CHARITY:WATER

There are only 9 days left to contribute to Drew's Charity:Water campaign for his 30th birthday!  So far we have raised $3,260 and 163 PEOPLE will have CLEAN WATER to drink!  Makes my heart so happy!!  Please click here and contribute!  Every little bit helps and $20 will give one person clean water!  We would love nothing more than to make it to our goal of $5,000 and fully fund our own well in honor of sweet Zoe Tadesse!  Water truly does change everything!

4 MONTHS!

Today marks 4 MONTHS since Zoe came home!  In some ways it feels like it's been much longer than 4 months, and then in other ways it feels like she just came home yesterday.  So much has happened in those 4 months and she has grown and changed in SO MANY ways.  The transition has been so much more seamless than I ever expected.  And for that we are so thankful. 

Evan really does love having a little sister...

 and Zoe loves her big brother oh so much...

It has been such a joy to watch the two of them interact with each other...

LOVE THESE TWO!!

Update in Pictures!

Things around here are kind of crazy lately with all the packing and preparations for the big move.  The kiddos are LOVING all the boxes laying around the house!  Here are a few pictures I've taken in the last couple of weeks...  ENJOY!

My little helper!

 She loves hanging out in the laundry room with the shoes- one of her FAVORITE things :)

 E is soo into Legos lately and he can pretty much do them all by himself!

 A little sibling love- these 2 are such blessings :)

 Another one of his favorite things as of late- his squinkies.... 

 Happy girl :)

 She LOVES to play in the boxes :)

 Who knew they could be so entertained with boxes?!?  I don't know why in the world we have all these toys around here!

 Climbing on boxes- you can't turn your back on her for a minute.  This girl can find trouble!

More climbing- trying to get her "deeee" (drink)!  

Life Redeemed

This afternoon as I was flipping through my Bible in preparation for our small group Bible study tonight, a picture "happened to" fall out of the pages where it was carefully tucked away. There are NO coincidences friends- God knew I needed this reminder today.  It was a HUGE revelation to me and brought me to tears like I haven't cried since we've had sweet Zoe home.  I think it's been so easy to forget how much we prayed and longed to have her home now that she's here.  We've been so busy with finding our "new normal" along with loving on and meeting both Zoe and Evan's needs in these past 3+ months that we've been home that I've almost "FORGOTTEN" how excruciating that wait to have her home was.  And even saying that word "forgotten" now seems so incredibly strange, considering how very much my heart ACHED to have her here every minute until she was in my arms.  And when I saw this picture today

  as it fell out of my Bible from the pages of Psalm 146 (which I prayed so very much during those excruciatingly tough months), all those emotions came FLOODING back.  The look on her face in this picture that my sweet  friend Jana had taken of her seemed so sweet to me back then during the waiting.  But now, after looking at those big brown eyes that have melted me every day in this last 3+ months, all I see is fear and sadness in those eyes.  This isn't the girl we know now.  And oh how I'm thankful.  We don't see this blank, sad, and scared look in her eyes anymore.  Just like her name- Zoe Tadesse means "LIFE REDEEMED", so has the change in her personality and spirit been transformed and redeemed.  The serious, shy little girl we first met in Ethiopia last June is long gone and has been replaced by this spunky, happy, mischevious, silly little girl who is always making us laugh.  

And oh how grateful I am at the transformation we have seen over the last 3 months.  Just another reminder that God can redeem ANYTHING.  And before you think "how lucky she is" or "what a great thing we've done by adopting her" which we hear ALL the time- PLEASE just know that all we have done is be open to His calling on our life and that ALL the glory belongs to HIM who has called us on this beautiful journey of adoption.  I'm so thankful that we heard and heeded His call to adopt- no matter how scary the unknowns were to us back in 2010 when we started the process.  Just like the saying goes- "If God brings you to it, He will see you through it".  I'm so incredibly thankful He called us on this journey that led us to our precious Zoe Tadesse.  And I'm so humbled He chose ME in all my imperfections and uncertainty to be her mommy. 

BIG NEWS!

WE ARE MOVING! Sorry for my absence from this blog in the past few weeks...  things have been C.R.A.Z.Y! And for those of you who didn't even know we had our house for sale and were shocked by this news, there is a reason!  It happened very quickly!  We have known a move closer to Drew's work and our church was in our future for quite some time, but decided to wait until Zoe's adoption was final because we would have had to re-do all of our paperwork if we moved in the middle of the adoption process.  Even though we knew it would be happening in the future, we didn't anticipate it happening QUITE SO SOON!  We have been watching the listings online for awhile and found one we liked and went to see it.  We decided we liked it so well that we would list our house for sale in hopes that we would sell ours before it sold.  While we were in the process of getting our house listed with our realtor, we found another house that had "just come on the market" and decided we wanted to look at it.  We LOVED it even more than the other one we had previously liked.  Here was our timeline:

• Thursday:  signed paperwork with our realtor to list our house and found the BRAND NEW listing of a house we liked online
• Friday:  looked at the new house and FELL.IN.LOVE and came home from there to see a For Sale sign in our yard
• Saturday: 2 showings of our house (both to the same people)
• Sunday:  an offer on our house and we put an offer on the new house (at the time we put in our offer, we found out there was already 1 other offer and there had been FIFTEEN showings of the house since it was listed Thursday- crazy in this economy!)
• Monday: our house is "sold", we found out we were to put in our "best" offer on the new house in hopes of "outbidding" the other offer
• Tuesday- put in our "best" offer
• Wednesday:  found out we got the new house!

So....  things happened MUCH MUCH quicker than we anticipated and it's been a roller coaster of emotions for sure.  We should be pros at these "ups and downs" after just finishing an adoption process, but it was still hard for my Type-A personality to handle!  The way things worked out and fell in place could not be explained other than a GOD thing.  Definitely made us see that this was meant to be and all a part of His plan.  I seriously don't know why I ever doubt- GOD IS ALWAYS IN THE DETAILS- even when it's hard to see Him. We are very excited to move and be closer to Drew's work and our church and church activities/friends.  We will be able to spend more time together as a family and lots less time in the car driving back and forth.  But with that said, it will be hard to leave too (tears have definitely been shed).  We have loved living in this house and making memories together.  And we will miss being so close to all of our family and friends here.  But we know that this is God's plan for our family and we are excited for this new adventure!  Please be patient with me in the next few weeks- I'm not sure how often I will be posting as things are only going to get MORE crazy and we are buried in mountains of boxes, boxes, and more boxes!  

I've been pretty terrible at taking pictures the last few weeks... But for those of you wanting to see pictures of our 2 littles, here are a few I've taken to tide you over until next time...

 Always such a happy little girl...

 We haven't had much snow this winter, but Evan gets SO excited at any little bit on the ground and can't wait to go outside and help Daddy.  Zoe had a cold here, so I didn't really want her to be outside.  But she LOVED watching the boys from inside... I love how you can see all 3 of them in this picture- Daddy with the snowblower, E shoveling the sidewalk, and Zoe taking it all in...

  And of course, E had to come up to the door and say hi.  They even gave each other kisses through the glass, but I wasn't quick enough to get those on camera :)  Love these 2 so much!