Monthly Archives: August 2010 Ok…like I have time to update my blog TWICE in one day–but this blog is serving as my scrapbook, babybook, you name it–all wrapped up in one when it goes from blog-to-print. SO…I have to get these two things in:). IF you haven’t seen Parker and Laney’s FIRST day of school…oh you just MUST go […]  Oh…here I sit–in a quiet house (until noon time carpool that is;). Babies sleeping…the older two at school. And my heart–overfloweth. Psalm 45:1 says…my heart overflows with a good theme; I address my verses to the King. Last night, marked our last night of summer. Daddy took the kids to a movie…mommy went with the […] Laney is her knee socks and Mary Jane’s is probably the cutest.thing.ever. May have to implement uniforms in our homeschool this year:) So glad you love your school……I went to a wonderful Christian school, and was so blessed to be a part of it! I needed to hear those words of encouragement! Thank you so much! By the way I met a man named Temesgen today 🙂 oh your children are so cute! forgive me but what are irish twins? my guess are they were just within a year or so of eachother? either way they are both so beautiful and photograph so well! I loved their little outfits especially her little dress and socks…so precious! :0) so glad you guys found a great school! You have blessed me beyond measure tonight. You, my dear lady, have just been used in a mighty way. You have spoken to my spirit and I have quoted you in my blog because your/HIS words spoke straight to my spirit in such a divinely timed way. It never ceases to amaze me how God can use this modern technology we have to uplift his saints and to see His will be done! Thank you for speaking without reserve. Many blessing for you in return I pray in Jesus Name! WOW! You make me want to move to where you live, so that my “somday soon” kiddos can have a school like that to attend! :o) WOW! What it must do to your heart to know that the hours spent away from you are with such amazingly wonderful God-filled people! Praise God! I agree with Amber. You ARE being used in a mighty way! Keep up the writing, as you inspire each reader in our own individualized way! :o) I am enjoying getting to know you, your heart for God, and your family via this wonderful world of blogging! (I think I am now an addict! Ha!) Blessings to you and yours ~ what a blessing to have such a wonderful school for your irish twins! thank you for being such an encouragement to all of us! Cathcing up on the faily and sweet baby Isaac ! Gracious …you all are the best . Lovin’ always lovin’ hearing your heart procaim our mighty Savior’s love even in the mundane like organizing a play/toy closet. St.Pius is back in full force and I am waylayed in everything that I normally do…this was a treat to see the pictures and read…I can not wait to meet you one day. I would love to have you speak to my STFrancis Circle this year but, it seems next year would be better for your family. I know you are balancing by God’s grace all that you do ! I keep you in my prayers and thoughts daiy. Pax,M  Those of you who have gotten to know us–know that the Young’s are always looking for a reason to celebrate! Life is just too short…SO this weekend we are celebrating the LAST weekend of summer…for US the last weekend before school is officially in season. Laney will start preK on Monday (WAAA!) and Parker will […] these pictures are BEAUTIFUL…as usual 🙂 oh.my.goodness. i sat here with tears in my eyes watching the little video. all the kids’ faces are PRICELESS and then there is my little wiggly wild man. LOVE IT!!! thanks for capturing these moments, andrea! Gorgeous pictures. Can’t wait to meet you someday. Love those Carley’s yes we do!!! oh i love the pics and love how you celebrate stuff like that! I want to do the same! i just love the way you take pics! Is your room that white and beautiful or is that effects? also i just giggled when I read your comment about Isaac’s belly touching the cushion…that is WAY TOO CUTE! :0) Oh April, this momma doesn’t have time for effects…so that room is really that WHITE! It is the ONE place in my house that stays white! How? I have no idea…but it has so far:). The kids say, “The white room!!! Quick get out of here!” So funny! Oh, how I wish we had a Krispy Kreme close by! After living in Georgia for almost 9 years we came to LOVE them. Now living in NE, the closest one is 90 mi. away. 🙁 Our kids LOVE your children and like to watch the videos of Isaac over & over (eating green beans, the popsicle..) When I say – come look at the pics of Frank – they immed. know who I mean! Love the pictures! Andrea, I always look forward to seeing your posts. I love how you make the most of each day and truly enjoy these times with your kids. They grow so quickly! My oldest just turned 20! Not sure how that happened so quickly. It’s sad to have her off to school (in CA and we live in OH), but know that she is in God’s will. Continue enjoying and thanking God for the blessing of each day! Those Ethiopian babes are just about the yummiest thing I’ve ever seen! And Frank with the donut is hilarious. You must save those for his first date. Or wedding slide show. Good luck, Mama! I’m sending one off to preschool soon, so I’ll probably be crying in my coffee too! Andrea! I just love your blog! The pics are too cute and that sweet little Frank. . . I could eat him up! Hope you are doing well. Jenni (1in17) WOW! What a blessing to have the family of friends from church. I love how God provides. loved the spider lesson…see, you are a natural homeschooler! =) yesterday while out 2 lunch after church i spotted a family that had a couple little adopted loves and i went up to the mom. i told her we are adopting from ethiopia and she invited me to an ethiopian adoption support group here!! i didn’t even know it existed. so glad i ran into her! So sad Krispy Kreme went out of business near us! Probably better for my waistline. So makes me want a KK and a Mild and Mellow coffee (think that is what it was called…it’s been too long)! My mouth is watering!!! Love the pictures!!!!!! Thanks for chatting Sat.!  