UPDATE FROM ACCIDENT

It's been three days since our car accident, and we are doing well. Kevin and Philip have not shown any signs yet that they sustained any injuries! My concussion seems to be healing, too, each day. Thanking God for his protection and healing!

Thanking you guys for your praying!

Thanking our family for being there when we needed them - as they always are.

It looks like our new car may be totaled . . . praying that it all works out well and that we do not have any financial burden from the accident, especially right now as we are waiting to bring Eli home.

Praying when it is all said and done that we will once again have a safe and reliable vehicle. After a wild time with all of our vehicles a little over a month ago, we were finally feeling secure that all of our cars were in good shape again!

Oh well! Just proves that nothing is in our control! It has been a new lesson once again for us to give everything over to Christ! Whenever we begin to feel panicky about the situation, we just stop and pray and give it back to Him. We know He has it all worked out even when we can't see it quite yet. That gives us a reason to smile.

Here's another reason to smile. Just looking at this sweet face and realizing he is still here and not injured brings peace to our hearts.

PRAYER REQUEST

We could use your prayers right now. Our "huge honking car" as Philip likes to call our new (used) Mercury Margquis was hit from behind tonight, not once but twice. The couple who were driving ran from the scene as soon as they hit us the first time. Their SUV was still in drive and hit us a second time.

Philip and Kevin are fine. I have a slight head injury but am fine, too! I will just have a big headache for a couple of days! We are praising God that he let us walk away from that accident. Our huge honking car took most of the impact so we didn't have to!

Please pray for the couple who ran. We hope they are not hurt. They will be in big trouble with the law when they are found, too.

Please pray for Philip. He is very traumatized by the accident and worried all the way home that someone else was going to hit us from behind.

Please pray for my head, too. It really hurts!

We could also use prayers for the fixing of our car. We just bought it a little over a month ago! But we thank God about that, too, since it was so safe for us.

Throughout the ambulance ride to the hospital I kept thinking of a song with the words,

"Oh no you never let go, through the storm and through the calm. Oh no, you never let go through the highs and through the lows. Oh no, you never let go. Lord, you never let go of me." We know He never lets go! No matter what.

LOOKING BACK AND LOOKING FORWARD

I just had a conversation with an old friend a little while ago. This friend is one whom I can be brutally honest with and she can be the same with me and we can still remain friends. :)


Anyway, we were talking about what a difference a year has made in Philip's adjustment and our adjustment. We are all doing so well, and he is a perfect fit to our family. She was marveling at how well it is going now.


Then she mentioned how worried she and others had been about us when we first mentioned we were going to adopt . . . way back in 2006. She laughed and said, "I mean, we were empty nesters too, but we just thought about getting a dog!" I laughed along with her because I knew what she meant.


She wasn't comparing Philip to a dog or as a way to fill an empty nest. She just said that they had been concerned about us. I don't think she was alone! Kevin and I know that many people who cared about us wondered about our sanity and well being when we announced to the world that we just knew God was going to add to our family. Maybe they still do worry! LOL!!





But this I can say while looking backward and gazing forward . . . .


Kevin and I have never been more sure that something is SO RIGHT and someone is SO MEANT for our family as we are about our sons (Ted, Philip, and Eli). Each one is a precious gift of God added in a slightly different and amazing way. They each have an incredible story to tell.

Kevin and I remember how clean, uncluttered, and calm our home was before we added a toddler again. We remember how sweet the walks alone were in our favorite park. We remember our plans for retirement in the near future.





But now, with a home full of little boy's toys and toddler mess, clutter from our two small businesses, a new son joining us soon, a college graduation in the near future, and a general chaos most of the time, we couldn't be more joyful!





And to think that we would have missed out on ALL OF THIS JOY if we had thought in our own human terms instead of God's terms!


We also worried about us being too old to parent young children again, too strapped financially to afford another adoption, and too set in our ways to enjoy life with little ones again,


But after giving it to God and seeing his leading,


This is the life we were supposed to be living.


