Closer and Closer

Every day I feel it...we are getting closer and closer to Olivia coming home!  I am so anxious to meet this little girl that has occupied our thoughts and prayers for the past months.  We are praying for that LOA from China...I remember with Hannah's adoption that things felt like they were really moving after that point!

We've decided after tons of deliberating to take Hannah with us to China.  There are a whole bunch of reasons and even though it may not seem like it, we really think it is the best option for our family.  I am excited and super nervous about how things will go taking her on that looooooooonnnnng flight!

We have made some major changes around our house this week, splitting up the kids into the two bedrooms and moving our bedroom somewhere else in the house.  This seems to be alleviating the pressure in our house so much as there is so much more room to play on the main floor!  I just love it even though it is making nights more difficult for the time being.

Yesterday we got great news - someone from our adoption agency is heading to China in a couple of weeks and she will be visiting with our Olivia!  We will get new pictures and video, and we get to send her a care package!  I am so, so thrilled.  I know she won't understand, but it is very special for us to get to send her something, and I also hope it helps her foster family in the transition ahead to see how much we love her and a little about us.  I can't wait to go shopping!

We are all a little sick at the moment, nothing major, but it has made me realize just how few times this winter we have been sick!  It used to be all the time, every week someone was sick.  Last winter was so difficult!  I am so grateful for our good health this winter.

It's early in the year but I am starting to think about school for next September and make some plans. It is fun and overwhelming and exciting and stressful and I'm just thankful for the opportunity to homeschool right now.  We continue to reassess and evaluate and discuss sending the kids to school but for our family right now this is just a great fit, so we press on in this direction.  It will be interesting to add in another little one (my eyes just got really big at the thought of it....) but I'm sure we will find our new normal after a while.  I am so ready for her to be here with us!

Blessed Beyond Measure

There really are no words for how full my heart feels tonight.  I am absolutely blown away by what God has done for us.  I am humbled, overwhelmed, astounded...it is just so crazy.

Three months ago we had a $14,000 need for our adoption.  We didn't know where it would come from.  This whole adoption has been so much more of a step of faith for our family than we have ever experienced before.  Truthfully, it was scary.  I like to plan, I like to know what is going to happen and how everything will work out.  This adoption has been the opposite of that in so many ways.  My faith has been stretched, and changed, and it has been deepened day by day as I have seen the hand of God at work in our lives.

He has done what only He could do.  He has provided everything we need in ways we never could have imagined!  It has been an incredible, amazing journey and I'm so glad we had this need so that we could see just how BIG He really is!

I came across this verse at the beginning of our adoption journey and it became my prayer:

"Help me, O Lord my God;
Save me according to
Your lovingkindness.
And let them know that
this is Your hand,
You, Lord, have done it."
Psalm 109:26-27

I feel like our need HAD to be big so that it could be so obvious - He is the only one who could meet our need!

How has He done this?

• Through friends and family who have donated to our adoption fund
• Through a $3000 matching grant from Lifesong that at this point is only $300 from being complete!
• Through a grant from our church's adoption ministry
• Through a refund from our home study agency because someone in China decided LAST YEAR to change post placement requirements for adoptions (and we had prepaid for post adoption visits for Hannah and Olivia!)
• Through a grant from JSC Foundation (we just heard today!!)
• Through an unexpected raise for Brad that totally came out of the blue
• Through my mom crocheting gloves and selling them to friends to raise funds for our adoption

He has blessed us in ways that will never be forgotten.  My heart is changed; my faith is changed.  

I just wanted to share one last thing.  At the beginning of this adoption right before we decided to adopt Olivia, a friend at church gave a lesson during Sunday School about the Israelite spies going into the land that God has said He would give to them (Number 13).  They came back and gave their report: it was good, like God had told them.  BUT...the people were powerful, and the cities were fortified and large, and the people were stronger, and the people were HUGE!  Humanly speaking, everything said they should not do this.  There was only one reason they should do it: God said to.

As I read over this passage over and over again, the question came to me:

Is that enough?

Is it enough when God tells me to do something, even if there is every reason in the world why it is a bad idea?  

