How Do You Like It?

We got a new button for our adoption fundraising. The wonderful ladies at Reeces Rainbow created a button for people to put on our blog. We'd love it if you would put the button on your blog. I can't wait until we have guardianship of our princess so we can share her picture with everyone.

One Down, One to Go

We have finished 1 surgery. Ananya is lighter a couple pieces of metal and finally on her way to recovery. We will still have to go back one more time to get the plate taken out that was put in when she broke her leg in November.
Two weeks and we will be finished with surgeries for a little while. Prasun goes on January 26th to have his SDR.
Then we just have the long road to recovery to get these 2 walking (again). Prasun is a no-brainer. He LOVES walking. Ananya on the other hand seems to have no use for being upright and mobile (besides crawling). Not sure how to make this happen. Her problem is simply an issue of strength. She is weak. I just need to find the thing that is going to motivate her.
On the adoption front:
We are getting ready to file our I-800 and compiling our dossier. I feel like this is the never-ending adoption. Oh my! It is delay after delay. I know eventually it will all fall into place. Not quite sure how though. I hope everything goes so quick, including our fundraising. We have lots of money to raise.
Everyone have a blessed weekend.

Dear Jesus

Dear Jesus,
The narrow path is kind of lonely sometimes. Can you please convict more people of the things you are showing. I heard loud and clear when you said that food is not unclean but the mouth of man. Horrible things come out of the mouth of man. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for standing with me when I am up to my eyeballs in my own self-righteousness.
Love,
Your follower

I'm not sure if I'm being convicted or just turning into a big giant prude. In this case I'm taking prudishness as a positive. I'm having a difficult time watching indecency on tv, I hate hearing vulgarness in music, I don't like seeing all that is going on around me that NO ONE would do in the presence of God. UMMMM... ( He's watching right now. Maybe not the best time for a dirty joke just because you don't think others are listening.) I don't know where all of this started. I'm really glad that it did though. I'll keep following the narrow path. Jesus did. I'm following him, not the person next to me. I'm done following people that I know are headed in the wrong direction.

Pictures

I got a few new pictures last week at Anthony's first band concert. I was so proud of the kids. They did an amazing job. I didn't, however, get a picture of Prasun. Half the pictures were blurry. The 3 I'm posting are about the only good ones. BTW. I almost have a teenager. He's so big.
Well back to reality. Laundry is waiting.

Our Newest Member

Here's our newest adoption story. Not sure if I've ever told the background for our other adoptions but I'll tell them sometime soon.
This has been a crazy journey and I'm still amazed at where God pointed us and how we got there.
Patrick mentioned in passing in one of our many adoption discussions that he would like to adopt a child with Downs Syndrome. I, of course, filed that in my useful information bin in my brain. We were pretty consistent that we did want an older child. We finally got to the point that I just admitted that I had no idea where we were going to adopt from. A hard thing to admit when you've paid the fees to start a homestudy. One day I was blog-hopping, checking in on my favorite families. A family, I'm not even sure which one now. I jumped over to Reeces Rainbow and started admiring all the kids. I found an Indian girl who was listed with our favorite agency, Dillon International. I was pretty much sold at that moment. Patrick wasn't far behind me.
We now are paper-gathering and fundraising to bring home this princess. She is beautiful. I can't post pictures until she is legally ours (after court in India). I do have to address the name issue though. It keeps confusing people. Reeces Rainbow assigns names to children they list to protect their identity. They assigned our little girl the name Valerie. Her name in our family is Varsha. We have a hard time thinking of her as Valerie. So please don't be confused when our fundraiser things list Valerie and I refer to her as Varsha. It is the same beautiful girl.
I now have to make my pitiful plea for our daughter. We are stepping out in this adoption knowing that God is going to provide money. We have done this twice now. We have run through alot of our reserves and have lots of obligations already. We both also know that God is using our adoption to show others around us that we can find homes for so many orphans if people step out and give just alittle. You would not believe how just the $1 bills added up at a quick last minute craft fair added up by selling cinnamon ornaments and homemade dog treats. Then the donations with our spaghetti dinner. We had I think 5 families show up. We made another 30 plates of take out. My mom bought 50 plates (which paid for the supplies). We raised $740. We have seen our Reeces Rainbow sponsor page increase in small increments. We are at $116.50. We have 2 grants we have received. We are making progress. It will be slow, but I know that God will get us to our goal and provide for every need we have.
All this is to say, will you please consider making a donation to our fund? Even if you only donate $5, we will be that much closer to our goal. Donations made through the Chip In go straight to Reeces Rainbow. You are making a tax deductible donation. Tax time is coming.
Thank you all so much for sticking around. I'll try to take some new pictures of my beauties at home soon. These kids are amazing and they are all just waiting for their new sister to come home.