A Difference

One thing that I've been thinking about is that everyone in this world has something to offer. One might look at all the good to be done and rate it in order of importance. I think that is something that is completely inaccurate. Everyone gives in different ways. Adoption is not, nor should it be everyone's mission. Donating money is not, nor should it be everyone's mission. Volunteer work is not, nor should it be everyone's mission. You get the idea. There's too much out there to do for everyone to be expected to do it all! Some times the smallest things can cause the greatest good. I think of examples in my own life. Things that could seem small to some, but were huge to me.

I will never forget when we first moved to Idaho 9 years ago. When we got there, even though we knew people, I still managed to feel alone. I was 9 months pregnant, had 2 children ages 1 and 2, was staying in a temporary apartment for what we were told we could only have for a few weeks, and trying to get acclimated. I wasn't sure if this was where I wanted to be. Then one day at the grocery store a stranger was simply friendly to me. It was enough to totally change my spirits and make me feel great about our move and I never looked back. This person I am sure has no idea of the affect they had on me. But it was a great blessing and something I will always be grateful for.

Those little things mean so much!

When we decided to adopt a second child from Ethiopia, our financial reserves were almost gone. Because of my oldest sister and her husband's financial generosity we were able to move forward and pay for that second child referral. I hope she isn't mortified of me mentioning this because I know she did it without any desire for reward or praise. But if it weren't for their help, it's possible we would have missed out on the chance to get Hana! Which the thought itself rips my heart out! Their help was so generous, and so profound in our lives and the life of our Hana. I jokingly tell them Hana is 10% their daughter now. Which I hope they remember when it comes time to pay for her wedding. :)

Maybe a kind word, or a note is the thing that actually saves someone from suicide? You never know. I love the scripture that talks about the body (of Christ) and how every single part of the body (member) is vitally important. This makes more sense when you are sick, or you lose the functioning of the smallest body part. Have you ever done something like smash your thumb? And then when your thumb was something you could go weeks without ever thinking about, you suddenly realize how life without it working right is quite difficult?

I also think of Helen Keller. She was both blind and deaf. If you compared what she accomplished in her life alongside what many people in this world have done, you wouldn't think it was a big deal. But the fact that she did what she did with her limited capabilities, has made a huge impact on thousands upon thousands of people.

We all have different resources. We all have different lives and circumstances. That's why comparing yourself to others can never be done fairly.

Everything good you do, no matter how small or big you think it might be, is IMPORTANT. It makes a DIFFERENCE!

I hope and pray that I never make anyone feel that they are not good enough or aren't doing enough. If I have, I am so sorry! The life of those around me are such a vital part of my happiness. Just your association with me makes a difference in my life alone. Thank you. Keep it up.

Make someone smile.
Help someone out.
Hug your kids.
Tell someone you are thankful for them.
Give what you can. Whatever that is.

Everyone has a different mission in life. Find it and love it. My mission is no better than yours. I guarantee it.

Blog Change

I was blog surfing today and found a couple of really inspiring blogs. (Thanks Nina & Em!) I have gotten a large amount of help in my personal life from visiting random blogs that discussed various topics that concerned me at any given time. It got me thinking about my blog here. And other people's blogs. It seems a blog defines a person in a round-about way. Whether we realize it or not. Blogs typically talk about the same kind of things, or follow a similar vein of ideas or purposes. And as a result, you associate those topics or feelings with that person. Which I think is totally fine. For instance I love love LOVE visiting Jespy's blog for the purpose of entertainment, and a really good belly laugh that brightens my day. (Thank you Jenny! What would I do without your happy medicine???)

I think my blog barely touches on some of the things that occupy my thoughts and concerns most of the time. In an effort to not be judged or not to be too personal, I feel like I can't be me some times. So it's kind of taken the joy out of blogging. And I know some people that actually DO care, have missed that. I'd like to get that back. There may be people that are put off or annoyed by me. And as much as I care about them and what they think or feel, I don't know how to fix it. So I don't want to let that determine how I blog anymore. Nobody HAS to come here. Nobody HAS to read this. Nobody HAS to agree with me. I do want people to come and I do want people to appreciate it. But not to the point where I'm walking on eggshells here. I'm ready to move on I guess you could say and whoever wants to come along, that's great!

