so as i was saying. . .

Big Huge News!!!!!

2008-11-12T12:53:00.001-08:00

just a week ago we got news that The Abba Fund did not have the funds to be able to provide a loan to us HOWEVER today we got some news from them and apparently an organization in Texas called Hope for a Hundred made a donation that makes it possible for Josh and I to get a $13,000 INTEREST FREE loan we need for our adoption!!!!! as of today our adoption finances are 100% covered!!!!! for those of you who dont know the total cost is going to be about $27,000!

The Lord has been so faithful and so good to us and blessed us beyond what we could've ever imagined. it has been awesome to be on this journey and to witness firsthand the miraculous ways the Lord works. there is no possible way that Josh and I could've done this on our own. we have depended on the Lord's provision every step of the way and He was, is and will continue to be faithful!

i'm just so thankful for everyone who has joined with us and been a part of our adoption. i know that so many of my friends and family have prayed for us, listened to my vents, shared in our frustrations and our joy and i cannot possibly begin to tell you how blessed we are to know how loved our family is.

OH MY GOSH I'M PUMPED!!!!! i cant wait to see my baby!!!!

it's october a good time for milk and oatmeal!

2008-10-07T11:56:00.000-07:00

today i woke up and it was 30 degrees outside! maybe i am just a southern girl but this just seems a little extreme to me! the cold i dont mind nearly as much as the dryness. my gosh it's as dry as a bone here. dry air makes for some very dry skin, especially for my girls so i made something to help them out a little. now i'm not well known for following a recipe, (i wonder how cynthia will feel about that!) and this case is no different! i made a milk and oatmeal bath mixture and my goodness it's like a small miracle in the brockman home. all you do it get powdered milk and oatmeal (the kind you make cookies with, NOT the kind in the packets!), grind the oatmeal into a powder using a food processor, a coffee grinder. . .maybe build some muscle and grind it yourself with some rocks. then mix the two. i use about half and half. pour it under running bath water and voila! the bath water will look milky (b/c you added milk) and there will probably be a few bits of oatmeal but it wont hurt anything. just remember to rinse hair with fresh running water and not bathwater. if you need extra moisture add some almond oil to your bath water. my lilianne has the dryest skin ever and i tried lotions of every kind but when i started bathing her in food products i wasnt having to lotion her up 600 times a day. small wonders!

really wishing judah was here. . . .

2008-09-30T19:06:00.000-07:00

ok, so now the wait is getting really hard. nearly unbearable. . . i know that every adoptive parent goes through this at some point but how could i know that it would be so heart wrenching??? we have adoption training on thursday and friday of this week so i'm looking forward to that. maybe it will be a good distraction. . . then again, maybe not. then again maybe it will. who knows. . . i'm loosing lots of sleep over it which, in the end, may be preparing me for getting along with less sleep when our baby boys comes home. i just wish i knew who he was. i wish i knew what he looked like and how his hair smells. i wish i had an idea of who this person, who will be coming into our lives in around six months, is. it just feels like it's never going to happen. none of the advice i'm getting is making the wait any less painful. anyone out there have any clue about what this feels like? torture, that's what it feels like. like wandering through a desert knowing that eventually you'll get to that oasis b/c everyone who has gone before you made it there. trying to distract yourself with ideas of how you'll make the water better. . . maybe add some crystal light or something. . . imagining what the palm trees look like surrounding the pool, picturing yourself diving in after an exhausting and strenuous haul. yet somehow, all these fantasies dont keep you distracted. i thought that if i tried not to think too much about him that i wouldnt think too much about him, but what happened (and here's a surprise for you. . .) yeah, so what happened was that i actually ended up thinking more about him. . . funny how that was supposed to work out differently. funny? not really. pretty horrible actually. i miss him something fierce and i've never even laid eyes on him. i know he's out there, sleeping close to his Ommah, maybe he sucks his thumb too, maybe he has thick black stick-uppy hairs. i bet he knows how to laugh by now and i bet when he does that his little toothless grin would melt my heart. i'm sure that all of these sentiments will fade away and leave no trace when we finally see him but for the time being i'm sad sad sad about him not being with me. i'm his mother after all, and my child, my sweet baby boy is half way around the world.

