Been Lazy.........

I have been so lazy about posting on the blog lately. Sorry folks!

John and I are feeling a little better about the adoption this week. We have such supportive family and friends. Who better to lift you out (or beat it out) of your funk than your closest buds? Thanks you guys. We are praying that July brings better news. As of this month we have officially been in the adoption race for a year. The first six months have gone by pretty darn fast. With so much going on between now and the end of the year, we are hoping that the next six months go fast too.

The past few days we have been hanging out with our friends. Sunday we threw a puppy shower for our friends Scott and Elisa. They just got a new baby poodle and she is just too cute. They are always doing things for others, so we wanted to do something fun for them. Our good friends Lisa and Ken helped throw the party with us. Here are some pictures:






Last night we went to our other friend's house for their daughter's second birthday. Sarah was adopted from China last summer. She is absolutely precious. We felt so honored to share her birthday with her. This family has just been so good to us. They have really mentored us through the adoption process. We love them tremendously! Happy Birthday Miss Sarah!

Other than just some good times with friends we have been working and hanging out at the house. I am still thinking about doing some cave tubing in Belize though.........

Beach Photos from Yesterday

GRRRRRRRRR With the Posting of Pictures

I am having issues trying to post pictures from our beach trip. Blogger seems to be having some issues. I will try to post them in the morning.

A Band-Aid for Sadness

The referrals were released from China today and they only covered about two weeks of June 2005. That's great when you think that they have been averaging five days worth of referrals per month. It's not so great when the referral process has become erratic. Who knows, next month they might go back to only five days worth of referrals. That means, if they keep with that trend, we won't see our child for years. If they keep with this two weeks worth of referrals, it will be another 12 months of waiting. That means we are looking at 18 months of waiting before we would get our referral and then another two months before we could travel to pick her up. So today, we are sad. Today, we feel a little hopeless. Today, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Today, we feel like jumping ship. Today, we know that a family member who just found out she is pregnant, will probably have her baby before we do. Don't get me wrong, we are happy for our friends who are closer to their referrals. We are happy for expectant family member. We are just sad for us.

We decided instead of moping around the house to head out to my favorite spot in the world...a beach. And while Galveston is not my beloved Stinson beach, it is a beach that has the calming noise of waves crashing onto the shore. So we packed up and headed down to the island for a walk and for some dinner. The weather was beautiful. The birds were out in mass. And we even managed to catch a hermit crab. Would it be wrong if we headed off to Jamaica for a few days of ocean therapy?

After our walk we headed down to the Strand for dinner at Fuddruckers. We soothed ourselves with big fat hamburgers (turkey burger for me since they didn't have the veggie burger) and milk shakes. We then walked around some more and I caught up with this beautiful butterfly. Now I heard it was good luck for a butterfly to land on a person. This butterfly had to have been special because it let me pick it up and then it stayed put for about five minutes. It kept trying to search for nectar under my fingernail. It felt so weird and it was pretty funny! It finally flew away but I just felt peaceful after that.


Despite our sadness and this dismal outlook on our China adoption, we had a good day.

Rainy Days.......

It's been pretty soggy around here the last couple of days. This rain isn't even at a tropical storm level and yet Houston somehow seems to flood. We did get a lot of rain in a short amount of time but good grief, I would hate to see what this place would look like if a hurricane hit. Tropical storm Allison was bad enough. I hope that we don't get anything major this year here in our area.

Adoption news, well there really isn't any. A college professor who teaches statistics, and is waiting for her referral, came up with referral statistics. She estimates that those with late December log in dates (that would be us) would not get a referral until January. That would mean we wouldn't travel until March. Of course we can't really bank on anything because China's referral process has really seemed to have gone haywire. We are seriously living month to month.

Funny picture of the moment:

This is a picture of my cousin, my sister and I posing as if we were inside of a picture frame. My uncle popped up out of nowhere and looks like a ghost in this picture. Anyway, it cracks me up.

Happy Father's Day

HAPPY FATHER"S DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Choices in Life

I am reading this great book by an author named Hal Urban. My Mom found a book of his at the Naval Exchange in Virginia and it looked really good, so when I got home I checked a couple out from the Library.

The first one I am reading is called, Life's Greatest Lessons. One particular section that hit me with great interest was about the choices me make in life. Everything we do is because of a choice that we have made. He made a list of the most important choices we get to make and I wanted to share them. They made me think about my life and the choices I have made, both bad and good ones. I am going to list these choices but I will add my thoughts.

1) We're free to choose our character-the type of persons we become.
I think we are born with a personality type but I think we can shape our characters. Sometimes character can clash with our personality types but I also think, as does the author, that our character is really molded by our environment. We are molded by the people we hang out with, by the activities we participate in, and what we choose to put into our minds. If the people we hang out with aren't encouraging us to be a better person, or are people with bad character, what's the point in the friendship? If the activities we participate in or the things we fill our heads with bring us down, why bother? Trying to have a good character in this life is hard enough as it is, why surround ourselves with people, places, or things that bring us down?

We're free to choose our values We need to decide what is important to us and what our standards of excellence are and go for them. We can't let others dictate our values.

