why adopt

We are still here....We are progressing through our home study. Our visits have been completed, our paperwork is almost completely gathered. We now are waiting on our FBI criminal history to arrive in the mail. The next step is to submit a formal request to Citizen Immigration Services to adopt internationally. Some moms have growing bellies...I have a growing binder or paperwork.

Now that summer has arrived I have a little more time to sit down and write so I thought I'd address the questions we get most often about our adoption.

As we have told friends and family about our desire to adopt we often get one of two responses. Excitement or the strange look of why?

The answer to that question is I'm not sure why but I know several thing for certain...

I've always had a desire to adopt. In the early 90s I remember seeing many newsline type shows reporting on the conditions of orphanages in Romania. I will never forget seeing those kids rocking themselves to sleep and banging their heads against their cribs. It totally broke my heart. I remember thinking to myself that I would take one. Of course I wasn't old enough but I knew I could do it. I had always been a babysitter... I have 20 first cousins and I'm older than all but one of those. I was often asked to keep an eye on or babysit all of those at some point in time. I was responsible I could do it....
It got me thinking and I have always looked at children in bad situations and asked myself "Could I love that kid as my own?" and most of the time I concluded that I could. I then began to question this desire I had and wondered why I had it. I began to convince myself that maybe God was preparing me. Maybe I was not able to have children and this was his way of bracing me for it. I even went so far as to warn my husband about this premonition I had. He was fine with adoption and even liked the idea.
Obviously I was able to have children. It was even easy and I still am able to have kids. So, I could have more or I could act on this somewhat unique desire...
Which leads me to my next reason...

God calls us to it.... Not everyone is called to adopt but it clearly says in His word "Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress... James 1:27" I know that this doesn't mean we are all to run out and adopt but God has given me the desire and therefore I should. Kids need parents and we want and are blessed enough to be able to provide for another so we should. Let me re emphasize that....God has blessed us as a family beyond measure. He has done so much for us that honestly I feel like I have more to give and this seems like a great way to do it.

We want a big family... Willem and I have always wanted a big family. At this point in my life, I am not that into the whole pregnancy thing. I've been there done that. Same goes for babyhood. We cherished it for our three but we are happy to be done with midnight feedings, bottles and soon to be diapers! We want our kids to have each other, to depend on as they grow older. We want lots of grandkids and big Christmas dinners... Adoption fits the bill and we get the bonus of picking the age and sex of our child...perfect!

So there you go...a little explanation of this journey we are on.....

Hope everyone out there has had a great Memorial Day weekend...

Home Study Meeting #1 Done

We had our first home study meeting Friday. It went great! We felt like we were having coffee with a friend. She asked us questions about our motivation for adopting, how we met, what our marriage and family life is like. It was surprisingly pleasant. We received a lot of places for resources and education and got our questions answered. Our next meeting is at the end of the month and she'll meet with us individually as well as spend some time with the kids. Till then we have lots of paperwork to gather, including a FBI background check. So we'll be off to the jail house to get our fingerprints taken....uh...yay! That's it for now. We needed a recent pic of our family to put in our file. Here's how it came out.

Have a great week!

Blog Resurrected and Big News

This is what happens when you have three kids and a house you plan to totally remodel.....A blog that doesn't get updated for two years!

We have done some renovations to the house in the last two years as well as restore a 1974 Airstream. I will post pics and a brief description of those projects in a few days. However, I have no doubt our house reno's will not keep my blogging current. I do have an alterior motive for this blog. We plan to use it to update our friends and family of our upcoming journey...

Drumroll please....

We're Adopting! We've talked about it as long as we've been married but now seemed like the time. Four kids was always our goal. I thought for a while we'd stop at three but I have a feeling now that we are outnumbered one more is not going to be as big a transition. What's one more right? Our goal is to adopt a little boy around the age of 4. We're hoping to fill that gap between Derek (age 2) and Savannah (age 6). Two boys and two girls seems perfect.

A social worker will be here tomorrow morning to start our homestudy and we've decided to do an international adoption. Our country of choice is Moldova. Why Moldova? Well to be completely honest Moldova fits all of our requirements. They have children that are in the age range we are looking for and they have a relatively short in country stay time. Also Moldova allows for us to get a child in less time than some of the other countries. That being said this is still a really long process. We are anticipating it to take about 18 months. I will post more about the process in a few days.

Our kids are psyched and love the idea of being able to pick the age and sex of the child. Instant brother! The girls, especially Maddy, are already figuring out the sports and things they want to teach him. We are trying to not speak about it daily as 18 months for them will seem like an eternity but we too are having a hard time not talking about it.

For Willem and I, we are busy gathering paperwork and figuring out funding. We are very excited. At the same time we have a heavy heart. We really feel like the Lord wants us to do this and therefore he has a little guy out there for us. And, here's the kicker, he's alive...somewhere...in an orphanage being raised by someone who is not us. So if we can ask anything of our friends and family it is that you pray. Pray that our little boy is doing well, thriving where he is and has a sense that his situation is not forever. We're coming!

