Ways You Can Help

It has been so wonderful to share the news of our adoption with everyone. This has been such a long journey and it is finally starting! The most common reaction is "How can we help?" So we thought we would add an update with ways to help. There is no expectation or obligation for our friends and family to do anything at all, but enough of you have asked that we thought it would be helpful to identify ways for people to help:

1) Please continue to pray for us. Traveling with two small children for two months or more is no easy thing. We need people who will commit to praying for us. Please pray for peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self control (when we want to scream too), for protection from disease, for the transition in and out of country. Please also pray for our bonding as a family. This is not an immediate or a smooth process and we will need the ability to endure. Psalm 121 I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of Heaven and earth.2 

2) We need an old WORKING iphone that is not currently under contract with a cell phone company. We will be able to buy a sim card in country and use this phone to facetime, update the blog and facebook while we are away.

3) Luggage - we plan to bring as much as we can to Uganda to bless the babies home. However, we don't have much luggage. We would like to purchase a few of these bins to pack in and take with us. Afterward, we can leave them at the orphanage for them to store supplies in.  

4) Donate Personal Care items to the orphanage. We are encouraged to bring gifts to the orphanage (but lets face it, we want to anyway). Out of all of their requests we have decided to help with the following:

• (new) children's underwear & socks
• Medicines (Children's Tylenol, Children's Cold Medicine, Children's Benadryl, etc.)
• Desitin
• Baby shampoo & soaps
• Baby lotions

5) Make a Donation. Many of you have attended one of our fundraisers along the way and we are so thankful for the outpouring of generosity we have seen. As we face the possibility of an extended stay in country we are again trusting God to stretch our finances (even the most modest rates for staying in country add up when you are staying for 8 weeks or more!). Plus, the addition of Cara on the trip now adds some additional costs we had not budgeted for when we first did some financial planning over two years ago. If you feel led to you can give online at www.youcaring.com to help us cover these costs.

Helping After We are home:

1) Gift Cards - When we return home we will be overwhelmed. Gift cards for groceries or restaurants that have a take out option will help us grab dinner in a pinch. They will also help with "date night" since we won't be able to use traditional babysitters for at least a year.

2) Take Them a Meal - our church will be setting up a meal plan for us at www.takethemameal.com where people can sign up to bring us a meal in the weeks after we return home. 

Pinch Me!

Did we really book airfare for 3 to Uganda this December?! What a week it has been of planning and preparing.

You did read that right, all 3 of us are going to Uganda. The decision was pretty immediate for Bill when he realized we would be traveling over Cara's 5th birthday, potentially Isaac's birthday AND Christmas. A family needs to be together for these things.

There were other factors in the decision to travel as a family as well. First, Cara is much older now than when we originally expected to travel. She is able to understand much more of this process and she has become very invested in her little brother. We spoke with several families currently in country or recently returned from country that highly recommended bringing children with you to Uganda. One family had traveled twice; once without their kids and once with their kids and they said it was so much easier on their family when the kids (similar in age to Cara) were with them in country.

We are not naive, we understand that this will NOT be a family vacation or relaxing by any definition of the word. We fully expect culture shock, temper tantrums, sleep deprivation, food issues, digestive issues, disappointments and craziness (and that's just what Lauren will experience, LOL) However, this adoption process is guaranteed to rock our world in ways we never saw coming. We might as well go all in right from the start.

We also hope this will help Cara and Isaac understand each other too. Cara is already thinking about how hard it will be to leave some of her favorite comforts behind and I was able to help her make the connection to how hard it will be for Isaac to leave his home behind to live with us. Cara has taken this thought to heart and she is fully engaged in making our home as safe and familiar for him as possible. She has even agreed that we should start cooking Ugandan recipes now to get used to eating with Isaac!

Cara is also old enough now that she might remember this trip as an adult. How wonderful will it be for her to have memories of where her brother came from that they can share together? Being in Uganda might also help Cara understand why Isaac will do some things differently than she does. Going to his world might help her know how to help him adjust to life here, or at least be a little more patient with the process.

We are also seeing an increase in the time families are staying in country. It is becoming less and less predictable to determine when we would be returning home. This would make coordinating life on two continents miserable. While we know our families would bend over backward for us to get Cara to school and take care of her while we are gone, we also know that we are going to need even MORE help when we get home. This way we can call in our favors during our time of greatest need without exhausting everyone we know in the process. Finally, if we are all together in country and they say two more weeks we can just go with the flow and continue working toward bonding as a family.

We promise to continue to keep you all updated as we go :)

Christmas in Uganda

We had always planned to take Cara to Disney World for her 5th birthday. We booked the trip, made our dinning reservations (Christmas Eve in Belle's castle!!). We even talked Nana and Poppy into coming along, but it looks like our plans will be much, much different.

WE ARE FINALLY GOING TO UGANDA!

This week we received word that our court appearance has been scheduled for December 9th. It was actually a mistake but we have been told that they cannot take it back and that all of our paperwork will be ready in time to appear in court. It is also odd to have this much advance notice but we are not being picky. We are thankful for the time to plan and prepare (mentally, emotionally and practically). God doesn't make mistakes and we are trusting that this timing will work out perfectly.

It's not Disney but it's kinda cool to get a brother for your birthday :) and the doctors there estimate that Isaac's birthday is in December as well...birthdays can be a hard time for adopted children because it reminds them of their birth families and a possible future that will forever be unknown to them. My hope is that Isaac will see how God is restoring a potentially painful holiday by giving Isaac his forever family for his 3rd birthday :)

We finally had the privilege of telling Cara about Isaac and showing her his photo. She was very excited to hear this news and commented that "he looks happy" in his photo "it will probably be hard for him to get used to here." She is so wise. Cara immediately started thinking through the things we will need to do to get his room ready.

Cara also commented that "we will have to ask his parents if he can live with us." We explained to her that he is in the care of Ken and Cathy at the orphanage and that they said he would be perfect for us. Cara was pleased to hear this.

I think she is having a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that Isaac is not a baby. "He won't need diapers?", "Nope, but when we reschedule Disney World he might be big enough to ride the rides with you." Her face lit up at this news. Finally a playmate!