Adoption Update

I wanted to let you in on where we're at. When we finished our homestudy the end of July, our social worker said it would be about 6 months before they'd have us start our dossier - probably January - because it expires in a year (?), and they want to time it to when they think you'll get a referral. We didn't need a dossier for Korea, but it's required for Ethiopia. Here's what a dossier is... more paperwork!!! This time, it's not paperwork to fill out; it's paperwork to collect. Most of it is documents that we need to get notarized. We have to get statements from the bank, our employer, the police department, etc. and have them all notarized. A few documents we have to send to our Secretary of State's office to be authenticated. Anyway, imagine my surprise when we got an email last Tuesday with instructions for completing our dossier! Much earlier than I was expecting! Apparently they think we may receive a referral quicker than we thought. Granted it's still probably going to be months, but we were wondering if it would take a year or more. So that's where we're at. And we have to have our dossier completed in 7 weeks... We'll keep you posted!

Pictures from the summer project before it's officially fall...

Here's the beautiful and wonderful staff women I got to spend our 6 weeks with. From left to right: Jess, Kristina, and Erin. Love them!

On Aaron's birthday we went to visit this 600 year old tree. It's huge! Obviously. It has a huge canopy, and there's lots of tables and chairs under it to drink tea. It was really fun to see.

Here's one view from our apartment balcony. We lived in the part of the city that was more "hilly", and I loved being able to look out over the city to the hills beyond.

One of my best friends shares her birthday with Liv. She also lives in this country. It was such a treat to have her visit and celebrate their birthdays together.

Here we are with our big 3 year old! So far Liv has only had one b-day in the states...

We had an amazing little farmer's market a couple blocks from our house. In the same weekend it was Liv's b-day party, Father's day, and friends visiting. So that week I ran over by myself with a backpack and carried back 20+ pounds of produce which I bought for about $20? Produce was definitely a bargain over there.

Here's another view from our balcony.

With limited space to pack toys, I brought water colors, glue, and little scissors. Liv got introductory lessons in all 3 and loved it.

Here's our staff team at one of our favorite restaurants downtown. They've been open for over 100 years and only serve one thing - a cultural dish that they're known for and is delicious. Might I add there's a "butter guy" that walks around with a skillet of melted butter to pour over the dish. I declined, but man, there were people in that restaurant that had to get close to a stick of butter on their dish. They didn't mess around.

From left to right: Top - Erin, Emily, and Jess. Bottom - Luke and Kristina (our roommates as well) and Aaron and I.


One of the fun things about being overseas is observing the random things that are sold. One of my favorites to look at is the freakish looking toys. This doll looked especially "pleasant". After taking this picture the security guard made us put our cameras away. But truly, there's some scary toys out there...

Adoption update

Part of what's made the summer full was coming home from project the beginning of July and, after unpacking, starting immediately to get ready for our homestudy visit which we had a couple weeks later. So now our homestudy is done! We're officially on the waiting list for a boy from Ethiopia! So now we wait... potentially for a long time... The wait for a healthy child is 18-24 months just for a referral. Then it's another 6ish months before he'd come home. However, we're open to another heart baby or some other (hopefully not major) health concerns so our wait may not be quite as long. We'll see. But I wanted to update on where we are in the process. There probably won't be any more news for a while. I know this winter we'll get our dossier together - not sure what all is in that cause we didn't need one for Korea. But I'm sure it'll include more fun paperwork to fill out, assemble, or both! :)
In the meantime we're praying for this little guy who will someday join our family.

WAY BEHIND...

So many posts... I posted a quick one below from a social outing with our students to an "amusement park" while we were on summer project overseas. All the rides looked like second hand and just a little bit shady. But we had a good time! I'll get some more posts up soon!

If you're going to cheat death...

Why not do it on a second hand amusement park ride in a foreign country...
With your friends...

Closed in a cage...

Upside down...

Why not!

Date Night

I wanted to post a little culture for you. On Wednesday nights, Aaron and I have a babysitter and are able to go for a date - with him leading the project, it's hard to get much time together. So a week and a half ago we went down to the city center. It's one of our favorite places to just walk around and explore. We found this year that instead of taking the bus, you can take a car which you just pay a little per person. The car takes 4 people and will drop you off where you want along the main drag. So we took the car downtown which just amazes me in the first place. People are so alert to body language here. To catch one of these cars (or a taxi) all you do is stand on the side of the street and barely lift your hand and pointer finger, and they see it and stop. Then to watch them drive in the traffic is like a dance (see previous post on the miracle we haven't died here yet...). They drive so tightly together - lane lines are a suggestion - and just know when to weave in and out.

