Airport in D.C....

Just a little mini update ;)

Dan has already flown from Charlotte to D.C.  He's now waiting in the airport in D.C. for several hours to catch his very long overseas flight to Frankfurt, Germany.  He will be flying this afternoon and all through the night.  He should arrive in Varna, Bulgaria around 5:30am our time tomorrow morning. 

I can't even begin to tell you how incredibly excited we are! 
Please keep up the prayers for Dan as he travels this very long trip to bring our boy home.

More to come... ;)

The Love of Christ and Dan's leaving for Bulgaria...

I've wanted to write so much here on this blog...but life with 5 kids at home can be busy, especially when one of those 5 is a young baby.  There has been so much going on these past few weeks.  Lots of emails back and forth with our adoption agency and the agency in Joseph's country.  I can finally, offically post that Joseph is from Bulgaria!  So, if you were wondering which Eastern European country he was from, it's Bulgaria ;)  Bulgaria is not the country that we originally set out to adopt from...instead it is the one that God hand-picked for us.  Because that is where Joseph was.   And it is now a country that has become part of our family.

Dan leaves for Bulgaria tomorrow.  We can hardly believe it.  It just doesn't seem real.  Even with the suitcase in the hall, filling up with all the necessary things...its still hard to truly grasp the hugeness of this all...that on Friday morning,  Dan will be taking our little boy out of his orphanage forever and bringing him home to us.  I'm washing little boy clothes and worrying that maybe they might not be the right size and I'm packing away baby food since Joseph is used to pureed and watery foods and I want to make sure he's eating...and all the while I keep coming back and reading these verses in the bible....every day now for about a week I've been taking in these verses from Ephesians (underlining emphasis is mine)...

¹⁷ ... And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ²⁰ Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

I just keep thinking to myself..."how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ." 

It is so wide and long  that it takes simple people and stretches them across the ocean to rescue the forgotten.

Christ's love is so deep that it pushes us to take on things like adopting a special needs child because
the deepness of Christ's love is not about living our own lives in prosperity, but about laying our lives down for others.

Many people put off the idea of adoption because its not practical, its too expensive, its too difficult.  From an intellectual standpoint, it seems kind of crazy to go through all this and take a stranger into your family.  But scripture is very clear that God's love "surpasses knowledge."  Its just more than we can grasp.  And we have definitely found this to be true.
This adoption has taken and stretched us far beyond ourselves...and it has witnessed to how long and wide and high and deep our God's love really is.  That He would put this on our hearts to go all this way and through all this effort to love this one little boy.  That is not us.  That is God.  This was all God's doing.  And He truly has done immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine.  We  prepared for the worst...not being sure what to expect.  And Joseph was amazing.  And our hearts broke to leave him.  And we can't wait to bring him home.  

We are so thankful that we heard God's call and answered it.  There is nothing sweeter in life than doing what God calls us to do...no matter how hard that calling might be.

Please pray for my amazing husband...who not only happily welcomes all the kids that God blesses our family with, but goes even further to be obedient to God's call to stretch and adopt and says "Yes, Lord!"  He is my other half.  I love him dearly.  And I will miss him while he is away bringing our son home.  He will be away for his birthday AND our anniversary.  I am so thankful for his willingness to go bring our boy home.  I'm a lucky girl.

Pray for safe flights tomorrow.  Pray for an easy and smooth transition for Joseph.  The orphanage is all he's ever known.  We've been praying for months now that his transition from the orphanage to our home would be a smooth one for him.  Please pray for his well-being while he is in Bulgaria....with new sights, sounds, food, surroundings.  Please pray that he's not too overwhelmed by it all.  

I'll keep you posted about Joseph's Gotcha Day on Friday morning and how Dan is doing on his trip.

Thank you to all that have been supporting us with your prayers and donations.  We are so very thankful!

Our South Mountain...

When we lived in New Hampshire, we had "our place" that we brought the kids to.  It was just a little, out of the way creek with a sandbar that the kids could play happily.  It was a quiet place...we're not much for loud amusement parks and tons of people.  We'd much rather hang out in a creek where the kids (and Dan!) can build dams and catch critters we can photograph and look up in our field guides.  We've finally found "our place" here in the Carolinas...it's South Mountain.  We love it there.  We've been several times, and its always the perfect day.  We've decided we really need to make time to get back there on a more regular basis and make that a place that the kids remember as they grow up.

We know that things are going to be pretty intense when Joseph gets home.  We also know the need for keeping him at home and keeping his surroundings small and consistent for quite some time.  So we decided to get out together and spend Memorial Day at "our place" and it was a perfect day.  I was so thankful to spend that time with all of my family that I love so dearly and just soak in what we have now before we expand yet again to welcome Joseph into it all.

So grateful for the time we had there....

I wonder whether Joseph will like South Mountain as much as we do?

 

Lunar Moth...

 

Lilly watching the moth...

Lots of salamanders...

Dan & Emmeline catching a nap...

treasures from the creek...

The view from my lap...

Everyone enjoying snow peas from the garden...

Seeing what he's missed...

