Moses was adopted!

Hi all!
Well we are back to work after traveling 16 hours in a car, dancing the night away and watching one of God's greatest miracles take place this weekend! Phew...it makes me tired just thinking of the weekend we had. Thankfully all went off without a hitch! Everyone safely made it to and from PA (even Paige and Dylan...Dana you are to be commended for traveling with two little ones), the weather was beautiful, and we got to see lots of friends and family who we probably won't see until the holidays now! Here are some pictures from the special weekend:

Congrats Justin & Aly!!

Prior to leaving for PA this past weekend I recieved an email from the company we made our lifebooks through letting me know that they would be shipping earlier than we expected (we weren't supposed to get them until May 30th). On Monday they were already on our doorstep. Wow!! They are everything I had hoped for. The pictures look good and only one spelling mistake was found which I easily fixed with a pen. Tonight we got them ready to be mailed to the adoption agency and respective social workers throughout the state of Ohio.



During the car ride to PA I was able to do quite a bit of adoption reading.  I read bits and pieces to Aaron and we were able to discuss different topics which was nice. Sometimes after work we are so tired and already put in a few hours of adoption related work that we don't get to talk in depth about more personal issues. I've been loaning out all of my books from the library since buying them can get expensive but I have decided that there is one I will for sure be purchasing for our bookshelves: 20 Things Adoptive Parents Need to Succeed. First of all, there is definately more than 20 things noted in the book.  Secondly, the author was adopted herself which makes the book even better. She uses her own experience to share proven strategies and weaves moving narratives from other adoptive families into the pages. There is a fabulous appendix that provides helpful websites and other recommended books too! Check out the "light" reading taking place in the our household:

One of the topics she discusses is how to talk candidly with your child about her adoption, birth family, and adoption in general. Granted we will have awhile until we will need to really get into this but I found it to be reassuring that there are so many ways to go about doing so. This is an area that already causes some anxiety as it is such a personal part of their life and as parents you want to make sure to "get it right". However, she goes into detail about adding a spiritual perspective to the process by discussing the story of Moses. Many adopted people like to hear life experiences about other adopted people. As an adopted person, Moses had common adoption-related struggles (i.e. low self-regard, preference for isolation, poor choices in relationships, rage, and runing from his real purpose in life) and when adopted people hear these stories their reactions are amazing! I also thought this might be a nice teaching story for some of the young ones in our lives. I know many of our nieces and nephews are familiar with stories from the Bible and made a mental note that exposing them to the story of Moses might be a nice way of helping them to prepare for a cousin who was adopted.

In other news, we continue to complete our "trainings" and have been trying to complete at least 3 or 4 hours every other night. We plan to safe-guard our home this week and next for the homestudy coming up. Things are moving fast! I know we still have a long wait ahead of us but am looking forward to many of the projects around the house we will be doing to prepare for our baby!