The countdown ends...life with Aunna {almost} begins

We leave in less than 8 hours for our first flight of our adoption journey. It has been amazing sharing this process with SO MANY people! We truly treasure each and EVERY one of you!

Here is our last post before we head off to CHINA!

Our hope was to pack as light as possible. With taking our three older kiddos and adopting our little spit-fire we thought struggling with tons of luggage was a bad idea. 

The paperwork with adoption never seems to end. I spent two hours the other afternoon gathering our documents, copies, pictures and yada yada (when I wish I was napping).

A dear friend handmade this little doll for Aunna. The hands and feet of this sweet doll are just like hers. What a thoughtful and darling gift.

So many people have been generous in tangible and intangible ways through this whole process. This is a huge THANK YOU to you all!

{some last projects before we go...}

When I had my first, then second, then third kid I was determined not to be that mom that stopped taking pictures and making things just as special. Well there is pretty mch no way around that. To top it off after changing computers several times in several years I thought I had lost ALL of the pictures of Jumping Joy's 1st year of life (third child). Noooooooooo! I would be heartbroken if I had never found them. But, then I found them, printed them and have a photo album for them! They might not make it into that album until we get home considering I am typing this and need to get up in 4 hours to go to China, but it's a start!

I have been wanting to make new stockings for our family for few years. This year was perfect since we are adding a family member. I knew I needed to get them done before we left. So here they are!

I love how cheery they are! I have not yet decided how to get each person's letter on to them so I stopped with just the stockings for now.

The last thing I wanted to do was make a new valence for the girls room. Just a little freshening up. I had to improvise after I started because my fabric was printed quite wonky {grrrr} and the pattern repeats which I did not take into account when I bought it {grrrr}. So I added some toile to the bottom under the super-cute-but-you-can't-tell-in-this-pic dark grey toile rose-ish trim. :)

All done...nighty night. Next post...Beijing, China!

 feel free to leave us comments on our blog since we cannot post to fb on our trip :)

make new friends!

One of the biggest prayer requests as we get closer is that we will be traveling with other families while in China who are also adopting. Our prayer has been answered in a major way! We just found out yesterday that there are 4 other families traveling in our group.

I emailed one of the other moms last night. Their kids are almost all exactly our kid's ages and they are coming on the trip too! We had so hoped to travel with other families and that some of them would also bring their kids. YAY!

We look forward to getting to know them better through the crazy www.

Today we stared school with this book. We have always loved this book (and the videos) but it is even more precious to us with our upcoming adoption. We long for Aunna, and all of our kiddos, to know that they are special because God made them the way they are ON PURPOSE and

HE DOESN'T MAKE MISTAKES!

I should have known...

We have been homeschooling for the past 4-5 years (depending on how you count it) and I have noticed in the past three years the same pattern...week 6 is a ROUGH one! Two years ago I decided that the 6th week would be our first break and then every 4-6 weeks after that depending on the how the holidays land.

This year I was going to push through because we are leaving for China in what would be our 8th week of school. What's another 1-2 weeks right? "Come on kids, just do the work and we'll have that much less to do when we get home." NOT!!!

The sixth week hit, I made a cute "welcome to week 6" sign on the white board and was ready to push ahead. It was a ROUGH Monday!

Then I remembered...we take the 6th week off because it is ALWASY ROUGH! This year was no exception. So, I had to put my Achiever-self on the shelf and take the rest of the week off for the good of the family. It was a welcome break for the kids and I have found a great deal of peace and rest for myself.  Oh well, so much for getting in 10 more days before China. We'll live.

{As of today we have just 13 days until China!}

Satan continues to shoot poison darts our way.

Please keep praying!