Aaron's Home!!!!

I never did post that he was gone because I don't like to publish when my husband is out of town. He left 16 days ago to go to a wildfire in Florida.  So blessed to have him home.  We miss him so much.
Spent a while packing the kitchen today, since we could be moving in less than a week. I really want to move our stuff asap, but I am not sure when we will get the help to move.
When we moved into this rental house, Aaron and I did the ENTIRE thing alone.  UGH!!!! Our couch is sooo heavy.  When we got it from a distant relative, it was so hard to get into our last house that I told Aaron that I refuse to move that beast again.  Well, never say never, he didn't want to ask anyone for help moving and I couldn't just stand there and let him move it all by himself.    I think if I gave him the go ahead, he would get me to help him again. 
When we moved into this house in December, the girls were in TN at Aaron's parents.  Aaron and I got the UHaul at 7am, I helped him load it until 9am, then went and picked up the boys from Mom's because she had to be at work at 1030, Aaron met me with the completely full UHaul at the new house. We put the boys in their high chairs, gave them snacks and proceded to unload the entire UHaul alone. Why do we do this to ourselves?
Anyway, I am getting excited about the move.  A little overwhelmed with other stuff going on, like trying to finish school for the year, me starting a new job in May at a new hospital, moving, Aaron being out of town the last 16 days.  Whew!!!
Tomorrow the plan is to go to the zoo!!!!
We haven't been in forever.  Aaron gets two days off to rest from working 16 days straight.  So, off to the zoo tomorrow then packing and preparing to move on Thursday.

Who's a dork?

The ladies in our class at church do a different activity each month. This is the first time I have done something with them. About a month ago, they announced they were going to see Hunger Games together. I had only seen a piece of the commercial and didn't even realize there was a book out there. I wasn't going to sign up, but Aaron gave me the stink eye in class when I passed the signup sheet on by and whispered in my ear "you can't expect to make friends if you don't do anything with them" So after class I went ahead and signed up AND paid up front" I am so glad I did.
I did have to ride in the middle seat of the carpool, not the front, but I did pretty well and just had a tiny hint of motion sickness starting by the time we got there. But then the movie started. UGH!!!! A whole lot of camera panning around and also bouncing cameras and I knew I was in for it. I made it almost 2 hours into the movie before I had to go out and take a dramamine. I am such a dork. I felt awful. But it kicked in and I felt quite a bit better. We walked around at the outside mall for about an hour afterward and that really helped. Fresh air, no motion. But even now, my head is swimmy and I am a little nauseous. Normally, I have to sleep before the motion sickness goes away. I guess my brain has to reset.

Where are you, tax refund?

We paper filed our taxes this year on Feb. 29. Had to do paper because of the adoption credits. Anyway, according to their website, we were supposed to get our return back on April 17.
I eagerly awaited this date, excitedly, wondering which adoption loan to pay off first.
Then April 17 came and went and nothing in our bank account. And our status on the IRS webpage now stated that our taxes were being processed and they had taken the date off.
Then we get letters today, stating that they are going to spend up to 45 days reviewing our taxes and we should hear from them within 45 days. Well, that is just more interest we pay on our adoption loans.
I am slightly irritated. We did everything correct and Aaron did a very detailed outline of each adoption receipt we had. I guess ours just came up for review. I know this is very common from reading all of our adoption yahoo group emails last year. But I was hoping that we would have gotten OUR money back speedily and without a big mess. So much for hoping...

Why didn't I try this before?

Ok, Ethan is now 17 months old. I would guess for the last 10 months he has been home, he has screamed each and every time we leave him in Bible class. Seriously Ethan, you really don't have to scream. I know you love me and crave my company and want me to feel wanted, so you decide to scream like I am pulling off your toenails one by one. But you don't really have to do it. Give it up..Please! Normally, he is just fine until we make it in the classroom, and we put him down or hand him over.
His teachers always tell us that he is fine almost immediately after we are out of sight and he even gets down, plays and enjoys himself.
I know my children are exceptionally intelligent ;). So tonight, when we got to church and I was unbuckling Ethan, I said 'Ethan, do NOT throw a fit when you go to class. Do NOT scream when I leave you in class. " And he was smiling, pointing at me going "no, no, no" like he does when I tell him not to do something.
We get to the outside of class and I again told him the same speech "DO NOT throw a fit when I drop you off"
We walk in and there are no teachers so I got his bag hung up before one of the teachers walked in.
I again told him not to throw a fit while I handed him over to the teacher. Of course he is master of the pouty lip and started to breath heavy like he does when he really wants to throw a fit. I kept telling him 'do not scream" don't throw a fit" I will be back"
And guess what....
Not a peep, I left, he didn't scream and it left me wondering that perhaps he just needed permission not to go insane when we left.

