LAUREL'S NEW BLOG

Hi Everyone. As of today I have gone "Private" with Laurel's Blog. We've had to do this for many reasons but it has been definately recommended to us! If you want to be added to the blog readers list for access please let me know (either leave a post or email me) and I'll add you. If you aren't friends or family and a reader who I may not know- please leave a line about yourself in the line so I'll know who you are! Thanks so much for understanding. We want everything to go as smoothly as possible with this and don't want to mess anything else up for other people's adoptions. Laurel's new blog address is: www. bringinglaurelhome.blogspot.com

Sing Banana

So I was washing dishes the other day and heard Noah's sweet voice singing this song. Only the words were wrong, but when you substitute "Banana" for "Hosanna" it becomes pretty funny! He gets shy when I bring out the camera so I had to coax him a bit here but you get the idea! Enjoy!

SURPRISE!!! MEET LAUREL

SURPRISE!! This will probably come as a shock to most of you (it sure did us) but meet our new, hopefully soon to be daughter- Laurel!! In the last blog I told ya'll we were switching to the Special Needs China program but about a week and a half ago we saw this beautiful little girl on Reeces Rainbow, a website who finds and profiles Downs Syndrome children or children with other disabilites. Most of these children will be institutionlized at the age of 4 if no one adopts them. Laurel stole our hearts and after MUCH praying we decided to commit to her. Laurel is over a year old and has "sensory deafness". It is not known how much hearing if any she hears but she does suffer from many ear infections. We are learning sign language but praying God will heal her with great medical care. This is a HUGE leap of faith for us because this country doesn't allow us to look at all of her medical records until we get over there. We covet your prayers in this endevour. Laurel is in Eastern Europe so we will be able to use our documents we've already prepared and payed for!! Praise God!!! Please pray the Lord will help our paperwork pass through the system smoothly and quickly as we hope to travel to get her in sometime in the fall. Also, please pray that the Lord will make the funds available to adopt her this quickly. Reeces Rainbow has set up a Grant fund for Laurel for those who want to make a tax deductable donation to her cause. To get there go to http://www.reecesrainbow.org/ . Then you click on "Sponsor a Waiting Family" and then "New Commitments". Scroll down to Laurel and our profile.

We will keep you updated and once again cannot stress how important prayer is at this point.

Thank you all for your support!!

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS....

Noah in Our Bed
Summer Picnics
Beautiful Flowers
Sisters & Best Friends
Noah's Laugh
Good Books Read Over & Over
We had a busy week, kinda rough in spots but throughout the week the Lord allowed me some beautiful bright spots. I love being able to stay home with Noah and just be his Mommy. I love being able to share my time with sweet baby Connor too (Noah is completely in love with him).
We had a great time on Saturday taking the Teens to canoe down the river-13 miles in all!! Yes, we survived and didn't even have any casualties. Check out the youth blog later and hopefully we'll have the pictures up. Mike and I toured a new prison open house on Sunday afternoon. This was true love- my husband definately understands my affinity to prisons (not being in them just seeing them :) Very Interesting indeed.

In Adoption News: Really no news to share as of yet. Still waiting on our Social Worker to call and set up a time to do the homestudy update. We are kind of on the backburner because technically I can't apply to our agency Children's Home Society and Family Services of MN until I'm 30 which will be in August. We are scheduling another yardsale to raise money sometime in June.

RUDOLPH

I know it's not Christmas but I just LOVE this video. I took it about a month ago and it's of Noah singing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Enjoy!

Meet the New Members of the Family

LOOK CLOSELY AND YOU'LL SEE OUR "HI"

Yippee! The gangs all here (except about 5 of us not shown)

Ruby and Rachaels "Christian Lite" skit

Kathy looks great- Martha needs a bit of paint on the barn!

The Freaky Fashion Show- Debbie won.

Noah and his new pride and joys named: DUCK AND HEN

So sorry it's been so long since I've updated! So much going on on so many fronts! This weekend I was so blessed to attend our Ladies Retreat at the beach. Our theme was "Letting the Light Shine" and it was so uplifting. I don't think I've ever laughed so much or had a better time. Thank you SO much to the leadership team that put it on-your hard work was evident and God was glorified!!

Also, in other exciting news, we added 2 new members to our family- introducing "Duck and Hen" ( Noah named after characters in Little Bear). They are Polish Top Hat chickens and will have a ridiculous amount of feathers on the top of their heads when they grow up. I may be rethinking this whole impulse buy b/c of the amount of chirping coming from my bathroom. Noah however thinks they are the greatest.

In adoption news: To those of you who don't know, we are switching gears in our adoption. It has come to our attention that Ukraine is not going to be the place where we will be able to find our daughter. So....... in light of this we are switching to the Waiting Childs List for China. We are in the process of updating our homestudy for China and can apply to the program offically in August (when I'm 30-Aghh!). We will then be able to be referred a precious angel with a correctible problem such as cleft palate. We are very excited about this program and look forward to working with the agency to find the little girl for our family!! So far everyone in these agencies have been wonderful! Please pray that we will be able to get through the homestudy update with no hitches and apply in August with no problem. Also, please pray God will continue to provide the funds for this adoption. So far He has met our needs!