I miss my kids!!! Don't get me wrong, it was very helpful to have a few days to play catch up and I think I did a pretty good job. I cleaned all three kid rooms, changed all the bedding, organized the closets, washed, dried, folded, and put away ALL the laundry, loaded the dish washer, got my hair colored, colored a friends hair, waxed my eyebrows, cleaned the bath rooms, went grocery shopping, made 40 enchiladas, purchased school supplies, returned school supplies because I shopped from the first grade list not second grade, registered my kids at school and went brides maid dress shopping and much much more. Even being that busy it didn't take away the heartache from being gone from my babies!! Thank you my Lord in heaven for a sneak peek at how it will be when Craig and I are in Ethiopia and our kids are home in the states. It was very eye opening to learn not only how they reacted to being away from us but how much I dislike being away from them. If anyone has suggestions for our next trip apart PLEASE feel free to leave those thoughts in the comments.

We did it!!! We published a public goal on Facebook to make $2,000 dollars at our yard sale and we made it!! Just today I sold the last couch and love seat sets and let me say I’m SO happy to see them go!! I have pictures to share but let me fill you in…..

Step One: Craig the kids and I shoveled out the manure and bleached the walls of the horse trailer. I must says this is a proud mommy moment for me! Those kids of mine were awesome and wanted to help, they are just as committed to adopting as Craig and I are. I love that we are doing this as a family.

Step Two: Drive 90 miles one way to fill two trailers FULL of donations from my mom, THANKS MOM!!

Step Three: Get up at 6:30 am to clean out our storage shed and start to fill the trailer again!

Step Four: Room by room clean out our home. Again so touched by my kids generosity giving up some of their most valuable treasures ( most worth nothing but Mommy made sure they fetched a pretty penny at the sale)

Step Five: Un-load the last two trailer loads into my sisters vacant home that is for sale. Thanks Sis! Two bed rooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, front porch and drive way FULL.

Step Six: LOTS and LOTS of set up . Thank goodness Jill showed up! We priced a few items but most of the sale was by donation.

Step Seven: SELL< SELL>SELL! Thank you Lisa for having my kids over, you are a brave women! They would have been so bored and driven the customers CRAZY! I’m so grateful to you and Kirk.

Now this is when it gets really good….. Time and time again we would have people leave with a car load of items from our sale and return with a car load from their home to donate! It was amazing! To my friend Heidi and her husband Jason, thank you so much for the truck load of donations! All of those goodies fetched a great price. But my favorite was a little old lady who came by 5 or 6 time taking arm loads but paying very little. On one of her last trips she came back to the house with three potted plants, she went into her yard and took clippings from plants, potted them, and brought them to us to sell. What thoughtfulness.

Step Eight: Clean up- for which I could not have done without Craig and my brother Chester, with a BIG thank you going to Matt and Jill for taking my kids to Loon Lake for the week.

Now I know all this sounds so sweet and simple but OH MY GOSH did we have trials!! The house had no water, and Mallory had three days of the backdoors, Craig is in harvest so all of his help came after 11:00 pm at night and almost every night we had items stolen even though I slept there. All I can say is it was WORTH it.

Virginia- thank you for looking after me all weekend trying to feed me or give me a break. You a such a blessing.

Our family has had a crazy week preparing for a MASSIVE yard sale that opens in the morning. As I type we are taking a little break from unloading one of two trailer loads we have to set up tonight. I'm so thankful to Jill for spending her day helping me set up and organize for this event, she even said a little prayer with me on the phone before coming over, she is such a blessing!! I took this afternoon off to enjoy an ongoing tradition of manicures and pedicures with my girls and our friends Darcell, Ari, and Bri. The girls always have so much fun and I love getting adult conversation with Darcell. She was such a doll and watched all three of my kids this evening as I attended a traditional Ethiopian dinner hosted by One Changed Life. They are a non-profit organization base locally out of Princeton, Id who organize Christian sponsorships for the children of Ethiopia, you can learn more at info@onechangedlife.org. and I truly hope everyone takes a moment to learn more. Well Craig says it's time to get back to work! I'll post yard sale pictures tomorrow so stay tuned.

I love the things kids say.....