We got downtown and went to a little "home-cooking" restaurant - basically, this place was located in an alley and was the size of a living room with 4 tables inside and a couple outside the door. Then back through swinging doors was a tiny kitchen with this awesome little guy with a white apron and white hair who I think was the cook. We had a nice little meal and headed out to walk around.

There's an awesome old building - all stone and in a square shape - that's all small stores of scarves and silk products. It's awesome. All the girls here love it :). We walked in there a little and headed further back from the main drag into what would best be described as a permenant covered bazaar. There's all kinds of produce, nuts, meats and different sections selling jewelry, household goods, textiles, clothes (I got a shirt for $3), meat, and other random stuff. It's just so fun to wander around in.

Then we walked to a little Burger King ice-cream hut and shared a little icecream, went to mall and grocery store and headed home. I told Aaron, you can't do any date nights like this in the states! ...except I guess if you live in a big city, which we don't. So that's a taste of our time here.

Little Sparrow

Here's another thing I wanted to blog so I'd remember:
We were walking to the store together a couple days ago, and there was a little sparrow on the sidewalk in front of us. I pointed it out to Liv and said, "Look, there's a sparrow! Jesus knows where all the sparrows are in the whole world, and He knows where we are all the time too." To which she replied, "That means He loves us," Which I thought was amazing. Continuing to pray that the Lord keeps her heart tender towards Him.

Three

Liv turns 3 today! I was so sentimental last night, how does a 2 year old to bed and wake up 3 the next morning. It's gone so fast - and will continue to I know. We had a birthday party last night cause the summer project students and staff are having an outreach event tonight making a party not possible. We had our fellow project staff, a few of the interns here, and a few of the long team staff here all over for dinner and chocolate cake. It was fun - Liv was high on people (and sugar). This morning we had breakfast together, opened her presents, and took the metro to a playground with (no joking) 2 story high slides. They're seriously bigger than anything I've seen in the states. So with a new influx of a couple toys, she's got more options to play with and has been enjoying that a bunch last night and this morning.

I've been teaching Liv some "new skills" in our days together. With suitcase space at a premium I only brought a couple toys and books but brought construction paper and a few crafty things cause they take up less space. So the last few weeks Liv has learned how to do watercolors, glue, and use scissors (which she says pronouncing the "s's" like in the word "hiss" - I love it). So we'll keep working with that as well. We often go on walks to the little grocery store up the road. I can only carry what I can manage in one hand along with holding her hand as we walk cause we live on a busy street. So we go to the store often. She's learning how to kick the ball really well and keeps saying that when she's older she's going to play soccer. We've been inside a lot lately cause it's just hot - thankfully this year we have air conditioning (which they won't keep powered on all day, but still, it helps a lot).

We have another week and a half here in this city. Then we leave to go to a bigger city for a couple days to debrief and tour before the students and 3 of the staff head home. Aaron, Liv, another staff women, and I are heading to the city Aaron and I interned in 9 years ago. We have some great friends serving there, and we're looking forward to a couple days of spending time with them. But again I'm missing the 4th of July in America. I love the 4th of July :). Oh well, hopefully next year.

2 weeks in...

We're doing really well! As is our habit, we forgot our camera cord... so, no pictures. Though if you're my friend on facebook, students and staff have already uploaded some photos and have tagged Liv and I in some. So until we get home (or I steal pictures from someone else) I don't have any pictures to post. I'm sorry, I know that makes blog reading more enjoyable.

Tonight, Aaron and I took a walk with Liv to our little grocery store that's about 3 blocks away to grab a couple things. I commented that it's really kindof amazing that with all the time we've spent in this country, it's amazing we haven't died yet :). I'm sure that's of great comfort to the grandparents... I'm sure the angels watching over us work double time when we're here. With traffic, transportation, etc... But I try to keep my eyes open and a tight hold on Liv. There's definitely incoveniences in living overseas, but one of the benefits - at least being here - has been the produce. The farmer's market comes to our area every Tuesday. So tomorrow, I'll load up Liv in the stroller, wheel up and down foot high curbs about 3-4 blocks, load up the basket of the stroller, and come back to our apartment with absolutely amazing fruit and veggies for super cheap. We got perfect watermelons last week - probably one of my favorites. Man, so good. I'm planning to get another tomorrow, along with peppers, zucchini, cherries, peaches, and strawberries.

