I'm going (I think...)

So. 3 weeks after I heard I was welcome to travel, I finally heard the details I needed to know in order to travel (I think the babies' home administrator must have been on vacation or out of the office... Or the Lord was wanting to teach me some things, which I am THANKFUL for.)

Early this week, I sent this email to my family:

Well the bad news (for our Texas family, at least) is that our fam will not be able to come to Houston for my birthday after all.

But the good news: I’ll be in Uganda meeting (and taking pictures for all of you of) our newest little Meyer. EEK!

Heard from the babies’ home (at last) this morning. They’d like me to come the first week of August. I want to be home by 8/13 or so because Luke starts middle school on 8/16 and I don’t want that to be crazy(er). I’m waiting to hear when exactly they’ll have room for me in their guest house – but I’ll likely be traveling from 7/30 – 8/2ish until 8/13 (depending on guest house availability and flight availability, of course.)

Please pray with me that I’ll hear back from the babies home tomorrow so I can get that flight booked – it just gets more expensive the closer you get… And pray for a good flight and a low fare J.

Speaking of the flight…

• Since this first trip doesn’t include actually identifying our child (they have a child already in mind for us; the identification was the main reason I wanted Matt to go on this first trip rather than the second, longer one) and
• Since it’s looking like the courts are going to start actually requiring both parents to be in court (in the past it was a “requirement” that they didn’t actually hold anyone too…but word on the street is that it is moving to medical exceptions only.) and
• Since we think we will have enough money for this trip if it only involves ONE plane ticket (and THANK YOU SO MUCH to those of you who have helped us out with this and been praying for our funding – praise God for you! We have a lot farther to go, but we have just about what we need for this step.)

I’m going to make the trip on my own.

I was worried about this at first, but now I am EXCITED and not afraid (we’ve been leaning this way for a couple of weeks, so I’ve had some time to settle into the idea). Also, our friend Brooke (who also adopted from Uganda, and for whom I babysit) has family in Kampala. She said they would be willing to pick me up at the airport – the arrival was my biggest concern – and maybe even let me stay with them that first night and get me to the babies’ home the next day. Praise God for His provision through friends!

More news and prayer requests coming soon !

Love you all!

I did hear back (immediately) from the Babies Home about specific dates when I could come. BUT when I contacted the travel agent (who is highly recommended by other adopting families), I got some bad news. The tickets for the exact 2 weeks I need to travel are DOUBLE the price they quoted me before I had exact dates. The quote was the lowest possible price, so I was expecting the real deal to be higher - but not double. The agent was very distressed. I went searching on my own, and confirmed those prices - and saw that if I could/would wait until September, they go back down again (maybe because it's less of a peak time, maybe because there's more time between now and the flight.

I did NOT want to wait until September - because I'm anxious to go, but also because going in September pushes the second trip (when I get to bring little guy home) back - probably until early to mid-2012 (going in August, I think there's still a slim chance we might get a court date in 2011...)

I am thankful to the Lord for almost immediate peace. I was tempted to be frustrated and sad - especially since it feels like if I'd heard back from the babies' home earlier, maybe I would have been able to get better tickets.

BUT. Yesterday in my time with the Lord, I laid it all out (more for myself than for Him, since by definition, He already knows. :D) 

The bottom line: If the Lord wants me in Ug*nda in August, He can provide the $$ and the flights for me to go (without us making a bad stewardship decision and spending double the money just so I don't have to wait - that was never an option.)

I decided I'd give it through the weekend, and if we weren't able to find a better deal, then I'd wait until September, and receive that from Him. I trust His goodness to me.

And He is good whether I go in August or September. Whether from there the process moves quickly or slowly...He is good.

And... I had a couple of folks send me cheap deal sites... It looks like I may have some tickets booked at a MUCH better price (the price I was actually expecting - not the lowest possible, but not outrageously expensive either.) Praise the Lord.

If that all goes through as planned, I'll be in Ug*anda meeting our little guy the first 2 weeks in August - getting back just in time to get Luke settled into Middle School. Jet Lag + Oldest starting Middle School = Meltdown? We shall see... :)

Happy Father’s Day :)

Happy 40th Matt!

Matt and I both hit the big 4.0. this summer (Matt’s birthday is in early June, I’ll be joining the club in August).

About a week before Matt’s birthday, I was talking to a college friend who said, “WHAT? 40? We have to throw an old person party for him!!” (this person is 21, so…)

I got to thinking about it – there’s NO WAY I’m throwing an “old person” party, since I’ll be joining him at 40 in just 2 short months. Also: 40 is not old, and age is not bad. I refuse to decorate with black and buy into the cultural message that aging = death. Aging = 1 day closer to Jesus :). But 40 is a great reason to celebrate, so we did throw a party.

