fun with the new camera

c has been asking for a new (read nice) camera for about five years, she does like to take pictures but has had trouble taking care of the actual camera. since we have kept the last one in tact for the last three years i decided to splurge (considering h, we will have as many pics of her as b) and get her a canon t2i for her birthday. turns out taking pictures is fun, see the following for some fun i had with our new camera.

EP submited & visa physical

these two little letters have drove me crazy since last october. EP means emmigration permit. and hanul has finally been submitted for hers!

last october we were told there would be no more ep submissions for the year. i called multiple people and sobbed with them over the news. i was heartbroken. i had truly thought hanul would be home for christmas. so when the korean ministry started taking submissions in january of 2012 i thought "well, maybe we'll get it." and we didn't. we weren't in the march or may submission either. by this point i was feeling pretty discouraged and had you asked me when hanul was coming home my most common response was "i have no idea. i've given up guessing."

it became a in roadblock in my life. the year of 2012 has dragged on, but flown by at the same time. each time there was a submission i would wait in expectation, prayfully asking for patience. and each time i recieved the final email "another round of eps were submitted today. families have already notified" and my heart would sink. funny enough, the same thing happened this time around.

i got home yesterday and was trying to put my tired boy to sleep. i walked in and on the computer i had left another adoptive's families blog open. i saw their title "bummed" and my heart skipped a beat. they were not submitted. beniah called to me from his room and i thought "well, i could check my email, but let's be honest-its probably not there." so i choose to live in the moment and went to comfort b. i returned to the computer only after convincing myself that i was wasting my time. i looked and in my email and sure enough there was the email "the june eps were submitted today. families have already been notified." i sat for a little bit. truly bummed because the rumor was june was going to be the only submission during the summertime. so i went back to my inbox to see what other not exciting things lay waiting for me. and there it was. "ep submitted today, june 20th!" i raced through the email, grabbed beniah (who had not fallen asleep, by the way) and began jumping up and down. i said, "beniah, hanul is coming home!" and he giggled and said "mama you are funny!" we ran right away to the gym where dave was coaching a camp and broke the news.

then today i received news that her visa physical is scheduled. another step in the process! included in this email was q & a travel information. TRAVEL INFORMATION.

we still have some paperwork stateside that needs to be worked out. its nearly driving me crazy. and i am trying to prayfully wait and trust that everything will fall into place.

i've been trying to memorize more scripture. i'll leave you with two that i have been repeating time and again these past couple months.

trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.
proverbs 3.5-6

moses answered the people, "do not be afraid! you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today...the Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.
exodus 14.13

the last three months: part one

the last three months have obviously flown by for us. here is a very quick recap with lots of photos..in a couple parts because there is a lot! note to self: never let this much time go by again with a post!

during easter weekend, poppo and mimi (dave's parents) flew out to tucson. we've been wine tasting a number of times, but we've never highlighted it as a adventure in arizona.

we started our tour at the keif-joshua winery. this is actually where i realized i was pregnant in 2008. we were on our "marriage weekend" retreat, enjoy an afternoon of wine tasting. i walked into this particular winery, smelled the red wine, and had to walk out. i was amazed the physical reaction my body had! i was suspicious, so we went home, took a test and sure enough were expecting! our visit this time around was not as dramatic-and we really enjoyed their wines. 

the owner walked us through the tastings and shared what brought him to arizona

then we headed down the road to my favorite spot-sonoita vineyards. i am not particuarly fond of wines. but the first time we came here they gave us a grand tour complete with their story and what brought them to arizona. i was so impressed i tried their wine and i actually enjoyed it! i keep to the sweet wines, but they have offers on both ends of the spectrum.

i believe this is the sparkles peach with a wild hibiscus flower, beautiful and delicious! 

arizona wine country

we highly recommend heading down to soniota/elgin for an afternoon of tastings. there are several spots to hit up, all within 15 minutes of one another. a great option for a staycation!

b also had fun dying easter eggs with poppo and mimi.

we also hit the zoo for a fun older cousin trip. the boys had fun running around and we got to see the new elephant family!

all our weight together was no match for this baby elephant!

my first food fight

i had my first food fight with beniah earlier this week. maybe not the type of food fight that first comes to mind, the kind when my three year old refuses to eat what we ask him to...pizza of all things. granted it was home made veggie pizza.

