Our Trip to China 2!

Well, we are counting down the days. Wednesday Sept. 1 we leave for 2 weeks to China to bring Mack home! I, Missy, have so many mixed emotions! I'm so excited to visit China again. I'm so excited to spend this time with Dave. I'm so excited to add another member to our family! But, I don't want to leave everybody behind, I'm nervous about going so far away for so long and WHAT our we thinking adding another person to our family!!!!! With all that said, God has blessed our family so much that we feel compelled to share our lives with another that He has brought to us supernaturally. (through the miracle of adoption!) Truly we feel Luke will benefit growing up with another brother who shares his ethnicity, and our family has embraced adoption and cleft as part of our lives so here we go again!

Wednesday morning Dave and I leave Peoria and will return the 16th of September. Our 4 kids will be staying with Grandma! We will miss them all so much on this trip. Cole is just starting his Sr. year, Shelby Soph. year, Piper 7th grade and Luke is 3 with many speech appts. while we are gone! Grandma Linda and I will be sitting down tonight to go over the calendar! I know they will do fine, but wow, it could get interesting!
Dave will be documenting everything for us and we will keep the pictures coming. Please pray for us as we journey.
Aug. 23rd the first day of school this year, this was what my devotional JESUS CALLING read,
"Entrust your loved ones to ME; release them into my protective care. They are much safer with me than in your clinging hands. If you let a loved one become an idol in your heart, you endanger that one-as well as yourself. Remember Abraham and Issac. I took Isaac to the very point of death to free Abraham from son-worship. I detest idolatry, even in the form of parental love. When you release loved ones to Me, you are free to cling to My hand. As you entrust others into My care, I am free to shower blessings on them. My Presence will go with them wherever they go, and I will give them rest. This same Presence stays with you, as you relax and place your trust in Me. Watch to see what I will do."
This was so appropriate for the first day of school, or sending one off to college, or worrying about a new driver and specifically in my case leaving kids behind for 2 weeks.
When we talk about the dynamics of our family changing I say to the kids, "God is faithful". I'm reminding myself when the human insecurities creep in that My God is Faithful!
"Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we can ask or imagine" Eph. 3:20

Missy

Mack - 13 months!

Introducing Mack-March 2010

Since I wrote in November a lot has happened. Duh! And really I wouldn't even know how to give a lot of details, so the short list is Christmas, my brother's wedding, gymnastics meets, volleyball games, swim meets, Dave and Cole and Piper's birthdays and our spring break! But, most importantly we were "matched" with our 5th blessing. A little boy, from China!!!!! I wrote that we began our second adoption last spring and Dec. 16th we received our referral. It was the day before my brother's wedding!

His name is Guo Yu Hui. He was born Feb. 9, 2009. He was born with bilateral cleft lip and palate. It was corrected on Oct. 9, 2009. On Dec. 16th we accepted him into our family and we are waiting to find out more information on him. We named him Mack Andrew Nicholson. He will be 2 1/2 years younger that Luke!

We are waiting to see when we will be able to go and get him! Hoping that it will be June. We have Luke potty trained and out of the crib waiting the arrival of "baby maaa" this is Luke's interpretation. Need to work on the hard consonants!

We have asked for post surgery pictures, but have not seen anything. As soon as we have more information we will post it! Please pray for the details as you think about us. Dave and I will most likely make this trip ourselves. It is exciting and overwhelming thinking about working out all the details.

3 Years Old!

Oct. 20 we celebrated Luke's 3rd Birthday. This day was actually uneventful. The day before my Grandma had surgery and she was in the ICU so postponed the party a few days so there would be more time to enjoy it. We had brunch and enjoyed a couple hours together on Sat. morning. I can't believe he is 3 already. This year has gone so fast. His birthday was Thomas the Train. Everything he does is about trains. He loves them. Sometimes he wants to sit at the computer and watch Thomas the train videos on Youtube. I don't mean show I mean kids taping their real thomas the train tracks with the trains sitting on them. Really....The other kids are so great. Cole is almost half way through his Junior year. We went to our first College Fair the other week. That was weird and exciting. Shelby just finished her Freshman Volleyball season. She is doing great in high school and Piper is really busy with school and gymnastics. She also has a lead part in the church Christmas play. We will be looking forward to that. Dave is well and we are all enjoying the fall time in Illinois!

Our Homestudy is done. We sort of sat on it a few weeks for personal reasons, but finally finished all the forms. Now it will be translated by our agency and shortly sent to China. After that we wait for a Log In Date which is the beginning of the real waiting time. God is totally in control of the timing and we are just following through with our responsibilities.

There is lots to look forward to in the next couple months. I will be more diligent with postings. Thanksgiving, Christmas play, my brothers wedding, Christmas. Hope everyone enjoys these fun family times!

So Big!

Just a little update on Luke. He is having a great summer of "growing up" and learning lots of new things. He swims like a fish-almost by himeself. It's so great! We joke about taking him to the pool last summer in China thinking he was going to be scared and he just threw his head under without even flinching! He's jumping on the trampoline, hitting his baseball and going to speech every other week.

Just wanted to say Thanks to Orlando for the bike to practice on! The leg strength is almost there!!!!