People kept asking if it was a surprise: I can’t even keep Christmas presents secret, how in the world would I pull off a surprise party? (Seriously. Every year as soon as I’ve bought his present, I start asking Matt, “Want to know what I got you???” I can’t stand it, and always end up telling him or giving early. :D)  Plus: I’m not really a fan of surprise parties myself. Too much of a planner, plus expectation is half the fun. I don’t enjoy the feeling of everyone else knowing that was going on, while I’ve been in the dark.


Anyway… I think it came off pretty well, considering I didn't start planning until 6 days before.
I made this happy birthday banner , and some of Matt’s favorite foods.

For his birthday every year, I make him a banana cream pie, using this recipe. It’s from scratch as I don’t like banana flavored jello pudding, and it’s surprisingly easy to make a vanilla custard. Except you have to stand over the stove without interruption for about 20 minutes, which means I have to make it after the kids are in bed. And also, you shouldn’t get distracted by the TV show you’re watching while cooking and accidentally put in the egg whites instead of the egg yolks. Because then you’ll have to start all over again. Oops.


Instead of a full pie this year, I made a double batch of little individual banana cream pies in muffin cups. I used crushed Nilla Wafers for the crust and real whipped cream on top – delish.

We also had  Reese's Peanut Butter cups, chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles (which I’ve never made before, and haven’t liked much – they’re usually kind of dry and brittle. But since they’re one of Matt’s favorites I went looking for a good recipe, and found this one. It is a WINNER. Amazingly soft and wonderful. Yum. I had to make Matt take the leftovers to work so I wouldn’t eat them all.)

Matt’s mom brought peanut butter balls (which I really appreciated, since he loves them, but they are a mess to make), plus we had queso and chips, a delicious dip from Betsy, and yummy ham/cream cheese rolls from Matt’s stepmom.

Matt’s mom brought me pictures of him as a kid, which were awesome.

We finished it off with lemon water, lots of pop (yes, I live in Nebraska now, I call it pop.), and sweet tea using my dear friend Wendy McCord’s recipe (Which Matt will now be requesting regularly! So delicious!)


It was fun to have so many friends and family around us on Matt’s special day, and the kids had a BLAST. Luke played basketball out front almost the entire time – he wanted to put up a “no parking” sign in the driveway, he was so excited about getting to play ball with a bunch of friends.

Tobin was of course in the middle of all the action outside until the mosquitoes drove us all inside. He had to be dragged kicking and screaming to bed hours past his bedtime where he immediately collapsed from exhaustion.

Good times. And here’s Matt’s gift from his (younger) sister:

LOL.

Pray for my heart...

Hi Friends!
Thanks for all of your kind words and encouragement about our news that we are welcome to travel to Ug*nda at any point. We've contacted a couple of attorneys, and are waiting to hear back from our babies home with the answers to some questions we have about what is next, and about our potential child.

I would SO appreciate your prayers for us...

* For my heart... the reality has really set in that there is a child on the other side of the world who needs a family, and who, Lord willing, is for our family. It's very hard not to want to just jump on a plane and go RESCUE. But that is not the way it works, and while some of the hoops we have to jump through are annoying, many of them are necessary for the protection of children and families. I can also hear the Lord saying to me that this waiting process is good for me too. But I feel like I did during the first trimester I was pregnant with Tobin: Hopeful for the future, anxious to meet this little person the Lord had made for us, but also fearful about all of the unknowns and potentials.

Please pray in all of this that I would remember that we are waiting on the LORD. Not for Him to do what we want, but for HIM. I want Him to be our (my) focus, not the future, decisions, unknowns, or even our sweet little boy. I am trying to allow all of these thoughts to drive me into Him, rather than distract me from Him.

* For wisdom... We contacted a couple of Ug*ndan attorneys who are very highly recommended, and have heard back from both of them. Now we have some decisions to make. In an independent adoption, your attorney is really the lynchpin for your whole experience. I don't think there's a bad choice between these two firms, but we'd like to make the best choice.

We also have some decisions to make about when we travel, and whether we will both go on this first trip, thinking through how we will work the second, longer trip (will Matt go with me for the first week or two, to appear in court; or will I do the entire 3-5 weeks by myself?)  We've been thinking this through all along, but now we actually have to start making decisions.