I want to organize my blog a bit differently among the things that matter most to me; as well as the topics that seem to be getting the most hits, (like miscarriage and adoption.) I know there are many people (my counter is currently over 25,000 visits,) who come here to read about different things and I want to make that a bit easier to navigate. So I'm gonna start working on that now. You can do that easier now with the tabs above. I sincerely hope you enjoy.

This guy is my hero

I've watched this over and over again and it never gets old. So inspiring!

Little Updates

It's been a month since I've posted. Goodness, this blogging thing is getting harder for me as times goes on. Life has just been very busy. All with good things of course, but BUSY.

Just a couple of things here.

Celeste was mentioned in an article on the cover of the local newspaper! The article is about our Serving With Smiles humanitarian group for kids. I will just type here the little blurb about her here:

"The blog website administrator is an 11-year-old named Anna Celeste, whose mother is one of the group leaders. Anna is responsible for posting updates about the SWSSS group to the website. As she writes, she does so from her own perspective which brings a fresh approach to the stories..."

So cool. Now maybe I can get her to go on there more and do some more posts that have her fun writing personality in them. That's been a bit hard to get her to do lately. Her first post was really great, but since then, she just isn't in to it.

Also, on an entirely different topic...

We got our court dates for our Ethiopian kids! But I must say that as excited as I was to get the dates, I was disappointed and shocked by the lateness of the date. We aren't sure why we were assigned such a late date, and there isn't anything we can do about it. But we are excited to have the date and to start making our travel plans!

The court date is Feb. 1st. Which means we should probably be heading over there around January 28/29ish. Just as a reminder, this court date is not our trip to pick up the kids. You do that when you go for your Embassy hearing which isn't scheduled until you've passed court. Those Embassy hearings I have been told are typically 6-8 weeks after your court date. That is when you pick up your kids. Which means, we are looking at bringing them home end of of March'ish. Here are a couple of new photos they sent us recently.
In these last updates they told us that Hana is the same: happy, energetic and loving. And Andualem is smiling more, happy and feeling grateful that there is a family that is concerned about him.
I can't tell you how excited we are to meet these kids in the flesh and make them part of our family!

Jonah

I am so proud of myself Jonah! I He has earned his Arrow of Light award. It was a lot of work! And I he earned it several months early.
At the ceremony we were asked to give a little presentation about him and how he has displayed the various values Cub Scouts hopes to teach. As I wrote these up, I actually got emotional because Jonah really has come so far in the past 5 years. Looking back, I am not sure I would have been able to envision him accomplishing achieving Arrow of Light and graduating from Cub Scouts. I also would have had a terribly difficult time being able to point out any examples of him displaying the following values. He still has his challenges, but I'm so thankful for his progress! He's a really good boy.

Here's what we said at his ceremony:
1- Wisdom- Jonah shows wisdom in thinking about the things he wants and planning ahead on how he will work for them, or make them happen.
2- Courage- Jonah's courage has increased this past year as he has overcome some fears and pushed himself to do things that he used to be afraid to try.
3- Self-control- We are so proud of how much Jonah has grown in this area. He handles himself in a much more mature way. He is also very good to come home from school and immediately without being asked, get his chores and homework done before he does anything else, which exhibits a lot of self-control.
4- Justice- Jonah has also learned a great deal about accepting and understanding the need for consequences for our actions. He wants to live a good life because of his knowledge about justice.
5- Faith- Jonah has a great deal of faith. In our family when we have difficulties or stressful situations, he is often the first one I will turn to to ask for his prayers because I know that his faith often exceeds mine. Time and time again, special little miracles for our family have happened because of his prayers.
6- Hope- Jonah has a lot of hopes for his life. He is confident in his hopes for all the great things he will do in the future. He knows that his hopes, combined with his faith and hard work, will happen.
7- Love- Jonah loves his family a lot. He often will say “I love you” just because. He gives us and his baby sister plenty of hugs and shows his love by trying to help and lift us up when we are down.