FIRST…thank you for all you INCREDIBLE families who commented on my last post about adopting first!!! I encourage you to go check out the comments and amazing blogs of these families! Be encouraged as they follow the Lord in adopting first!!! And absolutely…I think our next adoption post needs to be about families who started […] way to go Parker!!!! i must admit, i hated losing teeth… i liked the tooth fairy, but did NOT like to pull out a tooth! So cute!!! Love that little Frank! Our little monkey didn’t seem to talk FOREVER…but finally we’re getting hilarious little sayings out of him too….I really should blog those before I forget =) Picture of Isaac and Frank is AWESOME…and I love the feetsies of all four…and I’m super jealous of your house BTW 😉 i LOVE Isaac’s butt…its so big and cute! :0) Hope you dont mind me saying that! also i am in love with the pic you took of all four of them on the chair and then their feet! LOVE it! Adorable photos! Parker…you are Evangeline’s hero! She has watched you pull your tooth over and over.She wants to loose a tooth SO BADLY! Yup…there she is now…trying to wiggle one loose:) Frank is looking so much like Parker to me in these pictures! So sweet! Ha! That is the SAME tooth that my Cheru just lost yesterday! It was his first tooth, too! Precious photos and priceless updates on your adorable family! we had so much fun yesterday…look forward to many more morning just like it (minus the big kids). thanks so much for having us over…and for the donuts 🙂 ♥ Oh, there’s nothing like the early talking of a toddler. My 1 yr olds favorite words until recently were trash and bulb (meaning light bulb), and he always said them with such gusto and twang it would crack us up. Months later, he is still obsessed with all things trash related and changing light bulbs (too bad we have so many compact flourescents). Love all the pics and updates 🙂  One thing I have overheard in the past year from lots of people as they watched our family adopt say is, “We would love to adopt ONE day, BUT we want to have our ‘own’ kids first.” The funny thing about our family is that Richard and I actually started our marriage wanting to adopt […] Love this post! We are becoming parents by adopting FIRST! I wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂 it’s always encouraging to me to see other families adopting first as well! we’re one of those families 🙂 http://aheritagefromthelord.blogspot.com Andrea – thank you so much for sharing and for encouraging others! My hubby and I are also on this road of adopting first and couldn’t be more excited! We also thought we’d adopt ‘one day’ but the Lord had different plans for our lives! That’s what I love about God – His ways are higher than our own and are PERFECT! It’s incredible to be able to tell people that this is God’s plan A for our family! Follow our journey at http://godetchedyourname.blogspot.com/. Love this post Andrea…I also cringe when people say “our own”! We origionally were going to adopt first…but were too young (by 5 years:) to be homestudy approved in our state. So thankful for the 3 bio kiddos the Lord has blessed us with thus far, and so, so thankful for the little one He is leading us to! My husband and I have been married just a year and a half, and we are thankfully on the waitlist for our adoption from Ethiopia! We agree with the points this couple made- adopting first has many great practical reasons! Follow along on our journey, yestoadoption.blogspot.com That’s US!! We came home with our first from Taiwan last Fall and we’re headed to Ethiopia for siblings this time! Maybe one day we’ll really put our efforts into getting pregnant, but for now, the Lord’s calling on our family and the way we should build it is perfectly clear! We are adopting first! We needed a little nudge by fertility struggles, but now that we are here, I feel so amazingly lucky, I can’t even express it! It is like striking gold! It is like winning the lottery! Adoption is like a direct line to God’s heart, and you won’t regret it! We don’t have our baby/babies yet, but we already know that we are forever changed, and LOVE adoption! LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!! http://whenwebelong.blogspot.com Thank you so much for posting this! So beautiful! We are first time adopting parent’s and feel so incredibly blessed to be on this journey. God is teaching and showing us some beautiful things! http://richardandbrantley.blogspot.com Enjoyed this post! I always knew I wanted to adopt – and like others, “assumed” we would choose to have bio kids first…then felt less and less like going the bio route, and ended up realizing there