, we are at peace over this whole process. We knew what we were getting into when we started this, and it's going pretty much exactly like we were told it would. If we underestimated anything, it would be the amount of love we already hold for a little girl we haven't even met yet. But other than that, in the beginning things are paperwork, paperwork, paperwork...now it's just hurry up and wait...and wait...and wait. The last two months we've been eligible to receive a referral. And on "list days" (when the list comes out), I'm a big ball of nervous, excited and anxious. And I can't focus for anything! LOL. And then the list is out, and there's no referral...and I'm a mixture of emotional, frustrated, more anxious, and impatient for the next month's list! It's quite the emotional roller coaster.

And yet...we are not worried. Our frustration, our anxiety, our impatience does not stem from concern if we are doing the right thing, if our daughter will be okay, if the waiting will ever end, if God is still in control...those are not things that even cross our minds. These are simply the emotions of parents waiting desperately to hold their daughter, knowing she is somewhere, half a world away, waiting for that forever love she so deserves...and there's nothing we can do about it. We can only wait...

Third, while I want the waiting to end, to have her here in my arms, there is no part of me that wants to miss the here and now.  Life is happening while we wait, and I want very much to remain a part of that. There are 4 other kids in this house who need me, who need us. They have school and friends and activities and love to share and I don't wanna miss one moment of my time with them. I want to help them, to hold them, to love them, and to share with them every part of this difficult journey to bring their little sister home.

So what do I do? I do what I can today. In this moment. I do all I can do for them, for her, for our family as it is and our family as it will be. I help with homework, I oversee chores, I make the meals, keep the house running, calm the arguing...all of the daily family life stuff. I'm also keeping regular contact with our agency for updates, I'm painting/preparing what will be the girls' shared room, I'm reading books and meeting with friends who've come back with their daughters so as to learn as much as possible. And soon I'll be going through Sissy's old clothes to set them out for Mei Mei, and creating a packing list for our trip. I do all of these things, because while I can't do anything from my end on the adoption front, I can certainly participate in life as it is while I prepare for our daughter's arrival. It's all I can do. And I'm loving every minute of it.

I also get to listen to my children's prayers for their little sister, to answer their questions about where she is, what life is like for her, why we can't bring her home now and what we'll do when we go get her.  I get to tell them about a little girl, half a world away, that was created just for our family.  And when I talk about the specific little girl we are praying over and I call her by name, I get to hear my daughter say, "We call her Mei Mei, Mom." To which I replied, "Well not til we know she's ours." And she looks at me with a smile on her face and says, "Well, I call her Mei Mei..." (then whispers) "...because I love her."

Oh my sweet girl, I love her too. I love her too...

Oh The Waiting...

It's that time again. The wait before "the list" comes out. Basically, there are always children waiting to be adopted, but once a month there are new faces added--children who have just become adoptable. We've given our caseworker the info for the child we are waiting for, age preference, that she be a girl, what special needs we feel we can adequately handle, etc. So she's gone through the list periodically looking for a child for us. But basically, we are waiting each month for the new faces to be added so she can look through those and send us a referral.

As many of you know, we are waiting for a specific little girl's name to be added to that list and praying that our caseworker can find her. :)  The details of how we came across her are nothing short of miraculous and I will share those one day, if God chooses to bring her to our home forever. In the meantime, we've decided that we will fight for her specifically until God closes that door! That tends to make our waiting every month just a little more crazy!

So the list will come out this next Monday night (our time)/Tuesday morning (China time). If you think of it, we would greatly appreciate your prayers during that time! It usually comes out around 8pm our time and we will either have a referral (or not) by as late as 1am.  Last month when this happened we were crazy busy emailing and calling back and forth between our caseworker and others to determine if this little one would be on the list. And while I am at complete peace in the turnout of the whole adoption and whomever God has chosen for our family, the day of the list coming out (at least last month) I am a complete ball of anxious, clock-watching, can't-focus-on-anything, might as well go to bed worthlessness. LOL.

And once again, I completely in awe of how this little girl, who I have yet to meet, has utterly and completely stolen my heart...