They Accepted Our Offer!!!!!!

Picture of the front of the house.
Below is a picture from the front porch.



Above is the picture from the back porch.

I am so excited! There is soooo much space in this house. So much room to fill with more children! And because it was a foreclosure, we got it for a great price. We will hopefully close at the end of this month or the first of May. And it is in another county, because we really really wanted to get out of our current county.
It will only be about 30 min. from Aaron's work and about 15 minutes from church. More pictures later when I get back over there. I haven't seen the house in 2 weeks and I hope to go over there for a while when we get our home inspection done.

Have we bought a house yet? Who knows...

Well, we made an offer on this particular house 2 weeks ago yesterday. And we still don't know. We have offered, they have counteroffered, over and over. Saturday morning, the bank told us what they HAD to have, and with some minor adjustments, we were able to get to that point and make our final offer. But we had to wait for the termite man to go visit the house. Our final offer was turned in on Tuesday afternoon. I was hoping that since with this offer the bank gets what it HAS to have from us in order to sell the house, that we would hear back in a timely manner. Yet here it is, almost 48 hours later and still no word from them. UGH!!! Seriously, people, do you not understand that I dont do well waiting!
When we first started working on this foreclosure, our realtor was telling us about a client of hers that had been in negotiations over a foreclosure for over a month. I thought that seemed crazy at the time. But now that I realize the bank spends 3 days at least to make a decision, that is believable.
In other news, the boys spent the day and last night with Mom. We had some stuff to do with our homeschool coop, plus I am trying to do extra school every day in order to get done with our curriculum and be done by the 2nd week in May.
The girls are going to TN with Aaron's parents on Saturday. I really want to work 3 days next week. Still no tax return and with us possibly buying a house at the end of the month, I really need to work some.
I am hoping to work full time this summer once we are done with school. That is just 3 days a week, but I would like to kind of build a buffer for wintertime.

I had a terrible dream...Are you having it to and don't realize it?

I just woke up a few minutes ago, so this blog post might be a little crazy and it may still be the sleep talking.
Here is my dream...
Part of this dream I was walking around in a hospital gown, which I guess should have clued me in. I was looking all around the rooms for my bag of clothes I had brought, so I could take a shower. It had been a week or two since I had been there/worked and the clothes had been moved.
While standing there talking to some of the ladies I worked with, all of a sudden I had a flashback to a few weeks prior.
In my mind I went through an entire birth scene where I had given birth to a baby girl, then they had whisked her away. And I thought " I just gave birth a week or two ago...I have a baby!" For some reason I had forgotten.
And in this dream, I broke down in front of the other nurses, screaming that I had a baby and I didn't even know when exactly she was born, that I didn't know if she was ok, that I had only held her once and she didn't even have a name!
In my mind, I went through all the excuses as to how in the world I could have forgotten that I had a baby out there. I kept thinking "maybe I was too busy, maybe I was thinking about work,...Etc"
It was an awful feeling. One of those dreams that feel so real that you wake up feeling mentally horrible.
So in my dream, I finally found my purse through my tears and went to find the Montero. I went through 3 different parking lots, because I couldn't remember where I had parked it. The whole time I was running through the parking lot, sobbing and trying to punch numbers into my cell phone to call Aaron to remind him of our baby. Then I was trying to think of the number to the hospital where they would have taken her to tell them that her mom was on her way, but I couldn't ever remember the number.
Finally I found the Montero and there were about 6 mechanics working on it, it was all taken apart. And there sat Aaron in the parking lot with the other kids, watching the car being fixed while in the van. I jumped in the van and spilled out the story of our baby girl. By this point I was hysterical.. "she's probably in foster care by now, they think I have abandoned her, she doesn't even have a name, what in the world is going on with the Montero?"
Aaron showed me how he had everything fixed on the Montero at once and it was a bill of $12,000. AAAHHHHH!!!! He was so proud that he had thought to fix it all. I was thinking how he could be thinking of staying here watching the Montero be fixed and spending that much money on that when our baby was not with us.
Then I woke up...
Ok, here is the interpretation that came to me right after I replayed the dream in my mind.