We're free to choose how to treat other people I don't think anything really needs to be added to that. I know that I could work on this, especially with people who have hurt me.

We're free to choose how to handle adversity Okay, so this is something I definitely need to work on. I was faced with a situation recently where someone who I thought I had helped and did the best I could for that person vehimantly put me and my efforts down. This person lied about me in front of others and just put me down. I thought I handled the situation well but looking back I really didn't. I let this person's words eat at me for a couple of weeks and made myself incredibly angry. I even thought of vindictive ways to let this person know that they were wrong. I didn't follow through with those plans but I should have just let it go. I don't handle adversity too well and I try to avoid it at all cost. I know it's something I need to learn how to deal with.

We're free to choose how much we'll learn Being open-minded about life is a way of learning. If we choose to be closed-minded we can miss opportunities to better our lives. I try and approach every situation with an open mind. It's difficult at times. I love to learn though and will try and take every opportunity to learn as much as I can.

We're free to choose what we'll accomplish in life We can sieze opportunities that are presented to us or turn our backs on them and lose out on a possible accomplishment. We can either be lazy about life or work hard and achieve great things. Being lazy of course is the easy way out but what do we have to show in the end? What we will be able to present to God about our life when we stand before him? I want to leave a legacy. I want to make my accomplishments better my life as well as other lives. I want to experience the life God has to offer. There are so many, many great opportunities out there for us but we have to get our backsides and reach for them, otherwise life and our accomplishments will just pass us by.

We're free to choose our belief system Isn't America awesome? We have the freedom to choose who and how we worship. Even though I feel like my belief, Christianity, is being attacked in this country, I know that I am still free to practice my beliefs with fear of death.

We're free to choose our own purpose What's your purpose in life? Do you long to please only yourself or to please others? Do you believe in a cause greater than yourself? I feel incredibly blessed to know what my purpose is in this life.

Adoption Depression

No real news to share with you all on our adoption wait. We have been paper pregnant for six months now. A friend of ours is a little over six months physically pregnant and she will have her baby in three months. Us on the other hand, we don't know when we will have our baby. We don't know if we will have her in six months or if the wait will go up so much that we will be waiting twelve more months before we get her. It's so freaking depressing thinking that there is no end is sight. We can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are no answers from anyone. Today, I am sad about this adoption process and a little envious that our friend will have her baby soon. When will it be our turn??

Enjoy the Coffee

I received this email from a colleague in the fire service. I usually don't even bother to read forwards because I get so many of them, and usually most of them are repeats of ones I have already read. Because this individual never forwards anything, I decided to read it. It's a really great life lesson and I wanted to share it with you. After the you read it, I will add more of my thoughts:

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups made of Porcelain, Plastic, Glass, Crystal, Some ordinary looking, Some expensive, Some exquisite.

He told them to help themselves to hot coffee. When all the students had a cup of coffee in their hands, the professor
Said:

"If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap looking ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and worse, you were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee , then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in
It."

So folks, don't let the cups drive you..., enjoy the coffee instead.

*******
Several people that I know are going through some pretty difficult circumstances in their lives right now. These are people that I admire for the outward appearances. They hold themselves well. They present themselves well. They dress well. Sometimes I am a little envious at what they 'appear' to have. But when you get past their outside appearances and demeanors, there is turmoil and pain. Their coffee cup is beautiful but their coffee isn't so good. Now don't get me wrong, these are good people that try to lead moral lives, it's just right now they are going hardships.

I guess my point would be, just because someone is pretty on the outside doesn't mean they don't go through the tough stuff in life. Many times we admire the pretty people because we assume they lead perfect lives when in reality they have problems too. We need to stop putting so much emphasis on the presentation and put more onto actions. We also need to start looking at our coffee.

Where Would We be Without Family?

Family..the one word that could envoke disgust or joy or sometimes a mixture of both. Families have hidden secrets that they try in vain to keep locked in the closets of the past. Families have the token 'wierdo' that everyone wonders either a) how they ended up wierd or b) how did such a wierd person end up in the family. Families have members who at their very best act like the scum of the earth and members who at their worst still seem like Mother Theresa. Of course there are all of the 'normal' members in between who have been blended together through fate, marriage, divorce, birth, adoption, and through other ways yet to be determined.

What constitutes normal you ask? Normal is yourself. Everyone else in the family is catagorized into to neat little niches in the structure of the family unit. Sure the crazy uncle that likes to talk to himself in the corner of the kitchen seems a little sketchy, but he thinks he is normal. He is actually thinking his niece has gone off the deep-end because her hair is dyed a funky red and has multiple piercings in her ear. The uncle is normal and the niece is normal...in their own eyes.

Family is what made me who I am today. Where would I be without them? What stories could I share with my friends without crazy uncle Bob? I have been shaped and molded by these individuals. My history is written with them as main characters in the story of my life. I love these people even though some of them drive me up the wall. I cherish them with all my heart and I hope they feel the same way about me, even though some of them have to tolerate my silliness. Blood lines and adoption papers tie us all together into a package this doesn't neccessarily look neat or pretty on the outside but when the package is opened a beautiful gift emerges. I love my family. Where I would be without them?