Oh, Christmas Card, Oh Christmas Card

For the last 3 years I have not sent out a Christmas card. The Christmas card is a way of saying “look how our family is growing!” Well, its still just me and Andrew and I didn’t want our ‘look at whats new with the Boganwrights’ to be “look, Becca got bangs!”

Last year the idea of a Christmas card that was still just us was kinda depressing.

This year I got over it and really did intend to send them out… but just never got around to it.  And then we basically spent our budget in gifts and the idea of spending more money on cards and stamps just didn’t seem plausible.

So.. here is what our Christmas card may have looked like…..

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Homestudy Done

We are taking foward steps in our adoption from Ethiopia process.

Andrew and I just finished our homestudy interviews and are ready to start out immigration (called a dossier) paperwork.

Homestudy means the social worker that was assigned to our case came to our home to check it out and interview us. We did one interview at the house together and then we did another day of interviews where he sat down with me and Andrew individually.

The homestudy was a lot less invasive than I thought it would be. I was prepared for our social worker to look at our medicine cabinet, ask where we store our knives, look in our fridge, etc. But he really just looked to see that we had 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms like we said we did. 

Thanks for continuing to pray us through this process. Andrew and I are getting more and more excited. It still may take a while. Probably about another year and a half to two years before we get to bring kid(s) home. We are praying for God to work a miracle of ‘quickness.’

 

Another trip to DC

Andrew and I flew to DC again in November to visit my BFF and the fam. They had connections and arranged for us to get a tour of the White House which was pretty great.

Every tree was yellow, red, and orange. It was so beautiful.

I cried when we got on the plane to come home ’cause I loved spending some quality time with my sweet friend and I miss her dearly, but also because they are moving which means we won’t be going back to DC for a long, long time. I love it there.

(BTW – these pics were taken on Andrew’s phone and I just now got them onto my computer. See what I mean?)

Why I haven’t been blogging

I have kind of been silently revolting. I still have a flip phone. Antennae, no data plan, can only hold about 15 pics, no music, no gps… you get me?

This means I am no longer the photographer in the family. I don’t carry my camera with me cause my husband takes all the pictures now on his iphone. This means that he has all the pictures… on his phone…. on his computer.

Now I feel entitled. Before when it was perfectly fine for me to take pictures on my camera, come home and find my camera, find the right cable, use the cable to upload them onto my computer (PC by the way), and then sit down and write from my computer… now it seems like such a task. 

So, there’s the lame reason. I haven’t been blogging because it has been feeling more like a ‘job’ rather than a easy thing I can do to to express my thoughts and invite others into my thoughts and life.

I think I might need to get over myself.  

Paperwork, Smaperwork

When you have biological kids, why don’t they (“they” is a fluid term ’cause I really don’t know exactly who I am talking about)  fingerprint you and do background checks and check up on your financial status and have someone come to your house to interview you?

I have been putting off starting our paperwork for our homestudy. I have called myself ‘busy’ which is true, but not true enough that I shouldn’t have started.  But…today is the day I sit down and get started.

My character flaw has greatly shining through in this process:  If I don’t know exactly how to do something, I don’t do it… or at least I put it off til the last possible minute.

Today I have the time. Today I begin. Today I make some progress.

Journey with Us

Why Ethiopia?  One thing Andrew and I feel strongly about is not simply adopting a child to fulfill our desire to grow our family – we are adopting to take care of God’s children.

We are called to care for orphans and, however excited and freaked out we are, we are moving forward to fulfill this calling.

Here are some  staggering facts that I had read from a new adoption friend’s blog about Ethiopia:

• An entire generation of parents are no longer; there are 4.4 million + orphans
• One in six children in Ethiopia die before their fifth birthday
• 44% of the population of Ethiopia is under 15 years old
• 1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)
• Drought struck the country from 2000-2002 (first year no crops, second year no seeds, third year no animals)
• Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school. 88% will never attend secondary school.
• Ethiopia’s doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000.
• In 1993, after 30 long years of war, Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia landlocked without any major seafaring ports.

I can’t save all 4.4 million. But we can make a difference for one. (Maybe 2 – we are open to siblings).

 

 

And so it begins…

I have decided to change the “prego journey update” title to “adoption journey.”

After almost 6 months of knowing we were supposed to start the adoption process but feeling frustrated because it seemed that every avenue we started to pursue felt like a closed door, we finally feel like we have some God-given direction.

Through a well-established Christian international adoption agency called Holt, Andrew and I have begun the process of adopting through the country of Ethiopia. 