I think each time I come here, more and more the Lord guides my heart for prayer as I'm out and about. Someone will catch my eye or just cause my heart to ache, and the Lord brings me to pray for them, to bless them, to ask the Lord's Spirit to touch them. I'm just so sensitive to the darkness here - absence of the light of Christ. It's heavy, it's depressing at times, and it brings me to ask Him to continue to be light and life. Thank goodness that I know He's in me and with me and that my light is sure, my identity in Him is secure, my future is sealed. And hence the reason to go, to tell others, to let our light shine before men...

I have luggage!

My luggage came on Thursday. The man at the front desk called up and said cargo had come for Heath James - I assumed that would be me. Liv and I went down to grab it but then had to come back up to my room to get $50 to pay for the delivery. Yup, I got to pay $50 for the airline to lose my luggage and then bring it to me. The gratitude for having it somewhat helped overshadow the frustration. But truly, overall I'm so grateful to have Liv's and my clothing and toiletries.

Our first (almost) week here has gone well. Liv has been sleeping through the night... I have not. I've slept 2 full nights with the help of Benedryl. The others I've woken up for hours. Hopefully I'll get straightened out soon. I'd rather be the one awake at night rather than Liv.

The students have been adjusting pretty well. And I'm learning to navigate around our neighborhood a bit. It's been fun to see that even in the first week, students are making connections and having GREAT conversations with students here. The Lord continues to lead, guide, and open doors.

My computer battery is about to die, but I wanted to at least post that my luggage has come (!) and we're doing well. Much love from the Joneses :)

More Adventures

Well, I'm certainly NOT going to win any awards for consistent posting this school year. The last couple months have been crazy and especially the last few weeks. We're currently on our summer project with the students back in the Middle East where we were last summer (the source of some of the craziness trying to get packed and ready to leave). We just got in early, early this morning our time here after a long day of travel and misadventures. We literally took just about every form of transportation. We took the metro train in Minneapolis to the airport where we were 5 minutes from missing the deadline to check in for a flight due to a large group in front of us. We made it to our gate, loaded the plan and then sat there for 2 hours before we took off due to a few minor issues. Because of that we missed our connecting flight in Amersterdam. So we got to wait there an extra 5 hours (could have been better, but also could have been worse - so grateful it wasn't worse). Then we took off there to land in country where ALL of our luggage managed to be rerouted EXCEPT for 2 of our 3 suitcases which had all of my and Liv's clothes and toiletries. I'm praying to have them by this weekend (welcome to international travel, not as speedy). Then we got on a bus for the 3 hour ride to our city which included a 1 hour ferry ride - see, all the transportation covered.

So right now I'm borrowing Aaron's clothes to sleep in and washing the clothes on my back in the washer. Our living situation here is great. We have bedrooms, a washer, and air conditioning! The weather is absolutely perfect now, but it'll quickly get pretty hot. So we're really grateful to have air this summer. It just got so hot last summer.

This summer we have 15 students and 6 staff. A quieter group than last summer, but so far so good. I think it'll be fun. I'm looking forward to getting to know them better. I will hopefully do a better job updating. I'll try to give you a peak into this summer's adventures.

2nd Gotcha Day AND...

2 Years ago today we brought our little peanut home! I can't believe how fast it's gone. Here's our little baby and now she's potty trained and singing songs from High School Musical. I was remembering coming home after being awake for 30 hours and having this little person and not knowing what to do next (as most new parents feel). Londa drove us home from the airport that night and took a picture of me sitting on the floor giving Liv a bottle - there's suitcases and piles everywhere, but my baby needs to eat! What a blessing she has been. Last year for our first gotcha day we went to a cook-your-food-in-front-of-you Japanese restaurant in town. I don't know that Liv loved it, and I was willing to make her a Korean meal but she still doesn't like rice. So I thought, what does Liv really like - cheeseburgers and french fries. So we invited our neighbors over for burgers and fries and had a great time! My little all-American girl :).

Happy 2nd Gotcha Day, Sweetheart!!!

