Feeling better

After my last post, I am feeling much better. I am seeking the face of God more and more. I truly do not want to feel the way I do about infertility. What I have recently learned is that, children were never made to be ours and never will be ours(well I knew this, but it's more of a reality now). They are ultimately God's children and always will be. Yes he gives us a gift in the form of a child, but still they are his children. I cannot MAKE God give me gift. Never will I be able to. Just like you could never force me to give a gift to someone. It's up to me to choose to give a person a gift. Just like children, it's God's choice whether he chooses to give me a gift of a child. I cannot persuade him to give me anything. I can ask, I can always ask, but it still lays in the hand of my father and his choices for our lives. This may sound like I am making God sound awful. No, No that is not what I mean at all. My father has giving me 9 precious children. He has brought my children to me in a very special way. If I were to haven given birth, My 7 children probably would not be here with me. My goodness, I would never wish for these children to be anywhere other than with us :) You see, if I would have never began foster care, I know where I would be. I would be selfish, never would I have had to rely on my God more than I do now. I cannot in any way take care of these children without my Father's hand on my life. I wish to not even think any furthur about where my life would be if we would have gone a different direction.
     I do, I really do pray that God will bless me with a child. I hope one day we will have a biological child. But I will not partake in IVF treatments (again) as the Lord has convicted me not to do that. So I will choose to bring a frozen baby into this world to have a chance at life. I cannot wait to do this. I am very excited. I do know that it still is in God's hand whehter he chooses to keep the life of our adopted embryos growing in my womb. I pray that he will choose us to be parents of our adopted embryos. Nonetheless, if it doesn't happen, at least we brought these children out of a frozen state of being and into the arms of Jesus.
     I am still praying that God will bless us with the finances to be able to get on the waiting list by Nov. 7th. We need $1600 to do that. I know that the Lord can work it all out for us. Meanwhile, I just keep getting more and more excited, and also very impatient, hahaha. It's hard waiting, especially when you have been infertile for SO many years. It becomes a little hard to wait :)

New Direction, Infertility

So for awhile my blog may be taking a different direction. I really want to blog about our journey through infertility. It won't all be about that, but lately I have been consumed by it. I know that there are others who are going through infertility as well, and I know the very dark feelings that haunt me and I am assuming others who are going through it also experience those very awful dark feelings too. I ask for encouragment, and prayer and if you choose to leave an opinion, I ask that you think about the position that I am in before you post an opinion. Some may not agree with my thoughts and thats o.k., but guess what, the are very real. I am not going to act as if I am just fine. No really I am not. With that being said toaday will be my first post about infertility.

You know, being infertle is agonizing to say the least. It's something that I never wish upon anyone. It is a very dark place to be in. I feel stuck, I feel jealous of those that can have a child. I experience envy at times, oh yes I do. You know the bible talks about those very things. But it's true and real. Am I proud to feel like that, absoulutly not. I don't want to feel that way. But these feelings creep up and sometimes I cannot control it. Being infertly and being a christian is also hard. No I am not going to turn my back on God (although I have wanted), but it's hard. It's funny (well not nessacarily funny, but hurtful) to me that those who have conceived and birthed children are so quick to say, pray and God will give you the desires of your heart. Seriously, do you know how many times in the past 8 yrs of trying to conceive, I have prayed, I have been on my knees begging, I have been flat on my face before Jesus asking, over and over again to bring me a child. Oh my goodness is the pain so very real. The yearning to become a mother is so overwhelming. Some might say well, you already have children. Yes I do and I love them with all my heart, but still I am infertle. My desire to have a child consumes my being on a daily basis. The pain of not having a child consumes me on a daily basis.
     What can I do about this? Just continue to do what I do everyday and confide in my Savior. There is nothing I can do, and yet the pain still stays with me as we are best friends. There is so much more to say, but that enough for now.
     I am however excited to begin our Embryo adoption journey. It seems so far away and I really don't want to wait. I am not a very patient person when it comes to this aspect of my life. The clinic we will be using for our precious embie babies is inGrand Rapids. We used this clinic when we did our IVF in Oct of 2008. The only bad part is that our clinic has a 10 month waiting list. We need to have a certain amount of money to be put on the waiting list buy November. We are praying that we can have all the money for the entire process in November so it can be paid for in advance. It is an exciting thing and I continue to pray that the Lord will bless us with a child through embryo adoption.