Tonight Mallory, Levi and I had dinner at my mom’s house. When Nana served Mallory her plate of chicken with a gravy sauce, green peas, mushrooms and wild rice, Mallory wanted to know “What kind of chicken is this?” My standard answer “The edible kind.” Mallory responded, “No, like is it the wing or the arm….?”
All I could do was laugh when Nana answered “An arm but I cut all the fingers off!”
The look on Mallory’s face was priceless, what kind of farm girl am I raising; we’ve had chickens on the farm for two years or more! We enjoyed the entertainment Malory provided during dinner. I was thankful to not have to cook tonight after a busy day of loading a horse trailer of yard sale donations Nana gave us to put toward our HUGE adoption fundraiser taking place on August 22nd. I drove 90 miles one way to pick up the fist of at least 3 loads. In just a few weeks Nana is moving to Texas so everything she’s not taking with her she has generously donated to us, Thanks Mom! It was my first time to pull a horse trailer so I was a bit nervous but I made it to Othello safe and sound and not so much as an innocent little bird was harmed along the way. I can’t say the same for a few bugs that met the windshield but all in all I did good.

My poor, poor, husband!! Last night at his parents a wasp stung him in-between the eye and the nose, swelling started right away and when we made it home I provided him with a healthy dose of Benadryl and an ice pack, but by this morning he looked like Will Smith in Hitch!. It is so bad that he is home from work today which is a HUGE deal being harvest and he can’t keep his eye open due to the amount of antihistamine in his system.(He did ask for a straw to suck it down with but I thought that was a bad example for the kids) Around 11:00 I suggested that he come out of our bed room and spend time with the kids and I, he gave me a very concerned look and asked “Will the kids think I look like a monster?” I assured him we love him no matter what sort of alien being he looks like!!! He did come out to the recliner but is sound asleep again, at least he was a good sport about me taking pictures, too bad they don’t truly show just how swollen he is. Thank goodness my hubby has such a good sense of humor.

What a fun day we had as a family today!! Craig has been in harvest for a couple of weeks now and this last week, four nights of six he didn’t make it home till midnight, so to have the entire day with him was awesome! We shared a BBQ lunch with friends, took the kids to McDonalds for an ice cream cone and then enjoyed the evening with Craig’s parents. His mom Lori made dinner (chicken they butchered this morning) as I gave three of my favorite guys Craig, Levi, and my father in law Bill hair cuts. We made it home in time for a family movie but the truth is Craig and the kids all conked out fast asleep on the couch about half way threw The Land Before Time, I guess the kids are still worn out from their big swim meet on Saturday. The girls competed in two relay races, the back stroke and free style and did GREAT.I hope the pictures I have posted bring the same sime to your face as it did to mine!!

Just this week I was boo-hooing about how long our adoption process has taken so far. You see before our paperwork pregnancy, I was not a patient person. I went to the Lord in prayer and spilled my heart “I have made HUGE progress in this valuable virtue of patience, so could we please, please, please possibly take even just a little baby step toward progress Heavenly Father?” God is SO good! Yesterday I had our final meeting with our social worker to finish up our home study!!! With all the interviews done and the documents turned in, we now PATIENTLY wait to receive our official and final copy!!! YEAH!!! So what’s the first thing I did as I drove away from the meeting??? Well, I gave a prayer of thanks to my Father in Heaven and then called my girlfriend Jill. I know what you’re thinking….I wanted to call my husband, Craig, but it is harvest time here in the rolling hills of the Palouse and he tends to have zip zilch and zero cell coverage when in the field and I was bubbling over with excitement and really wanted to talk to a person and not Craig’s voicemail.

Now when you’re excited Jill is always the girl to call because not only will she join in and catch up to your excitement level she can usually top you and I LOVE this about her. Let me tell you Jill didn’t fail me yesterday. She gave me a solid 20 seconds or so to be on top of the world about finishing our home study before she broke in with the news that gave me the boost to jump over the moon!!! No Longer Orphans was officially up, running and online!!!!

It is amazing to sit back and watch the dream God has for a person unfold before
your very eyes. No Longer Orphans is the direct result of Matt and Jill spending a lifetime choosing to listen to the Lord and because of their faithfulness he planted a thought into their hearts: “Establish a non-profit organization that will choose and sponsor a family through the adoption process”. Always faithful as they have been in the past, they took that thought and the Lord’s guidance and created a plan of action.

As Craig and I entered this adoption process, we did it on faith alone. We have been blessed many times with the support of family and friends; from the kind words of encouragement to the financial help of meeting the overwhelming costs. We have been walking down a long black tunnel with faith guiding us completely, believing that when the Lord was ready he would provide. As we have been making our way through this tunnel we have prayed, and when we pray we always get the same answer….”Keep walking forward, and you will see Me shine in all My glory for you are not alone”.

Craig and I can’t even begin to describe the honor, and love that we feel to have been chosen as the first family supported by No Longer Orphans. We see the light, the tunnel is no longer black because of this beacon of hope and let me tell you, every single step in the darkness has been worth it. We are excited to share with anyone who will listen the amazing adventure this process has been and want you to join us in the journey as we make our way to Ethiopia with the guidance of the Lord, love of friends and family and the support of No Longer Orphans. Thank you God!