wasn’t really a good reason NOT to adopt first…so that’s what we’re doing! Thanks for sharing this story! Brandon and I are also called to adopt FIRST. When people ask us if we had trouble getting pregnant, we just smile and say “Don’t know!” They always look a little perplexed! Just part of our story. Africa is where our children are! Blessings to others on this journey, whether first, second, or even third choices- you are right where God wants you! As you know, Andrea, this is the route Aaron and I took even though our plan was to “make” kids first and then adopt. It never felt right to us though. Adopting first, I believe, truly was God’s calling for our family–I’d love to say that we jumped right in, but it honestly took us so long to listen and obey. Even after we started our adoption, God worked on our hearts soooo much! THANK YOU for posting about this; it’s so exciting to see this happening with couples…I feel like I’m hearing it all of the time lately! 🙂 There is no PLAN B is God’s leading. http://www.one27james.blogspot.com Thanks so much for this post! I wanted to adopt since I was in middle school, and am so thrilled to be able to realize this dream. There are so many ways to create a family, and I hope that soon, our choice of adoption FIRST will not be such a novel thing or a surprise. Feel free to stop by and share our story at: http://curdsandkimchi.blogspot.com Hi Andrea! I love your blog and I really enjoyed this post because we have decided to be one of those families as well! My husband and I are adopting our first from Ethiopia. It took us a year of trying to get pregnant to realize that God had a better plan for us! Please feel free to check out our new blog!! grafted-branches.blogspot.com What a great post and how encouraging to read all the comments from young couples choosing adoption FIRST! What an encouraging post! My husband and I have also chosen adoption as the first way to build our family, and to many of our friends and family it doesn’t make sense. Although Satan has tried to fill my mind with doubts about our less than “normal” method of building our family, I know without a doubt that God placed the desire in both of our hearts. I have not had contact with very many other families who have chose adoption first, so your bog and all of the comments are so exciting to read! We too are adopting FIRST- ah, how nice to hear of other called to the same as us. We believe that God wants us to build a family and our first will be a sweet babe from Ethiopia! We’re so blessed by where God has placed us in life right now with the resources, time, energy and heart to do this. Oh, you have no idea what this post means to me!! We are adopting first and at 24 years old, we find it hard to find other families that are also doing the same and around the same age. This is so sweet of you to post this, and I can see/read other stories similar to ours! You’re the best! Thank you for this post! We were called to adopt first and a year after bringing our son home from Vietnam, we felt God calling us to adopt from Ethiopia. Now, we’re waiting to bring our daughter home some time this fall! It is such an encouragement to me to read the stories of other families doing the same. Yes, please do your next post on older families starting again by adopting! I have been trying to convince my parents to adopt, or atleast look into it and see what God has planned. Even though I am 19 and my brother 15, I just have always longed for more siblings to fill my house! Thanks for all your wonderful blog posts! God bless your family. We are adopting first as well! What an encouragement it is to read about all these other couples doing the same. I believe it shows a clear picture to the world the spiritual aspect of adoption. My husband and I have received many strange looks, but we couldn’t be more excited about adopting first! We are an adopt first family!! We wanted to adopt first before we wanted to try for bio kids. After a few years of infertility, we decided to start the adoption process from Ethiopia. We are waiting for our referral for 2 little ones. Any day!!! Our blog is PlanAEthiopia.blogspot.com. Much love! I am so encouraged to see more and more families feeling God’s prompting and following His will for their lives. My husband and I started dating 9 years ago and one of the first things we talked about was our desire to adopt. We couldn’t pinpoint how and when this would happen, but we knew that’s what we wanted and what God wanted for our family. After the birth of our son, we found out some of our best friends were adopting their first child from Ethiopia. We were so excited to know that we were going to have other families like ours and begin researching more on how to make it happen. A short few months later God just smacked me over the head with the desire to start the journey NOW. Although it took some convincing in the financial area with my husband (fixer-upper house + debt + new baby = not a lot of money)…God changed his heart to see HIS plan for our lives. NEVER have for a MOMENT regretted this decision and are EAGERLY and (not so) patiently waiting to be matched with our Lil Miss. thisdomesticateddiva.blogspot.com My husband and I are also adopting first. This is our first choice because of God’s plan. It is amazing to look back during our process and see God’s hand opening doors for us and guiding us