I Wanna Be THAT Mom

I'll admit it. I do. I wanna be THAT mom. You know, the one who appears to have it all together? She volunteers 3 days a week at her kids' school(s). She makes it to the gym every morning AFTER rising early to read her bible, fix her family breakfast from scratch and get them off to school. She meets friends for lunch, after she delivers meals on wheels. Her home is always impeccably clean. Not to mention that she decorates like a pro. She even blogs in her spare time and inspires everyone with her words, her charm, her openness, her life in general. She's organized. She's ON TIME. She's the homeroom mom and puts on amazing holiday parties both for her kids' classes and for adults in her home. She's a great cook, a devoted wife, an amazing friend. Yep. I wanna be her. And sometimes, I beat myself up when I realize just how far from being her I really am. It's humbling. And depressing. And so absolutely FRUSTRATING!!!

But when I take a step back and allow Him to, God speaks to my heart. Quietly, reassuring me, loving me. And that's when the Truth hits me. That mom, she doesn't exist. She isn't real. Yes, there are moms who have it more together than others. There are moms that thrive on volunteering and do it well. There are moms who go from sun up to sun down, non-stop. And they wear themselves out. Sometimes, they get so busy doing that they forget to just BE, to just enjoy their families. They don't have it all together any more than you or I. Then an even bigger Truth hits me...

I don't have to have it all together. I don't have to be that mom. I have strengths that are mine alone. And I can use them to the best of my ability to be the best mom I can be. We all have strengths and weaknesses. We all struggle. We all fail. We all find ways to go on. We all have areas where we triumph. We are enough. I am enough. YOU ARE ENOUGH. There is no right or wrong here. There is no one mom who is better than another. We have all been called to OUR place, in OUR family, to do OUR best. Not another woman on the planet could come into our home and do our job as well as we can! It's what we were created for. It's where we thrive. Some days, we look like THAT mom to others. Some days, we watch other moms seemingly outshine us. It's an endless cycle, but it's just that, a cycle. We (speaking to myself here!) need to focus on where we are strong rather than where we are weak. We need to encourage that mom who's clearly struggling as her kid is screaming through the aisles at the supermarket. We need to smile. We need to laugh. We need to relax and simply enjoy the life we've been given and not sweat the small stuff! We need to take a moment, even if it's 5 minutes locked in our bathroom, LOL, to breathe, to give ourselves the grace found only in realizing that we are enough. We are THAT mom already. :)

A Whole Lotta Nothin...

So I haven't posted in almost a month. Mainly because we've been busy recuperating from the lovely flu and strep the last couple of weeks. We don't get sick often at all, but when we do, with 6 people in the house, we tend to pass it around freely!

The January "list" of newly adoptable children in China came out last month and while I like to play it calm and cool, in all honesty I was a basket case that day! We did not end up getting matched with a child, so we wait for the list to come out again this month. It's usually the 3rd or 4th week of the month. While the waiting is monotonous, there is enough to get done around here (finishing up the changing of the kids rooms, painting, finding or building new furniture, etc) that it keeps my mind off of the wait. I'm sure that won't be the case once we know her name, know her face, have a specific child we know is waiting just for us. So for now I'm thankful I have things to keep me occupied! And we've seen God work in SO many incredible, impossible ways this last month! Maybe someday I will be able to share them all but for now we must remain silent while we follow the process.

I do have a number of posts almost ready to come out of my head. LOL. For some reason, some of my best post ideas come to me as I'm laying down to sleep or trying to get back to sleep after the 249873569328th interruption! You'd think I'd keep a notepad by my bed to write these ideas down, but alas, I do not. I keep telling myself that it's such a good idea I just KNOW I'll remember it in the morning...and yet none of those posts have yet to see the light of day. What can I say? I'm a work in progress!

I also have a number of projects to finish that I'm excited to share on here, but again, I'm organizationally challenged...did y'all pick up on that?? This last week, in fact, I was explaining another great idea of mine to my husband and his response? "How about we just finish one of the OTHER projects you've started first?" Pshaw! As IF!! Where's the fun in that?! I told him then and I'll say it again here, he told my daddy over Christmas this year that being married to me is always an adventure! So see? "I'm just keepin ya honest, babe!"  :)

So anyway, all that to say, there's basically a whole lotta nothin going on 'round here. But I promise new posts next week! These ideas HAVE to get out of my head!!