Our Lil Sweet Pea!

A short little sneak peak at our little sweet pea....everything looked healthy at our appointment, she was measuring right on target for a February birthday, they counted 10 fingers, 10 toes, two eyes, one nose and one mouth with  no sign of cleft palate (they are BIG into checking that out in Korea), a strong beating heart, lots of "eating/swollowing" motions and a lot of other movement too.  We praise the Lord for this little life He is adding to our family; may that little heart one day know and love Him.

Please pray for a safe remainder of our pregnancy and a healthy baby and mom!

He's BAAAAACK!!!

Steve arrived safely home!  Thank you to many of you who were praying for him while he was away - I know your prayers were answered!

We went with Michelle up to the airport to surprise our men and pick them up - they were expecting to take the bus home from the airport.

Watching for daddy to walk through the doors!

Love!!!

Okay, so I knew Caleb missed Steve a lot but I didn't realize just HOW much he missed him or how sweet it would be to see him "reunite" with his daddy.  He clung to him for the longest time, insisted that dad sit next to him on the drive home and then the whole hour and half drive home kept saying things like "I missed you so much daddy."  "I need you, I love you, I care for you, Daddy!"  And then this morning, first thing he asks: "Is daddy still home mommy?!?" He has been all about everything "Dad" all day and has thoroughly enjoyed the rough housing and "guy time."  It's been so sweet.

We are thrilled to have Steve back and it has been fun to hear about his adventures and all the Lord is doing in India, as well as see all his pictures and video!  I hope he blogs about it soon and when he does, I'll send you his way!

For now, a few pictures from his time away:

Thank you for your prayers during his time away!  

Our Week without Steve

Tristan Turned One!

In case you are wondering, we survived our typhoon and tropical storm.  Neither hit very bad or were much trouble.  The tropical storm today actually really cooled things down and it felt great!  I hope it stays this nice!  We are loving it.

I heard from Steve earlier this week via facebook that they made it safely to India, after a lovely boat tour in Thailand on their 7 hour layover (*so jealous*).  It sounded from his note that he had already been impacted by a lot that he had seen and experienced in traveling and his partial day in India so that is great. He sounded encouraged and really excited to start teaching.  I haven't heard anything since so hopefully they are having a great (and safe) week.

Caleb is missing Steve a lot - or in his words, "Alex the Lion (the character he pretends to be most often right now) really misses Zumba (that's daddy's character).  Zumba is off in India catching chickens for Alex the Lion (because, of course, lions eat chickens) and India has better chicken than Korea."  Yes, these are the kinds of things that come out of our 2.5 year old's imagination.  Keeps life interesting!  I (of course) really miss Steve too and it makes me appreciate him all the more...we are pretty blessed to have an incredible daddy and husband!

Overall, we have been having a fantastic week and really enjoying each other. I am convinced it is the Lord's grace and your prayers!! We have felt blessed by a number of friends reaching out to us as well, thankful for a community around us.  Today was the hardest day of all, Caleb really tested boundaries and was overall just exhausting to be around.  He didn't take a very long nap either and really fought bedtime tonight.  He is asleep now and I'm hoping some good rest for both of us will get us back on track for tomorrow!

A dear friend's little boy turned 1 year old today, so that was a fun outing and a great (much needed) diversion from our day.  We braved the tropical storm and walked over to their house.  I always enjoy seeing lots of little kids all together and the kids had a great time doing a craft, singing happy birthday, listening to a Dr. Seuss story (that was the theme), dancing around, eating cupcakes and being crazy.  The moms enjoyed the great food and adults to talk to!

I'm hoping I hear from Steve sometime soon and if I do, I will update you!  Please be in prayer for him and Pastor Nelson!

Joyful Additions

Are you ready for some exciting news?!?