I will give you the short version of the story:

A few weeks ago we had dinner with our dear friends, the Crowleys, and they asked how they could pray for us regarding adoption. I shared that i was incredibly frustrated b/c it felt like every avenue we tried to pursue seemed like we hit a wall. I know they prayed b/c that night I woke up at 3:00am and thought one word: Ethiopia.

I tried to put it out of my mind because I had previously thought (and still do a bit) that the difference of a black child growing up with white parents would just be so difficult for the kid. But that Sunday morning I did some research online and cried when I saw the picture of the Ethiopian boy on one of the adoption page… but was still skeptical.

I sent the link to Andrew thinking, “maybe he will open it and feel something amazing.  That will be our confirmation.”  Well, Andrew saw it but there were no tears, no heart-strings pulled.  (It was a Sunday, after all and he was very busy – no time to really look at the email). 

So I went to church that night praying… “God, I am asking for a miracle of confirmation. I pray in expectation that tonight you will do something miraculous. Some random stranger is going to walk up to me after service and say something like, ‘I don’t know you, but I think you should adopt a black baby.’ ”  It was going to be amazing.

But 1st service passed…. 2nd service…. no strangers.  No one held a sign in the back of the service and told me what to do.

A bit discouraged (because I had prayed in faith after all) I went home and my husband was great to encourage me to keep praying.

2 days later, Andrew shares with some people in his new Masters class (yes, he started school again) that we are thinking of adopting and could use some prayer. A few minutes later, a stranger walks up to him and says… “Hey, have you ever thought of adopting from Ethiopia?”

God spoke and we are listening.

We have turned in our application with our first non-refundable deposit. We have attended our first parent training class. I am in process of getting paperwork together. We are moving forward.

Thank you for praying us through the journey thus far. We need more… and lots of it.

Zion

One of Andrew’s love language is hiking. His birthday was a couple weeks ago so we went to Zion National Park in Utah. It was incredible.

Andrew was a little huffy about pulling off on the side of the freeway to take this one but he did well to humor me.

This is a hike through an area called “The Narrows.” Cliffs on either side, walking through a river. Although I was sick of my feet being wet after 6 hours, IT WAS AWESOME.  So beautiful.  Never seen anything like it.

This part kinda freaked me out the first time through, but on the way back we just let go and swam with the current.

Just another amazing hike.

An amazing birthday celebration week with my husaband.

Prego Journey Update

Its been a while, and since I had posted a series of fun blog posts, I decided it was time for a real update.

This month I got lax on doing the temperature taking, charting, fertility awareness thing. I think I may be done.  It is emotionally hard to pursue 2 avenues whole- heartedly: pregnancy and adoption. I feel like I only have the emotional energy for one.

So, Andrew and I have started taking steps towards pursuing adoption. Started paperwork through a very established and well-oiled organization called Bethany and went to an 8 hour orientation.  It wasn’t quite what we had expected and so we felt like our pursuit has come to a bit of a halt.

Physically we haven’t done much since then but God has been bringing people to us to give us confirmation and amazing information about how to exactly step into this journey.  After a crucial conversation with a great couple we got connected with while in DC, Andrew and I have opened our sights a bit wider: when we weren’t open to international adoption previously, we now are.

When we got home from DC, we were told from a friend that she had a sister’s friend’s mom’s cousin’s neice (exaggerating) who was pregnant with twin boys and was interested in meeting with us about adoption. So after imagining for a few days what is would be like to have twins, I  found out she is thinking she is keeping them.  I can’t imagine the turmoil of trying to decide to give up my children so I definately do not fault this girl, but it did make me think: “so starts the up and downs of the adoption process.”

So here goes: we want to adopt.   Not only do we want our family to grow, but we feel like this is the direction God is leading us. We are called to take care of orphans and we have an opportunity now to fulfill this calling. 

Prayer ideas: pray for direction, for God to perform a miracle so great that He and He alone gets glory through our story, for this to happen quickly (that is my selfish one), and for the mother who decides she loves her child enough to give them away.

Thanks

Gormet Dessert

About a month ago, a friend had a dinner party for her birthday. I was in charge of a gormet dessert.  In case you didn’t know, I’m not really a gormet kind of girl, but I decided I was up for the challenge.

Here was the product:

Kahlua brownies, strawberries, whipped cream with dark chocolate shavings in a chocolate drizzled glass.

I don’t like to toot my own horn, but………

 

TOOT!!!