A New Adventure: An Announcement

Oh my goodness! Can I just tell you how busy we have been? It's a rhetorical question, I'm gonna tell you whether or not you give me permission. We've been super busy. I suppose I won't go into detail and list off all the things that have made us busy. Not that I'm complaining (okay maybe I am just a little bit) but I am a person who likes to take one thing at a time, get half done and move onto the next thing. Being busy is just not that conducive to me being a procrastinator and being able to read whole books in one weekend.

Remember last month when I said that I would like to lead a more simple life? Well I can tell you right now that simple life will probably never happen. I know by now that most of you think that our (my husband's and mine) big announcement is that I'm probably pregnant, well you would only be partially right. The big announcement is.....we are ADOPTING a child from South Korea! At least we hope to adopt a child from South Korea, we might get swallowed up by all the paperwork to never be heard from again.

We have started the paperwork process and hope to get that completed in the next 2 months. Then we will have a home study where we are asked all kinds of personal questions and someone comes to "inspect" our house(eeek!). After our home study we wait, and then wait a little bit more before a child is referred to us. Then we have to come up with a massive amount of money if we accept the referred child. After we accept the referred child he's ours, only we have to wait some more before we can go and bring him back to the States.

I'm referring to our child as "him" as the child referred to us will most likely be a boy around the age of 9 months when we finally arrive home with him.

There are still many unknowns for us like MONEY. We cannot afford the hefty price tag on our own. We will be applying for grants, doing some fund raisers, praying and probably a little bit of begging and pleading. But I do want all of you to know that both my husband and I feel 100% confident that this what God has in store for us. We know that He will provide the money even though we cannot seem to comprehend how.

We are already praying for our child. We do not know if he is born yet, or if he has even been conceived. We are praying for him, his birth parents and his foster parents. We are praying that he will be healthy and that his birth mom will have a good pregnancy. We are also praying that he will have loving foster parents who will be attentive and see to his needs. We are praying that we might be a testimony to his foster parents when we go to South Korea to meet our little one for the first time.

I plan on sharing more information, especially fund raising info, in near future. In the meantime we would appreciate your prayers.

Aha! Ahhh!

So here is some other exciting news! Awhile ago I was asked to film an Aha Moment for the Mutual of Omaha. I was very nervous about going in there and just being a blubbering idiot. It seemed to come out okay although I totally forgot to mention my blog address, that is how the ad agency for the campaign found me, and to mention anything about my faith in Jesus Christ. Yep, I totally blew it on that aspect. I really had good intentions and I kind of played out in my head what I would say. However, when the actually filming began my mind went blank. You can tell in the video where they had to edit out my really long pauses.

I got an e-mail form the ad agency handling the campaign letting me know I was selected for voting. Here is what the e-mail said:

"Congratulations! Your story has been selected as one of the semi-finalists. Your aha moment will appear alongside 74 others where visitors to the site will have the chance to vote for their favorites.

The first round of voting will begin on October 1st and continue through October 15th. After the first round, the top-25 vote getters will win an ipod Nano and move on to the final round of voting, which will begin on October 18th and end on October 31st. Check the website on October 18th to see which moments made the top-25. The top-10 favorite aha moments will be featured in Mutual of Omaha’s 2011 nationwide TV ads, which will begin airing early next year."

Here is the deal, I want you to vote for me. (You can do that here.*) I don't necessarily feel the need to be in the top 10 and be in the commercial because I didn't mention my blog in my video so really not going to build that much traffic to my blog, although you never know. What I really want is to be in the top 25 so that I can win an i-pod to raffle off and put the money from the raffle into our adoption fund. (Doesn't that sound like a good idea? I can't take credit for it, it was my husband's.) Please, please vote for my video. I believe you can only vote once a day, so vote today,then tomorrow and the day after that...


*Their website seems to be having some trouble, just refresh your browser and you should be able to vote.

Random Russian Remembrance: Nightmare Bathrooms

I have nightmares about bathrooms. This is probably going to sound strange to some people but when I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I literally have a nightmare about a bathroom of some sort. Last week it was about peeing in a cup at the doctor's office. In my nightmare the bathroom was open to the waiting room and it was a disgusting bathroom, meaning it wasn't clean at all. Most of my bathroom nightmares revolve around the bathroom not being clean.

I think all this has to do with the bathrooms I encountered in Russia and most notably Sevastople, Ukraine. The bathroom at the Panorama Museum of Sevastople is a little building outside the museum. At least I think that was the museum bathroom. I'm not sure because this was out of the way and a good 100 yards from the actual museum. A group of us girls had to go, me being the oldest took charge and found this building. I would like to note that I was the only one who did not speak Russian at the time. I'm not sure why a group of 13 year old Russian girls just followed me blindly to this building.

