Have a Little Look-See.....

at the future Morgan Princessa:

Due to arrive May 18th........maybe sooner!

The Rest of the Story

Warning: This is long.

The very same night that we moved the boys, we started working on priming the bedroom for it's new color. We had lots of cooks in the kitchen for this job but the boys were so excited to be helping that I couldn't say no.......at first. After three pairs of ruined pants and many brushes of primer in inappropriate places I nixed my three helpers and decided to finish after bedtime.

So, backing up: In December last year Bobby and I had really been praying for some direction regarding our adoption. In July of this year it will be 3 years since we started the process. Waiting that long had really begun to wear on my emotional stability. It's just a hard roller coaster to ride for that long. We received word via a very knowledgeable, reliable source, unrelated to our adoption agency,

that quote "if you are waiting on a referral of a girl, healthy, 0-3 years old from El Salvador, it's NOT going to happen". Apparently the government is not issuing certificates of adoptability to those children. Don't know why. Doesn't make sense. Big blow. We contacted our agency and had a meeting set up for the end of January.

Another pic of all the sorta helpers:

We headed out on an almost 8 hour drive to our agency to meet with the CEO. He confirmed what we had been told and spoke of all the uncertainty in adoption in ES. His wife, who is the head of our agency's domestic adoption program sat in on the meeting. She suggested that, even though they don't usually do so, that we put our name in the domestic hat and just see what might happen. I had already researched this option and am not joking when I say that 4 other agencies had told me, "Birthmothers do NOT choose families like yours (with that many biological kids)". Several would not even consider our application. My agency normally wouldn't, but since we'd been waiting so long they made an exception.

I (along with a very, very talented and dear friend), put a scrapbook together of our family. Our book was sent out by our agency at the first of February. We didn't share that we were exploring this option. We just wanted to keep it to ourselves for the time being because we knew the chances were slim and we didn't feel like explaining it, to tell the truth.

In the meantime, still living expectantly on God, my mom, my sister and I finished the painting. (This pic was taken yesterday so I've obviously added some extra things.......like curtains ,a rug, and a chandelier that I was told EVERY girl needed in her bedroom).
On February 9th and 10th my email inbox was flooded with friends from my bible study and church group sending well wishes, prayers, and encouragement regarding our adoption. I thought Dr. Phil was going to show up because I was convinced someone had set up an intervention for me. He never showed though and I was thankful. If I were going to be on television for an intervention I would like to have a cute, new outfit. I didn't. So it worked out for the best.

Her little bathroom is now pink and this is a really bad picture of it:
Friday, February 12 was just as normal as any other day. I had to be at two places at once since the boys were having Valentine Parties in their classrooms. I started out in Cade's room and then after about 30 minutes made my way back down to Grant's room to monitor his sugar intake. I kept hearing a strange noise and then it registered......my phone. My phone is ringing that special ring that I set it to just in case one of these years my agency actually calls me with some type of information. My phone has NEVER rung it's special ring. NEVER. Until this day. I answered quickly and I'd be lying if I said my heart wasn't beating as fast as it was when I won the blue ribbon for fastest sprinter in the fifth grade, or if I said there was no way my pits were sweating. It was my agency with "the call".......a birthmother had chosen our book. What? A BIRTHMOTHER HAD CHOSEN OUR BOOK!! I may have said, "Shut your mouth!" or "Shut up!" Whatever I said wasn't a nice thing to say to the woman who is calling to give you great news! She didn't seem offended.

I then cried, in the hallway of my son's school, like someone had just shot my puppy. I couldn't believe it. After all the negative feedback, after all the neigh sayers, after all the waiting. Our family was picked. God's fulfilling his promise. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
And, just to add a little more praise where praise is due: Bobby and I had prayed specifically that a hispanic woman would choose our book. We had been picturing our daughter with brown skin and brown hair for so long we couldn't imagine anything else. I had asked Bobby, "What if they give us a white baby?" He said, "White baby? I've never thought about having a white baby." Which cracked us both up since we are, in fact, white!