Embryo Adoption

I am so excited to say that my husband and I have decided to do embryo adoption. I am so excited for this as it will give us an opportunity to become pregnant and save lives of precious frozen babies. Yes these babies are already babies, not eggs, real frozen embryos. Where the sperm has fertilized the egg and then produced a baby. I just can't stand the thought of theses babies being in a frozen state of being. So that is why hubby and I feel it is important to save these precious souls. We have sent a letter to family and friends asking for donations and we are excited to say that we have received the very first donation. So very excited as we are on our way to adopting embryos.

Isaiah's caseworker stopped in yesterday and she said that he is doing wonderful. She said she hasn't seen him so interactive with his siblings and that she really liked the progress he is making. She also told us that his case will be transfered to a different worker. She really didn't know what that meant, but that it was no big deal. So I guess we will just wait and see what that means.

I really have no other information as we are just trying to enjoy the last days of summer here. It is very hot today, temps are in the mid 90's, which I love. The kids only were able to play outside for a little while this morning until it became to hot for them.Well I guess that is all, I will keep everyone updated on our embryo adoption journey.

It's been awhile...

It sure has been awhile since I have posted. I plan on NOT waiting so long between posts. I hope to make a daily recording of anything from life to kids to well anything, I guess.

We are happy to announce that we have completed all of our adoption paper work on Nicholas who is going to become Isaiah. I am really thrilled about that. He is my baby. Well not really my baby because he is older than Adyline and Cameron (Urijah). He will be turning 3 in December. But because my little man has down syndrome he seems to stay in that baby stage a little longer. I am surely not complaining. I love it. I wish my other kids would have stayed babies longer. Kids just grow up way to fast.

I have come up with our school year schedule or rather what we are doing for school this year. I am going to be combining a little of the Charlotte Mason approach with Abeka which is a textbook approach. I think this is going to work out great. For organizing all of this, I am going to be incorporating the workbox system to hopefully keep things organized and running smoothly and efficently, or so I hope, lol!!!!

My family and I are going to be embarking on a very exciting journey. I will give further details in a few days. I promise. It is just not yet the time for it to be written in the blog. But soon, very soon. We are very excited about this upcoming journey that we feel the Lord has brought us too. I can't wait to tell all of you about it!!!!!

As I am looking at the bottom of my screen, I am realizing that it is 1:20 in the morning and my kids don't know how to sleep in, LOL. So I guess that means that I better get some shut eye before the kids come storming in my room and ready for the day. Oh how I wish I could have as much energy as they do in the morning. I don't drink coffee so I really don't have a pick me up in the morning to get me started. Does anybody have any suggestions of a pick me up drink or something other than coffee to awaken this awfully drowsy lady in the morning????

A sigh of relief

Today was such a fabulous. Today is going to go down on the books as one of the best days I have had. Today we have learned that our foster son Nicholas' (who will now be called Isaiah) biological parents rights were terminated. I am so excited to be able to begin the adoption process on our baby boy. Our little Isaiah has Down Syndrome and he is the sweetest little guy. I love him to pieces and he is just so perfect. Perfect in every way. I just love him so much. He has been through so much while living with his biological family. I will save that story for a later date as he is not yet adopted and I cannot give that info out yet. But he has come so far while being in our care. I give my heavenly father all the credit. We could not do this without him. I believe my little man has come so far because of our miracle working God. God answer's prayers and he has shown his love grace on my Isaiah. My heart truly goes out to his biological family. He has 6 other brother and sisters who truly love him. They were all returned to their parents a few months back. The other children were not treated or negleted in the way that Isaiah was treated. Yes, they were neglected, but I guess they did enough to get them back. But due to Isaiah needs they just didn't seem to understand everything that was involved with caring for a child with Down Syndrome nor did they want to educate themselves on the needs of a child with Down Syndrome. They had 18 months to learn, educate, participate, and show up to appointments that they just refused to go to. So in a way I am happy that he was not returned home as this would pose a very big problem for Isaiah. He would be neglected again and probably fall more behind. After I post his story while in the custody of his parents you will understand more. But believe me, I do grieve for his parents. I know they just didn't care for their child properly, but still they are human with feelings and emotions. We are not allowed for his family to have any contact with him. Sometimes they allow it, but because of the severity of the neglect we cannot. So I pray for his siblings. I pray for strength. I just could not imagine losing my brother. But it had to be done.

This is my little Isaiah (Bubby, this is what I did when I found out you are mine forever)

 

Next, As some may know we have been in a battle to keep custody of our foster son Cameron who has been with us from birth. The grandmother (who has been found to not be the legal grandmother) was granted visitation with Cameron as they were confident he was going to move there. But we got word today that those visitation have been suspended and now that gets a step closer in completing his adoption. I am so excited.

Cameron (who is also known as Urijah)

 

I do have a prayer request. We have inquired about a little girl who is 10 yrs. old and has been waiting for a forever home for a year and a half now. Our adoption worker has told us she will not recommend us to adopt her. I beleive that God can work this situation out and give this little girl to us so she can have a forever home. God is bigger than caseworkers. I pray Lord that you work through this and make a way for little Alisia to be with us. Lord her adoption worker has requested that our adoption worker send our homestudy to her so that she can check us out. Lord our worker is standing in the way for this adoption to go through. Lord we have had many complications with this worker. Lord I ask that you remove her out of the way or that Alisia's casewroker would be proactive and determined to get Alisia in our home. Lord I pray for Alisia. Lord please give her peace and please hold her in your arms as she waits and waits. Lord our arms are wide open and we really want her. Lord thank you for working on her behalf and ours. I pray Lord if this is your will that you would make this happen. Amen.

Busy, busy, busy

     This past week I have been very busy. We have had to wonderful little boys spending some time with us. They are a friends foster boys. We watch them periodically for her. They are so fun and very well behaved. My family always have a lot of fun with them. My daughter Madisyn is totally in love with the littlest one. He also adores her. Madisyn babies him alot. I am not a huge fan of babying little kids, but she really likes him alot and he can easily be reverted back to not being babyied (sp?).

     This past Saturday my parents came over for some remodeling of their "villa" as my dad calls it. We have offered them a room to live in. They graciously accepetd and I am thrilled. We have given them the living area in the basement and my dad is reverting it into a little apartment. It was used as the children's playroom, er, junk room :). The toys in that room were overflowing and it was becoming quite rediculous. I will be slimming down there toy consumption because I have found if they abdundant toys, they really din't play with ALL of them. So we are going to be sort of limiting their toy consumption. I am not saying they cannot have toys, but once it gets over the top they really don't appreciate them as much. We will be allowing educational toys, play dough, legos, lincoln logs, outdoor supplies like soccer balls, footballs, etc. Stuff that we can all do together as a family rather than just saying, "Go play in your playroom". This approach will get us more involved as a family. Don't get me wrong, we are very close as a family now, but this will bond us even closer. If we look at it this way, at christmas time if the children each get 7 toys each and we currently have 7 children that is a grand total of 49 toys. That probably would not include toys from relatives and this is not counting the multitude of toys they currently have. Now if we had 2 childrent than maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal. I also see that we are not done growing our family and I am not sure when we will be. I forsee us have many, many children. So we need to put a slight limit on all of the toys that get accumulated by our children. I am o.k. with this because I would rather spend time with my children instead of them going off into another room all of the time. So this what we did this past week and weekend.

     Here are some pictures of some of the children playing outside on a rather unusual and very pleasant spring day:

This is Arianna playing in the yard. I think she is looking at a map.

This is Owen cruisin' on his and Corey's new power wheels 4-wheeler, with Emma trying to catch him.

Emma looking out of their playhouse.

Here is Arianna looking out of the doll house

This picture is hard to see, but he has just lost his second top front tooth. Now he is missing his two front theeth. He was a little scared about it though. 

WOW 5 Years old today...

My little man is 5 years old today. It really has just gone by so very fast. It is just amazing how much my little guy has changed and matured over this past year. He is growing into a handsome young boy. Not that he wasn't already. But something about being five just makes me look at my kids differenlty. He is entering into a different phase of life and I am excited to see what his 5th year of life will bring him. It is awesome to celebrate this birthday with my precious blessing. So here are some pics of his special 5th birthday.

He has never watched spider man so I have no idea how he got into liking spider man so much.

Blowing out his birthday candle.

The spider man toy grandma bought him.

The motorcycle jacket grandma got him. We all loved this coat.

His new spider man bike daddy and mommy got him. He got to pick from 3 bikes and he choose the spider man one, of course :)

This is the first day we got Owen. He was 14 months old. My he really looks different.

And another one from his first day with us.