:)

Got this photo in my email today. Guess they let the cat out of the bag and told these two that they are being adopted and are soon to be brother and sister.

A special girl

I have the opportunity to work with the Young Women in our ward. I really enjoy it. I love all of my girls so much. I am so excited for one of them because she's on the cover of the new Jenny Phillips CD that's coming out! She's the girl in the center.
This girl is really special. I've never met a girl that is so good through and through. She is such a good example to me and I have been incredibly impressed with her since the moment I met her. I really appreciate her example for me.

Things I've heard my kids say recently that I don't want to forget

Driving home from school the other day Becca yells out "I love Jesus SO much!" ...pause... "So much you can't even believe it!"

About a week ago Steve and I were sitting on the couch together and Jonah walks in the room. Just out of the blue he says, "Dad, I can tell that you really love Mom." I thought that was a pretty sweet observation. I hope the reverse is apparent to him too.

Finally, today Becca decided she wanted to write a letter to God. I was really surprised to read what she wrote to Him. Here it is:

"Dear god i love you what is it like to be in Heven what do you do in Heven i dont rille (really) like you(r) berd (beard) and Hair but i still like you do you Have food in Heven? love Becca."

Personally I think His beard and hair are just fine, but some girls just don't have a taste for it.

On a more happy and exciting note...

We've told a lot of people, but not everyone. You ready for this???

We are going to adopt TWO children from Ethiopia. At the same time. You've all heard about Andualem, who we call Andy, but you haven't heard about Hana. (I think we'll keep her real name.)
She is a 5 year old cutie who seems like a sweet and happy little girl. She's very healthy and lives in the same orphanage as Andy. Both of her parents died of AIDS as well. :(

The most frequently asked question we get is "When will you get them?" I'd like to know that myself. It's been almost a year now since we started this whole adoption process. Right now we have been told it looks like we will be going over there some time in December for the first court date. Then we should go back 3-6 weeks after that to have the Embassy date and take them home. So I guess that looks like January'ish. But it could be sooner or later. Who knows.

So yeah, pretty exciting stuff going on here!

Isaac

I'm not quite sure how to write about this, especially as I've tried to avoid getting too personal on our blog. I even thought of going private so that I wouldn't need to worry about what I should and shouldn't say here. So please forgive me if I say too much. I just want to make sure that our family blog does discuss something that is a big deal to us.

So a couple of weeks ago we were anxiously awaiting our appointment to go in for our ultrasound to find out if our baby was a boy or girl. I actually was so excited I could hardly sleep even days ahead of time!
For a couple of weeks before this appointment I was having a lot of pain and contractions and my nausea was getting worse. I was sent to a high risk doctor to check things out when I was 14 weeks pregnant. That doctor ran an ultrasound and said the baby looked fantastic, so she was not concerned and sent me on my happy way.
But when we went in to the next ultrasound later, paranoid me immediately searched for that lovely little heartbeat flutter. But I didn't see it. The technician kept looking and looking and just didn't say anything. She said to turn on my other side and wait a minute while she went to the other room. When she left, I was upset. I told Steve "I am really scared! I didn't see the heartbeat!" He tried to calm me down until she came back in. She looked some more and said nothing until I finally said to her, "I don't see the heartbeat" at which point she admitted the same. She suggested we go ahead and get with my doctor. We immediately rushed over there. I wont go into detail as to how I was feeling or what was going through my mind during this time. But it was difficult.
Basically we saw the Midwife who did an ultrasound. No heartbeat. She then sent in the high risk doctor who did an ultrasound. No heartbeat. They advised me on what we should do next and sent me home to wait to hear when I am scheduled to come in to the hospital. That evening I got the call and more discussion with the midwife who arranged it all. I had an induction scheduled for the morning, with the anticipation that I will likely have a D&E right after I deliver the baby since placenta's often don't deliver well at this point in a pregnancy that has ended in such a way.
Everyone knows I've been through this before. Last time from start of induction to delivery I think took a couple of days. I did deliver the baby, I hemorrhaged, then I went in for a D&E. The whole process was pretty traumatic. So I was worried about the same type of experience repeating itself. It didn't however. We were so blessed. From start of induction to delivery was only about 14 hours. Blood loss was very minimal. When I delivered our baby, the placenta also delivered all in tact without much struggle. No surgery was needed and I didn't feel too terrible. (Delivery was 12:45 am on Friday September 10th.) Right after the delivery the doctor looked over the baby who she announced was a boy. Then she handed him to me. He looked much like Benjamin did, but probably an inch or two shorter? He had all ten fingers and all ten toes, as tiny as could be. We looked him over and held him for quite a while. They brought us in a very nice crochet blanket for us to wrap him in. We did so with such tenderness, expressed our love and goodbyes, and gave him to the nurses to take away. In the morning I was very anxious to go home because our kids at home were sick with the stomach flu. We stopped on our way home at the mortuary where we picked out a little box for him to be buried in. The burial was scheduled for Monday September 13.
He was buried in the beautiful Angel Garden section of the cemetery. The place set aside for babies and small children.