And just as God would have it a Puerto Rican woman chose us....and her baby is fathered by a man from Honduras. 100% hispanic, just as the desire of our hearts.....one beautiful, newborn, Hondurican baby girl!! (Don't look up Hondurican. I made it up. But I feel certain that I like the way it sounds and I may just coin it as a new nationality.) Yeah for some pink for this testosterone laden family! Looks like come May the look of this family is going to be forever changed!

Stay tuned....this story might not be over just yet :) Next up: Mission Trip posts. It takes a person a long time to sift through 2,500 photos in order to blog about them!

Ahoy Matey!

February 6th also brought about big changes for Little Buddy. Being that he is a nocturnal Chatty Charlie, (unbeknownst to him), he scored a room all to himself. What used to be Grant's pad is now his pseudo-ship for pirate play!

Gone is his twin bed with railings on the side. He's moved up to a full size bed with the ever looming capability of being fallen out of! He was pumped! One thing he was not ready to let go of was the rocking chair. I asked him if I could leave it out and his reply was, "Well, I guess you could.......but no. I'm going to go ahead and keep it. You like rocking me."
I found an old treasure map and a ship's anchor to complete his decor. I've had a pirate picture on order for the last month and it's yet to arrive. I'm praying that I'm not getting hoodooyed. 
Rhett "lubs" his new room. The changes have not interrupted anyone's sleep cycles or anything. It's brought about some confusion when getting out of the bathtub because for a couple of days everyone was running to the wrong underwear drawer. Those problems have since cleared up!
Little Buddy's bffs like their new space as well. What's a new pad if you can't share it with your friends?
Tomorrow I'll peek into the changes in Cade's old room. Yummy. Those changes are exciting!

Expectant

This post is late in coming.....but such is my life lately. I feel like I've been two steps behind in everything that I plan to do. I've sent my son to a birthday party with NO gift, forgotten to pay my mother's day out tuition (although that's no shocker being that my mind still doesn't register the due date without the handy "pay now" sign taped to the door), left wet clothes in the washing machine for days and then wondered why I had no clean underwear..... My mind. It's been on hiatus.

Anyhoo, January brought some changes here at the Morgan Casa. In the midst of a truly wonderful bible study, God sent me a strong conviction about my attitude regarding our adoption. His question to me: Why do you doubt? Why are you living with no hope? That's when I made a decision: I am going to live expectantly! I'm going to fully expect that God is going to finish out the work that He's started in this family. 

As of February 6th, expectant living looks like this:

Yeah, yeah. Not the picture you were thinking of I'm sure. That my friends is a picture of two brothers now sharing a room. I gave Cade the option of choosing: room to yourself, or share with a brother. He picked share. Then he picked Grant.
The consensus was that Little Rhetters does too much talking. It's the truth. Cade and Grant were overjoyed to move into their new quarters as bunk mates!  

After I shot down the Star Wars bedding, both settled on having a sports themed room. That worked out well being that the local Tarjay had several accessories that went well with the decor.
I must say that my request for this post was just ONE normal looking picture. Now that you've perused all of the shots taken you can see that "normal" just really isn't in this family's vocabulary. That's okay. Most of the time normal just really isn't much fun!

Stay tuned for Little Buddy's room.......and more of this story!

On A Mission

At the time of this post our mission trip begins in exactly 36 hours! Last night we had a quick little get together with some of the team to do some packing. Amanda P. was stoked about being there :)

We had tons of donations from our Sunday School class as well as my mom and dad's church. We packed 60 boys watches, a gagillion girl's hair accessories, girls and boys underwear, handmade blankets and birthcloths, and a few pairs of stray shoes in this box. 

Bobby was in charge of weighing the boxes. He and I clearly didn't agree on how items needed to be packed......I wanted to place small items together in ziploc bags. He preferred to just pile things in willy nilly with the "git er done" man attitude. Needless to say, I let him do that and then when he walked away I put things in ziplocs. Deep inside he thanked me for it later when we had to move some items around......deep, deep inside. He may or may not have referred to me as "Packing Nazi" once or twice.