As we wrestled with the thought of adopting again, there was a list (a long one!) of reasons why, humanly speaking, this was a bad idea.  Here's the list....from my journal :)

• Three little ones who are needy
• A small house
• Finances
• We're spread so thin!
• We're so tired!
• Leaving the kids for 2 weeks
• Olivia's medical condition could be serious
• Oh the paperwork!

And yet, as time went on it became clear to us that God was saying GO!  Bring her home!  And the question was...

Is that enough?  Is it enough that God says do it?

It was a big step of faith for us to say yes.  Honestly, there have been some really difficult days at the Hunt house over the last few months.  We have dealt with struggles and challenges with our kids (one in particular) that came out of nowhere and have pretty much knocked the wind out of us.  It has been hard in ways I cannot explain.  My list of why not got even longer!  I thought maybe this was a mistake.  I wondered why we said yes.

But tonight I sit here more convinced than ever of God's faithfulness.  He will not fail us.  I know this deep within me.  No matter what comes.  Even if her medical condition is something I can't imagine facing.  Even if adjustments are hard, for her or for our current kids.  Even if our house is full and loud and we are tired and stressed.  He. Will. Not. Fail.

He is enough.

Using the Space

If we ever get to move, closet space will be near the top of the list for things I will be looking for!  We have so few storage closets and it makes things a little difficult as we keep adding people (and therefore stuff!) to the house.  With another little one on the way and the addition of a bunch of new stuff for Christmas/birthdays, I decided it was time for another purging and organizing session!

The kids will all be sharing a room for a while until we can get another bedroom build in the basement, which means one closet for four kids!  Yikes!  I had already done a lot of sorting of the kids clothes and this is what the closet looked like before:

The bottom organizer was used to hold toys and a whole bunch of miscellaneous things were on either side.  The top shelf held sheets, blankets, and more miscellaneous things that couldn't seem to find a home.

I came across this idea on Pinterest and instantly knew it was perfect for us!  The closet is divided into four sections...each child could have a section to hang up their clothes and in the center were two six-cube organizers (12 cubes altogether) which meant that each child could have three bins. Perfect!  The goal was to have everything out of the dresser in the bedroom so that all the clothes were in the closet.  The bedroom is small and most of the kids toys are in there (a few in the living room).

We already had one six-cube organizer and with gift cards and waiting for a sale I was able to get another one without paying anything!  Score!  All we had to buy was one shelf, one long dowel rod (to be cut into four shorter sections to hang clothes on), hardware, and bins for the shelves.  Since the canvas bins were almost $6 each, I decided to check out the dollar store where I found these plastic bins for only $1 each!  They don't look as nice but I think they will hold up well to the kids pulling them in and on all the time.

The finished result:

Things I love:

• It is super easy to put the kids clothes away (and they are able to help me!).  We fold pants in half to go in the bins and t-shirts in half as well.  They each have a little blue bin for socks/underwear on the lower shelf.  
• The kids can all reach their bins and get themselves dressed easily (they did this before but often messed up everything in their drawers since the dresser was packed so full).
• Two of the kids can reach their hanging up clothes - before none of them could.
• There is room for some of the bigger toys and trucks at the bottom of the closet and it makes the bedroom look less cluttered.
• We are still using the dresser (for toys right now) and hope to get another bookshelf to organize the toys, but for now at least it stays clean and there is somewhere to put everything!

It has been fun finding ways to make our little house work for us and has been a good experience to get rid of clothes and toys, keeping only what we need.  I'm a big believer in "less is more" and I would rather have a few things we really like and use/play with than a house full of stuff we don't care about!

Now to fill up that last section with clothes for Olivia....eeeeeekkkkk!!!!

F*I*V*E

Tomorrow this little guy

turns FIVE!

He was one amazing four year old...

I can't wait to see what five will hold for him!

He is the most awesome little brother...

And a loving and compassionate big brother...

He lights up my world,

loves to learn like no child I've ever seen before,

is kind and sweet

and sometimes crazy!

He loves to climb

anything and everything,

loves to jump

and run

and yell :)

He's hilarious

and thoughtful

and smart

and I'm so glad he's mine!!!

