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.

bumps along the road

our journey has been longer than we anticipated when we began. when we sent in our application in november the timeline from application to bringing your child home was 9-24 months. now the wait times are extended to include 6-12 months in between completed homestudy and referral and then an additional 12 months before you travel. and while i knew from the beginning that the only guarantee in adoption is that you will wait, each passing day is still hard.

today our little girl is 18 months old.

when we were matched with her back in july she was 9 months old. i had always thought she would be home by the time she was 18 months. don't ask why, just one of those silly things you think you know about your adoption (that you have no control over).

we've made progress, but received a letter requesting more information to process our i600.
just when i thought we were moving forward we hit a bump.

each day i try to rest in His promises as i gaze at her picture. soon my love, soon.

finally!

last week i received an update to our homestudy. when jojo, our manny, moved in we had to add him on our homestudy and then i got a promotion so we had to update that as well. i've been waiting for this update for quite awhile and now that i have it i can move forward with the qualification on our side (by our side, i mean the u.s. side). so the day after i got the package in the mail i was compiling documents and printing our forms to send into u.s. immigration. 

after a 20 minute freak out session where i thought i had lost our i600 approval letter (which determines us capable to provide care for an orphan, love that language) which we had recieved back in oct. i finally found it, in the bundle of documents i had prepped to send in to uscis once i got my updated homestudy. *whew* then i got together our mailings and was so excited i had to take a picture. ;)

is he as excited as i was? don't think so. he actually tried to eat the package..don't ask me why!

hopefully we'll have everything done on the u.s. side once korea is ready to move-don't want to miss our chance!

adventures in arizona: chiricahua national monument

while at ft. bowie i picked up a pamphlet for the chiricahua national monument and showed dave a picture. "i want to go here." the photo was breaktaking, as was the park itself. look at these amazing rocks!

it wasn't far from ft. bowie, but we decided to come back another day as we were all a little tired from our hike there. so a couple weeks later we returned to the region and discovered this amazing hidden valley, or "sky islands" as they were called. the visitor center was open and humming with tourists and guides. the guides were very friendly and helpful in deciding where we should go. they choose echo canyon for us as it would have good views, but was family friendly.

the visitor center also had a short video about the chiricahuas. it provided a little of the backstory of ft. bowie and how the chiricuhuas were a home to the apache indians. i ended up walking out with beniah because he wasn't that interested in the documentary, but i would have loved to finish it. ;)

we headed up the seven mile road to our trailhead. the drive out there we kept looking for these amazing rocks and couldn't find them. they are hidden within the valley of this mountain range so its not until you drive into the state park that you begin to see everything. i would have taken a TON more pictures..but my battery was near dead (silly me) so we only have a few.

at the trailhead of echo canyon.

the view NEVER got old!

unfortunately this photo does not do this area justice..at all. this is echo canyon grotte. there were huge rocks that were suspended above you balancing on rocks on the sides. so that rock in the top right corner of the photo looks as if it could just fall in at any moment.

here you can kind of see how the rocks are hanging between other rocks. the rock directly behind the boys was just hanging out.

while i was setting B up for a photo, dave climbed behind the rocks and surprised him

it was so beautiful and serene-i couldn't help myself!

i'm still trying to convince dave to do a camping trip. he is not very interested. at the start of this hike he thought out loud, "maybe we could come back and camp out here." i gleefully reminded him on the way back to the car and he decided he had changed his mind. he claims he is not a camper. :( i will keep trying! :)

movement

last week was a much anticipated week in the world of korean adoption. after much delay and confusion, ep's have finally started to be submitted. looking around at blogs of other adoptive families my heart smiles as they share their family's news of taking the next step in the process. so exciting.

i also spotted a customer in line this morning holding parenting your internationally adopted child. as i made his white mocha i blurted out, "micheal, i have to ask, are you adopting?" his face spread into a smile as he told me they were leaving this afternoon to travel to ethiopia. we chatted a little about how long the wait has been and about his little girl. he showed me beautiful pictures. and i was just overwhelmed with joy for him and his wife who have been waiting three whole years.

the past couple months have been somewhat crushing because as people would ask me, "when is she coming home?" i had no answer to give them. i just had to explain that i really had no idea and that we were just waiting.

a month ago beniah was talking about sharing his bathroom with joey and i mentioned to him that he would also be sharing it with hanul when he came home. he responded, "she won't come home for a long, long time. she is far away." hearing those words out of his mouth was heartbreaking. he used to tell me she was coming home soon, sometimes it was even tomorrow. and while i obviously knew that wasn't true hearing the hope in his answers was light. this response was like darkness. but now there is a  light at the end of the tunnel.

the uncertainty of adoption causes you to constantly hold fast to the promises of the lord. and i will continue to wait-i know we have some time. we have been waiting (since referral) for six months and families who were submitted first have been waiting upwards of a year. just knowing there is movement is good enough for my heart for the time being. and my delight comes from seeing others welcoming home their sweet gifts from the lord.  

training wheels!

we've had a big boy bike hanging in our garage for i think two whole years. a friend of the family passed it on to us when beniah was very young. so a couple of weeks ago we deemed him ready and got the bike out. 

super stoked

so i tried on the 3 yr old helmet at target..and it wouldn't fit over his head. this is a 5 yr old size..and i still feel like it doesn't completely fit over his head!!!

i tried putting on the training wheels myself, but i was worried that i was getting it wrong. i was actually it right, but i let dave take over from here.

getting the tires ready

very, very excited!

first time!

annddd we're off!

we've had a couple of minor spills, but for the most part b would ride his new big boy bike all day everyday if we let him. they sure do grow up fast!!!

adventures in arizona: ft bowie

our friends, the allertons, took us out to ft. bowie (boo-ee), arizona for a hike up to the old fort. ft. bowie was the nerve center for military encounters with the chiricahua apache indians, led first by cochise and then by geronimo. the two conflicts that led to the establishment of the fort were the bascom affair and the battle of apache pass. locations of both of these conflicts are on the trail to the hike with lots of information posted along the way.

at an apache settlement. he told us he was making a fire

too busy making fire to smile for the camera..

the apache spring. this was the source of water  and the center of activity

we of course, had to climb up!

in 1861 an apache raiding party kidnapped a local cattle rancher's cattle and his twelve year old son. cochise and his band was falsely accused of the wrongdoing and was invited by army lt. george bascom to the army camp. cochise denied having anything to do with it and offered to look into the matter with other apache groups, but bascom didn't believe him and tried to arrest him. cochise escaped, but his family was held hostage and later killed after cochise executed us army personnel. this set off what would be the apache wars which lasted for 25 years. ft. bowie was built to host operations against the apaches and to protect apache pass (and apache spring). military operations accumulated in 1866 with the surrender of geronimo. the chiriacahua indians were then banished to florida and alabama. the fort was active from 1862-1894 and after geronimo's surrender life on the fort was somewhat enjoyable. 

the ruins of ft. bowie

there is a great visitor center with a small museum. a park ranger was present the saturday morning we took our trek and was available to answer questions. the kids all had fun taking turns on the very, very old bugle. i'm sure this thing has some old, old spit in it... i didn't take a turn. anyway, band geek in the making?