through this time. He has used this time as we are waiting to grow our faith and love for Him. He is showing us how to be better parents. We are hopeful to be bringing our son home soon. He is a year old and we are longing for him. After nearly 10 years of marriage, and thinking we would have bio kids first and then adopt, we now know that it was God’s plan all along to enlarge our family through the miracle of adoption. We are one month old now as a family of Four and we are madly in love with OUR kids. http://www.nystrandfamily.blogspot.com Thanks for bringing this to the forefront. So often, I think our culture views adoption as God’s Plan B and unnatural. However, I believe in the life of a believer, adopted as God’s child, it is a very natural lifestyle and God’s Plan A, just as growing a family through biological children is God’s Plan A. We are so thankful God saw fit to bless us with twins through adoption and we are excited to watch how He continues to grow our family! Blessings as you transition! Well, I wouldn’t say we adopted “first,” as we have no plans to have bio children. 🙂 However, the day we decided to adopt was the most peaceful day of my life, and now I have two beautiful Ethiopian princesses I am so thankful to be able to call my daughters. I wouldn’t have it any other way. THANKYOU so much for sharing this! I have had so many conversations with people lately about wanting “their own” first (cringe!) and have been able to ask why. I posted this link on my website as you have explained it so well and hope & pray that they will consider it! WE just brought home our son from South Africa and have LOVED every moment with him!! http://www.rileycandra.blogspot.com Me and my hubby are adopting first too. We went to Uganda last summer and fell in love and couldn’t think of NOT adopting first. We were just matched with a baby last week and are still waiting on a picture of our little guy but we couldn’t be more thrilled!! That is us!!! (www.aebrunk.blogspot.com) We chose to adopt years ago, and to say YES to the first referral. We were on the path to adopt a sibling group in Ethiopia (dossier almost sent) when our agency called to say 2 1/2 year old twins needed a home in 24 hours (in March). It was God Who led us down the path so we would trust Him and say YES. Like someone else said, if someone asks if we’ve had trouble getting pregnant – we just say, “We don’t know!” 🙂 God does. And He led us to the perfect little ones for us. Round 2 adoption may be another sibling group, or a single child, or back to Ethiopia where our heart is or domestic again, but we want to adopt again! What a privilege. I am SO VERY PROUD of my big sister Britney Cannon and her husband Jason Cannon for their incredible relationship with Christ. I long for the kind of faith, dependence and love they have for God. They have opened their hearts to hear His cry for them…they are taking a gigantic leap of faith and saying, “Yes, God, I hear you! I am following Your lead. Take my dreams, my hopes, my fears…take my life Lord, a living sacrifice.” How awesome is that?!? Y’all are my hereos. And I know that with the amazing faith and trust you have….God is going to see you and your baby through everything. I am SO stinkin’ excited to meet my new baby nephew/neice!!! And I promise, I won’t call him Bookie, haha. Besides, that’s Landen’s nickname. lol. LOVE YOU GUYS!!! Don’t forget to buy an adoption tee from them if you can!!! |
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by admin
So glad to hear Isaac is doing so well!!
too cute…love the note idea from the TF..will have to steal that idea 🙂 kj
Another priceless update. Know you I have walked these very same steps … from hypotonia to PT, OT, feeding therapy, baby sign language classes, and then speech therapy. God’s visible hand guided us every step of the way. Trusting you will meet Him there too in new and powerful ways!
Love & Blessings,
Kim
You’ll gain alot from the ‘tongue’ therapy, which is what I called it. Teg was older- but textures were…. tricky… but it didn’t take long to start seeing improvement. Keep up the therapies in all their glory.. it’s hard… but worth it!
Andrea – our Jadon had/has many of the same issues that ITY is dealing with – feeding therapy helped immensely- all slow but steady progress. He often still gags at the site of something new – and he is almost 6:). we had 7 hours of therapy a week up until last year – ot, pt, feeding and speech – what a blessing those therapists were and how our lives have changed! WE are all praying for you – I know how difficult the journey is from a momma’s perspective. If you ever need a cyber hug:) or to ask what worked for us – I am here. Love you dear friend
It is great to hear that he is doing so well. What a great momma you are! And the Lord is so faithful!
Hey Andrea! What kind of camera do you have? I have a Nikon D40 and the lens just broke so I need to order a new one, is there a lens you would recommend that would fit my Nikon where I could get the professional looking pics like you take! (:
I LOVE the ones you took a few days ago of Frank by the window! Just beautiful! I love photographing my kids but I am not a professional and would love a camera or a new lens that would make my pics look better! Also, I want to start a family blog, do you have any advice for that?? Hope you are having a great wednesday!!! Bobi