Isn't this happening to millions of Christians every day?
I have seen estimated anywhere from 147,000,000-163,000,000 orphans in this world today.
Does God not have a plan for each and every one of them.?
In my mind, there are 147,000,000 Christians that get up every day and go on with their lives and don't even realize that their child was born 2 weeks ago, 2 months ago, 2 years ago, etc.
How can they not realize that their child was born???? Is it because they are "too busy" to read study the Bible and realize that God commands all of them to take care of orphans?
Can they not go and get the child because they spend too much on material things, like Aaron fixing the Montero when it was running already?
Even worse, are they happy with their lives the way they are and even though there is a child that God ordained for their family, they would rather pretend it doesn't exist and let foster care, an orphanage, or the street take care of their child?
Are they figurativly sticking their fingers in their ears screaming "I can't hear you, I can't hear you" when they read what God says in the Bible about taking care of orphans.

Then I thought.."Karen is this dream for you too?"
Did I just have a little girl born not too long ago? Is there a baby that needs me to claim it and name it? Is that why I didn't have any pregnancy symptoms in my dream?
Yes, we plan to adopt again. When, I do not know.
The girls are ready. surprisingly, after being SO NOT READY just a few months ago, I think I could start the process again tomorrow. I told Sue at our adotion agency a few months ago, while she was doing her weekly CHAT she does with Ethiopian adopters, when she was joking with me that it was time for us to adopt again, that we were for sure wanting to adopt again. I told her Aaron says a few years, but I thought that it would be sooner, but I was going to let God let Aaron know.
The girls and I were looking at the waiting child list at our adoption agency the other day. There was the cutest little 4 year old boy that we all fell in love with. The girls were like "can we get him?"
I told them, there are a few things that must happen before it would even be possible to even start again.
#1 we need a bigger house. Not just because we "want" more room. No, there is no way we would get a homestudy approved living where we are now, with 4 kids sharing one room and Ethan sleeping in the living room. Hopefully we will buy a house soon...I am hoping today.
#2 we have to get our tax return back and pay off the last adoption. Even with the HUGE tax return we will be getting this year, it won't pay everything off. But we should have it paid off soon after, I hope. We are supposed to have our return by April 17. We filed in February, but since we had adoption in our taxes, we had to paper file and because it is such a large amount we are getting back, I think the IRS is going to take it's time.

But God knows what we need and all in His perfect time! And God knows who He plans for this family and who knows, maybe she was born just a few weeks ago. Be neat to find out in the next year or two.

Still don't know about the house?

Well, we still do not know if we are going to get the house that we have been making offers on since last Wednesday.
We had made our new offer on Friday night. Finally, Tuesday night around 7:30 the realtor said she just got off the phone with our bank and they wouldn't budge on their price they had counteroffered us.
See, when we looked at the house we noticed that one of the air conditioner units had been stolen. So one of the conditions we asked for was working air conditioners.
Well, the bank which owns the house apparently called the most expensive AC person around and said that they needed to go ahead and replace both ACs and that would cost the bank $12000 and therefore they could not go down on their price.
However, the realtor called the man that just happened to put her an AC in not to long ago for less than $4000. She and this man went to the house today and he checked them out and said he could replace the missing part on the bad one and update the other one for a total of $2000.
So with that information, we made one last offer and hopefully will get the house. That was a little after lunch today.
Praying we at least will have a decision by Friday. This not knowing is driving me nuts!

Happy # 10 to Natalie!

We had a great party at the house yesterday! Natalie invited 6 girls from 3 different homeschool families from our coop. Then Aaron and I invited some old friends from our previous church who we haven't seen since July! We didn't tell the girls and they were so excited to see them get out of the car. It was a lot of fun! Happy Birthday Natalie! I love you!

Finally heard

Friday afternoon at 4pm, we finally heard from the bank about our house offer. After making an offer on Wednesday morning. They counteroffered at more than we could afford.
So we talked it over for a few minutes since the bank closed at 5 and our realtor called at 4:45 and made a new offer for us.
So now we wait again. Maybe our answer will come quickly this time (after waiting all weekend)