* Because we were taken by surprise by the invitation to travel and meet our child whenever we're ready, we are not financially ready. We totally recognize that if we don't have the funds to travel, then it's not God's plan for us to travel yet. But we'd sure love to go as soon as we can (and this summer would be ideal, since it works so much better for Matt's work schedule.)

* It is a TOTAL longshot.... But because we have not heard back from our babies home in answer to some of our questions, I am holding out hope that they might be considering letting us do a referral. This means they would select a child they think is the best fit for our family (they already have a child in mind for us anyway), and we would begin the process from home rather than making the first of the two trips. This would mean that we would be able to adopt with only one trip to Ug*nda. I don't mind going twice (and would love to go as many times as we can! I can't wait to see this place that has so been on my heart and in my prayers!) But making only one trip potentially shaves $4K off of our total cost. It also allows us to get started on the process sooner, without needing money for airfare quite so soon.

Thanks for loving our family and for praying for us! Even typing all of this out is such a good reminder that our hope is in Him!

Adventures in Uganda: NEWS.

Due to the nature of adoption in Uganda (and, frankly, the occasional craziness of the Ugandan adoptive community), I chose not to share any details on our blog about our adoption while we were still in process. But because this blog is the story of our lives... I want to go back and fill in those empty spaces.

I'm backdating these...Today is 2/28/2012. But I'm dating this post from the day we got our first exciting adoption news...6/1/2011. The following is an email I sent my family that afternoon with the subject line "NEWS."

****

It's fun to have some news to share.

Last Wednesday we sent our home study and other paperwork to Ug*anda to our babies' home (via Federal Express, which is the only reliable way to post things, from what we've heard.)

I've been trying not to be anxious, knowing that it should get there sometime this week (the 30th or 31st), and watching my email for a notice from the Babies' Home that our paperwork is received, so we can be on the waiting list.

We've been in contact with the babies' home since January or so - we knew they had a waiting list, but also that not many families on the list are open to toddler/older boys so we probably wouldn't be on it for too long: 6 months at the most. So I was expecting to hear from them, "Paperwork received, you’re on the waiting list.” It was also our understanding that they do not do referrals or match families with children until you make the first trip.

We heard from them this morning.

They have all of our paperwork, we are approved. And they would like to know when we would like to come to Uganda to meet our child and begin the process. EEK! And YIPEE!!

** Additionally – we are not going to make the following public knowledge yet. But they also have matched us with a child. Here’s what the director of the Home said:

“ I therefore have the pleasure to inform you that we have a healthy boy called Marvin Kiggundu- 2 years old that we would like to match to your family for adoption.”

We are completely shocked. But my friend Brooke met Marvin when she was at the babies home for her adoption, and was able to show me a couple of pictures of him that she took last year when she was there. Here's my favorite:

 

So apparently, and obviously: LORD WILLING... in late July or early August Matt & I will be flying to Ug*anda (that's about as early as we can imagine getting it together to go...plus almost all of our college staff is out of the country until mid-July.) To meet our SON.

Please pray:

- For CALM. This is surprising to us, but not to the Lord.

- For WISDOM: When to go, how to work out the logistics of travel, care for our boys, etc.

- For my passport: We applied  for renewed passports a long time ago, but I sent in a copy  of our marriage license instead of certified copy or the original. Don't know what I was thinking... But we just heard from the passport office yesterday that we need a certified copy - so I need to get a certified copy from Brazos County, turn that in, and who knows how long it will then take them to process it. Matt's came last week. :(

- For finances: We've been working and saving like crazy, and the Lord has provided JUST what we needed each step of the way. But for this first trip, we need between $7K and $8K - $4K for travel, and another $3-4K for legal fees to get the adoption/legal guardianship process started.

I could get totally freaked out about that, but I'm determined to trust the Lord. He has provided, and He will provide. And the timing of our saving/working/raising funds is completely in his hands.

Thanks in advance for your encouragement and prayer! LOVE LOVE LOVE you all!

Brothers…

So technically Luke & Tobin are half-brothers. Same dad, born to two different moms (although they have the same mom now – yay me!)

Tobin is the weirdest sleeper I’ve ever seen. He moves around so much in his sleep, he’ll probably need a rail on his bed until he’s 20. 3-5 times an evening (this is between his bedtime and mine, so just about 2 hours) we are startled by a loud THUMP as he rolls over and hits the wall. Never waking up.

