We Are Expecting!

We are happy to announce that we've officially started the international adoption process through Christian World Adoption. We say officially because this process started in our hearts years ago but as of this week we have submitted our first applications. Many of you have been praying that God would open and close doors for us as necessary to ensure we are matched with the right child at the right time. In answer to those prayers, we experienced God's visible hand in this process as we received confirmation and encouragement during our initial meeting with a CWA representative, Joyce, on Saturday. As she told her own adoption stories (she and her husband have 9 adopted children), she unknowingly addressed every question/concern we had identified as we prepared for the meeting.



God spoke to us both differently during the meeting but we both left feeling that CWA was the organization for us and we were in agreement that our next child was (or will be) born in Ethiopia. For the first time, Michelle felt a strong emotional pull to a country and when Joyce showed pictures of the Ethiopian children her eyes began to water. Riley, ever the rational one, felt that Ethiopia made the most sense given all of the information available (God can speak in boolean logic and mathematical equations, right?). Neither of us started this process with either CWA or Ethiopia on our hearts, which makes us even more firmly convinced that we are hearing God's voice in this.

We both have so much to learn about this process, but we are excited to have officially launched. We are still prayerfully asking God about timing, gender, special needs, etc... and we ask all of you to do the same. We feel like we could write about this for days, but there will plenty of time for that in the future (this will likely take 12 months or longer). In the mean time, if you are interested in reading about some of God's work in Ethiopia through CWA, check out the Acacia Village project.

Thank you for all of your support and prayers thus far. We can't wait to share God's blessings with you as we move forward.

Riley and Michelle

Tomorrow

VACATION STARTS TOMORROW! We're thrilled to have some quality family time in Tampa for the next few weeks! We'll be staying with Lacey, Aaron & Miss Addi most of the time, but Kyle also hooked us up with a fun stay at the Nickelodean Hotel in Orlando. We're also going to spend a day touring Disney with Kyle and Stacey as they're in the middle of their 67daysofsmiles.com Orlando gig. What we're equally excited about though, is that we're meeting with our first adoption agency tomorrow down in Huntsville, Alabama! That's right...adoption! It's something that has been stirring in our hearts for over a year now, and we feel like God's timing for us to pursue this is now. We've yet to choose and agency or a country (although we know our heart is for an international adoption) so we're thrilled to pick the brains of an agency that is at the top of our list. Riley and I spent an hour at Borders tonight compiling a list of questions we have for this agency and we're praying for God's direction in this exciting endeavor. We'll keep you posted!

1st Day of School

One very proud Ellie on her first day of preschool

The Girls dancing in the driveway before we loaded up in the car

Miss Saedi happily entertained while Big Sister is away

Saedi Update

Results of Saedi's biopsies...she's fine! The only thing all that testing showed was that her esophogus was slightly inflamed. The doc believed this was a result from reflux, which over time had caused inflammation. We're extremely thankful & we've learned a lot from this experience (more on this later). I'm proud of myself for following my mother's intuition and getting her checked out even when I felt like a weirdo. Because of people's encouragement and a gracious doctor, I know longer have doubts about following my instincts, even though Saedi is A-ok. She's taking a prescription anti-innflamatory and the Dr wants to see her in a couple months to check on weight gain progress, but in the meantime she has no crazy allergies, no scary diseases, no malabsorption issues.
*I planned on posting pics with this blog, but I forgot to get them off the camera that Riley has with him this week

Friends

Thank you all for your prayers and messages regarding Saedi and her endoscopy. The procedure went well, and she was a champ. While her esophogus, stomach, and small intestine looked great to the naked eye, we should hear the biopsy results in less than a week, so I'm going to wait to get those results before I post about that experience. In the meantime, here are some fun pics from a few weeks ago. The weather has been terrific lately- sunny and lower 80's so we've spent a lot of time outside at parks and playgrounds.
Ellie, Brooke, Saedi, Emmy & Meadow feeding the ducks


Silly Ellie and Emmy

Saedi Update

I promised a Saedi update when I heard back from the doc, but to be honest I haven't felt up to blogging about it. The good news is that Saedi's recent blood work and cystic fibrosis results all came back normal. Hooray! The bad news is that when the doc called me with the results he wanted to schedule an endoscopic exam in pursuit of getting to the bottom of her minimal weight gain. I verified with the doctor that he had medical reason to believe the exam is necessary and not just because I have crazy mother's intuition. He verified that yes, he saw enough abnormal evidence to want to pursue this and he assured me that their hospital does this procedure 1,000 times a year. From what I understand, this exam is the Gold Standard- meaning if something is wrong with Saedi this test will find it. Because she's under two, allergies, Celiac Disease, etc may come back "normal" in the blood but if present will show in an endoscopy exam. So, all that said, on Tuesday we'll take Saedi back to Vanderbilt where she'll undergo a half-hour upper endoscopy. They'll put her to sleep, go in her mouth and down to her gut where they'll take a sample. They're also going to go up her bottom a bit to check for any abnormalities on that end as well. She'll be asleep and won't feel any pain and we'll be with her (hopefully) when she wakes.

Mostly I'm thankful that a wonderful, reputable hospital is doing the procedure and our family is extremely blessed to be seen at such a place. I have complete trust in God that Saedi is in His hands. After all, He's the one who created her and knit her together in my womb. How much more does He love her? I'm also thankful that Riley has been granted the day off work so we can go together as a family to comfort each other. Yet, knowing all those blessings in my head and in my heart don't leave me with complete comfort. I'm apprehensive about little Saed-Saed going away with several doctors where she'll be put under. And what am I hoping for? I'm not even sure. God, make me humble. She's my littlest. My baby. A Momma's girl. And I still tear up thinking about it.

Fishing

When we saw the predicted forecast of 75 and sunny during the day and upper 50's at night, we decided to take advantage and go on a last-minute camping adventure. We headed out to Barkley Lake on Saturday afternoon, set up camp, hiked the .5 miles to the beach (perfect distance for the girls), swam, and explored. That night was another cheat night, so we filled our bellies with more junk- hot dogs, Crunch n Munch, Cheetos, Reeses-Cup- Smores (thanks Steve & Jenny for introducing us to that one), Oreos, donuts from our favorite Southern Maid shop, and soda. We feasted by the campfire til it was clearly bedtime. The girls and I went to bed while Riley ate Oreos with a raccoon by the fire. Surprisingly, the girls slept until 7 the next morning (that was later than I expected given the early sunrise and noisy morning creatures). We ate oatmeal with bananas and pb then hiked back to the beach for some fishing. Below is a video of the single fish caught. We ended our adventure with a biking trip to the Lodge where we ate lunch, packed up and headed for home. We all took naps until dinner time where Riley mentioned that he thought the family was ready for a real back-packing trip. "We could just hike a couple miles each day!" The man's appetite for the outdoors is never satiated...I love it!