Took the Plunge

We finally signed the adoption agency contract and sent it in! And amazingly enough we feel complete peace about it. Sure it's still scary, but neither one of us are having second thoughts. God has started blessing us financially this week! We have received almost $800 this week from friends at church, and we also found out we have more money in the bank accounts than we originally thought! It's enough to pay for my upcoming doctor's appointment ($500 or so) and to send off for the USCIS, which is approval from the US government to adopt! And we'll have money leftover! Our church family are also very excited for us. So it is an exciting time for us.
And I've finally decided to add a few pictures. Some from our gardens anniversary trip in April and from our beach trip. A picture of the cake I made for my mother and father in law for their birthdays. The first few are of us trying to get Alex's picture for his passport and we ended up getting some really cute ones. 22 pictures later we finally got one that worked. lol

A change!

I actually had a few minutes to write this morning. We were at church late last night, so Alex is sleeping in.
We went back to horse therapy yesterday! What a blessing! While we were there the riding instructor came out and talked to me. He said that they have raised enough money for Alex to ride for at least a year!!! That's over $4000! As I was talking to him I could just clearly see God's hand in the situation. There's no other explanation. John wants me to write up a story about Alex that he can pass on to the people who donated, so that maybe they will see how it is helping and will be willing to contribute more on an ongoing basis. Of course I will write the story! It gives me a chance to brag about Alex and what the Lord has done! Praise the Lord!
Also the last few days we have been talking about the Russian adoption again. For awhile we felt that the Lord said to wait. Boy that was hard. The longer we waited the more our enthusiasm went down. Well, I think we are beginning to see why the Lord had us wait. I mentioned in the last post that the agency we were going with changed the "rules" on us, so that caused us to look elsewhere. We were looking for an "easy" way out, a way that didn't require much faith. Local adoption was nearly free. The Russian adoption through the other agency (before the rules changed) would have been only traveling fees which would have been doable for us. It seems the Lord is wanting to take us the more expensive route because it causes us to rely on Him 100% for the money. It stretches our faith. There is NO way possible we could come up with the money. On Monday Steve found an agency that we had never seen before. We have not seen any bad reports about them anywhere. It is a small agency, and seems to be more like a family than just a business. Steve has emailed the director twice and both times she has gotten back to us within hours! It took a few days at least with the other agency. We feel more at peace with this place, and you pay as you go so if we back out or something happens we will not owe them tens of thousands of dollars. It appears that we will either be adopting from Moscow or from Magadan which is close to Japan. If we adopt from Magadan, on the second trip we will literally be flying all the way around the world (most likely) to bring our child(ren) home!
So now that we are talking about it again and things are happening, we are getting excited again. We both have fears which can become paralyzing, so I ask for your prayers that the Lord will help us overcome. We had a chat with our pastor last night that encouraged us and reminded us that the Lord called us to do this. The Lord is good and I know that He will guide us every step through this process. I will keep you all updated!

Lots of news!

Oi. I didn't mean to go a month! I haven't been on the computer much at all, which has helped me get other things done, but when I was on I had to pick and choose what I was going to do. I don't figure many people (if any) read this so I had to let it go. Lots of things have happened so I will try to cram as much into this post as I have time for!
I'll try to go in chronological order. First off, Steve and I went to the Fort Worth gardens for our 6th anniversary. We usually go on a trip but money was tight. We had a good time and got some pretty pictures. When we got home, the babysitter told us she broke Alex. They were running around outside and he fell and kissed the pavement. He had a busted bottom lip, cut upper gums, and a loose front tooth and a crooked front tooth. When we saw him we thought it was really bad and that he might need to go to the ER, but Steve cleaned him up and tried to turn his crooked tooth back. Alex was a champ! He had done all his crying when it happened (a couple hours earlier) and he never complained about it! He only said twice that his mouth hurt and that was the next morning. So he handled it better than I expected. His loose tooth tightened up again and his crooked tooth isn't that noticeable (just to us). It could have been so much worse so we are very thankful!
He seems to have a lazy eye or something like that going on. For a few months his left eye has been turned in at times. Any of you reading this, I ask for your prayers for his eye. If it continues we will get it looked at.
Another way the Lord has had His hand on Alex is with the horse riding. Last Wednesday was his first Wednesday of not riding. He has a rocking horse and all day he dragged that horse around the house! I showed him how to "feed" it and brush it. He had hardly ever played with it before that day, so that showed me that he knew he was suppose to ride Richie that day! I was glad to see the connection but so sad that he couldn't go. Later that afternoon his PT, Suzanne, called and said some sad news turned into good news. The riding instructor's mom had died. He requested that instead of sending flowers etc, that friends and family donate money to the therapy center. Then he said all of the money that comes in is to go to Alex's riding fund! Can you believe it? I was going to cry on the phone. They had already gotten over $1000! That's at least 12 more weeks of riding! I was/am so excited! Praise the Lord! Even friends who don't know the Lord know that it is only He Who could have worked that out! The riding instructor has only seen Alex a couple of times, and that money probably could have gone to so many other things. We are truly blessed and I am so excited for Alex!
Those are the two major things that have happened. We are in Houston at the moment. Steve had a business trip that started in Austin, then San Antonio, and now to Houston. We are going home today. We've been gone a week! We are hoping to go out to the coast before heading home so that will be nice. Alex has only been on a beach once and he liked it (who doesn't?). We spent about four days with my family while Steve was working in San Antonio, so that was fun. Alex came out of his shell and his speech was amazing! He is talking so much more now.
On the adoption front, things are changing. We went to a foster/adoption meeting a week ago just to see if we would be intersted in doing that. Fostering does not seem easy to me so I will need to pray more about that. Adoption isn't either but at least once you have the child you don't have to worry about them leaving. We received an email from the Russian agency we were looking at and it turns out (because of the economy) the funding requirements have changed and are no longer things we feel we can handle (more than three kids, children older than we feel comfortable taking in etc). So for now, unless the Lord drops $50K in our laps to get one child, it looks like that is on hold. We still feel He laid that on our hearts, but the timing is not now. All this could change, so we will see. We are praying about local adoption and I am going to the doctor to make sure nothing is wrong before trying to get pregnant again.
We could be moving in 6 weeks since our lease is up. Something else we are praying about. So I need to get busy cleaning up the house when we get back.
I guess that's about all my news. I will try to post pictures soon and try to get back to posting at least once a week!