Last week, I went to check on Tobin before I went to bed and found him like this:

Sound asleep. Even when the flash went off. Didn’t wake up when I moved him back onto his bed either.
Luke is not quite as heavy a sleeper, but he is HILARIOUS if you have to wake him up. If we have meetings at the house in the evenings, Luke gets to go to sleep in our bed and read until his bedtime (he also gets to go to sleep in our bed if one of us is gone for the night/evening. Why is that such a treat? I don’t know, but he loves it!)

When we go into wake him up and move him to his bed, he is often very disoriented, and very often yells odd things. “It’s the HAMBURGER! GET THE HAMBURGER!” Ummmmm. OK? And as you’re steering him (now that he’s too big for even Matt to carry) to his bedroom, if you take your hands off him for a second, he turns and goes the other way. Matt gets mad at me if I move Luke without him, because it’s such entertainment.

The day after the picture of Tobin above, we had a meeting to plan summer Bible study stuff. After everyone left, when I went to move Luke, here is what I found:

Is being able to sleep in weird positions genetic? And if so, which parent do you think they got this gift from? (hint: it’s not me.)

Easter Celebrations!

We had a delightful Easter.
We usually spend Easter weekend in Iowa with Luke’s grandparents. Julie (Matt’s first wife & Luke’s first mom, for those of you less aware of our family’s backstory) went to be with the Lord in early April, so we always like to spend some time with her family during that time of year.
This year, however, some close family friends had a wedding Easter weekend – and asked Matt to officiate for them. The wedding was Saturday afternoon, so we were here in town Easter Sunday. We missed time with the McCutcheons, but it was fun to be at our own church to celebrate the resurrection.
A few weeks before, to begin to anticipate the sadness and joy of Easter, Tobin & I planted an Easter garden (Luke would have loved to help, but he has been super busy – between soccer practice and practice for the 5th grade musical, he’s not home much in the afternoons anymore.)
I got the idea from Ann Voskamp’s blog, and am SO GLAD that we decided to make a little garden this year. We made pipe cleaner figures to act out the crucifixion and Easter morning in the garden – both boys really enjoyed that, and I think anything hands on like that really helps younger kids to understand. As a bonus, my friends at Tabletop Truths talked about Easter gardens on their blog, and ran a contest: The first 3 families to send pictures of their Easter Gardens got free Easter placemats. SCORE. Love those placemats so much! And love our Easter garden.
 (We made the “tomb” mountain out of dough, from a recipe in Noel Piper’s Treasuring God in our Traditions… And it got moldy. Next year, we’ll use clay. We threw the tomb out – it did last long enough to bury and raise Jesus – and we’ll plant the rest of the plants in planters outside.  Yay!)
After church (and college group), we headed out to Grammie & Papa’s for Easter dinner. Fun times with cousins!

My contribution (along with making resurrection rolls with the kids) was a Honey Bunny from Great Harvest Bread Co. We got a cinnamon chip one for breakfast, and took a whole wheat one to Grammie’s.
Tobin LOVED it. I almost wondered if we wouldn’t be able to cut him up. But we started from the tail, and managed to not break our soft-hearted boy’s heart.

We also did Easter baskets Sunday morning. I go back and forth with Easter baskets – we don’t pretend they’re from the Easter bunny, but we do give them gifts. Some years we’ve done just things that will help them grow spiritually – but this year, it felt like I’d just be doing that “because”. Neither of them need new Bibles, and I had already given some books and CD suggestions to grandparents, so we didn’t need anything else along those lines. So we just gave them summerish toys. And stuff I’d bought for Tobin for his birthday, but then decided we had plenty.

I don’t know. What do y’all do for Easter baskets? I so want Easter to be about Jesus and not presents… But I like giving my kids gifts, and we really don’t buy them things except at birthdays and holidays.
And yes, they’re still wearing their Christmas PJs. Mostly because they like to match, how cute is that?

In case you’re wondering what’s going on with our adoption… I’ve moved all adoption related information to a separate (protected) blog, available to personal friends and family (Blogger only lets you have 100 readers on protected blogs, so you'll have to be someone who knows me IRL). Comment or email me (reemeyer AT gmail DOT com) if you’d like an invitation to that blog!

So, what's going on with your adoption?