eagle's peak

2008-09-06T19:40:00.000-07:00

woke up this morning hoping that katherine felt better than she did yesterday b/c i had it in my mind that we were going on a hike! we haven't been hiking in a few weeks and i was aching to be in the mountains. we decided to go to eagle's peak and since the days high was only something like 67 degrees it didnt matter that we didnt even get in the car until 9:45am.
so, off we went, into the wild where when you get to the trailhead there's a sign that tells you what to do if and when you encounter a mountain lion. . .what you do is this: pick up your small children so they dont run off, stare straight at the lion but dont look it in the eyes, make yourself as large as possible. . .by raising your arms in the air (i'm assuming you raise up the kid too somehow. . .), next yell at it in a deep low tone!?! now i've never met a moutain lion in the woods before but i'm pretty sure that if i did i'd be in a mess b/c i just dont think i could remember to do any of that. i would probably grab my girls and just hope that we didnt get eaten. besides, i dont want to make myself look as large as possible, i want to make myself look as small as possible regardless of whatever situation i find myself in, be it a moutain lion attack or a trip to the trendy part of town. anyway, we did get through the day without getting eaten or even bitten by anything, and i'm pretty sure we're all tick free!
so this hike i'm talking about, the one we went on today, is supposed to take 1.5 hours to get to the top. it's not even two miles. you do climb up 1900 feet so that's pretty great. with kids we figured it would take us longer but after hiking for three hours, scrambling over rocks and fallen trees, trekking through mountain streams and still another 45 minutes to the top we had to stop. we did get to the meadow which was AMAZING! you're struggling to get three kids up all these rocks and ledges and you come to this area that is golden with black-eyed susans and aspen trees towering over you with their flat green leaves fluttering in the breeze. there was also a small stream going through it all. it was something to behold. i'll tell you what, sitting on a log and eating GORP was heaven itself after lugging katherine and lilianne up the side of this mountain! maggie is always a champ, usually so far ahead of us that i wonder if she'll be gobbled up by the time we catch up with her. of all the girls she's the one who was made for hiking. she loves everything about it and each time we pass someone on the trail she has to stop and give them the scoop about what animals are around which bend, where the slippery parts are and how much further she thinks they have to go to get to the top. all the girls are great on hikes though, lilianne insists on walking by herself and katherine MUST hold someone's hand nearly the whole time, but they dont complain much. round trip it took us 5 1/2 hours which was INSANE and still the girls were pretty happy most of the time. the trick is that with small children we dont go to reach the top. we go to enjoy the great outdoors with our family, to teach our children about the wonders of creation, and to show them how to respect all of God's living things. they also learn to perservere when things get a little hairy and to help eachother when one slips or falls. all in all it was a wonderful experience for everyone. next time though, dont think i'll be going for 5 1/2 hours, we got done and i enhaled about 10,000 calories at burger king. . .

a day in the life of a SAHM. . .

2008-09-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

part I- one day this past week, i forget which, was by far the craziest day ever. it all started the day i cleaned all my floors by hand with my wonderful home made concoctions. . .had i known what was to come i would've waited. three men showed up at my door that day with clipboards, pens, stacks of paper and little tubes that looked just like the BIG ones in the blood drawing room at the hospital. who were these burly men with work boots and stick-up hair? surely they were at the wrong house. . . alas no, i apparently have a bad memory. they were from the environmental department from our housing management office and they came, unbeknownst to me of course, to wake the baby, take chunks out of my walls and floors AND, i could hardly believe it when i saw it, to scuff up my floors. SCUFF UP MY FLOORS!!! my shiny fly lady floors. . . they did however offer to clean my floors for me but come on. . .what do they know about natural cleaning products you mix yourself, they're men for pete's sake. they couldn't have known the hours i spent with gerber cloth diapers strapped to my knees, how after only a few minutes of rubbing oil into my wood floor how sweat was beading on my brow. i suppose if i had said "sure, clean my floors yo" they would've just looked at me wishing they could retract the offer. oh well. . .that was only part of my day.