We are expecting TWO joyful additions to our family:  One has been growing in our hearts through the means of adoption for 6 months and is expected to arrive in our arms {Lord willing} sometime 2014....The second one has been growing in my belly for 17 weeks and is expected to arrive in our arms {Lord willing}sometime winter 2013!  We are overjoyed to be pregnant and adopting!

Your prayers, encouragement and support are greatly needed and appreciated as we pursue adding to our family in these two beautiful, God-orchestrated ways.

Please check out our post over on Steve's blog that gives more detail to this exciting news and our decision that we do not feel pregnancy is a reason for us to interrupt our adoption, instead we feel the Lord is growing our family in big ways and blessing us with two special additions.

Yesterday

We had a blessed Sunday yesterday.  I hope you did too, wherever you are in the world.

We have grown to dearly love our little Church nestled in Songtan on this side of the world.  Our head pastor and his wife were away on vacation this Sunday so Steve had an opportunity to preach.  I was especially encouraged by his sermon this week.  I am linking it here if you have 30 minutes this week to take a listen, I pray the words from Isaiah 61 encourage you as well.

Another high point of yesterday was that IT RAINED!! Now typically this would not be very notable during the end of monsoon season but we have had uncharacteristically little rain the past month and this was sorely needed.  Not only was the rain wonderful, it cooled the temperature down!!! I am so excited.  We actually pulled a light sheet on last night while we slept. Wonderful.

We also took some time in the afternoon to take Caleb out and enjoy the cool rain, puddles, mud and the slick wet slides on the playground.  He was absolutely delighted and the hour we spent playing was not nearly long enough for him!

Missionary Aircon

In many ways, Korea is a very easy country to live in.  Yes, we have our cultural differences, it's a foreign country, life looks different than in the States, there is no Target and we miss our family and friends horribly but compared to many other countries, we have it pretty easy.  But there are a few things that make us feel like "real missionaries" and one of those is the high temperatures, high humidity and lack of air conditioning.

I read that if you place a frozen bottle of water (or the article suggested milk but seriously milk is way too expensive here to use in such a way!) behind your fan to create "air conditioning."
  

Wordless Wednesday

Just Beachy

This is playing a little blog catch-up but it was a summer highlight so I can't not post about it, even if it did happen a few weeks back!

A dear friend (and mentor) of mine planned a family beach trip and invited Caleb and I along.  It was our first time to the ocean in Korea!!

Now, the ocean is absolutely one of my favorite places EVER and this particular family is a family we all love being around so there was no way we weren't going!  It was still pretty "early" in the summer so we held our breath for good weather and the Friday we went turned out to be great.  It was still fairly cool and somewhat overcast but it wasn't raining and wasn't cold so we were good to go!  We packed in their big van, drove an hour and half of beautiful mountain scenery and arrived at the beach around 10am.  We had a total blast. Caleb never stopped playing and running, barely wanted to stop to eat lunch and tried to grab fist-fulls of sand "to bring home and play with later" when it was time to go at 5pm!

Caleb and Aaron

Caleb and Morgan

Caleb and "the boys"

Caleb and Elijah

Beach Basketball with Luke

Look at those purple lips - cold water!

Wet and Cold, warming up

Jordan

The mommies 

"bye bye Ocean!"

Caleb's only regret of the day was that we had to leave and he "didn't find the Nemo Fishie."  He has a book about Nemo and was sure he would meet Nemo Fishie at the beach!

What Up, Songtan South Korea!

Donkey Goose

Anyone want to guess what animal belongs to these feet?

Here's a hint:  Caleb and I discovered a new section of the arboretum yesterday with some good friends that we hadn't explored before and turned out it had several birds and animals.

We called my mom and dad this morning and Caleb excitedly told them about his day and about seeing a "donkey goose" yesterday.  He tried to show them these pictures on my phone but didn't quite understand that we weren't on skype and they couldn't see what he was excitedly showing them.