And what a life!


Joy overflowing,


Happiness unending,


A newness and wonder to life each and every day.


WOW!


God's ways are so much better than our own thinking! Kevin and I fall on our knees at times thanking God for the privilege of being parents to three precious sons!

FOLLOW A JOURNEY IN PROGRESS

A sweet and funny bloggy friend named Lori and her husband K-man are traveling right this very minute to Ch*na to bring home their new daughter Shu Li. They are parents already to two teenage boys and a little girl. Their youngest child was adopted from Ch*na about a month or so before we brought Philip home.



Their newest daughter still in Ch*na is older. She is 13 about to turn 14. They have been in a race against time to bring her home before she ages out of the orphanage system in Ch*na. They have trusted in God, and he has made a path for them to Shu Li just in the nick of time. You can follow their journey by clicking HERE!



If blogger is blocked in Ch*na and you can't access their site listed above, you can follow their journey by going to Journeytome.com and clicking on Journey to Shu Li.



Lori never fails to bring a smile to my face. She is hilarious when posting about her "adventures" in life! She will brighten your day, too! :)

WAITING FOR OUR LOA

WAITING,


WAITING,


WAITING,


DAY 42 ON THE COUNTDOWN TO OUR LOA (LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE)

Chinese Festival

We attended a Chinese Festival downtown yesterday. What a blast! We met up with two of our travel families, and it was so good to catch up and spend time with them. Philip loved being with his little buddies and loved walking in the lantern parade following the very colorful dragon.

Throughout the day, we met several other families who had also adopted with our agency. The common bond we all have is amazing. This miracle of adoption goes on and on!

Chinese Dancers

Our sweet boy

Dragon Boat

Not so sure about the Dragon Boat!

Playing with Oliver and Keegan

Huge game board

Are they the next act?

Walking in the parade

The colorful Dragon puppet

What a fun day spent surrounded by the sounds of Chinese music and festive dancing, eating Chinese food, and seeing special friends.

THANKFUL THURSDAY

I am thankful for . . .


Philip's first official day of preschool this year going well. He had so much fun.

A big cheesy smile at the preschool door


I am thankful for . . .

The international doctor's visit going well yesterday. If you remember, I posted a few weeks ago detailing the little difficulty at that doctor's appointment. I am thankful they let me in the office yesterday! LOL! I tried to act very normal and not at all psycho! I hope I fooled them!!



I am thankful for . . .

Putting in a call to an old friend tonight. She is the friend I have mentioned before who told us long ago that God had prodded her to tell us not to worry. We would receive another child someday. I called to tell her the rest of the story!

To top that off, her husband is the cousin of a family who just returned from China with their second daughter. That family and I have recently gotten together over our blogs. They are related to a very special friend of ours who passed away some time ago. That friend was my elementary principal and Kevin's boss and their uncle - Talk about the Red Thread connections in these people's lives with our own!



I am thankful for our God who orchestrates such Red Thread connections!



The Red Thread story is an old Chinese proverb that states

An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time,place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.



Ready or not, here I come!

INDY RACE CAR DRIVER

We spent a little time at the park pretending Philip was a race car driver. Here is his photo shoot! Who knows? Maybe a future Indy car driver?

A little warm-up action before the race.

Taking the parade lap nice and slow.



And he's off!

On Pit Row for a car check



Time for a quick tire change.

We have a new track record and a winner!

A Double Blessing

Something just clicked into place last night like a missing piece of a puzzle found.



Way back in October of 2007 when it looked like our adoption journey wasn't going anywhere, Kevin and I were taking a walk one day (October 11th to be exact) in our favorite park filled with beautiful trails and scenic winding roads. It was a special place for us to go several times a week to unwind from the stress of the teaching day.



