School is COOL!

While we've still got little ones who think that, may as well go with it!!!

September was back-to-school month in all its glory and we are SO grateful that both our little ladies have so far been loving every bit! It was a month with lots of firsts and school related activities, book-ended with a sweet weekend visit from Mee-Maw and Grandpa in the beginning of the month and an apple picking adventure at the end.

Maelee talks about having the "best teacher" and has even become best buds with her previous nemesis from Kindergarten who is now in her class.  She is reading mystery chapter books with tiny print, writing her own little stories, and is thriving in the classroom setting so we are thrilled to watch her grow!  She's having fun with gymnastics and is taking an after school Spanish class and Science class this semester so it is a full schedule but we are appreciating the early school day as it gives more of the afternoon to enjoy!

Lilee took us a little by surprise with how much she has been eating up every minute of her 2-morning/week preschool program.  It's been a bit of a strange, bittersweet transition for me, but no tears were actually shed when she walked through the doors.  After a sincere, tight hug, she excitedly walked right into her "classroom," and went straight to the toy ducks on the floor to play.  Her class is called the "Ducks," after all. :) Her teachers are awesome and take loads of pictures so it has been so confirming seeing how much she just loves her school time! Even though that high-pitched, precious voice of hers hasn't changed much, her vocabulary has really taken off lately so it's been so much just conversing with her.  She is a riot!  Still loves to ham it up and make people laugh, and still our sweet cuddle bug.

Both girls have energy for days and keep us on our toes!!!

Now that I've written out a quick update on their happenings, time to show you in pictures!

SWEET mommy/daughter fro-yo date after meeting her new FIRST GRADE teacher the Friday before school began.

LOVED seeing Mandy and Holland that night for dinner at my folks' followed by more yummy goodness- gelato down the street!

Another sweet treat of a visit from Mee-Maw & Grandpa at the end of one of their cruise vacations over Labor Day weekend.

Sprinkling the "Ready Confetti" under the pillow before the big day!

It's here!

Annual quick "first day of school video." :)

BIG STUFF.

Happy girl.

Cute pic that Maelee's teacher got.

And loving her back-to-school ice cream celebration at Baskin Robbins with Nana & Pop-Pop and some of her pals from last year's class!

Grade #1!

Then Lilee gets ready with the confetti!!!

Like I said, she is now a "duck." :)

Can't get much cuter...

She was so thrilled to be like big sis and "go to school!"

 Some shots her teachers took.

After Lilee's first day, we took a walk down the block to surprise Maelee for lunch!

She was pretty tickled :)

And an ice cream celebration for Lilee's first day with neighbor pals, Kaia & Elaina :)

How sweet it is!

Taking in the Irish Festival in Shirlington Village.

More pics from the teacher of Lilee having a blast!

Grandparent's Day dinner at our place with Nana & Pop-Pop!

Our girls are SO BLESSED to have amazing grandparents!

Neighborhood buds.

The Townhome Crew.

Elaina, Kaia, and Xavi at Maelee's school's "Ice Cream Social" :)

Painting outside on one of the beautiful, warm days!

The last Saturday of September was a full one, and so sweet.  It began with a trip to the Dulles International Airport to greet a family from church coming home with their new son from an 11 and 1/2 week stay in Uganda.  It was pretty emotional for us as we imagined bringing our own child home from South Africa through that very same spot in however long from now...  It was a very special morning. 

We headed straight from the airport to an apple orchard about a half hour away from Dulles for our annual apple picking trip.  Let's just say... it wasn't our best experience yet...  It was a gray day but mainly, the trees were just incredibly picked over.  Maybe next year we'll make it somewhere before the end of September!  There may have been a few bad attitudes along with many bad apples, but we managed quite a bit of laughs, too, and chalked it up to "now we know for next year!"

Helping some friends color their "Welcome Home" poster before the big arrival.

Time to pick some apples!

We enjoyed most of the apples we got at least! :)

Later in the day (did I mention it was a full day?), Maelee and I went to a nearby park for the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra's "Fall Festival" where we ran into one of her classmates!
We missed out on most of the festivities but the girls loved their impromptu play date and I loved that I somehow captured this awesome shot of our girl in action!

Another happy shot from school.

And with best pal, Chloe, at Chloe's house this time!
Here mama was gracious to watch Lilee for me while we had one of our home study interviews.
These two are too much fun :)

And I'll call it at that for the month of September!  Plenty more pics below if you want to see even more.  Happy Fall Y'all!!!

Click on the link below for more pics from Sept!
pix.sfly.com/Tw05WEow

And some more adorable ones of Lilee at school!
https://pix.sfly.com/RHD28w

Dreaming of Child #3

Now that we are officially IN the process of adopting, rather than just dreaming of adopting, we figured it was time to put this journey into writing.  (LOTS of writing...)  It's been a journey a long time in the making, beginning with a desire placed on our hearts over 13 years ago.

Early on in our marriage, Steve and I talked about being open to adoption as one of the ways we'd like to grow our family.  We believe the bible is very clear that God passionately cares for the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned and fatherless, and that He desires for us to respond by caring for the marginalized as well.  While people are given many different passions and are called to respond in so many different ways, we believe one of the ways we've been given a heart to respond is by being the forever family to a child that needs one.