part II- USCIS. i almost dont even want to go there. actually, i wont. it's sufficient to say AGH!!! it's like they dont want to help you at all in the adoption process. . .ugh.

so, moving on. . . i have discovered a WONDERFUL recipe for capet freshener. how it smells depends entirely on your choice of essential oil, but my carpets smell great! for those of us trying to get away from cleaning our houses with poisons masquerading as kid friendly household cleaning products the recipe is as follows:

1 cup baking soda
1 cup cornstarch
approx. 15 drops of essential oil
-sprinkle on carpet, leave for 10-20 minutes and vacuum

i used about half cedarwood and half lavendar oils. the health benefits of these oils are many, but i just find that using them in my cleaning products not only makes my house smell good (without inhaling potentially harmful chemicals) but in taking a few deep breaths every so often i feel much more relaxed. i must remember to do this more often!

part III- Lilianne had her physical done for our second homestudy! she passed b/c she's a genius. we got paperwork notarized and the rest of us have physicals next week. this is the second time we've had to do this for our homestudy b/c of our move but so far so good. i just cant wait to have all of this over and done with!

i must run before my laundry gets any freakier and starts making more babies.

waiting and waiting and waiting. . .

2008-09-03T09:52:00.001-07:00

when i found out last week that we have less that six months before we get our referral something happened to me. i became that soon-to-be adoptive parent who spends countless hours thinking about a child who may or may not be born yet. he'll be born soon if he's not born already and that just gets me SO excited! so i've been trying to fill my time (when i'm not busy with my other three kiddos) researching cloth diapers and wipes and wipe solutions, wet bags, how to make barley water and natural cleaning products. the past while now i've been bitten by the green bug and i have no windex, bleach, dawn or anything else that's not a natural cleaning agent. i use my own bags at the grocery store and make my own buttermilk bath mixture for my kids. i crochet scarves for my nieces and have been working on a prototype for making my very own cloth wipes. looking at all this seems like madness but i have to do something with this somewhat creative mind that God's given me. plus, if it keeps me distracted from the agonizing wait for a referral then so be it.
the day before yesterday i made my own wood floor polish and got on my hands and knees and made that floorl sparkle! here is the recipe: equal parts vinegar and olive oil, plus some essential oil (i used cedarwood) to cut the vinegar smell. put everything in a spray bottle, spay your floor, rub it in and buff. buff it well or your floors will be slippery!
so anyway, as i was saying (i'm too easily distracted!). . . i long for my son, wherever he is. so much so that all night i had dreams about cloth diapers. . .

renewed vision

2008-08-31T15:39:00.000-07:00

it's been six weeks since we moved to God's favorite state and it has proven to be harder than i thought. being an army brat, i'm accustomed to frequent moves but i always remember it being easier. we got here and two weeks later my lovely inlaws came to see us, as soon as they left i began homeschooling, then we got news from our social worker that our homestudy would have to be redone. . .so with a move, searching for a new church, having no friends, visitors, a new schdule, homeschooling and hiccups in our adoption process the Lord has not only taken a backseat, he's been pushed out of my speeding automobile and (frankly. . .) run over a few times. luckily this past sunday we did try a church that just might be our new church home and the pastor spoke on something incredible. it was about how first and foremost God created us to worship him. if i'm not doing this first then life seems to fray at the edges and my life becomes frantic and tattered. i was reminded that i'm a worshipper first and a wife second, a worshipper first and a dauter-in-law second, a worshipper first and a mad mom in a minivan second.

so, i started worshipping again. life here is still a madhouse and yes, i still have a stack of paperwork to redo for a homestudy but when i calm my mind and spend some time with the one who knows every detail of my life things just go smoother. i can get a grip on my red hot temper before i burn someone. life isnt easy, it's not meant to be, but i worship Him all the more b/c He's the strength i rely on when my hubby is hungry, the two year old is pooping on the floor, and the other two are squabbling over who took dora the explorer out of the dvd player.

Psalm 59:16
But I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble.