Update....

I've been asked a lot lately what's going on with Josiah. Well, our documents are at the Chinese Embassy right now. They'll be ready to be picked up on the 22nd and on the way back to me. Then our dossier can go to China. Then the wait begins for our LOA. The front end of this adoption has gone pretty quickly. It was nice to be able to use many of the documents from Mari's adoption. No telling how the clock will tick on the Chinese end of things. The LOA's are so erratic. One of ours came in 120 days and one came in 46 days. No rhyme or reason. All in God's time. I'm resting in that for sure.

Rob's knee is healing and he started physically therapy yesterday. Trying to slow that man down is a whole different story. I keep reminding him "you know you are half way to 90" : )

Mari is having a second surgery on her nose on Friday. Prayers Please. The first surgery didn't work. We were reminded ever so kindly by her doctor that we have a pretty unique girl....didn't we know that though? :) He is such a sweet man and he LOVES Mari. They cut up together. It's really sweet. It broke his heart to keep cauterizing her nose. He finally said " I can't do this anymore ". So, we did the surgical cauterization and it didn't work. He hasn't had this happen before. This means the next step is to go in and stitch up all the blood vessels in her nose. There are a bunch of spider web like vessels in there. It's hard to stitch that nose because it's so little and there's a lot to stitch. It's shocking to me that this teeny weeny little nose can bleed like that. And this time the nose bleeds are by far the worse they've ever been. Please pray for divine healing for her nose. The next surgery if this didn't work is a type of nasal septal plasty and he doesn't even like to do them on children. So, we are believing that this will work. Claiming it in the name of Jesus. Period. She is such a trooper though. She's always reassuring me that it's ok and that's she's fine. The last one happened at Sam's with a buggy full of groceries. We went through an entire pack of wet wipes. It was awful. I couldn't get it under control for 45 minutes. That one scared me.

On a lighter note the girls start school on Monday. I'll be teaching Kindergarten and first grade this year. I'm really excited. These are the fun years. I want to enjoy every minute. They have been begging me to start school for the last month...."No way Jose !" It was just the middle of July. They really do thrive with a more structured routine so I started letting them review a couple of weeks ago with a sort of "loose" school schedule. Kind of getting them back to a routine. They love school so much. What a blessing. I love teaching them but I really love the summer too. It's been such a fun relaxing summer. Just what we needed. Things will get busy soon enough. Mari is starting speech and adaptive PE through the local school system. She's excited about that. It frustrates her terribly when someone cannot understand her. I've never heard of a child being excited about speech, but she is. She is my lion hearted girl. She does it all with gusto. Speech therapy will be no different. Izzy starts piano lessons at the beginning of September. She is beyond excited. She was given a keyboard for her birthday and plays all the time. ALL THE TIME ! We can't wait for her to learn something. She knows the musical alphabet and I hear quite often during the day Izzy playing A,B,C,D,E,F,G up and down the keyboard. Over and over and over...... :)

God bless the stay at home Momma. And I thought I worked hard as an Accountant. My 10 hour days as a CFO pale in comparison to my 14 hour days as a mom. I'm really ashamed to admit that I never used to think of staying at home with your children as a full time job. I definitely didn't have the proper perspective back then. I recognize now that not only is it the hardest job but by far the most important job that I will ever do. I'm so grateful that the Lord is allowing me to do this. Just praying that I do it well. Hope you guys had a great summer too. Soaking up the last few days.....