When you are an inept blogger...

...I find that it is desperately hard to start again.

We have had so much happen in the last 5 months and hardly any of it has been documented...where do you start? Do you go back to 5 months ago and hope to rehash? or can you just move on and start fresh from where you are at the moment?

Knowing that I'll probably go all defunct again very soon, it'll probably be best to just start from here and see what happens.

Just know that in the major 5 month gap, we've lived...chaotically, unconventionally, and barely holding it together at times...but we've lived.

About 5 months ago we gathered our children up from Ethiopia and came back to the States to meet and greet and celebrate Christmas. 3 months after we touched down, we found ourselves unable to return to Italy...and then my camera battery died (the charger being in Italy with my other lenses, video camera, extra memory cards, camera cord for the computer, and card reader--all left behind in the frenzy to pack up the 5, pack for the 2, close up the apartment, and skidaddle to Addis with 3 days notice)

But now, thanks to my mom who knows how terrible this loss of camera use really can be for my general well-being, I have a battery charger once again and after borrowing my mom-in-law's camera cord, I can share pictures with you fine people once more. Much better than just words... much better than a post relying on my ability to piece thoughts together coherently for those of you NOT privy to the inner workings of my indecipherable thought process...which lends itself much more toward james joyce-ness all the time.

So enough of this...the children are outside playing, screaming, riding their trikes like crazy--they spend the majority of their time in this way these days. Hope the neighbors don't mind. I don't normally regulate their noise level when they are outside I had to do that in Italy, I don't want to do that here if I don't have to ...it's when they get quiet that I have to worry. In the meantime, I have the extremely noisy dishwasher running, a load of laundry in the washer and a mountain waiting to be gathered up by their owners and put in the appropriate closets and suitcases (because, alas, we are still living somewhat from suitcases having no furniture in the boys and our room yet)... all that this all means is that there is time, however brief, to share a few pictures.

I'm sure someone will be running in to tattle on their sibling in about 2 minutes. But I'm trying the new tactic of 'work it out yourself'...shocks them every time still. I think they think I'm truly lazy, when in reality I'm learning that it gives them a chance to see that the offense really wasn't as bad as they first thought--they are going to live, they have words they can use directed toward the other person, and if you give a problem 2 minutes to rest, you most likely will end up thinking about something else.
Not to mention that if momma has to get involved that fought over toy will go into an indefinite time out and one of the offenders (if not both) will end up enduring a rather lengthy sit in a boring corner of the house. I'm pretty consistent with the consequences and so far, tattling is less frequent.

So, none of this is illustratable yet--so I'll just stop and start posting the pics...a plethora from the last couple of weeks. Elijah's class at school reenacting the Land Run, Judah and Iliana at church on Easter Sunday helping their teacher tell the story of Holy Week through Resurrection Eggs, my attempt to get Easter pictures of the family...good stuff. And if you follow me on facebook this is a colossal waste of your time...sorry.

Adoption changes everything...

Adoption is hard.

This is a little of what I have been learning in the last 3 months since bringing Canaan and Eden home...

It is also really good. Challenging. Full. Amazing.

We are still working on our initial bonding issues...tough stuff. More on that later probably.

On top of the challenges of adoption, our family has gone through so much bureaucratic hokey, misinformation from those supposedly in-the-know, and a whole slew of bad advice to last us for a LONG time. So, on top of the transitions that come with adoption, we have also been displaced from our home in Italy and relocated back to the States...for good.

In a nutshell, we cannot get the documents that Italy wants to grant our children long term visas, making our living in Rome (and probably any other country besides the US) no longer possible. The Italian-Ethiopian embassy will not translate the necessary documents into italian because we are not italian citizens and we are no longer in country (Addis) to plead our case. We did not know of these requirements before we left Rome. When we came back to the States, we tried to line up documentation as best we could, but roadblocks always appeared. As the months passed, we could not rely on our company to support us any longer during a wait that was indefinite, and they do not grant transfers to those in their first term (not that any country would most likely take us) so we made the difficult, but very clear decision to resign.

I could tell our story with bitterness, blaming individuals for their bad advice and attitudes that seemingly lead to where we are right now--but that would be unfair and untrue...the fact of the matter is, God was, and continues to be, guiding all of our circumstances, bringing us to the place where He wants us to be. It is His 'fault' that all this has happened. And THIS is where our peace comes from. He is showing Himself faithful to our family and we are blessed.

We are blessed to be together as family. Together with Canaan and Eden.

