We ran a 5k!

We have been working out hard since the middle of August.  Like 6 days a week we're either lifting weights or doing high-intensity cardio.  Chris has always enjoyed working out, but I've really enjoyed it too.  It's very addicting and so much fun to see results. 

Since we both felt in a lot better shape and wanted to see how that would look out in the "real world" (i.e. not just in our basement doing a DVD workout), we signed up for a 5k.  We decided to do the Clement Park Gobble Wobble on Thanksgiving morning.  My sister came over and watched the kids so we could actually run instead of wrangling kids!  (Thanks, Monica!!)

I definitely wasn't super fast or anything, but I did run the whole time and wasn't even that sweaty or tired afterwards (maybe I need to push myself a littler harder next time?).  I ran it in 31 mins and 26 secs, which isn't great, but my goal was 30, so I got close. 

Both of us had a great time and we really wanted to do another 5k again soon.  Now we have a time to beat too, which is good for us self-motivated types!  This was such a fun way to start out our Thanksgiving day, I think it will become a tradition for us.

We got a grant!

Praise God!!  He has provided all the money we need to pay the rest of our agency fees, this most recent time through a grant!  We had always planned on applying for grants (plural, we figured we'd apply for many before receiving one) when the time was right, but we are so blessed to receive the first one we applied for!!

It's so hard to believe that this time last year was about when Chris and I first started talking about adoption.  We were unsure if we were hearing God correctly and very nervous about the cost of the whole thing.  Now we are not only done with our homestudy and dossier and on the waitlist, we now have all the money we need to pay our fees to accept a referral.  (Correction: it turns out we still have a $1400 fee that is due to our local agency when we travel for our second trip. I don't know how i missed that one.  I'm kicking myself!) Only God could do that, I guarantee it!

At this point, we are now focused on fundraising for our travel expenses (and the $1400 due to our local agency). These expenses will include:

• 4 round-trip airplane tickets to Ethiopia (we have to take two trips to Ethiopia)
• 1 one-way ticket for our daughter to come home from Ethiopia
• 10-14 days of hotel stay (each trip is about 5-7 days)
• 10-14 days of food (some is provided I think, but I'm not really sure on this)
• any in-country legal fees (court, embassy)
• in-country transportation (we will have to hire a driver)

I'm sure there are more expenses associated with travel, we just haven't really gotten to that point in our research, so we aren't aware of all the little things that could come up.  (If you are an adoptive family and have traveled, maybe you know of more we should be planning for?)  Based on the expenses above, we estimate our travel expenses to be around $10,000.  Unfortunately, we will not know when we are supposed to travel until about 1-2 weeks before, so we don't have the luxury of buying tickets way ahead of time to get a better price.

We trust that God will faithfully provide for these expenses, just as He has all the rest.  If you would like to help with our travel expenses, you may donate online at Ordinary Hero and 100% of your donation will be tax-deductible and be made available for us to use.

Operation Christmas Child

This year Chris and I wanted the boys to make their own box for Operation Christmas Child.  We tried to enforce the idea that for many children, this is only gift they get, and how it is one small way our family can bless a child in another country.  I'm not sure if they totally got it because even while we were at the store picking out things for their boxes, they were begging to get stuff for themselves.

But once we were home and got all the stuff put into the boxes and they wrote the child who would be getting the box a letter and enclosed a picture, they were very excited. There is a way, now, where you can print a label online and track your box to see where it ends up, I can't wait to show them that part!

 

Boo at the Zoo

Boo at the Zoo was COLD this year! Freezing! I actually wasn't much in the mood to bundle up and go, but I knew the kids were really excited about it. Chris encouraged me that we should still go, despite the cold, and I'm so glad he did. We had a really good time and it wasn't as cold as I thought it was afterall. 

Brayden was a ninja

Logan was a ninja

Preston was a ninja

Ashten was a ladybug

3 ninjas and a ladybug

Daddy, 3 ninjas and a ladybug

Mommy, 3 ninjas and a ladybug

Towards the end, at the ampitheater at the zoo, there was a guy doing a magic show. It was cute and the boys LOVED it. They talked about it for days, wondering how he did some of his tricks and stuff. I'm glad we took that time to slow down and do something fun that we normally wouldn't stop and do!

We didn't have a zoo membership last year, so we didn't go to Boo at the Zoo, so I'm glad we made it a point to go this year.  And one positive aspect of the cold weather was that there were less people there!

November adoption update

I haven't blogged about our adoption in awhile, and that's honestly because there's just not much to blog about right now.  It stinks waiting!  Especially when I know there are more kids than families who are willing to take them.  Our waitlist # only moved one spot last month, so we are at #128 for a girl, 0-2 years old. 

People ask me all the time how our adoption is going and I don't really know what to say.  It's going, there is just nothing to show for it right now.  It was easy when they would ask me about it this summer and I could tell them how our homestudy was complete or we were almost ready to send in our paperwork, but not I just say that we are just waiting at this point.  I'm not a good waiter.  I need something to do, some way to feel like I am in control.  Unfortunately that's not what God has for me at this point, so I need to wait patiently for His timing.

Posing

The other day I was  taking some new pictures for my blog profile photo.  I don't know why, I guess I was just bored of my last picture, in which my hair was curly and lighter brown and I wanted a picture with my new, fun, fall hair color! 

