New Leila Pictures!

What a blessing it is to have our dear friends in Niger right now (The whole Woods family of Erica, Thomas, Ella and Jacoby), and in Leila's orphanage all week! And I'm thanking God for technology, too! Without that I wouldn't see these sweet pictures until they returned, and now I get to see them in almost real time! Thank you Thomas and Erica!

Look at that pretty girl!

Coloring with Jacoby, Ella, Immanuel (the sweet boy in red stripes Erica and Thomas are trying to adopt) and another little one being silly with his picture on top of Leila's head.

Ella (in peach) is 5 (going on 6). Leila isn't much taller than her at 9.5 years.

Keep praying!

Daddy Day

There's no doubt in my mind I married the best man in the entire world for me and me alone. He's such a keeper, and he's proved that even more so as he's developed and grown into being a wonderful father. What a blessing his creativity, dreamer-attitude, encouraging words, free flowing affection and hardworking spirit are to our children. He encourages their faith, their dreams and their courage so that they will face life with gusto and courage knowing they are loved and strengthened by our one and only Savior. His children are seeing him live out his faith with incredible generosity and time invested in others' lives. His incredible patience with my antics, ideas for training our kids and my sometimes stressed out self is a priceless gift. I am blessed. 

He claims he had the best Father's Day weekend to date though I don't think I can take much credit for it. Saturday was spent on a large Angus farm picking out new cows for our growing herd with Doug (our farm partner) and Geoff's parents. We had a great adventure taking trips in the Gators (think farm-like golf carts) into the cattle pastures, only to be surrounded quickly by dozens of cattle. We were on a hunt for certain cows, so we ventured around looking at ear tags for specific numbers and felt we'd won a prize when we found them. We returned home, had lunch, the guys worked on the fence and put and won a bid on a tractor we've been needing for a long time. It was a big farm day! With Grandma and Grandpa in town, we were able to escape for an evening out to use some gift cards that had been waiting patiently in my purse for several months. A dinner at Bell Cafe followed by a movie in the theater called Belle (highly recommend it!) - we were quite satisfied and grateful to have some uninterrupted conversation at an hour other than 5-6am. 

After church on Sunday, we put the kids down for naps and ventured out on the 4-wheeler to work on some fencing. Well, actually, I sat on the 4-wheeler and he worked. I was simply there as a companion. Once the kids woke up we piled in the car for an evening at Busch Gardens. We had a great time with minimal lines and the Food & Wine Festival in high gear. We rarely eat while at Busch Garadens but on Father's Day, eating out one meal is a must for Geoff. So, we enjoyed some delicious food, kept the kids out way too late and decided we were ultimately ok with that decision since we just thoroughly enjoyed being with one another. 

So, here's to a wonderful man I am blessed to journey through life with!

Gifts from Mary-Michael.

These are her answers to questions when I asked. Most are right on point! Others? Well, not so much...

Dealing with the Unexpected

Isn't it good that nothing is a surprise to God? Our humanness is often shocked and surprised by things that happen, requests that are made that seem crazy - but God isn't. That gives us some peace during the ups and downs of adoption.

So, what's the unexpected? Well, somehow Pouhin is back at the orphanage. What in the world?! Hadn't The LINK received confirmation he had relocated to the Ivory Coast from the mission board that "oversees" the orphanage? Remember that post just a little while back? They were going to bring in 2 lay people to oversee things. Well, forget that for now. He's back. So, we are asking God to soften his heart and for him to be easy to work with.

In other news, we had our biometrics appointment on Tuesday, which is basically getting our fingerprints done at a USCIS center, which is part of our I600a paperwork. We were assigned to Norfolk on Tuesday, June 10 at 10am. The appointment took all of 10 minutes. I thought maybe they'd ask me questions or something but it was probably better I didn't have to be hooked up to a lie detector test and share how we didn't want to drive to the store Sunday night when we realized we were all out of diapers, so we put Frazier in a swimmie diaper and stuffed a burp cloth down the front of it. Yep, we did that. So, since they'll never know the dirty details, the federal government will continue to believe I'm a great candidate for a parent simply because I have no criminal record!

Here's a shot of our visit to get fingerprints. You know we took pictures every month of the pregnancy, and there's just not much to take a picture of during the adoption process except for paperwork. I guess that's why they call it a paperwork pregnancy!