The burial was so nice! The cemetery was beautiful. The weather was perfect.
It was just our little family there along with the people from the mortuary. We did a quick little service where we prayed, I spoke a bit to the kids, we sang a song, and Steve dedicated the grave. The kids each put a little heart by/on his box for him.
This picture turned out poorly because it was on my phone from a distance, but I never want to forget as we were walking back to the car, all the kids were with us except for Celeste who was touching his box and looking like she was praying for him. It was pretty sweet.
In the hospital while I waited those hours in labor, I thought about our baby and what we should name him or her. Surely our child can't be an "it". Our original plan was to name him Samuel if it was a boy and Mariah if it was a girl. That was when the baby was alive. But as I labored I thought of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son. He didn't want to and it probably brought him anguish, but he chose to obey. As I thought of this, I felt that we should name our son Isaac because like Abraham, we would be willing to let our son go even though we didn't really want to and it brought us such sorrow to do so. When I asked Steve what he thought of it, he immediately agreed and we felt good about that. So we named him Isaac. I don't pretend or think that we are anything like Abraham who was a great prophet! I only felt like I could in a very very very small way relate. We gave him the middle name of Swenson because Benjamin was given my mother's maiden name and we thought it would be fitting to give Isaac Steve's mother's maiden name.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie said "Nothing is more universal than the resurrection."
and Joseph Smith said "All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection, provided you continue faithful. By the vision of the Almighty I have seen it."
We believe these statements and take great comfort in our faith and sure belief that we will one day be reunited with Benjamin and Isaac.

Augtember happenings

A few weeks ago Steve and I had the best date! We went to a local ski resort and rode the ski lift up the mountain. The weather was perfect and the views too. We really enjoyed ourselves and decided this would be a tradition that we must do at least once a year.
Charity as I waited to go into my ultrasound. Such a cutie.
We lost our baby. I'll post a bit about that next. But as a result, I decided to take on a couple of little jobs to help bring in a bit more cash and keep me busy. I'm a housekeeper for Anna and for a friend! It's been great.
We went to the park and had a picnic for our Family Fun Day last week. It was Charity's first time actually playing in a park. She doesn't look like she's having much fun here, but she was just wanting a bit of freedom.
Her very first experience swinging in swings!
I started volunteering at the school. It was great to get a glimpse of Becca's crush, Aiden. He sits right next to her. She says she wants to marry him and imagines she is kissing him... As long as it stays at just imagining, we're ok!
Eden at our Serving With Smiles project this morning. It went well. We enjoy it.
Things are going good. We are so very blessed.

Blog Flood

Well, I just posted 10 blog posts. Yep 10!!!
Our blog is all caught up now on our entire Summer and it feels like a monkey off my back as I was debating for weeks on whether or not I should just give up on blogging, or let my posterity believe we did nothing the Summer of 2010; or if I should try and spend a couple of hours and get it all caught up. The guilt got the better of me, and there it is.
Poor quality it is. Lacking in creativity too. I am sure there are a million grammatical errors as well. But making those posts great would have been too much to expect.

