Home Videos

The other night we broke out the old video camera and started watching videos of the kids. It amazed me how much I had forgotten. Especially about Hannah as a baby....she is now 14. Watching her as a baby and toddler seriously brought tears to my eyes. Dang she was cute. Big round bald head. I had forgotten how she used to growl like a lion...she kind of sounded more like she was possessed, but still so cute. She used to dance with her daddy and when she was about 15 months old her favorite thing to do was the cheer from Saturday Night Live. My name is Hannah......I've got team spirt.......so check me out.......cha cha....you know the rest...so incredibly funny. Why we taught her that I have no idea.
We seem to have a lot of videos of Luke "performing". Either in a play or singing at church. The kid is not shy. Maybe one day he will thank me as he accepts his Academy Award. He has always been wise beyond his years. Friends of mine even joked when he was a baby that you could put a pair of khaki pants and a polo shirt on him and he would be a mini Darren. My little man....
Owen is a performer of a different kind....can you say "show off" ?? The videos we found of him were very funny. He was a very busy toddler....I had forgotten that too.......always running around and throwing himself onto a chair-bouncing off and running the other way-over and over again. Or while we were taping Luke singing a beautiful song from church, you could hear Owen in the background making weird noises. Loud noises.
It's funny how you forget things, even the good things. I was really kind of sad after we watched the videos. How could I forget all of that? My babies were so adorable!! But I also remember at times thinking, Will this "phase" ever pass? Will they ever be out of diapers? Will the late night feedings ever stop? I can't believe I am going to say this but, I'm looking forward to doing it all again. Late night feedings and all.
I have been pretty stressed about all the adoption paperwork lately. Not really doing it, that's not a huge deal to me. I kind of thrive on organization and timelines. But I can't control this timeline and I am about ready to loose it. It's the unknown that is bothering me. Someone else has control of my future right now-and I really don't enjoy that too much. Control Freak....maybe. Anxious mother to be.....you bet. I am so ready to add to our family, it's just so hard to wait.
So for now, I will keep pulling out the old home videos and remember how fast time flies.........and hope it flies just as fast until we can go to Ethiopia and bring home our child. Please pray for patience for me as I wait.........

I pinky swear.....

Well, it's official...I received an email from CCI (Celebrate Children International) stating that we were accepted into the adoption program. It was a one sentence email..with 2 attachments. One was a 12 page contract, the other a 22 page contract. You have to read and initial each page. Then you have to take it and sign a bunch of pages with a Notary. I think you also have to sign in blood and pinky swear that all is true and accurate. Really, I think it was in the fine print..... :)

Kidding aside, it's a ton of paperwork. Now that we are "officially" clients of CCI, we are able to access the client webpage...which is so awesome, informative and helpful. I was really impressed. You can log in and keep track of the whole process. I am very much a list maker and marker off-er.....so that was right up my alley.

We had our second home visit and the kids were interviewed, that was a treat. Actually, none of them said anything inappropriate, believe it or not. We have our third and hopefully final home visit next week at which Darren and I will get our individual interviews done. After that, we wait for the home visit to be written up and approved by DCFS. I just pray it doesn't take too long. I just keep thinking that my child is over in Africa somewhere waiting for me. It's so hard for me to think about myself sitting in my huge soft bed, typing on my Mac, drinking my hot chocolate and I have a child in Ethiopia with no home, no family and no food. Makes you think about what really matters. And it makes me want to go upstairs, sneak in my kids rooms and kiss them on their foreheads as they sleep so peacefully in the warm beds. I need to make it a daily priority to tell my kids just how special and wonderful they are to me. I am going to do it, I pinky swear.

Daunting......and crying

Today I received an email from Sue our CCI agency contact. She is in Haiti working and took the time to email our agency info to us. I like her already!!!! There is a client page on their website that gives you every piece of information you will need to do this adoption. I just kept scrolling and scrolling and downloading and downloading. I am so overwhelmed at this point I can't even think of what document I should work on first. It all seems very daunting, but I know the end product of piles of paperwork is a sweet child waiting for us to come get them in Ethiopia. I so wish this was a faster process. God is teaching me patience, I know. It just that the other night at dinner reality smacked me in the face. Darren said the blessing before we ate, he asked that if our child was already born-for God to watch over her and keep her safe until we are able to come get her. And if she wasn't born yet, let her mother be healthy and keep her safe for us. I lost it. It hit me that our child may already be waiting for us and I am wading neck deep in a pile of paperwork. I know God will give us our child at the perfect time-not my time. It's just so hard to wait.

I find myself searching blogs for families who have gotten their children already. The stories are so sweet. I cry happy tears for them. I cry happy tears for us, knowing one day that we too will post our "Gotcha Day" . I am such an emotional wreck. Sort of like pregnancy....but this is a pregnancy of my heart. Not sure if this way is any easier or harder...just different. I can't wait to meet my precious child........

Well, here we go......we have started the adoption process. Actually we started about a month ago but I am just now getting around to starting a blog.
Let me tell you a little bit about our family. Right now the Bodine family consists of Tracy (me), Darren, my wonderful husband, Hannah our 14 year old beautiful daughter, Luke, our handsome 10 year old and Owen our sweet 6 year old.  We are hoping to adopt a little girl from Ethiopia.

When we first talked about adoption it was back before Owen was born.....it was just a quick conversation about adopting if we didn't get pregnant. Then we were blessed with Owen and didn't really talk about it again. Until we went to Juarez, Mexico on a mission trip with our church. Again, another conversation.....but it didn't really lead to anything. We have friends that have adopted and fostered and the conversation came up again. Then lately, all around us we keep getting redirected back to the adoption conversation. Darren has given me podcasts about it, I have watched tv shows about it. Then our church decided to do another mission trip to Haiti to an orphanage. I researched it and fell in love.  I knew my heart was ready for another baby. Then my friend and business partner, Jennifer,  showed up at work one day and said that she was seriously thinking about adopting from Ethiopia. Wow. Again, God was bringing me back around to adopting.  I starting doing a TON of research about adoptions. The Haiti government is pretty iffy right now and I steered away from Haiti.....Ethiopia kept coming up.  Jennifer has friends who have adopted from ET, friends of friends and so forth. I was so weird how I just kept running into people who are or have adopted from Ethiopia.
While researching a home study program, I came across a blog, clicked on it and low and behold it was friends of ours from college. They have 6 adopted children, 2 domestic and 4 from Ethiopia. I contacted her that night and we talked for hours. The next day there was a huge article about adoption in the paper.  God was seriously giving me every sign. I sat down one night, asked Darren if he would want to adopt  and he said "Yes". Easy as that. I about fell over. He then proceeds to tell me he has been thinking about it too.  Believe it or not..it all just fell into place.
Many friends and family were shocked when we told them. Yes, it seems fast but it is so right. I feel it down to the tips of my toes. We are so sure that this is what God has lead us to do. We now there will be struggles, we know our lives are going to turn upside down, we know this will change everything. But that's ok. We are so excited about bringing a new child into our home.
I'm sure as this blog continues, I will tell you more about the "why's".  I'm going to attach some of those reasons (borrowed from another friends blog). The personal "why's" will come later.
We hope you will be along for the ride.....it might be a bit of a roller coaster...but it should be fun.
Check in often and see what's new.