food isn't used as a tool in our house (not even for rewards), his "crap" intake is very limited and therefore issues over food have been limited and rarely escalate. this was much more a battle of the wills and i was not to be outdone by my mostly compliant son. yet i found myself reflecting in the moment, "what does grace look like in this situation?" i have found when you ask the right questions God often provides you with the right answers. i offered to go bite for bite, he requested the deal with momma...problem solved.

any lessons learned in conflict recently? 

confessions of a broken heart

mother's day this year was bittersweet. i was so thankful to spend the day as a family and dave made sure we did whatever my heart desired. last year i asked dave to help our kids make me pages in a scrapbook that i wanted to keep over the years. i had this idea from a magazine and thought it was perfect-because being me i would want to keep every card they made, plus i love scrapbooks! i actually walked in on dave helping beniah this year (i came home on my lunch break and surprised them!), but didn't take a peak because i really did want it to be special. so while dave was getting breakfast ready (strawberry crepes, yum!) beniah hands me my book and climbs into my lap. we open to the first page and i show him the page he (dave) made last year and how big his hand has grown since then! we giggled and beniah turned the page. this year's page had pictures of both beniah and hanul with "happy mother's day 2012! love, b & h". i immediately teared up. i wasn't expecting to see her in my book quite yet.

i tell everyone who asks that i have two kids. i tell them about beniah and my daughter hanul. i explain that she is not quite home yet. but i really do love her and see her as my daughter. but i realized something. i've been guarding my heart the past month or so. there are definitely days that dave just looks at me and knows that i'm thinking of her and i can't help but cry out that i miss her. i started collecting items for a care package to send her a couple months ago and still have not sent it off. bad adoptive mother..i know. i'm sorted through clothes we've received, but i keep tucking them in the back of our closet. i want her home so badly that its very hard to confront the fact that she isn't here. but i know this is not fair-for her or me. she is still my daughter and i love her no matter where she is.

i never thought we would have celebrated mother's day without her here. when we had her referral the latest we thought we would travel would be february. whenever i look at the calendar i still can't believe its may. i'm almost in denial about it. i need to recalibrate my mind. hanul's homecoming will not be when is convenient for our family or when our agency thinks it will be. it will be exactly when God has intended it to be all along.

daughter from danang

i'm on good terms with netflix again. had it not been for their suggestion i may never have seen this movie, but while folding laundry today i had to privilege of watching "daughter from danang".

its a documentary film that follows a vietnamese adoptee's return visit to vietnam to "meet" her birth mother. she was part of operation babylift at the end of the vietnam war when thousands of babies were airlifted out of vietnam and placed for adoption around the world. her mother feared her life would be in danger because of her mixed race (her father was an american solider) so she choose to place her in the care of a family abroad. watching these mothers breaking down in tears while gripping their children before letting them walk onto a plane broke my heart. and i was frustrated that they felt this was the best choice that was to be made.

while i completely believe that adoption can be the best decision for some, adoption has become a business in some countries. the film makes note that some parents were being pressured into sending their children away. my only hope was that in the moment these adoption caseworkers truly believed this was what was best for the children. there was an element of uncertainty: once the war ended some were unsure what would happen to them and believed their lives were in danger while others wondered if they could actually care for their children.

the film takes you along for the journey of heidi returning to the land that had once been home. she experiences seeing her mother for the first time in 22 years, coming back home to where she had once lived, and meeting relatives she could have never imagined. while visiting heidi experiences highs and lows as she tries to understand who she is as well as who her birth family is to her. i have mixed feelings about how it ends. adoption is complicated and can leave many mixed emotions.

you should watch it and then tell me what you think.

Isabel 2012

"If that happened one night in America, it would be on the cover of Newsweek." - Jason Russell, Invisible Children


saturday night one of my students little sisters was taken from her room, she has been missing since. naturally this is a big deal and makes me physically ill thinking about it. this is precisely the point my wife pointed out, that was made in the viral kony 2012 film, a child's life is immeasurably valuable no matter where they are born, yet in the u.s. this event gets national attention. nancy grace says that isabel's school administrators should be suspect, there's a winning opinion.

please pray for isabel and her family, lets fight tirelessly to bring her home and always remember the value of every child's life...no matter where they were born.