Happy, happy birthday, Nathan!

We love you more than words can say!

The Best

It was, quite simply, the best birthday and Christmas ever.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened.

(Except that none of us got sick!)

The days were filled with laughter,

and snuggles,

and Lego,

and playing,

and movies.

It was fabulous and I am so thankful!

The boys playing the great Canadian game, Crokinole.

Hannah has been asking for new sunglasses for about four months

ever since our dog chewed hers up.

Every. Single. Day.

Who was happier about this present - her or me?  Hard to say!

A birthday spent with family and dear friends.  What a gift!

I treasure these moments!

On the Move! {Adoption Progress}

I've been waiting to share about some happening around here until they actually were happening...

...and now is that time!

A couple of weeks ago, I started to really feel convicted about how little I have been praying for Olivia to be home quickly.  The truth is, I was scared to pray for that because I knew that God could do it!  And I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with the idea of four.  Total selfishness, I know.  So I let things float along at whatever pace they went, not being too pushy, just kind of going with the flow.

Anyway, I was listening to a message from a women's conference and in it the speaker, Leslie Ludy, shared about their adoption and how they prayed it would go so quickly and then it did.  I was reminded of our own stories, of times when I know that God stepped in and allowed our process to go more quickly than it would have otherwise.  I knew I had not been doing all I could to get Olivia home.  So I prayed that day and asked God to step in, speed things up, and bring her home.  She needs to be home - she has been diagnosed with a serious medical condition and even though we hope it is not what has been diagnosed, we need to have her evaluated so that we can treat whatever is going on.

Not three hours later, my phone rang.  It was our adoption agency calling.  I had sent in our home study the day before so I expected that it was confirmation about that.  Instead, it was a conversation about the possibility of expediting Olivia's adoption because of her serious medical diagnosis.

Wow.

Ok then.  I was not prepared for that!  We learned about what we needed to do next, and we started to work on getting a letter from a doctor supporting our request to expedite.  We had filed our I800a with US immigration and thankfully when I called and explained that we were hoping to expedite, they bumped up our fingerprint date and we had that done earlier this week.  Finally, just yesterday, everything came together and I sent off all our documentation to USCIS along with a request to expedite in an email.

Less than two hours later, I had a reply: our expedite request has been APPROVED!

Wow again.

USCIS quotes I800a approval time as 90 days, so we have significantly reduced the time we will need to wait to bring Olivia home.  It has taken me a couple of weeks to get my head around the fact that it won't be next summer like I thought.  There have been a lot of sleepless nights - I find myself waking up at 3am and not being able to get back to sleep for hours.  There are just so many unknowns ahead and so many changes.  YES we chose this and YES I very much want her home!!!  But now that I have experience with this a little bit I know that it may or may not be an easy transition, and there could very well be challenges ahead.  I'm okay with that but if I am honest I still struggle with fear.  I know this to be true: whatever lies ahead, whatever medical challenges or attachment issues or sibling rivalry or lack of sleep may come, we will be okay because we are held safe in the hands of Almighty God.  We will not walk this journey alone.  I cling to that in the middle of the night when waves of fear wash over me and threaten to overwhelm me.  We will not walk this journey alone.

There is one other aspect to this change that could cause us to fear or freak out: money.  When we started this journey we made a plan for how to pay for the adoption.  That plan included having time to get our taxes back and many more months to save.  Its now looking like we will have a different timeline (although I still don't know how much longer we really have).  It is tempting to fear and worry about where we will get the money.  I am choosing instead to trust that God's hands are all over this, and He can and will provide what we need, when we need it.  I am excited to see how He works.  We have applied for several adoption grants but have yet to hear back.  We have set up a fundraiser website as family and friends had inquired about donating to our adoption fund.  We are so grateful for every donation that will help bring Olivia home!!  If you are interested in donating, here is the link:

Bring Olivia Home - Hunt Family Adoption

We are hoping our dossier will go to China very soon so that things keep on progressing with the adoption.  I'll keep you posted!  We thank the Lord for this special little girl who is soon going to be OURS!