Family Pictures

All summer we TRIED to have our family picture taken. And every time we tried to get our outside picture taken it rained. So finally we had a partly cloudy day so that we could get it in!
Candace and Lori at Magic Moments Photography have been photographing our family for a long time. http://www.magicmomentsstudio.com We have a tradition that on your 5th birthday the kids have a big solo portrait done. So since Yabsira turned 6 shortly after she arrived home, she had her 6 year old portrait done.

Referral-versary!

One year ago today at 1:00 we saw a picture of our little Yabsira for the first time and today at 1:00 we will be taking her to kindergarten for the first time.

Soooo much has changed in one years time. From a tiny room in an orphange full of children yet very much alone to a home in a far off land where she will never be alone!

Thank you Lord for Yabsira!
Thank you for replacing her sad face
to one full of joy and excitement!
Thank you for giving her "a hope and a future."(Jer 29:11)

I've been thinking...

I had to post a picture.: The girls were flower girls in our friends wedding!

I haven't posted in awhile. I've been thinking about how I would bring all of my thoughts together. And I still don't think I have a grasp on exactly how to communicate what I (and my family)have been going through since the beginning of our adoption process. It would pretty much take at book.
So these are some of my feelings that I will reluctantly gush out on the internet.
Deep breathe...hear I go...
So, from the beginning we ALL knew it was a God thing that we adopt. In the past I have said "There is someone missing from our family." I knew that when we saw the face of OUR child that she was OURS. God made it so. In my mind we were adopting OUR child. God put us together. He would give us a child just like us,right? Wrong. For some reason I thought that when God said here is your little girl that it meant that she would naturally be infused with our families genes or always had a small bit of them tucked away inside of her. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that is what I thought. But the truth is she is "like" another mother and father. That is the genetic truth.
So, how have we been working this out in our family? In the beginning this was tough, really tough. To be completely honest, I cried a lot. Her reactions and mannerisms were completely foreign to us just as much as ours were to her. Not only was there a language difference,cultural difference but also a family difference. What we were able to teach our other children from the beginning of their lives we had to start at 6 years of life with our youngest child. Our family rules, expectations and just the ways we do things. Weather the reactions of our biological children are nature or nurture (I think a little bit of both.), we can kind of predict what their reaction to something is going to be. Our son is a lot like his father and our daughter is a lot like me(yet they are still their own people). While I know that everyone has their own unique personalty despite the number of kids that are in a family(Thanks, Mandi. I've learned that from your precious kiddos:)). I wasn't expecting her to be who she is.
As you read on you will understand that my next statement is not a bad one. It has become clear to us in a much more vivid way that GOD GIVES US WHAT WE NEED NOT ALWAYS WHAT WE WANT. When we started this process we would have said boldly "We DO NOT have any expectations!"LOL!! But guess what? We had plenty of them. So, we have spent the better part of the last 7 months realizing that. Some of them have been right on and others have been dead wrong! But God has been loudly declaring that HE knows what we need. And we NEED Yabby! She has made us realize things about ourselves and our family that need to change. She has shown us that "Jesus can do anything!" She says it and lives it! She has been a huge testimony of those words to us! Personally, I have realized my flaws in parenting and myself. Wow, that part stinks. In order to become the people God has made us to be, Yabby NEEDS to be apart of our family.
So, it is seven months since our little fire cracker has come home. We are starting to see how she is "like us." In good and bad ways. And she even tells us she looks just like her big sister. So, maybe God did infuse some of our genes in her. Because in the words of Yabby,"Jesus can do any thing!"