Snow days

A little gift from God that our day to day things can stop and we get some added family fun time. Usually these days consist of playing games, making cookies from scratch, a good pot of soup and movie time. Yesterday's snow day consisted of packing....and more packing....and planning. I am thankful for the extra time we received so we can prepare for the upcoming move next weekend.

                                His first box...that means the call will come soon- right !

I had a very profound moment yesterday when I was going though our medicine cabinet and realized how much medicine we had that we either never use or had expired before we even opened it and how many duplicate I had. I was thinking about our future son and the million upon millions of third world children who don't have access to these medications. A simple tylenol or ibuprofen can change the outlook for a sick child and I had about 4 outdated bottles.....I really started thinking how responsible am I with what I have.

This week as we start pulling things out from closets and storage rooms I see how much excess we have. It reminded me of the time we went to a flea market filled with "little treasures" , Kellsie's eyes were wide, she looked at me and said "Mom, I don't wanna be a hoarder" Oh my! God- I don't wanna be a hoarder of you blessings.

So this week I am diving into my bible and beginning to read Jen Hatmakers 7 where she reduces down to 7 foods for one month, seven clothing items for one month and so on. I have been avoiding this book as I am afraid of what it will stir in me. I can tell you, I don't think I could ever be as disciplined as she was and stick to just the 7 foods for one month but I do hope to weed out some excess thinking in my life.

In the mean time I think we might take a break from this packing and take a little dance fest in this house!

A little soul searching then some fun family updates

As you read in our last post we have passed the 9 month mark. I have chosen to focus on my family and work and remembering that we still have a son out there somewhere I may not yet know his name or recognize his face but he is there waiting and so are we. Every night we pray for our new son but today I am also starting to pray for his birth parents as well. For the family that has made the ultimate sacrifice of choosing a life for their son that they are unable to give. I will always be thankful for their willingness to put our child first, may I be able to remember and honor their decision too.

Ok...done with the deep now onto the lighter side
     
     Fun family updates....

I am in shock that Kellsie will be turning 8 next month. Seems like this little ball of sweetness grows faster than ever before.

Jacob started shaving so I believe he is now officially a young man. He continues to amaze me in his humor and sense of purpose.

Saria is ready to start track soon and has been spending lots of time getting ready for her next choir concert. She is still full of life and praying about joining the mission field this summer.

Gene has been busy at work and planning different projects for the house, always my handy man! He has lost more weight so we are back to adding in protein shakes but thankfully his healthy is still good and he is active as ever.

I have been working a lot lately and in between being director of guidance, regular counselor duties, raising a family, planning our adoption, getting ready for a move and life in general I decided to persue

National Board Certification as a School Counselor.

Because I have nothing else to do- right (insert eye roll here)

What does this mean for me? Check out the pic to see....

Lots and lots and lots of preparation, analyzing, typing and time. I am blessed to be able to be working on this with my awesome co-worker Rebecca and this weekend we were able to work on our entries all weekend long.

Tune in next time to see our next post of craziness Collins style!

Nesting

I don't know if it is the impending referral, the possibility of moving to a different house or my new natural diet pills (thank you Debbie- down 4 lbs.) but I can not stop NESTING.

For this little on the ADHD side girl, this can only lead to craziness....

To prove to you how bad this is I started to type a list of all the things I have done the past 3 hours in terms of organizing and cleaning (not that you can see it all with 3 kids and a dog) but then I realized that you all probably don't want to read all of it

(and I really want to go do more laundry)

Even Gene walked up to me after cleaning the stove top for the 4th time and trying to make a new meal from the extra left over cornbread and said

 "Wow- I think you are nesting!"

I also have this bad urge to start getting things for our little guy. 

I did break down and buy a few books from Kellsie's scholastic packet. Another adoptive mama suggested we write little messages in the books while we wait, I think this is a great idea. (If only spell check worked while I write!)  

Here is my favorite one....

I can't take it,

                                   must do more organizing......

DTE Update

Today we are officially 9 months DTE. We started our adoption journey a little over 16 months ago and started the official wait in April of 2012. Some days it seems like just yesterday we sent of our dossier with months worth of documentation. Other days it seems like we have been waiting years.

If anything through this process we are all learning more and more about ourselves, our relationship with God and what it means to follow him.

I am still in awe the amazing events that have occurred these past months and just how much we have grown.

This month we saw two very special families bring home their children and become forever families. Watching their gotcha moments reminded me that this waiting time that seems so long will eventually end. When it does our real journey will begin as we get to bond and parent our little guy.

 Our family will become one of 6 and I will be a mom to 4. We will have to communicate with hand signals and attempts at rough translations until he learns English. (my attempts at learning amharic are pathetic- however we may be using some flashcards for communication) . Our children will have to learn how to show patience with their new brother and set an example for him.We (and by we I mean I ) will have to learn how to juggle four children in the morning before getting to work and teach the new guy how to brush his teeth and where the dirty socks go.