We began sponsoring a little girl from Sierra Leone during our first year of marriage and I'll never forget the moment we got our first letter and picture from her.  It had been a frustrating day (who knows why), but I remember seeing her beautiful, bright smile and having all those frustrations instantly melt away.  This little girl totally captured our heart and ignited a deeper desire to go from being "open" to adopt to hoping and praying adoption would be a part of our family's story the same way we hoped and prayed for our other children.

While we enjoyed talking about our future children, we were definitely in no rush to start a family in those early years so when the topic of kids came up, we'd normally say "we'd love to have a child, adopt a little girl from Africa, and have another child" as our ideal plan/dream.  When we finally figured the time was right to start a family (well, God decided even earlier was even better... haha), we were overjoyed to welcome Maelee in 2010.  We were living in NYC at the time and had no intention to leave anytime soon, so our "dream" evolved to envisioning having two children before adopting a third.  As much as we loved every moment of living in the Big Apple, it certainly didn't do our budget any favors.  We had learned enough about the process (and cost!) of international adoption to realize that adopting a child in NYC with two kids already filling our cozy one bedroom apartment probably wasn't going to happen.

After being beyond blessed by Lilee's birth in 2014, it was becoming more and more obvious that we couldn't responsibly sustain Manhattan family living that included hopes for another child in the near future.  So as much as we loved it and as broken-hearted as we were to leave it, after 8 years on the Upper East Side, it was time to move on. Being closer to all of our family, not to mention the incredible blessing of living within a few miles of my parents, in addition to connections we already had in the area and the draw of DC nearby, Northern VA was by far the obvious choice to relocate to.


It was also after Lilee's birth that we started wondering if we were simply meant to parent girls or perhaps we should consider adding a son to our family. But the desire to adopt from Africa was as strong as ever.  As soon as we moved into our current home which could accommodate a third child, we began researching international adoption more fully.  We attended an orientation meeting with one agency and had several phone calls with a few others that worked in different countries in Africa.

Speaking of different countries in Africa, despite there being roughly over 30 million orphans on the massive continent of Africa, very few countries there actually allow international adoption for various reasons.  One country is currently in the process of passing a law which would require prospective adoptive families to live there for a couple of years in order to adopt, and a couple of others limit adoptions only to children aged 8 or older.  We have always been encouraged to keep Maelee as the oldest (if you know our dear Maelee even the slightest, you would agree!:), which limits our options to a child aged 6 and under. During our initial search, South Africa seemed like the right counrty to pursue but as we were learning about the process last fall, we were discouraged by the in-country requirements.  We worried about how we would manage up to two months in another country given Steve's work and Maelee in school.  At the same time, we were being introduced to a domestic pilot program called "Foster-to-Adopt."

While we agree that there is nothing like a newborn baby, and we absolutely loved those sweet early days, months, and years with Maelee and Lilee, we also always imagined adopting a child that was past the baby/toddler years.  Our knowledge of domestic adoption was that our options would be infant adoption or foster care where we would potentially foster a number of children before a child would become available for adoption. Neither of these options matched our desires for our family, especially given our girls' personalities and dispositions so we assumed domestic adoption wouldn't be a possibility for us. So when we learned of the "Foster-to-Adopt" program which places children from the foster care system (who have already had parental rights terminated) with forever families, we were very interested.

After A LOT of prayer, we submitted our formal application to the pilot program at the beginning of this year, attended the required training in January, then began the massive home study paperwork.  It took us much longer than we anticipated to complete but we excitedly mailed in our packet at the end of June and were so thrilled to quickly learn that it was complete and we could expect a phone call in August to begin the home study.

Then, the phone call came on July 29th...

It wasn't the call we were expecting.  Instead of calling to set up the first home study appointment, we were being encouraged that we should probably start looking at other options for adoption unless we were open to children over age ten or with severe special needs.  Again, given our current family environment, we had to be honest with ourselves about the child we could realistically and adequately care for. As the program we applied for is still in the early stages, there are still many unknowns and they are finding that children in the age range that we believe would be the best fit for our family (and likewise we would be the best fit for) are not often available for adoption.  Younger children are typically adopted by their foster families, which is great, and we certainly didn't feel right praying that more children would need homes!  We were told that if we continued with the domestic foster-to-adopt program, we could anticipate a wait of at least three years before we could bring our child home.

While we understand that adoption is definitely more a marathon than a sprint, and we anticipated a lengthy wait with various bumps and turns along the wait, this was a road block we were not expecting. Once the initial shock wore off, we dove back into research and re-examined how we wanted to move forward.  We were drawn back to South Africa and decided to look a little deeper into our initial fears regarding the in-country stay (the time we'd actually have to be in South Africa in order to legally bring our child back to the States).  We got encouragement in both areas that were concerns of ours when we explored South Africa about a year ago and spent more time in some serious prayer.    

Bringing this (very) long first chapter of our story to a close, we switched over to apply to adopt from South Africa a few weeks ago and were very encouraged that much of our previous paperwork from the domestic program was able to transfer over.  So much so that we were able to go ahead and schedule the first home study interview!  For THIS Sat!  We are so excited to be moving forward.  We don't fully understand the major detour between our initial search into South Africa a year ago to being brought back there now, but we trust that God had purpose in all of the training, prayer, and study we had along the way.   He has been so gracious and merciful in providing so much peace and clarity as we pursue this new direction, even after we felt such confirmation in the direction we had been led before.  We are being reminded that God is more concerned over our hearts toward loving and caring for one of HIS children, rather than our decision in pursuing the specific child we bring into our home and the specific country they are coming from. 

We will be updating this blog along the way and can't wait to see what God has in store!