Here's our box of fun: Jump ropes, playdough, craft sticks and lots of diecuts, coloring books and some things Bobby picked out- wiffle balls and bats, baseballs, and glo-sticks. Have you ever seen a sad kid with a glo-stick? Me neither.
Next our box of toiletries and randomness: bowls, neopsporin, q-tips, cups, deoderant, soap, and toothpaste (all nicely packed in ziplocs, might I add).

We racked up with some shoes. All the boys will be twinkie-dinkie-doo with their almost converse shoes on. Piled under those are tons of girls shoes. We should have enough for every child to have a pair. God will have to work out the sizes because we just bought what we could find.
I didn't take a picture of our fifth box. It's a box-o-pads. And really, who wants to come to this blog and look at a bunch of pads? Here's an interesting fact though: A packed to the hilt crate of pads weighs just a hair over 25lbs. Now if you're in some kind of random knowledge contest you'll surely win with that tid bit of information.

So, 36 more hours until plane boarding, 60ish hours until we debut at the orphanage and tackle our first major task.... the de-lousing of 100+kids. If my hair looks a muck in all my pics when I get back it's because I've greased it in tea tree oil to ward off critters. If Bobby is bald it means the tea tree oil didn't work.

It is very likely, if I can pull it off, that my crate will look like this on the way home:

If there is a hand visible it means that the medication wore off before we made it all the way home. Also, the visible hand will also likely mean that you can catch my picture on America's Most Wanted or CNN News "American Missionary Kidnaps Child"......wait. Didn't we finally just quit hearing that one?? In any case, I'll try to keep things legal. Thanks in advance for your prayers for our team!!

Drivin'

Grant's favorite birthday present has been tearing up the streets......well, the streets of his mind. He's already been talking about how he could take his car to the pool and only, IF ONLY, it would be frozen over, he could drive it right across the water.

He picked out one of his most loved sleeping partners, so loving and thoughtfully named, Black Bear, to be the sole driver of his prized wheels. I can't decide if Black Bear's facial expression shows happiness or frustration. 
I find it quite ironic that this is his most prized pastime these days being that I personally bought him two remote control race cars for Christmas that never made it out of the package and were returned to the store without a second thought as to where they might be. As of today, I've used a total of 12 batteries not counting the one's that were in it when he got it. This might be a good time to remember to use my Duracell coupons. 

We All Survived!

Grant was up at 5:45 this morning because the thoughts of his spend-the-night- birthday party were inhibiting his sleep. His teacher informed me that he was high on excitement the entire day. I only had to hear "are my friends coming yet??" approximately 80 times between the hours of 3 and 5pm.

Lucky for me, 5pm finally rolled around and after a few rings of the doorbell all the party players were present and the fun began! First stop: pizza eating and an impromptu spelling contest. After a brief conversation lull, one bud piped up with "Does everybody know that I can spell railroad?"  That just gave me a giggle....

This is how crazy a 6 year old slumber party can look:
I wrangled the boys for a moment of present opening but couldn't contain them long enough to sing Happy Birthday or even eat cake for that matter. It was fine with me being that they were all ready dosed up on sugar from their Valentine parties at school.
They did settle for a little bit of popcorn and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. After that the real fun began!
How about a little wrestle-mania!! It was at this point in the party that I could really figure out whose idea it was to have 4 boys spend the night- Bobby or Grant? It cracked me up when the boys came upstairs and asked Mr. Bobby to play with them. Can you even see Mr. Bobby in this pic??

This picture makes me smile every time because Grant is totally laughing his head off.

Wrestle Mania will always be one of the boys' favorite memories I'm sure. This buddy's mom said that's all he talked about when he got home and she had no idea what it was!
Here is the last group shot of the night. I wish I would have had a camera to snap a picture of the faces of my three night owls when I entered the room at 1215am with my serious face on and separated the chatty charlies. It would have been priceless memorabilia! 
I know this slumber party created a lot of whiny boys on Saturday but it was good for a thousand laughs and smiles on Friday night! Happy, happy birthday, Grant!!