But most importantly we will teach him to love and remember his birth parents and his country while showing him what it means to be in our family and part of this family. As crazy as we may be!

Gena

After my last raw post I needed to take a little time away from blogging but now I am way behind!

This year we decided to celebrate Ethiopian Christmas with some traditional Ethiopian food and music. It was fun to think that we were celebrating and eating the same way our new son was on the same day and we had a little helper who told us how the transition home for our agency was celebrating too so we really felt connected to our little guy even though we don't know him yet.

 This is photo journal of my first Ethiopian cooking...our quest to make Doror wat and Miser Wat, two traditional Ethiopian meals. (FYI- Below may or may not be the actual instructions but an adaptation Collins style!)

                          Cut a million onions into pieces until your eyes burn. Add garlic and fresh grounded ginger root (which you can buy at walmart!) then make into a paste

the burning red face and eyes (not my most glamerous moment)

Add to some oil paprika and a few other spices and stir, stir, stir until your eyes STOP  burning (about 10 minutes)

 This one is the Doro Wat which to the onion/oil base you add a bunch of Berbere (an Ethiopian Spice I bought when I last went to STL for our fingerprints- hope it has a year shelf life!)

Add broth/water/wine and some cut up chicken then simmer for about 40 minutes, In the end you get to add several whole boiled eggs and simmer an additional 15 minutes. (Gene really had a hard time believing you put in whole eggs)

                                                                         

X

I forgot to take a picture of the Miser Wat at this stage but you take the onion/oil mixture and add some water/stock and a pound of red lentils and then let them simmer for about 30 minutes until the lentils pop and turn yellow.

Check out the hot cook!

(Literaly- I was burning up standing infront of some seriously hot spices and onion- you can see my face is still all read and puffy. )

 The other cook trying out the dish- he likes :)

Here was the start of an epic fail- I tried to make a quick Injera recepie. For those of you that are not familiar to Ethiopian quisen - Injera has a sourdough taste with a spongy think pancake consistency and is eaten with almost everything. You take a piece of it and scoop the stew/meat with it.

 Normally Injera takes 3 days to make

- my recepie used club soda and took 30 minutes -

 as Jeff Foxworth would say- Here's my sign!

So far not soo bad- looks kinda like a pancake but then.....

These 4 may not look to bad but let me tell you- I made about 12 of them and they stuck together or to the pan, were too runy or thick or just plain wrong.

 In this picture you can see the real Injera on the left and my imitation on the right.

See the differences in texture.

On a side note- that Injera was also from when we had our fingerprints done- aside from a little freezer burn on the sides we salvaged the middle parts....

The final meal- Yum!

The three infamous critics.....

Their first bites.

They all liked it and Jacob believe it or not had 3 servings of Doro Wat,

his only complaint- add more Berbere!

And to not let you miss out on the rest of our celebration- Kellsie searched youtube and found us this great Ethiopian music and dancing.

Melekame Gena!!!

Grief

This weekend I grieve...

for the women who so desperately want to be a mother but struggle to conceive

for the child who has a mother but wants her to act like one

for the birth mother who chooses to give her child a better life than she can provide

for awaiting adoptive families who just want to hold their new child in their arms

for families that have lost a child and just wish they would have had one more night

for Conneticut...
       
          for all of those who hurt.

An outpouring from my heart

My heart is raw. The past two weeks have been very
difficult for me.  I started this blog as a way to share our journey with family, friends and other adoptive families so I want to be honest here and share my heart, pretty or not.

This past week we changed our request back to one child. It was a long time coming and something we really struggled with. A day later in our agency, there was a referral for a sibling set and then a few days later another sibling set referral, both were within our age ranges. To be honest, this was hard. I wish I could say that I was praising God and celebrating for these families, sending them heart felt words of encouragement. But I wasn't.....I was sad and angry and hurt. Knowing that if we had not changed our request we would have two new sons right now was difficult. Yes, I have three amazing wonderful children in my home who I love and cherish- but in that moment I missed our Ethiopian child(ren). My heart sank. I felt like we had lost something, we had missed it.

To say adoption is easy is a lie. This is tough stuff and I mean gut wrenching, pain in your heart, earth shattering longing like you would never believe hard. Seriously- hard stuff people.

But out of this pain and hurt, I get to see how much God loves me. If we love this child so much before we even know them, how much more does our heavenly creator who adopted us! I can place my trust in God and know that he has plans for us. The boys that I cried over and missed were never really mine, they were intended for their new families and have been heavenly matched.

Now, can I say this every moment of every day? Nope- some time I just want to throw up my hands and run back to the days before I felt that half my heart was missing. Back to the days where I had hidden the knowledge about oorphans and hunger, extreme poverty and AIDS. Back to the days when I thought three was just fine with me. No constant e-mail checking, cyber stalking other adoptive parent blogs, or constant research on race or health or behavioral interventions.... But then, no one said life was going to be easy, pain free or boring. Our child is out there somewhere and he is waiting for us too!