Well, I am officially in my 2nd Trimester of this pregnancy. It's been hard. But I have to say it's been by far my easiest pregnancy ever. Which I am so thankful for. I still throw up daily. But not too many times. I still feel nauseated ALL the waking hours of the day, which is the most difficult part I think. But I keep hoping that it will ease off really soon as it did with Charity's pregnancy when I was feeling 100 times better in my 2nd trimester. I feel pretty tired all the time. I need naps every day or I totally crash at some point in the evening. I have occasional cramping/false contractions but so far things seem fine.

I've been able to do a lot this Summer despite all that in regards to the kids, trips, and working in Young Womens. But my job as "Homemaker" has gone totally to the dogs. I rarely make meals and my house has been a perpetual pig-sty for weeks on end. I've come to hate it when people drop in on me. I don't even answer the door most the time now. But yesterday we got the house cleaned and somewhat orderly and I hope I can keep it that way better now.

Well, now that I got all that done, I'm gonna go to sleep!

Charity walking August 24, 2010

My 32nd Bday

It was a really great day. Actually 3 days. Saturday before my bday my sweet friend Jen took me out to breakfast. Then Anna took me out to lunch, then Steve took me out to dinner and to buy my present. Anna and Emily pitched in for this too. I love it! Steve stayed up late putting it all together. All the baskets carefully hold all of our "junk" piles people were leaving (including me) around our kitchen and living room. Sunday which was my actual birthday, was a normal Sunday with a few meetings and church. But Anna had us all over for dinner which was nice. And Monday Steve actually took the day off. That was a huge deal! We went out to lunch together and he spent the day with me trying to get our house back in order too. It was awesome. I got some other nice gifts and attention and it made me feel thankful to all the kind people around me who took the time to make my day good.

School Starts

Well, it happened. The Summer flew by like crazy! We had a great time. I was excited for school to start though. The kids were having mixed feelings about it. Their first day went off without any issues or major excitements. I went home and took at least an hour nap while Charity napped. It was heavenly. They go to a Charter school now. The decision on what to do with them and their education this school year was a tough one. But on the first day of school, I was feeling pretty darn good about it. On the second day, a bit of a sadness hit me. Enough to make me feel a bit guilty, question my decision, but then ultimately say after my hour nap again, "This is totally what I needed to do!"
So far they are doing well and happy with their teachers and situations. I have been impressed with the school so far too.
Becca is joining the cheerleading club which has got to be the cutest thing ever. Jonah is joining the robotics club and Celeste is joining the Spanish club. Eden has no desire to do any.

Our Summer Part 7. The Water Park and Charity's First Bday

We took the kids to the local water park. Charity was the star of the show for me.
She LOVED being in the water. It was adorable.

The kids had a great time with their Dad. Celeste took off her boot cast and hopped all over the park one footed in order to slide down the slides and play wherever she wanted. I was impressed.

Charity turned 1. Everyone says this, but it's true. How do they grow up so fast?! I hate it.
I spent a couple of hours trying to get some cute candid shots of her. But she was so wiggly and busy, it was hard. She played "Peek a Boo" with me using her curtains.



Here are a couple of videos of her on her special day.

Summer 2010 Part 6 Girls Camp

Girls Camp of course rocked! We had 10 of our girls come. They were all so well behaved and so fun the entire week. Never did they fight with each other and never did they act like total brats.
The leaders were great to be with too.
We had a lot of laughs. We had a lot of tears. We felt the Spirit and grew closer to God and to each other.

And if you want to know what our camp was like, it was the best ever! We had cabins like these:
Wait, there's more. Check out the inside. There was even carpet in our cabin.
We ate really well. We had showers and flushing toilets. It was totally posh camping. After my last nightmare camping experience, it was PERFECT. (That's if I ignore the fact that I vomited multiple times a day.)

Summer 2010 Part 5

Another exciting part of the Summer was a whirlwind 24 hour trip to California. I wanted to fly down to Bakersfield to see Mom and Andy filming their movie. I was also to play a little (embarrassing) part in the movie. I played the part of the fat, bad, ballerina in a Talent Show scene. I protested a little at the idea when my mom asked me to do it. I told her how fat and how bad I am at dancing lately. I reminded her that I am pregnant. She assured me it would be ok because I would not be playing the winner of the talent show in the movie, she just needed a dancing act. So with that, I did it. But to make it even more fun, my dear friend Jen came along with me. And boy did I love this trip with her. We talked and talked for hours as we traveled and were together. She is amazing and I loved every minute with her. When we got home, I was more tired than I have ever been in years. We got lost on our way home from the airport. A drive I've done a million times. I had no idea where I was and which direction I was going, I was so tired.

