Wednesday, March 30, 2011

swagger

I know these vids are so 5 minutes ago, but it just doesn't get old…for me.

Sorry, but I still don't want a mini van, no matter how hard these two rap about it. 

Monday, March 28, 2011

tiniest miracle…

Has anyone else noticed the media coverage on Japan has dropped off the past week? I wonder if it's purely ratings-related, do their viewers need a new story to follow? Well, onto the next news-worthy headline...conflict in the middle east…is it a war or is it not…blah blah blah. We know how that's going to end, right?

My heart breaks for the Japanese and all the uncertainty they are facing these days. Someone compared the clean up efforts currently underway to a quarter century's worth of trash accumulation being cleaned up by a relatively low number of workers. 

Imagine how many children have joined the other 143 million orphans in the world as a result of this disaster. Staggering. We need to remember them in our prayers.

I must end on a happier note...this incredible story of rescue should prove to anyone that there is a God and he has a greater plan for this family.

©Yomiuri Shimbun/Reuters...

Amid the silent corpses a baby cried out—and Japan met its tiniest miracle.

On March 14, soldiers from Japan's Self-Defense Forces went door to door in Ishinomaki, a coastal town northeast of Senda, pulling bodies from homes that had been flattened by the earthquake and tsunami. More accustomed to hearing the crunching of rubble and the sloshing of mud than sounds of life, they dismissed the baby's cry as a mistake. Until they heard it again.

They made their way to a pile of debris and carefully removed fragments of wood and slate, shattered glass and rock. And then they saw her: a 4-month-old baby girl in a pink woolen bear suit.

A tidal wave literally swept the baby from her parents' arms when it hit their home on March 11. Afterward, her parents — both of whom survived the disaster — took refuge in their wrecked house, worried that their little girl was dead. Soldiers managed to reunite the baby with her overjoyed father shortly after the rescue.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

progress

We found out from Ohio last week that our CPS clearances wouldn't be run until the 25th of this month...remember, the only thing holding up our China home study from moving foward? Well, imagine my surprise when I checked the mailbox TODAY and discovered two shiny white envelopes from the state of Ohio – the missing pieces of our puzzle! I was prepared to wait at LEAST another week for these. 

It feels like Christmas morning, minus the pancakes.

More excitement tomorrow when we pass off our clearances and dossier paperwork to our amazing and capable social worker to take over for us. We need the help and are very grateful that she has offered her assistance! Maybe if I wasn't working 80 hrs/week for our adoptions (and the impending doom of our 2010 taxes) I would be able to focus on it, but that's not the case. So, I gladly pass the baton...yet, the race has just begun.

Brad is gearing up for a more literal race. 
More to come on that in a later post. 

<-- Here's Brad looking manly at his first 
half marathon a couple years back.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

the waiting game

Who KNEW it could be so exciting to check the mail every day…for Child Abuse Clearances from the state of Ohio! Will they EVER arrive? Maybe if I dash to the mailbox faster next time. Maybe tomorrow I'll personally greet our mailman and ask him to check under his seat for misplaced mail. On a scale of 1 to 10, just how insulting would that be to a mailman?  

*contemplating*

Well, it's the last TINY little detail we are waiting on to complete our China home study and send it through the next approval process. I think it's called the waiting game? Which brings me to…


The good news is the first step of our the home study has been approved and we have plenty of other paperwork to assemble for our dossier. And I still have some turning 30 years old before I am deemed "mature" enough to adopt. (at least that's what China says) I NEVER would have expected to be so excited to start a new decade of my life…especially my 30's! *shiver*