Leading the BLIND

I have a weird feeling right now.  The best analogy that I can come up with is that of a woman who knows she will deliver her baby on a certain day due to a scheduled C-section.  However, I think that both of us, Chris and I, are feeling the same thing right now.  We are anxious.  We have lots of energy.  We have no words.  We are excited.  We are scared.  We are thinking about our son.  We are thinking about our court date on Tuesday.  We are praying that it will be successful.  As his parents, we feel helpless.  Everything is out of our hands.  We try to keep ourselves busy.  We wish time away.  We are preparing to take a trip of our lifetime.  We are trying to learn about Ethiopia.  We are trying to learn about being parents.  We are nervous. We want our son to know he has been loved from the time that he was born.  We want his transition to be easy.  We know that we are a family that will encounter issues.  We want to have answers for our son.  We want people to know that we would not trade this journey for anything.  We miss our son.  We wish we could hold him.  We wish that he could hear us tell him we love him.  When we are missing him, we go to his room.  We go through his things.  We read his books.  We look at his clothes.  We talk about what we will take to Ethiopia.  We are excited.  We are anxious.  We are waiting...waiting patiently to hear if he is legally our son.  We are praying.  Praying hard.

Christmas before Thanksgiving? Yep.

November has been a busy month so far which has made time go by fast!  I decided to add some pictures when we went to Oliver Winery in Bloomington, Indiana with Syd and Katie.  We had a great time together.

On Thursday, Chris and I went to a concert at Ball State.  This will be the last concert that we attend for awhile.  We went to see David Crowder.  He is one of our favorite Christian artists.  His concert was awesome.  We love how he sings the entire time.  It was great, as we were leaving we asked for a set list.  It was hand written on the back of a menu.  As we were walking out, we noticed a poster hanging on the wall and what do you know...it was signed by the entire band.  What a great surprise!   It is now hanging on our wall in our game room.  Connersvine opened for David Crowder.  They were good.  Hunter (the Colts punter) likes to talk and so does his sidekick...

This past weekend we celebrated Christmas with my side of the family.  We had a great time and I have to say our holidays have been a little messed up this year due to us traveling soon.  Christmas definitely has a different meaning for us this year.  Material things are a thing of the past...we already have so much and there is really nothing that we need.  Our focus has been on providing for our son and that is really fun for us!  We have been wondering a lot lately...we wonder how big he is, what he is eating, where he is developmentally, who is loving on him, what a typical day is for him, how much time he is out of his crib, if he cries a lot, if he sleeps through the night...soon we will know.

We always wait till the last minute to fill my mother's stocking...so we took pictures of us kids so she could update the picture of us that she still has on her fridge from 5 years ago.  We love you mom!

Chris having some fun with a Colts spiderman, aka our nephew.

My dad hanging out with one of his 4 grandsons.

My grandpa was able to join us before he heads to Florida for the winter.  He loves his great grandchildren.

Snorkeling gear for Chris....

I forgot to include this picture a couple of posts ago.  Before a Colts game, we stopped by my college roommate's house to see her beautiful daughter.  We are so happy for Greg and Libby!  Congrats!

And a final shout out to Ashley - we just don't understand how you can dislike the Blue Man Group.  Can we still be friends?

One more week till our court date!!!!!!!  Please continue to PRAY!

Donation Update

We have received a great response regarding the donations for our agency's foster care center in Ethiopia. We have received plenty of children's vitamins, wipes, crayons, pencils and hand sanitizer. Thanks to those of you who have given these items! Also, thanks to those of you who have given money so we can purchase some items (including a camera for the orphanage, diapers, wipes, food, and clothing to donate) while we are in Ethiopia. We are so grateful for the overwhelming response. Please contact us if you are still interested in donating items or money. We will be happy to share God's love (and yours) with the children of Ethiopia.

Adoption Update

This week I actually started a countdown at work!  We are only 19 days away from the court date.  Thanks for the continued prayers for a successful day!

Also, thanks for the response about the donations.  The children in Ethiopia will be blessed!

This week we received THREE more pictures of our little boy.  He is so precious.  According to the pictures, he is pretty flexible.  He looks great.  He is healthy and we can't wait to hold him.

If all goes as planned, we will be leaving for Ethiopia on either December 12 or December 13.  We will be staying there until January 10.  We are so fortunate to be staying with the parents of one of our friends that is from Ethiopia.   I plan to write them a letter this weekend.  I think their lives will change for a bit while we are there.  I hope they are ready! 

This weekend we are going to Oliver Winery and Bloomington with Syd and Katie.  I have lived in Indiana my entire life and have NEVER stepped foot on IU's campus.  It should be a lot of fun.  I am excited to be with friends.  

On Sunday, Rod and Megan are coming over to watch the football game.  It should be a fun time!  Go COLTS!