We prayed and waited for so long to be here, at this point, that we can't dwell on everything that we've lost. We have to focus on all that we have been blessed with. Our children are all healthy and happy. They are all getting used to this new family amazingly well. Canaan and Eden are growing and blossoming...they look healthier since we first brought them home...they've each gained almost 10 pounds and a couple of inches each and Eden is about to celebrate her 2nd birthday on Saturday!!

God has provided a car, a job, and hopefully this week we will close on a house for our family. Then we, along with our suitcases of things, can move in! We hope that our things in Rome will be crated and sent to us soon--we have many things for Canaan and Eden there, along with all of our supplies and things we'd been saving up for the baby coming in June. We've transitioned this far...it will be interesting to see how things change as we move from living with grandparents to living on our own. We'll have a whole new bunch of changes to sort through :-)

I know this is a little scattered...I'm not very good with words at the moment...I'll stop trying to type and just close with a few pictures...

Everything is set!

We leave Monday night late...well, technically Tuesday morning in the wee sma's. We'll get into Addis around 7:30 in the morning on Tuesday. We'll get Canaan and Eden around lunch time probably and spend the rest of the day settling in and getting to know one another...for GOOD!!!! We'll go to the Embassy on Wednesday morning and I have no idea how long that will last. Then we'll chill out on Thursday and Friday during the day...maybe do a little more shopping or just hang out around the guest house and play and maybe watch Christmas movies...then Friday evening we'll head to the airport for our overnight flight to Frankfurt (8 hrs or so?) and then we'll layover in Frankfurt for a couple of hours, eat, and get on our flight to DFW (11hours--bleck!). We'll be in Dallas around 2:30 on Saturday afternoon.

It's nice that we're going to airports that we are rather familiar with...we've flow in and out of Addis before, and Frankfurt several times, as well as DFW...so that might help us navigate a little better? Here's hoping!

Our family is going to meet us at DFW with a big van (thank you to our home church, First Baptist Hollis, for the loan!!) and we'll make the 4.5 hour haul from Dallas to Hollis!!! Then...we'll be home!!

Monday, the 13th, we start running the gauntlet of doctors, dentists, optometrists, and beauticians...that last is for me :-)

We'll also be trying to work on our legal documents...getting C and E's passports expedited, social security cards ordered, etc. Then we'll start with Italian immigration to get them their long term visas for Italy...we'll probably have to make a trip to Houston again to the Italian embassy--bleck! But hopefully all will work out before we have to catch our return flight home to Rome on January 10th!

Anyway, that's a rundown...I hope I will keep up with the blog during this trip...but you all know that might not be the case.

Please continue to keep our family in your prayers...if you are around Hollis we would love to try and see you at some point, but we will also have to be very attentive to Canaan and Eden's needs in all of this. We cannot overwhelm them with visitors and too much at once. We will probably keep them away from large crowds...which will include church services, I'm afraid. If we do come to church (probably not, but IF) we will slip in the back late and probably slip out early. It's not that we don't want to introduce them...we just have to be careful. We will be home-bodies at James and Jana's house as much as we can be. But hear us when we say that we WANT to see people...we just have to be careful and it would help us to have notice if you are wanting to come out and visit...just a small heads-up, that's all! Thanks guys!!!

We are so excited that our adoption process is winding down and our journey with OUR children will finally be beginning!!!!

Continue to pray for us as we travel. We will need a lot of endurance and good health and patience. Please pray for us all.

We love you guys!!!

Tickets...maybe

Well, this has been wild! We were working with one travel agency that had a lot of trouble understanding what we were trying to do and then they were unable to book tickets for our Ethi kids because we didn't have any passport info for them...even though EVERY family that adopts out of Ethiopia doesn't have that info upfront...but whatever. We switched to another agency and started working with them...SOOO much better! They are very knowledgeable and within an hour we had reservations made for all of us on all of our flights--together! I'm so glad because I didn't want to have to separate the family on such long flights! Instead of flying into OKC, we'll be heading for DFW...it was considerably cheaper to fly in and out of DFW...so our trip back to Hollis will be longer, but we saved about $400/person so that makes up for it!

We have no yet paid for our tickets...we're waiting for confirmation from our adoption agency (IAG) head on our flight time to make sure they work with our Embassy schedule before we solidify everything. But we have reservations!!

I joked today on facebook about how our kids won't be going to college now, but we'll all be coming home for Christmas...it's VERY expensive to do this. But the money is there and we believe that God had provided this money for this purpose and He will continue to provide for our family in the future. It's scary to deplete your savings on faith...but He'll prove Himself over and over to us...I KNOW it!

