Summer Fun and Heart Cath

Our Spring and early Summer have been full.  We've been enjoying our farm life.  The girls have spent time playing in the sprinkler and camping out in the tree house while I've tried my hand at gardening and Phil has had fun "playing" with a back hoe he got to borrow for a few days.  He has also been expanding our Full Quiver Farm business.  He is cutting lots on the weekends with his tractor.  It offers a bit of stress relief from his job as principal of a Christian school and provides a bit of extra income which he only half-jokingly says is "paying off the lien on Isabelle." 

 Some of the girls made it a little longer in the tree house than others....

We've also added a few more Bantam chicks to our ever-growing chicken population on the farm.

And we've had to defend our farm against the nefarious black snake trying to rob our hens of their eggs...

Two weeks ago Phil had to go check out a possible middle school retreat location for his school.  We were thrilled to be able to accompany him and spend a few days at the retreat center which is located close to Grandfather Mountain near Boone, NC.

Our family spent the days hiking, tubing in the VERY cold mountain stream, playing carpet pool, trying our hand at archery, and even riding horses.  (Isn't there something a little strange with Torie (20) and Michaela (15)...who have to get up EVERY morning on our farm to feed their own horses, take care of them, ride them and then repeat the whole process EVERY evening...and then when we finally actually leave the farm for something other than a horse show, the first thing they want to do is go find the barn so they can ride.  I'm just sayin????).  In the evenings we played cards in our cabin which had a fabulous view of the mountains.  It was a great getaway, and we're grateful to the    camp that hosted our family.

We got back from the mountains and made the trip to Charleston for Isabelle's heart cath.  It couldn't have gone better.  Everything looked PERFECT for her upcoming open-heart surgery.  What an answer to prayer!  We're hoping to schedule her surgery for September, instead of this summer as we originally intended... because...we received our Article 5 this week which means we should be traveling to China in the next 4 weeks or so to pick up Lily Rose.  It just doesn't get any better than that!!

We are LOA!

We have reached the next step in the alphabet soup of adoption.  We are now LOA (Letter of Acceptance.)  We received our letter from China, officially accepting us as parents of Lily Rose, on May 23rd, and we quickly mailed in our I-800 on the 25th.  If our timeline moves along according to a "normal" pace, we will travel at the end of July/early August to pick up Lily Rose!!

We received an amazing e-mail in our in-box today.  Another family is in Shanghai adopting their son.  He is just a few weeks older than Lily Rose.  The mom was kind enough to take Lily Rose's photo with her to China to see if she recognized her in the orphanage.  Today she e-mailed me several photos of Lily...from just yesterday. 

This is her description of Lily Rose....

Your daughter..."is a little peanut...a bit tentative, but smiling and interacting once we were there for a bit .  She was ticklish and giggled when I tickled her belly.  She is super-cute and oh so precious!!"

I can't tell you how special it is to know that someone saw our daughter yesterday and even got to tickle her belly!  It makes me home sick if that makes any sense...home sick for my daughter.

For those who have never adopted, I can't explain the love the Lord puts into your hearts for your children hundreds of miles away.  I can tell you that the emotions I felt on the delivery table with our first two biological children are the identical emotions I feel when my adoptive children are placed in my arms for the first time.  And the longing I have to hold Lily Rose right now is more intense than the longing I had with my first two pregnancies because Lily Rose isn't safe in my womb but hundreds of miles away where I can't protect her.  But my loving Father is holding her safely in His arms.  And He is giving me bits of encouragement through a woman like Shannon who took time out of her amazing adoption journey to bless me!

We're coming Lily Rose...