CWA Care Center in Addis Ababa

Our case manager called the care center in Addis last week and notified us of the needs of the orphanage.  If you are interested in helping us donate any of these items or money, please contact us at ponzchris@hotmail.com.  

We plan on packing lightly when we head to Ethiopia.  We are planning to put all of our stuff in one bag and all the donations in another.  

Thermometers

Anti-fungal cream

Anti-bacterial cream

Latex Gloves

Hand Sanitizer

Children Multi-vitamins

Disposable diapers & wipes (we plan on using money to purchase this in Ethiopia)

If you want to contribute, thanks in advance!  If you have any suggestions on where to buy this or ask for donations, please let us know!

Please pray for all of the children and the foster care center.  We have so much and they have so little, but we share God's unconditional love. 

November 1 = 24 more days

By the way, if no one was aware, it is NOVEMBER!!!!!!!!!!!  YAY!!!!  This morning, I woke up and rolled over to Chris and my first words were "IT'S NOVEMBER!!"  (As a reminder, our court date is on the 25th of this month!)

I love Saturdays at home.  We were able to get so much done.  You should see our garage.  It is so organized.  Love it!  We also put stuff away in our barn for the winter.  The weather was beautiful.  

Today we also met our friends, Wendi and Mark, at Starbucks.  They live in Lafayette and were headed to Mark's family in Peru.  Chris and Wendi worked together at Manchester College and I actually went to Niagara Falls with Wendi when I was a senior at MC for a conference.  Anyways, it is such a small world because we are both going through the adoption process.  They are also adopting from Ethiopia.  What a neat connection.  We plan to go to their house later this month to get together with the Lafayette families adopting from Ethiopia.  I think we are farther ahead in the process than anyone there, but we are excited to share our experiences and the joy of adoption with them.  

The Week in Review

Family is a big part of our lives.  This past Friday my mom and I traveled to Goshen to hang out with my Grandpa's sisters and their families.  Although this might not sound like fun to some, we had a blast.  These ladies can outlast me.  They stayed up until 2:30 in the morning.  WOW!  There was a lot of food and laughter all night long.  

In the picture above are the sisters...Claira, Celesta and Martha.  Claira is so funny!  She totally reminds me of my grandmother that passed away a year and a half ago.  She has a way of making people laugh.  It was great to get to know her better.

I ended up leaving at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday morning to come back home so we could go to choir practice.  Our high school teacher has been teaching at Eastern for 25 years and she invited alumni to come back and sing.  Although the rehearsal was practically all day long on Saturday, we ended up having a lot of fun.  We were able to see old friends and reminisce about the good old days.  I have to say, the choir students are spoiled now with the performing arts center.  I was a bit jealous.

The Colts are having a rough start this year.  I am not quite sure what is wrong with my team, but I hope they come out of this slump.  They are good...it is just taking them awhile to figure out what works...We are going to the Colts versus Patriots game on Sunday.  We will cheer really loud, get a souvenir cup, get to the game early, eat in the food court, wear our jerseys, I will wear my beads - I hope this is a recipe for success!

We have had a friend hanging out with us for a few days.  Chris took some crazy pictures of this creature.  I think they are kinda creepy!

When we were in Ohio we went to the Sauder Outlet store (RTA furniture) and purchased a few cabinets for the garage to help us get organized.  We could not believe this was only $25!  We ended up buying 2 of them.  We were super excited!

On a serious note, the pastor at our church suffered a massive heart attack.  He is currently scheduled to have surgery tomorrow morning.  Please keep Pastor Steve in your prayers.  He is at Methodist hospital in Indianapolis.

Since this weekend is Halloween, I thought I would share this picture.  It made me laugh so hard.  This was on our way up to Goshen.  I had to take a picture.  Who does this?

Powerful Video.

Sarah and I have seen this video a couple times and it really puts things into perspective for me.

World Vision

Christmas in October...

I guess you could say that my family is a bit nuts, but we don't mind.  This past weekend we sang Christmas carols and unwrapped Christmas gifts.  Although there was no snow, we had a wonderful time spending some quality time as a family.  This year we went to Ohio.  We ended up getting there on Friday night.  On Saturday, we attended my cousin's volleyball game at her high school.  Her team won!  It was fun to support her.  I think she had the biggest fan club there.  We also went to my aunt's chocolate shop, Stella Leona.  It is not quite open, but she served us all kinds of warm drinks.  They were delicious.  It was so much fun!  

Brotherly love...

A little football action...

Christmas in action.  Every year the adults do not exchange gifts, instead we donate money to a worthy cause that the host picks.  This year, Greg and Nancy, chose to give it to the orphanage where our son is in Ethiopia.  We were so blessed and we know that the orphanage will definitely use it.

Chris and I crammed into a chair for at least an hour while Greg read the Christmas story and the children opened gifts.  