Upon entering the building it was clear that there was no electricity. There were also no windows. It was also apparent by the smell that it was indeed a bathroom. There were at least 4 open rooms, one straight ahead with another behind it. The room straight ahead had benches and looked kind of like a locker room, at least that is all we could tell from the dim light from the open door. Off to the right was the toilets, well, the holes in the ground where you do your business, not actually toilets. Each hole was separated by a wall, there were no doors. Not that it mattered it was really too dark to see anything.

There was trash everywhere. We were stepping carefully hoping not to trample on anything that moved. Beyond the toilet room there was another room. But it was too dark to tell where that led or what was in it. There was also some movement going on in that room. I would like for you to take this moment and imagine five 13 year old girls and their leader (me) trying to go to the bathroom very quickly before anything came out of that back room to attack us. There was a lot of 13 year girl screams, then a little nervous laughter, then more screams. And to top it all off, we couldn't actually see the holes in the ground where were supposed to go.

I had my camera with me and wanted to use the flash so that I could at least see where were going and to get a picture of the nightmare bathroom. The girls begged me not to, which I'm sure was wise. They did not want to see what was beyond the toilet room. As I type this my heart rate is going up and I am imagining the fear I felt, which was probably greater than the girls since I lead them into this mess and I was farthest away from the outside door. I had actually positioned myself this way just in case something did come out of that other room and I had to be the one to stop it and the girls could get away. Yes, this bathroom was that scary, think horror movie scary.

I was the last one to go, I made sure the girls were done before I went, and before I knew it they had all left me in there ALONE! They all just ran out of there before I could finish, five 13 year old girls running, screaming as they went out of the most terrible bathroom known to man. And they just left me there ALONE! It took me about 10 seconds to run out behind them. I know that I had stepped in, ummm....something really gross. After making it out the front door I took off my shoes and just rubbed them all over the grass trying to get off whatever it was that I stepped in. Then I used an entire bottle of hand sanitizer all over my feet and my hands.

Now you know why I have nightmares about bathrooms.

Overcoming Rejection

I once heard that man's greatest fear is rejection. I don't know if this is true or not, but what I do know is that it is one of my greatest fears. I struggle with this fear everyday. I seriously just want everyone to like me and like everything that I say or do. I know it's kind of ridiculous and unrealistic. Sometimes I will not take a risk becuase the fear of rejection pops up.

Whenever I feel this way the Lord brings Isaiah 41:9,10 to my mind.

You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth,
And called from its remotest parts
And said to you, 'You are My servant,
I have chosen you and not rejected you.
Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.'

Whatever the situation or circumstance I know that my Father will never reject me!

I want a Scooby Doo Band-Aid!

Maybe you've noticed that there hasn't been any posts in the two and half weeks, or maybe you haven't. I wish I could say that I have a good reason, but most of it is just plain old ordinary laziness and procrastination. The other part is I've been a bit under the weather and have been on some pretty powerful drugs. I'm better now, by the way.

Last Saturday evening my husband and I decided that he should probably take me to the emergency room. (I'm not going to tell you why, so don't ask. Let's just say that you don't need to know everything about me and I really don't need/want to tell everyone everything about my life, and I'm sure you would prefer that anyway.) I was in some serious pain and the doctor said I could have some pain medication via the IV port they nurse miraculously got in my arm; I have deep veins that like to hide from nurses with needles. The doctor assured me that it would ease the pain in a matter of minutes. An hour later I was still in pain. I also had significantly less blood as well since the nurse took about 12 vials of blood.

The doctor came in to give me my lab results an hour and a half after the first course of pain meds. He asked me if I was still in pain. YES! After an exam and some signing of paperwork the doctor said I could have two shots of pain meds, but they would take an hour to work, but they're more powerful than the one given by IV and they would last about 12 hours. Umm, yes please.

After another 30 minutes the nurse came in and told us we could go home after she gave me my shots of pain meds. I started to roll up the sleeves on my hospital gown and she looked at me and smiled. She told me to stand up and turn around, these shots go in your bum. What?! Really? Tetanus and hepatitis, and even flu shots go in the arm. Maybe she thought I didn't have enough muscle on my arms to handle such shots, I assured I did. She was not having it.

I got up and asked her if I could at least have a Scooby Doo band-aid like they gave us as kids when we had to get shots in the butt. She thought I was joking, I was serious. I would've settled for Sponge Bob. She wasn't the most gentle and now I have a couple of bruises and I didn't get a cute band-aid :( On the bright side one of the shots was morphine and 20 minutes later I was blissfully unaware of my surroundings.

VACATION!!!...is over :(

Why does time leading up to a vacation seem to s l o w d o w n? And why does the moment you are on vacation time seems to speed up? Sigh, I guess that is something we all have to deal with (unless you are a weird person and you don't take vacations).

We were on vacation last week, in case you hadn't guessed. This year we went to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my husband's family; all of the family. There were 10 adults and the one and only grandchild. I'm sure Sean and Cong will remedy that soon, I hope, because we will not be the ones to give that sole grandchild some cousins.