Introducing Derek Kingston Gene Mast

He's finally here. Derek made it into the world on March 12, 2009 at about 10:30 am. His delivery was relatively easy. I was induced at 5:30 am and 5 hours later he was here. He weighed 7 lbs 14 oz and is 21" long. He's a great baby. Generally eats every 4 hours and sleeps in between those feedings. He's pretty happy unless he has to wait on his bottle, then he turns into a grumpy old man. The girls are absolutely in love with him. They love to hold him and feed him and give him kisses any chance they get. Willem is very happy to have some testosterone in the house. Derek has already been introduced to the tractor and the dogs.

As promised I took some pics of his room. We went with an extreme sports theme. We'd love him to be into skateboards and bikes like his daddy. Only time will tell. In the meantime he seems to like looking at the lines on his walls.

Master Suite Update

Finally we have a fully functioning bathroom. It is still void of wall trim, doors and a little paint but for the most part it is finished. I'm so happy to have tiled floors and no more plywood subfloor. Our bedroom is much cozier since the addition of the changing room/closet. We still have to put flooring down in our closet but we're going to just put down the old carpet for now until we can afford to floor the entire bedroom and closet at once. Our closet is going to be filled with wall to wall wardrobe units from IKEA called PAX. We have a few units and will be putting those up this weekend. Anyways, here are some pics so you can see the dramatic difference so far.

MASTER BEDROOM

The second pic is a pic from the bed and it's at the entrance to the closet.

MASTER CLOSET/DRESSING ROOM

Picture of closet entrance and the lighted room at the end is the bathroom. There will be a wood door with a frosted glass panel in it into the bathroom.

MASTER BATHROOM

The First pic is to the left of the door. The second pic is to the right, note the toilet area will have another wood door with frosted glass panel and the shower will be in that heavily junked up area. Shower construction will begin in a couple of months so that we can take a break and spend some time getting adjsuted to the new baby.

BABY UPDATE: As of Wednesday, I had already begun dialating so the doctor is thinking he'll be here by the first week of March for sure. We'll post pics of the little guy and his room once he's here.

Kicked out of our room!

Last I left you we had gutted the bathroom and were well on our way to driving ourselves to delirium with construction. Since that time much has happened. For starters the bathroom got a lot worse before it got better! Then just in case the bathroom wasn't enough we decided to dive into the dressing room/closet project in the master bedroom. Willem began framing up the walls and laid out the electrical. Literally the bathroom and closet project were getting closer and closer to our bed making it feel as if it was out to get us! Finally all has been done that we can do and drywallers are coming in tomorrow to finish it all off. I can't tell you how happy I'm going to be when there will be no more drywall bits and dust finding its way into every room in the house. Here are some pics of it tonight before the drywall guys do their magic. (The pictures have captions on them, just click on them to get a zoomed in version)

Sometime during all this construction I managed to pull Willem away to get the painting done in the baby's room. I knew this whole project was going to come very close to the baby's due date so I wanted the baby's room to be ready. Now that sheet rock day is here we have had to move out of our bedroom and we are now sleeping in the baby's room for the next week or so. I took a few pics of the baby's room since it's been painted. It was difficult getting pics taken as our bed is in there and a ton of other crap that we had to put somewhere until our bedroom is complete. I'll take better pics when we are all back in place and ready for baby boy to come home.

Also in the past two months we had a contractor come out and replace our siding that had gotten destroyed by Gustav. Thank you Vance Henry! You did a great job! We also had our buddy Addison Henry and his crew come out and put up a privacy fence along the side and back of our property. I'll post some pics of that sometime in the future.

I'm getting bigger, due date is getting closer, winter is leaving us and we're looking forward to a spring with our new baby boy and lots of down time!

I'll show more updates as they happen!

By the way, I just wanted to say a public and very big THANK YOU to my husband! He has worked almost every weekend from morning to night since MARCH to make this place my dream home without complaint! I couldn't ask for a better, more loving best friend! Thanks Willem for not giving up and walking away, God knows you have had every right to! I love you!

master bath and baby boy

We've got most of the Gustav aftermath picked up and our insurance claim has been settled. We should be receive a check in the mail soon so we can beging repairing the damages that were done.
In the meantime, renovations continue as we get closer and closer to my due date (March 19) for our little one! Realizing that things will come to a snail's pace after the baby is born we have decided to forgoe finishing off the mudroom bathroom and hammer on the Master Bath Renovation. Willem began gutting it several weekends ago and we are finally seeing some progress. He's managed to reframe the whirlpool tub so we can have a suitable surround and sitting bench at the end. The next step is to get the plumbing in place to accept the new vanity. Once that is done we can put up new drywall and prepare the floor for tile. Getting tile on the floor is our utmost priority as the plywood subloor is beginning to shred and give splinters. All the while, we are still using the bathroom. There is no other bathroom on the second floor besides the ensuite bath in the girls room. Therefore it is a tricky balance between getting work done and still having a semi functional bathroom.
Below are a couple of pics of the work in progress as well as a picture of a sketch of what the bath should look like when it is all finished.

The shower will most likely be postponed until after the baby arrives. I am using the closet that will eventually be the shower and a closet/dressing room will have to be built in the bedroom before shower construction can begin.
Somewhere in between getting this stuff done we will also have to prime and paint the bedroom which will become the baby's room. We'll post those pics too as we get it done. ALSO in case you haven't heard we're having a BOY!
That's enough for now. I'm getting a headache just thinking about it all! Or it could be the constant whirl of power tools!