The colors of fall are so beautiful.  I love this time of year.  I always think of my friend Julie because this is her favorite season.  Julie lives in West Virginia.  I met Jules when I studied abroad in England in 2001.  We have kept in touch over the years and she is married to Adam and in April, they became parents to beautiful Ella.  Here is a shout out to Julie - I miss you and thanks for praying for us every night! I wish you lived closer...

I have been so impressed with Chris's photography skills.  He has a super creative side that I did not know existed until recently.  I give him all the credit for the fall photos.

And in the spirit of the season, I had to post one of my favorite pictures of my nephew.  This picture was not taken during halloween, these are his pajamas.  However, the mask is not part of the outfit.  Anyways, I was trying to take a picture of him and I asked him to put his arms out so I could see the netting under his arms.  He followed my directions and put his arms out - just not the way I wanted.  How adorable!

Finally!

We got some exciting news today.  They have scheduled a court date for us at the end of November!  Our agency will be acting on our behalf in court and once it is complete, he will legally be our child.  All we can do now is wait and pray that everything is approved on the court date.  If everything goes smoothly our embassy appointment will be scheduled 5 weeks afterwards.  We are tentatively planning on traveling the middle of December and returning the first of the year.  

Glasses - Gotta share

My friend Megan introduced me to a very cool website and I think many of you can benefit from it. If you have glasses or need glasses, check out the following link. All you need is your script. It is a legit site because Megan ordered her glasses from here. Check it out...

http://www.zennioptical.com/

She purchased her glasses for $30. This is a deal!

I'm back...

Here is my confession...I love blogs.  I could spend the entire evening on the computer jumping from blog to blog and then surfing the Internet.  In order to finish my class, I gave up the computer in the evenings to watch my class, take a test and write a paper.  I am proud to say that I finished my class this past Saturday and I am back!  Can I tell you, it feels great not to have the pressure to choose between classwork and the computer.  I only have one class left; however, I am taking a 3 month break for several reasons...the most important being that we will be traveling to Ethiopia to pick up our son!  Another reason is that this class would push me over my limit for the year for tuition assistance, just another positive for waiting until January.  

Last weekend on Saturday we went to our nephew's hockey game.  He plays for North Central even though he goes to school at Ben Davis.  He is the goalie and I can say that it was great to watch him play.  NC won the game and this was the first one that I wasn't a nervous wreck for Andrew.  I think it was a pretty easy game for the team and for the most part he had few shots against him.  Every time I see him, he changes.  This time I think he was 3 inches taller than the last time I saw him and that wasn't very long ago.  He is taller than Chris now.  

On Sunday, October 5, several people went in together to throw me a shower(Cousins, aunts, sister-in-laws, mother, mother-in-law).  Here is a shout out to Cari for organizing it!  It was AMAZING!  There were so many people and so much love in the room.  It still amazes me how generous people are for others.  We received so many gifts and could feel the love.  As a recap, our son is set for a year on clothes, has toys to play with, books to read, diapers to do his business, books to scrapbook his life, cocoa butter lotion, DVDs and enough money to purchase our second ticket to Ethiopia!  God is so good!  

Here is a plug for my friend, Andrea, the Pastry Diva.  She made the cake.  I would have shown the other one, but his name is on it and so I rather not post it quite yet since we are using his Ethiopian name.  Let me just tell you about this cake - there were three different flavors: carrot cake with cream cheese icing, chocolate cake with chocolate mousse, and white cake with raspberry filling.  

Look at all of these beautiful ladies!  This is at the end of the shower...I know that I am missing several because they had to leave early.  Thanks to all who came and showered me with love.  It was a special day!

While I was at the shower, Chris had some of our friends at our house watching the Colts football game.  I wore my jersey during the shower and it was a good thing that I did this...the COLTS squeaked by with a victory.  I was able to watch the highlights and I think this game will go down in history.  They came back in the last 2 minutes of the game from being way behind.

Rod and Megan...

Syd and Don...

Katie is playing "the water game" (pool) with Anneliese.   

Liz and Anneliese...

Last week for work I traveled to Rose-Hulman to attend a career fair.  I am also planning to go to the University of Cincinnati this week.  This weekend we had the opportunity to watch out other nephew, Clayton, perform with the Brownsburg marching band at Ben Davis.  It was fun to hang out with family and the weather was beautiful.  Although we didn't get to hang out with Clayton, he is growing up so fast.  He is 16 and is also taller than Chris.  He is probably one of the quickest wit kid I will ever meet.  I love that about him.  We forgot our camera this time around...more pictures to come soon.  Also, Mark and Angie are painting their house.  It looks beautiful.  I am a bit jealous.

Today we went to the COLTS game.  It was a great game.  We dominated.  It was nice to see the team back again.  This is the team that we know.  

As far as the adoption front goes, please pray for the children in Ethiopia.  We recently heard that some children have some high levels of lead.  We trust that God has a plan and we know that our son is in His hands.  We still have not heard about our court date.  We continue to hope that it will be in October.