It made me laugh that in not being able to remember the actual name, he came up with "donkey goose" because, now that he mentions it, Ostriches do kind of look like what a cross between a donkey and a goose might look like.  I love the life-perspective Littles provide.  And the laughs too.

Little Friends

Caleb continues to be our little extroverted social bug.  He is full of first born, take-charge qualities and loves to run around with all his little friends. From left to right pictured above are some of the kids in our small group (Caleb, Hannah, Sadie and McKenzie).  Caleb, Sadie and Hannah are all born within less than two weeks of each other!

Sadie and Caleb are absolutely bestest of buds (pictured above), complete with teary good byes after play dates and begging to see each other on a daily basis.

Family pic above plus Sadie and Hannah!

What's in a Week?

cleaning out the office!

We would really value your prayers this week!  Here's what is on our "to do" list in the next 6 days:

- This weekend a social worker from Small World Adoption will fly in from China to do our Home Study!  A home study is a big part of an adoption process and is an evaluation by a certified social worker of you and your family and your readiness to adopt and add a child into your family.  It is a detailed report of you family that includes a comprehensive list of documents, observations and interviews.  You can read more about it here if you are interested!

- Deep clean, clean, clean!  Although having an impeccable home is NOT the point of a home study, it still feels like you want our home to be in great working order before it is evaluated!  We have had a number of "spring cleaning to do's" that we have wanted to tackle so we figured, what better time?  We also completely  moved our office into our bedroom so we would have an additional bedroom for our Houser "Baby" #2 when he/she comes into our family!  We are still a long way off (likely) from that event but it is good to have an extra room to show the social worker we have room and are ready for another.  In the mean time, we are all set with a spare bedroom for any of you who want to come visit us!!

- As a part of preparing for our home study and new child, we need to complete several online training courses as well as read several books.  Our goal is to completely finish all our online training by Friday so we can discuss it with our social worker and also be ready with questions for her.  I (Sarah) am almost finished but Steve is just starting, so he'll have a lot to tackle on it this week.

- What books are we reading?  We are working on "20 Things Adopted Children Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew" right now.  We are also planning to read "The Connected Child,"  "Attaching in Adoption," "Toddler Adoption" and "The Out of Sync Child."  These came highly recommended by our social worker and a friend of ours who is trained as a social worker and has worked in that capacity.  There are a lot of things we need to learn about the hurts and wounds that our child will have when they enter our family and also the unique challenges that a child coming from a background in an institution will have.  If you are interested in reading any of these with us and talking about them, we would love to!  Also, if you are family or close friends and would like to learn more about helping our new child adjust or the challenges we will be facing as a family, feel free to check any of these out at the library, we will need all the help and support we can get!  If you have adopted before, what books did you find most valuable or helpful? If you are in-process right now, what have you liked reading?

- We need to finish up some final documents and paperwork for our home study. We have been working on compiling this for over a month and are getting close to finishing our giant "to collect" list.  It is slow going but feels good to be checking some boxes off and be close to finishing.  Now, just be praying for expedited paperwork as we will begin the waiting process to receive most of it back (for instance, since I was born overseas and need a certified birth certificate there will be some added cost, waiting and patience involved in requesting it etc).

- We have several people we are meeting with this week to encourage and who encourage us, looking forward to some time spent with good friends Monday night and Wednesday morning and night, as well as a doula planning meeting Thursday night (In June we will be offering two childbirth education classes and have some planning to do for those)!

- Wednesday night youth group, 7pm and some times scheduled with students as well as normal office times and meetings.

- Steve will be preaching this weekend at Church and he is also speaking at Tres Dias up in Seoul on Saturday evening. Please pray for both of these important talks and that the Lord would guide him as he opens the word - that he would be faithful and that the Lord would use him.

- On Saturday our Church will have a booth at the International Center - we will be selling food items to raise money for our summer missions trip so I am helping prepare and bake food for the event this week.

