This is the Week!

This Saturday we finally received our long awaited furniture for the older girls' bedroom. Rebecca and I quickly made the beds with the newly washed bedding. She was so excited to finally get her new room. We moved all of the girls clothes over form Rebecca's old room and most of the boys clothes are moved to their newly finished room in the basement.

This furniture has caused us such a headache. This is the second set of furniture and the second store. To be honest if we were not desperate for the girls' room to be done before we leave we would have returned this set as well. We have never experienced such terrible customer service. We just wanted to know when it would be delivered and one simple question and persistence from us (due to our schedule and trip) they were terrible. Jeremy even made the trip down to the store to speak with the store manager and they refused to let him see the manager. On the bright side the delivery guys were super nice and did not damage anything.

We took a quick trip to Pittsburgh on Thursday to take Ben and Mariah to their endocrinologist. Mariah hates socks and shoes on her feet. If you look closely you'll see her socks on her hands. Why not?

Just relaxing watching some Micky Mouse on the iPad while we wait for the doctor.

Then we went to my mom's to get the other kids and of course, they had to go play in the snow. 

We opened Christmas gifts at my parent's too. We figured that since our van will be pretty full on our return from China it was smart to go ahead and open those now. This is how Mariah felt about it!

Grandma and Pap bought Mariah her Bity Baby twins. She (with a little help from us) have named the babies "Mollie" and "Matthew". When we asked her to name the little girl it almost sounded like "Mollie" so it stuck!

The older kids had been outside playing all day. So they look a little unkept!

Always willing to "help".

And help some more.

And last but not least.......

Since we left the house before 6am we forgot our camera. This photos are taken with my mediocre phone.

We are not done wrapping gifts yet. But we will get there. While I was wrapping gifts Jeremy was cleaning up his tools from the boys' new bedroom. We stayed up way too late!

I'm disappointed to miss the kids' Christmas programs tonight. Mariah was supposed to sing with the toddlers and Becca and Ben are in the older kids' program. Yesterday Mariah woke up from her nap with a fever. She was up a few times during the night and still is running a temp today. I guess we will have to watch from web streaming. Looks like next year will be yet another "first" for Mariah.

We are wrapping up the last of our planning for China. It is really hard for me to share these details but I've had a few people asking very specific questions about the financial aspect of adoption. I am sure this is a result of our recent fundraiser. 

So here it is. Our adoption this time around is costing right at $40,000. Honestly, we are a little short right now. We will figure it out in the next few days. I know God will supply where we simply cannot. We are definitely walking by faith at this point. There are two grants that we received that our agency does not have yet. We know for sure one will not make it to our agency on time. The other one we cannot get a hold of anyone to get some answers.

We had a family friend send us a card this week and it made me cry. Here is what was written in an email following the Christmas card. This is how God has provided for us this entire short process.


Romans 12 gives reasons for giving..you say it is a sacrifice...well, we are to be living sacrifices..I think about Christ sacrificing his life for me because he loves me. Love is a sacrifice...True love is shown by sacrifices one makes..we don't always make sacrifices to the people we love..so just accept the money and pray it arrives so it can help you in bringing Selah home. We love you guys and don't show it often enough.
Jas 2:15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, 16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?

If we know you have a need and can help meet that need, but instead we say, "Oh we'll pray for you," how would that show our faith? We show our faith by our works. Enough said...just use the money however you need.

I had another friend who sent us a check and told us not to thank her but thank God. He had provided for them in mighty ways. Other friends have helped thoughout our adoption. We are so grateful. We simply could not have afforded this on our own. So many families have gifted us financial help. Will you please pray that we can get things done very soon?

We Skyped with Selah again on Friday. She seemed much more relaxed. She has a cold though. We typed with her again for about an hour. We wanted to make sure she understood what adoption meant. Her social worker contacted us later in the day and told us this:

We talked about weather with her. She is very concerned about us having some warm clothes for her. She also asked if we have central heating.

She keeps telling us how terrible her English is. We jokingly told her how we are terrible with Cantonese and Mandarin.....the two languages she knows. She can read some English and what she couldn't we noticed her looking up words in some kind of a book. We are so encouraged at her willingness to learn. We did hear her tell her social worker as she was trying to take over the keyboard, "Let-a me!" We both smiled!

We showed her our Christmas tree. She thought it was pretty. 

She is living at boarding school during the week and at foster parents on the weekends. 

It has felt like The Enemy is working overtime to steal our joy and prevent this adoption from happening. Even though the bank's mistake cost us $500 on our flights, and another $120 for our visas, we still choose joy. I just told Jeremy that God must have some amazing things in store for our Selah because Satan has been non-stop in almost every area of our lives. It makes me even more excited!

I guess I'll end this post with a strange addition I noticed to Christmas Town......oddly, there are wolves roaming the town. Very large wolves that have a striking resemblance to those seen in the Lego set of The Hobbit. We have boys in our house, can you tell?

I am hoping to write at least one more post before Christmas. Until then we are wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!!!