We left last Saturday and spent a week up on the Keweenaw Peninsula. If you are wondering where that is at, it's at the very tip top of Michigan on Lake Superior. The weather was mostly pleasant, although there were a few days that were extremely windy resulting in me having an allergy attack. But don't worry, even though I stayed inside all day on Wednesday I was able to read most of a 600 page book. I didn't feel the least bit guilty for doing nothing all day, I love vacations.

We stayed in a 4 bedroom cabin at Gitche Gumee Bible Camp and enjoyed the services and the food at the camp. You can't go wrong with homemade bread at every meal. My hips and thighs seemed to like the homemade bread a lot, I gained about 4 pounds this year. Last year was worse, I gained 8! My husband's family has been going to this camp for 40+ years, but this was one of the few times the entire family got to go.

I would like to say that we took fabulous pictures and that they are attached to this post. However, I think that you will be disappointed to know we really didn't take that many pictures. I am a terrible picture taker, meaning I just don't take them. My husband is a little better and the 7 pictures that were taken was when he had the camera. Below is the best one of the 7. Isn't it just beautiful? You might also notice a smattering of color in the trees, they were beginning to change into their Autumn hues.



We arrived home on Friday and went to go pick up the dog at the pet hotel. Here she is enjoying some play time with the other dogs. We got her home and she slept for about 12 hours. On Saturday she got up to go outside, came back in and ate some food. She then slept for about another 12 hours. I think she had a good time playing with all the other dogs.



Now it's over and we are back to our jobs and reality, counting down the days till our next vacation. At least Labor Day is just two weeks away!

A Simple Life

I have decided I hate being busy. I am not one of those types of people that has to be involved in a lot of different things, going this way and that way all the time. I always wonder how it is that people that seem to always be occupied with an activity never get exhausted. Or, maybe they do get exhausted and I just never observe them in that state.

I used to be that type of person, you know the busy one. I started to become the busy type when I was in my junior year of high school. I was home schooled and by that time in my high school career I really had finished up most of the requirements for graduation. I had just 3 classes left to do; Science and English for my junior year and then just another year of English for my senior year. I also took 4 different music classes at the local high school. I started working full time as well hanging out more with my friends in the evening. I was busy to say the least, but I enjoyed it. I think this was because of my new found freedom of being 16. I was able to pretty much go where ever I wanted as long as I was home by midnight (even on school nights) and I told my parents where I was going and whom I was going to be with. My senior year was pretty much the same.

When I got to college I started out by working 32 hours a week as well as taking 21, yes 21, credit hours. As a requirement of my major (voice) I also had to practice voice 10 hours a week. Plus there was the social aspect of college as well. It is no wonder that by the end of my freshman year I was exhausted. And I don't mean just tired all the time, which I was, but there were days when I literally could not get out of bed because my body would not let me. I had to learn to scale back and not be as busy. My sophomore year was more manageable with only working 25 hours a week and taking 12 credit hours.

After my sophomore year I did not return to college. I really just wanted to work for awhile and since I am prone to being a workaholic this worked out well for me. I ended up working three jobs, one full and two part time. You would think that I had learned my lesson from college, but I did not. It wasn't too long before I was just exhausted.

When I went to Russia I decided that I would make it a point to take one day off a week. When you are in full time ministry this is actually something that is hard to do. But I was determined. I figured I would be better used if I wasn't exhausted all the time. Every Saturday I unplugged the phone, slept till noon, and generally did nothing most of the day. This really spared me from getting too exhausted.

I should probably note that when I get exhausted I'm not just tired, I literally cannot stand or sometimes even sit up. If I do attempt this I will half faint, I know it sounds kind of silly but a doctor did tell me that is what it is called. Half fainting is like fainting only one does not lose consciousness. I kind of think it would be better to all the way faint because then I wouldn't feel myself hit the floor, because that is not fun. I think the record so far for me half fainting in one morning was 14 times. I know you are gasping right now. I assure you that after about the 10th time it was kind of comical.

I tell you all this because this year has been busy, very busy. I also have been reflecting more lately and have come to the conclusion that I want a more simple life. I do not want to be doing things, going here and there, just for the sake of doing them. I also do not want to be doing things just because I cannot say no (which I really have a hard time doing sometimes). I have decided that I like things simple. I like going home to my house after a day of work (at one job) and sitting down to dinner with my husband. I like putting on my pj's the moment I get home in the evening. On Saturdays I like sleeping in and not doing anything. I like to sit on Saturday mornings and sip my coffee while reading a book. As I have gotten older I have discovered my limits, both physical and emotional.

I have now decided to start a journey of leading a more simple less hectic life. I'm not sure what that will look like. I know that I want to get rid of some things within our home we really have no need for. We have 25 boxes of stuff that we packed up when we thought we would be buying a new house. That was a year ago and we have yet to really need anything out of those boxes. As I continue along this journey I will be sharing more about leading a more simple life.

What do you think? Are you leading a busy hectic life? Or do you think that I am crazy for wanting a less busy life? You can be honest and tell me I'm crazy. :)