Please continue to pray for us as we scramble to get the kids' schools notified of their extended absence and all the luggage gathered and packed.

Pray for our kids as they enter an extremely chaotic time with LOTS of new things.

We've never taken back-to-back long flights before and we need all the prayer you can sacrifice for patience and endurance!

We'll let you know of more particulars later hopefully.

Thank you for standing beside us in all this!!

WE'RE CLEARED TO TRAVEL!!!

That's right! We JUST received word that we can appear at the Embassy in Addis on the 8th! That's 4 days before we need to be on the ground in Addis! WHAT?!?!?

So this is brief but I HAD to gather as much prayer as I possibly could.

We are desperately searching for flights...we have a travel agent working on it with us. We are praying that we can all fly together, even if we can't all sit together, and that we can AFFORD what these last minute tickets will cost! We are flying with 5 from Rome to Addis, then with 7 from Addis to Oklahoma City (or Dallas).

PLEASE PRAY that the details work out. Pray that God shows His sovereignty in a MIGHTY way through all of this...because we all know that there is NO way something of this magnitude will work out without the direction of the Lord!!

We will let you know what we find out!!

I feel a name change coming on...

Not for anyone in particular...but for the blog. I feel like the name of this blog would be more appropriately named "Motleys Wait" Because that is the basic definition of our adoption process. It is what takes up the most of our timeline...the waiting. We've been waiting to hear of an Embassy date since, basically, Oct. 12th. Our friends who appeared alongside us in court received their confirmation to travel two days ago (giving them only 7 days to get everything bought, tickets and everything, before they had to be in Addis at the Embassy)...we are still waiting to hear the Embassy's decision on our case. No, we have no idea what the hold up is. They are still working on it, I guess. We'll see.

So I know it's not exciting for anyone--but such is our adoption process...and I'd even venture to say that this is pretty common in many adoptions. It is not about instant gratification for most.

So please continue to pray for a decision to be made. For our hearts to be peaceful with whatever that decision is. and for all the details to fall into place in God's timing.

Also, just to throw this in, I am still really dealing with this pregnancy sickness stuff. It's terrible. I REALLY would love relief from it soon. Please pray for me as well.

We appreciate you all!!

our last step...

So we are still waiting. This should technically be the last leg of waiting for our family. It has been a difficult one. Much more difficult than I anticipated when we started it. I honestly thought that the fact that we had FINALLY met our kiddos coupled with the fact that this was our last long wait would be enough to help me endure the wait with patience and a great attitude...that worked for the first month. Now, it's the end of November. Our travel dates over Thanksgiving have passed and we wait to see if we made the Dec 8th Embassy appointment. Our papers have been filed, we are only waiting for the offices to look over our case and decide if we have all the necessary papers to be eligible for an appointment on the 8th. If they decide we need more documentation, then they will table us until we get the necessary paperwork filed...and we will hopefully get the Dec. 22nd Embassy date.

So that's the waiting update.

We need to hear from the Embassy this week. I would LOVE to hear from them on Monday. If we are granted the Dec. 8th appointment, that would give us a week to finalize travel plans and buy tickets and square things away here in Rome before we leave for a month. One week doesn't give us much time for that either, but it's more than a couple of days! We'll have a lot more details to work out for this trip because...we are thinking that for this trip, we will be taking the whole family to Addis, and then go straight from Addis to the States. We are considering this for a number of reasons. First, we have gotten little to no assurance that Italy will grant our Ethiopian children a tourist visa--and even if we manage to get one, there's still a chance that they will be turned away in Rome. Second, our childcare made other plans and we would have to scramble to get others to fill in, disrupting many lives at the last minute. Third, it would be really great for the whole family to be together when Canaan and Eden join us for good. Who knows if we can make it work out? Well, that's a silly statement, God knows, but you know what I meant...it is going to take a mighty work of the Lord to make all the details and the money come together for this--in one week. But we are hopeful. We serve a mighty God.

In other news, I'm still pregnant :-) I go in for my first doctor appointment on Tuesday morning. I've never met this doctor, but I have a friend that uses him and really likes him, so I am hopeful. It will be nice to see how things are going, to get a better estimate on how far along we are (9weeks? 10 weeks? 11 weeks?)...and I think I might even get an ultrasound so we'll be able to see the baby :-)

Please continue to pray for our family. There's a lot we may be facing this week. Pray for the details to come together in amazing ways that richly display the hand of God. Pray for my doctor's appointment: that all is well & baby and momma are healthy. Pray that we receive the Embassy appointment that God wants us to have.

Thank you for holding the ropes for us. We love you.