 

 

Ashten wanted in on the picture-taking action as well!  What a cutie!  I seriously cannot believe how big she is getting!

 

Kitchen dancing

I love it when this little ballerina puts on her tutu and dances in the kitchen while I make lunch!  

 

 

African food and arm art

A couple of weeks ago I got to spend a night away with some other moms from church where my friend, Rose, our resident African cooking expert (she's from Uganda) taught us all kinds of  African dishes.

 

She seriously went all out!  I think she prepared over 11 different dishes.  I'm so excited to have some kind of African food repertoire to introduce to my family and also to have in our regular meal rotation for when our daughter comes home.

 

 

It was all so yummy.  I mean really, really yummy!!  I ate way too much and totally blew off my calorie limits for the night, but it was so delicious.  I couldn't even tell you what my favorite dish was, probably either the eggplant thing, the couscous/chicken/bacon dish or the simosas! 

 

While I was off filling my belly and have a fun "night off" with some other mommies, Chris was so awesome to doing some fun stuff with the kids.  He took them to Cici's Pizza for dinner and while they were there, a lady was walking around offering face painting.  All the kids ended up getting them on their arms instead, but they were all so upset when they got home and Chris told them it was time for showers/baths and that their pictures would wash off.  They made him take pictures with the camera so that when I got home that night I could see their cool arm drawings!

 

Brayden got a dragon

Logan got a dog

Preston got a giraffe

Ashten got a butterfly

 

Down the drain

When we bought our house, we knew that the sewer occasionally backed up because of roots.  No biggie really.   We were always home when it happened, which was only a handful of times in 9 years (thankfully!) and it was as "easy" as getting out the shop-vac and sucking up the extra water and calling a plumber and waiting till all hours of the night for them to get there and clear the line out. 

This past February our sewer backed up the night before Valentine's Day.  We were actually doing our Valentine's scavenger hunt with the kids when I opened up the utility room and stepped in water.  Happy Valentine's Day to us, huh?  So we cleaned it up, waited for the plumber and then figured we'd be good for another 18-24 months like we had in the past.

Well, on September 23rd, it happened again.  :(  It had only been 7 months, so we knew the roots were getting pretty bad.  The company we went with this time for the sewer clean-out also offered a free video inspection, so we took full advantage of that.  This is when we found out that our sewer line is abnormal in that it 1) goes out through our backyard instead of our front yard, 2) is 175 feet long and 3) has a 2" pipe inside the house connecting to a 4" pipe once it gets outside.  We also found out that at one point in our sewer line, there was about 75% root blockage and because of the 2"/4" thing, they couldn't get a big enough tool in there to clean out the whole pipe.  Plus, the roots were really big and aggressive, so they weren't going away anytime soon.

The company recommended a sewer line replacement from our house to the fence (since doing the whole 175' would have been super pricey and the big root was inside our fence anyway!) as well as adding a couple of clean-outs toward the back of our property so that the 2" pipe problem would not be an issue anymore.  Basically now if our pipe ever backs up again, they can go out to the cleanouts and have better access. 

Because of the cost and the fact that our first clean-out on September 23rd came with a year warranty, we decided to not do the total sewer line repair, figuring we could just wait a year, with maybe just one or two more sewer backups and then make a decision.  Well, 2 weeks later our sewer backed up again.  Big bummer!  We had actually bought a water alarm that you put on the floor right by your sewer drain so that if water is coming up you know right away and not when you go down there who knows how much later.  So I knew right away and it was just shower water, so that was nice.  But at that point, we realized that there was no way we could go a year before having our sewer line replaced.

The next day our yard was full of dirt and diggers and while the kids had a fun time watching all the action, all I could think about was how sad I was that our poor grass, that Chris has worked so hard to maintain and keep looking nice, was all torn up.  So sad!

Unlike most expensive home repairs/remodels, we have nothing obvious to show for the cost.  We are literally flushing money down the drain.  A very clean and rootless drain, but a drain nonetheless.  In fact, if anything, the things you can see (the grass) look worse now than before the repair.  However, God is so faithful to our family and He has provided over half of what is costs to help us out.  I love to see how God provides even when things seem kind of impossible.

Taking pictures that involve kids

A few weeks ago, we were all at my parents house, so my dad wanted to get a picture with all his grandkids in it. The last one was over a year ago, so we were due! Look how young they all look! 

 



  

Admittely, all of the rest of the adults were inside helping get ready for dinner and watching football, so my dad was severely outnumbered, but I'm not sure that having more adults would have made things better. It's so funny to watch the photos progress. I'm not saying the pictures are bad at all, I think they are actually pretty cute, but it just goes to show you never know how a picture is going to turn out when kids are involved!

 

All 6 kids, sitting on the bench, 2/3 looking at the camera

Oops - lost one sitting, only 3 looking at the camera

Silly faces all around!

Now the kids are just bored, we got two good smiles (note: not from any of my kids!)

Sometimes I think the kids just purposely do that, it's not like looking at the camera is THAT hard, right?  Haha, either way, I suppose we'll have years of everyone looking at the camera and smiling, so these candid posed photos are great for now!