I wrote this post awhile ago but I've turned into a terrible blogger and it got "drafted."  I'm posting it now, but I have SO many other things to blog about...lots of pictures of the kids to post as well as all our excitement about our upcoming trip to pick Joseph up!  Joseph's Gotcha Day (the day he breaks out of the orphanage forever!) will be June 21st!!!
I'll go ahead and post this, but I'll be back with lots more pictures and stuff to write about.


 God certainly knew what he was doing when he gave us Emmeline (our newest little one who is now 4 months old) right in the midst of this adoption process.  This is our first adoption...and of course we knew that Joseph would have missed out on the experience of a Mom and Dad, on the experience of family etc. but I don't think anything could have opened my eyes more perfectly to what Joseph has missed than to be experiencing our newest baby right now.  To see her from the very start...to meet all her physical and emotional needs, to listen and be attentive to her cries, right down to the simple act of eye contact and facial expressions...I am now seeing all that Joseph has been deprived of and what we will need to go back to and experience with him in order to meet those needs for him when he gets home.

Dan and I have been reading and reseaching so we can be best prepared to care for Joseph when he comes home.  It has been very eye opening.  Most people who haven't adopted really have no idea what is involved in meeting the neglected needs of a child who is adopted from an orphanage.  The simple things we take for granted when we raise our own children are just not present with kids that come from an orphanage.

Joseph is three years old.  We are estimating that he is more on the level of a 12-15 month old than a three year old.  We knew he would be developmentally much younger...but we hadn't learned until recently all the things that can be done to go back to help "fill in the gaps" for a child emotionally that hasn't been cared for in the same way you would care for your child in your home.  Dan and I are realizing how seriously we are going to need to take meeting our son's needs...no matter how young those needs might seem...because we want him to have everything he has missed to be as whole as he possibly can be. 

So right now a lot of discussion is going on in our house as to how to best meet Joseph's needs.  And it is definitely going to be awkward at times...because we know that a lot of what we are going to need to focus on might not make sense to a lot of people, but it will be worth it for him.  Our goal is definitely not to expect him to be his age or for him to be "secure and independent" but to be truly secure and know he can be fully dependent on us as much as he needs until he feels secure.

I am so thankful for God's timing and for our little baby #5 who is helping prepare the way for her big brother in ways she'll never even know she helped.  With fresh eyes we are seeing what he will need...and we absolutely cannot wait to start meeting those needs for him.  He has waited long enough.

So for our friends, please pray for us...and understand the strange and challenging road we have ahead of us.  Know that we are doing what we're doing for Joseph's best interest and we can use all the support we can get! 

And speaking of baby # 5 who has been such a blessings in more ways than we can count during this whole process....

She's finally starting to be ok with being on her belly.  She'd still rather be in a standing position amidst all the "action" of family life.  She LOVES personal interaction and is such a lovey.

This is often what I find when I go into the living room.  Gabe has taken Emmie from the jolly jumper or swing just because he wants to be with her.  He knows her very well and knows that she'd be much happier propped up on the back of the couch watching all the nature activity in the yard.  She loves looking out this window.

The current gang all together before they head out to the pool for a swim.  We can't wait till Joseph is right in there with all of them!

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Our Reece's Rainbow donation fund...

It has been moving upwards lately!  Just wanted to let you all know that we've been noticing...and its been making our day!  Thank you so very much to those that have been going to our online donation fund with Reece's Rainbow and donating...every little bit helps.  We still don't have exact travel dates yet.  We wish we did, so we could at least go ahead and book our flights.  The flights are already expensive...I can't imagine how bad they'll be by the time we get the go ahead to book them. 

Please know how very much we've appreciated every single donation.  We pray as a family for all of our donors....thank you for being a part of Joseph's journey home!

We passed court!!

Our court hearing yesterday was successful!

The court has permitted our adoption!

We are now the proud parents of Joseph Stanislav Perry!

Thank you to everyone that prayed for a successful outcome.  

We are so blessed to have your support.

Please KEEP PRAYING.  We're being told that because of scheduling issues and the way our in-country agency does things, we won't be able to travel to pick up Joseph until the last week of June.  This is several weeks later than was originally told to us.  I know some people think a few more weeks in an orphange that he's spent his life in won't make that much difference...but after all that Dan and I have learned about orphans and what they struggle with emotionally, we just can't stand the idea of leaving him there any longer than is absolutely necessary.  And this wait just doesn't seem necessary.  

In our hearts, we've been his family for an entire year now.  And he's spent that last year growing up in an orphanage instead of here with us.  Please pray he can come home as soon as possible.  It's time we get down to the business of sharing with Joseph what love and family really looks like!  

He's waited long enough.

We've got court tomorrow...

Praying that all goes well with our court date in Joseph's country...

Would you say a prayer with us?
Our agency is also telling us that we'll have to travel several weeks later than we were hoping...the end of June instead of the beginning of June.  Please pray  that it might work out so that we can travel sooner rather than later...we don't want Joseph waiting any longer than he needs to!

We'll post as soon as we hear how court went.