 Hello sweet friends & family!
Judging by the number of times I’ve been asked, many are wondering WHAT in the world is going on with our adoption plans.
I haven’t had much to answer, since until a few days ago we were just in the waiting loop.
We’re actually still in the waiting loop (and will be all year, in case you’re wondering… adoption is basically like the process of moving from one waiting room to another.) BUT several of the sets of papers we’ve been waiting on are here – my birth certificate had to be ordered, I must have lost it somewhere in the move and name change paperwork when I got married. And our home study arrived in the mail today. Woo Hoo!!
We’ve been in contact with our babies’ home, and will ship our home study, along with some other paperwork (all of which I’ll have to get notarized in the next few days.) From that point, we’ll wait to be invited for our first visit (at which time we’ll serve at the babies’ home, get to know the children there, prayerfully be matched with our future Meyer, and file the legal guardianship paperwork in the Ugandan courts.) We really have no idea how long that wait will be – it could be as long as six months, or pretty fast (since there are not many families interested in toddler boys.) After that first visit, we’ll wait to be assigned a court date – again, that wait could be long or short, there is no telling. We also will be waiting at that point for approval from homeland security to immigrate our new Meyer back to the states after we are granted legal guardianship, which reportedly takes 6-10 weeks.
So here are the next steps for us…

1. Pray pray pray pray pray. It is reassuring to me that financially and logistically, we are in a position that enforces trust: If God is not in this thing, it is NOT happening. We TRUST His timing, we TRUST His heart. And there is the reality that since we are feeling led to not adopt a baby – our child will be between 2-4 likely – that child is already born, likely living without a mommy and daddy, possibly with health concerns. Help me Jesus.
2. Continue raising the prayer support/financial support that we need. In addition to needing the Body to pray with us for our little Meyer-let out there: It will be several hundred dollars to send our paperwork to Uganda… $600 to file for USCIS… $3-4K for the first trip to Uganda, assuming it’s both Matt & I. I’d really LOVE to not go alone. And Luke really wants to come, but we just don’t know if we can afford it. Plus on that first trip, we’ll begin paying the legal fees, our attorney, to file in court etc. (that will be several thousand as well.) Again: Help me, Jesus.
3. Assuming we have the $600 (I think we do, thanks to GENEROUS donations to our fund, plus my etsy sales), we will file with the USCIS for approval to adopt. We’ll need approval from them before we can get a visa to bring our child (once we are granted legal guardianship) home to Nebraska.
4. In the next few days, I’ll get the last few pieces of paper notarized, and we’ll ship our paperwork to Uganda.

And then, we’ll move to the next waiting room. :)

BAGS BAGS BAGS!

My Etsy shop has been keeping my hands busy… I so appreciate both the opportunity to make some $$ for our adoption fund (update on that coming soon), but also have really enjoyed designing and making so many bags. No such thing as business being too good but…I’ve sold out of the pretty flower coffee cuffs, and the Africa coffee cuffs (planning to make more of those this weekend!) And I had to stop taking custom Bible study/teacher bag orders – I had 2 orders for 5 each, plus an order for 20 (my AWESOME friend Tina got them for all of the prayer group leaders in our Moms’ study.) I had SO MUCH FUN making all of these bags, particularly the ones I knew would be given to my prayer group leader friends. I ended up making 26 so that there would be some choice (I didn’t want the last gal who picked to not have any choices), and so that I could have some inventory left over to sell.

All these orders allowed me to build up quite a gallery of different bags. If you want to see all the ones I’ve made so far, check it out:

Here’s the link if you want to take a closer look.

(And yes, I gave all of my bags girl names…so if people want a specific fabric for a custom order, they can request it by name. And since I’ve only had experience naming boys…I sure had fun naming those bags. Matt thinks I’m ridiculous. :D)

I’m loading the 6 bags I have left for inventory onto my Etsy store this morning, so keep an eye out for them. I have a couple new ones coming as well, I ended up with 3 extra sets of fabric, but stopped sewing at 26 bags, since I figured that would be plenty of choices. A couple of my favorite fabric combinations didn’t get chosen, if you know me well, you can probably guess which ones those are!

While I LOVED making all of these bags, I did have a little bit of sewing-rebellion with all of these deadlines.  A few times in the last month, I desperately needed to make something that wasn’t that same bag pattern.

So I made a little Easter cuteness…

Plus, a little something for myself. I’ve teen toying with this design in my imagination for a while, and was able to use scraps from some of the bags for the ruffles. Can you guess what the body of the bag is made of?

My former favorite pair of capri pants – which were still super comfortable, but hopelessly out of style. So now they get to be my favorite Spring purse!

Hilariously, when I showed it to Luke, he asked, “What about your old purse?” Me: “It’s right there, I’m going to put it away until Fall.” Luke: “What was wrong with it?” Me: “Nothing, why?” Luke: “Well, why did you need a new purse?” Me: Speechless. How do you explain seasonal purses to an 11 year old boy (when his daddy doesn’t really understand that either?”)  But this seasonal purse didn’t cost me a cent! And I love it! It’s a girl thing.