We had begun this serene little habit of walking 3 - 5 miles at a time shortly after Ted left for college in his freshman year. Here it was his second year away from home and our second year into our adoption journey.

Our Ted (with cousin Mary)

Anyway, as we often did, we were discussing our adoption. That day in particular we were very down, just beginning to realize how long the wait could be and feeling like we might grow too old to ever have any more children again. We usually used these walks to talk and pray about the week's events and always about our adoption.



We took another road that day (because I was in desperate need of a port-a-potty just a little distance away down another road we had NEVER traveled before). This road was different than our usual route because instead of a canopy of trees covering the sky, this road was wide open to the sky above us.



It was a funny sort of day - not sunny really but surely not cloudy! There was NO rain in site, but we happened to look overhead admiring that we could see the sky and guess what??

Overhead just as plain as anything was a DOUBLE RAINBOW!!

There wasn't even any rain, but here was a beautiful double rainbow! And to think that if we had not come down this road, we never would have seen it that day.




Kevin immediately asked what a rainbow meant in the Bible. I said that it meant a promise from God when he put it into the sky after Noah and his family were saved from the flood.




Kevin then said that he just knew it was meant to show us that God had promised us another child long ago (which had happened through a friend one day when Ted was just in grade school. She had called to say that she felt God tell her to pass along a message to us. That message was to not get discouraged. God would give us a second child someday!) That had been so long ago! But Kevin just knew this day and this sign was a message from Heaven.




I wasn't convinced and continued to be pretty down at that time, feeling like our second child would never arrive, but Kevin was so sure. In fact he was so sure that it meant something good was happening in China for us that we wrote it down on our calendar just in case we needed to remember it.




The next day Kevin shared about the double rainbow with his friend Britt. Kevin and Britt held a Bible study once a week in the wee hours of the morning before school started and had prayed often about our adoption.




The next week, Britt called to tell us to look in the sky. There was ANOTHER double rainbow. Sure enough, there was a double rainbow again without any rain in sight!! We noted this date on our calendar as well.



WHEN WE RECEIVED OUR REFERRAL FOR PHILIP IN THE SPRING OF 2008, we noticed that between the two dates when we saw the double rainbows PHILIP HAD BEEN HAVING HIS MEDICAL EXAMS TO READY HIM FOR ADOPTION. Our adoption! Looking back, we could clearly see how God had given us a sign back in October, and here was proof of his promise - Philip himself!

Our Philip

If that wasn't miracle enough, something happened yesterday to jog my memory about the SECOND date of the second rainbow we had noted on the calendar.




We were just driving along last night on the way to the gym to work out, when all of the sudden I remembered the double rainbow, and then I remembered something else. Eli was born in October of 2007. I mentioned this to Kevin, and when we returned home, I checked the calendar to see when the exact dates of the double rainbow sightings were. The first one had happened on October 11.




But don't ya know -



The second double rainbow we saw was on October 23rd in 2007.



The TWO sightings of the DOUBLE rainbow had meant much more than we could even fathom at the time. They meant double the blessing from China because . . .

Eli was born on October 23, 2007!





Our Eli

God is good!

And God is faithful to his promises.

This and That

YIKES!



It's getting closer to the rescheduled international doctor's appointment!



Are you sure no one wants to go instead of me?



Maybe they have forgotten about my previous behavior??!!




I thought you might enjoy these cute pictures of Philip and his grandma and grandpa.
Janet's dad is feeling better these days. Thank you for your prayers.


Who could resist an invitation to play in Philip's tent?

A little cozy in there?

Snuggled up with Grandma and Grandpa and a good book - this is the life!!




Updates on families . . .



Harper is home now, and the Scruggs family is beginning the bonding process again with her. See their website for sweet pictures of Harper with her brother Ivan.



Linny and DW have sent in their paperwork at the advice of their homestudy and adoption agency. Please keep them in your prayers for favor with the Ch*nese government in getting approval again for their Jubilee. Check their website for updates.