- Friday and Saturday our social worker will be coming to Songtan to meet with us, teach us, interview us and inspect our home.  Please pray for stress levels and a good visit!  We are actually more excited than nervous for this - I think it will be a great time to learn from her and hopefully glean wisdom in this process. But there is a lot to do to prepare and it is still nerve wracking to have someone coming to investigate you as a family and your home.  I know we are a loving family, ready for this next child but STILL having someone come to investigate you definitely brings some anxiety.

- Training and Raising up Caleb.  Last week and this week we have had some very challenging times with Caleb.  He is struggling with getting easily frustrated, with being disrespectful in the way he talks to us and interacts with us and also with some aggression towards other kids (pushing, hitting and taking toys away from them).  This has really concerned us and we are working hard to be consistent, firm and loving that he may not act in these ways.  We really could use wisdom in how to handle and how to respond - as well as patience with him!  Where oh where has our sweet little boy gone? I miss him and want him back!!!

That's our week! Will you take a minute to pray for us now and will you continue in prayer for us as you think of it this week?  We need your prayers!

Sundays

Tomorrow is Sunday again. Seems to happen weekly. Sundays used to be dreaded days for me when we first moved here.  Steve left early and I was left figuring out how to get myself and a little one ready for Church all by myself, we walked to Church by ourselves (usually with me carrying him) regardless of the cold weather or snow, and Church started at exactly nap time.  Steve seemed to be busy from early morning until late night and I resented it, as I adjusted to our new life, new ministry and new country.

I'm happy to say, the Lord has brought me a long way in the past year and half.  With an adjusted attitude and outlook, I've come to enjoy Sundays immensely (although they haven't slowed down one bit).

Here's what last Sunday looked like, to give you a glimpse into our lives:

6am - Wake up
7am - Showered, Dressed and Ready
8am - Students and volunteers over for pancake breakfast before Church
9am - Sunday School for me, Nursery for Caleb, Youth Group for Steve
10am- Check on nursery volunteers, welcome visitors, head to Church
12pm - Linger, fellowship, meet new visitors and close out nursery
12:30pm - lunch with students and/or friends
2pm - head home and tried (unsuccessfully) to put Caleb down for a nap. Friends came over and hung out, students were in and out.
3pm - headed to Church for Concert of Prayer (quarterly event at church) - it was a great time, if you live in Korea and missed it, I would highly recommend the next one!
5pm - Picnic with small group
7pm - Korean Church service (we have these every Sunday but I don't usually go. They are in Korean but translated into English. If you live in Korea and have never been, I'd highly recommend...last week the guest speaker was from the States so they wanted Americans to be in attendance, meaning we all went. It was total fail, Caleb was a basket case by 10pm but we survived).

Each Sunday comes with it's variations.  Some weeks we have orphanage, some weeks we have Leadership meetings, other weeks fellowship luncheons etc (and most weeks we do not have 10pm services that we go to) but all in all, this is what Sunday has come to look like for us.  It's full and it's rich and it's good. It's also busy and hectic and crazy. Sometimes it is stressful but mostly it is fun and filled with people who are dear to us.  But regardless, we would love your prayers on Sundays, as we seek to reach out as a family and serve in our Church, in our community and especially in the youth group.

If you have a pastor or youth pastor or worship leader, deacon or elder at your local Church who serves you each Sunday, don't forget to remember them in your prayers on Saturday nights and Sundays and remember to thank them.  It is something I never thought of before we started full time ministry.  I wish I had - there are a lot of hands that help to make Sunday a day of rest and soul-feeding!

May your Sunday be worship-filled and Blessed.  Wherever you are, enjoy Him.

Cherry Blossom Rain

It is a beautiful time in Korea right now - for a very short few weeks each spring it is "cherry blossom season" and the trees burst like popcorn, full of light pink and white cherry blossoms. They are everywhere and absolutely beautiful.  And then it rains.  One or two good rains and all the petals fall to the ground, replacing themselves with the bright new-green of spring.