I got an Iphone on that trip too! My Dad totally gave me the hookup. Getting on his plan left me with paying less than I was currently paying for my monthly cell phone bill before and with a much much better phone and service. It has changed my life. I am seriously in love with it.

A little after the trip to California, our family got this adorable adorable puppy. We named him Ranger. Isn't he so cute?!!
Well, we were very naive getting into this. We knew it would be hard, but didn't know how hard. He crapped all over the place a bunch of times. He cried and whined. He kept us up at night. He bit Charity. He gave Eden a bad rash. A little over a week after getting him, we were here doing this:

Don't know what I'm doing here?

Ok, here's another view of the scene:
We didn't sell him that night. The next day Eden's rash was so horrible, she couldn't go to church and she just laid around scratching herself in a delirium. Blood was being drawn as she couldn't keep her nails off her skin. She was afraid to go near him. Our home teachers came over and one of them actually wanted the little guy. He made our day when he took him home with him!

Our Summer Part 4 Celeste meets the ER

The day after we got back from Tennessee, we headed to Delta Utah for a Mahonri Moriancumer Bishop Family Reunion. So this was a very very extended family reunion on Steve's Dad's side. It was a quick one, but they did a fantastic job of it and we enjoyed ourselves...Well, except for the fact that we spent a few hours in the ER there in Delta.

Celeste was climbing up this rolling ladder/staircase in the gym there with her cousin. It's one of those things they use to put up volleyball nets or have refs stand on during volleyball games. Anyhow, when they were on the top and both standing on the same side of it, it fell. Celeste took the brunt of it. There was a decent amount of blood. Enough to make me feel scared. It was coming from her mouth. She also complained of her foot hurting.

It looked pretty scary of a scene, but I tried to stay cool and calm so she didn't totally panic, which she pretty much did anyhow. She was given a priesthood blessing by Steve and his brothers. Then we took her to the hospital where she got cleaned up and well cared for.
They were concerned with the blood and facial swelling, that maybe she had broken a bone/s in her face or head. So they had her get a CAT scan.
Which checked out ok thankfully!!! The blood was just from a very bad cut in her mouth.
But they did an Xray on her foot and found 2 broken bones. It was a heck of a night. She's still in a cast today. But we're hoping she'll be out of it in about a week. We were grateful that the damage was only a broken foot.

Summer 2010 Part 3 Tennessee Trip

So this was probably my favorite part of the this Summer. Going to see Emily and her family in Tennessee! We flew to Alabama stayed there overnight, then drove to Georgia, and stayed there overnight. Then we drove to Tennessee and stayed there several days till we had to make the sad trip home.
Emily and her family were perfect hostesses. I felt bad because I was feeling pretty sick with being pregnant and struggled wanting to do much more than getting my butt off the couch, but she was an awesome sport and let me keep my butt on the couch most of the time. Mostly it was great being with her and getting to see her new life there which I found to be quite charming.

A really exciting part of the trip was meeting the great folks at our adoption agency in Georgia and getting our referral! I'm not really sure if I'm allowed to post this, but, well, here you go...
Celeste and Kennedy were inseparable.
The rest of the kids had a great time together too.
I totally enjoyed the "Talent Show" which was a big build up for days. Celeste and Kennedy took it quite seriously and were MC's that night. They had even prepared a Power Point presentation to introduce the show's various acts.
Becca's act.
Now I clearly did not get enough photos of this trip. But I did get this gem of a video of Kennedy and Eden's talent show act. Enjoy. Thanks Emily for the awesome time!

Summer 2010 Part 2

This one is a bit random. Here's a cute photo of the girls as we arrived early for church and I was admiring their cuteness while waiting.
Celeste got a perm.
Eden got a cute hair cut.
We went on Trek, which I've already blogged about.