AND... We FINALLY mailed our paperwork today for adoption #2. Which many of you already know about but I know I haven't posted that on the blog yet. After much prayer last summer about our next little one (either biological or adopted), we again clearly felt the Lord leading towards adoption. So we're pursuing a boy from Ethiopia. So we've just mailed in the first batch of paperwork - then after all our background checks come in we'll meet with the social worker and then our homestudy will be done. I didn't realize the background checks will take so long; so the bummer is that we may not get to finish until we get home from our summer assignment. Then whenever our homestudy is completed we're put on the waiting list. So that could be awhile. We'll see. It just feels so good to finally have the paperwork done and sent. It feels like when you're in college and you finally turn that 20 page paper in that's been weighing on you. We've literally had it for months and worked on it here and there. I just didn't think it would take SO LONG. Oh well, I'm thankful that God is in control and that He knows I'm so very, very slow when it comes to paperwork (I hate paperwork). So we'll keep you posted as we progress!

Updates

So I guess it's been a month since I last updated! Goodness! We've been gone the last 4 out of 4 weekends which just makes the weekdays very full trying to catch up and getting ready to head out for the next thing. I just feel behind on everything. So thank goodness we're finally home this weekend. Being gone every weekend Liv has gotten to see a lot of Grandma and Grandpa Jones. She's loved it. It's so fun to watch how excited she gets to see her grandparents.

A few things on campus: the students started a 24/7 prayer room which means every hour, 7 days a week, 1 or more students is in there praying. It's awesome. It's been incredible to see how much the students desire to meet with the Lord and be in prayer. I can't wait to see what God does through it. I've gotten to go a couple times - it's just in a garage with carpet on the floor, a couple couches, blankets (basically no heat in there), and prayers and scripture posted on the walls.

I'm leading 2 Bible studies - 1 with a few girls from the women's soccer team and the other with upper classman women. I'm really enjoying both. They're great women. I love my job :).

Liv is doing great. She keeps growing, it's unreal how fast time goes. We're coming up on her being home 2 years. Wow. 2 great recent moments - this weekend, Liv came up to me and says, "So do you remember my dance move?" Um, yes? But I have to say yes cause I want to see what's next. So I say yes and ask her to show it to me - which was a fun combination of a spin and kick. She's asked me this a couple more times and each time the move is different. I love it. My great parenting moment of the day came this morning when I was running around and Liv kept asking me to do things. To which she finally said calmly, "Mommy, if you play with me I'll take you to McDonalds." Stick a ribbon on me and call me super mom :). We're doing a little sticker chart for simple chores. So when she gets the page filled, we'll take her to McDonalds... I guess she's picked up on it. She still loves and sings High School Musical.

So I'll leave the update there for now. Happy March! Yay, the snow is melting!

And I'm Proud to be an American!

So last Saturday, January 30th, Liv became an American citizen! Yay! I was so happy - mostly because that means we're ALL DONE! Some have asked why, now that she's 2 1/2, is she just now becoming a citizen. It's because we had to send in all the paperwork for the application and we're slow :). We sent it in last May before we left to go overseas. Then they sent it back wanting us to resubmit some things. I sent that the end of August and for months heard nothing. Just recently I had been wondering if she was just a citizen, and I needed to check or if it got rejected and they didn't tell us or if it still wasn't processed... But then we got a notice that the ceremony was coming up. It was held in a rotunda at the Mall of America. People have also asked why there?!? The only thing I can guess is that the immigration office isn't too far away, and there isn't enough room there to have it. They had multiple ceremonies that day. Ours was just for kids - there were 20ish or so that became citizens, most of them adopted. A woman sang the national anthem, a judge precided over the ceremony and said a few words, they said the pleadge of allegiance, and then they called each child up (with parents) to get their certificate. All in all about a half hour. But I was so excited!

Here we are! And they gave her a little flag...

Uncle Cory, Aunt Cindy, and cousin Cai came over for the fun.

Cai not having as much fun...

What better way to say, "Go America!" than a ginormous flag!

I love this picture :).

Here's our certificate. Thousands of dollars wrapped up in that piece of paper, but the results are absolutely priceless!

They called everyone up front for a picture at the end. Lots of chaos.

So there's the big day!

And in other news, Liv went poopy on the potty the day before! A weekend full of memorable moments :).

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, I Have to Pee Pee

We got a little book about a princess potty training, and I laughed when we got to this line. But we continue to move forward in potty training. The first few days to a week I was getting ready to pull my hair out. She didn't leave the house for 5 days and didn't wear pants for 4. We had people coming over so we figured we should probably put something over her underpants :). Then we traveled back to my parents home for a few days while Aaron went to a conference. We ended up using pull-ups most of the time there. But I think cause she was in underpants for so many days, she didn't begin to depend on the pull-ups. So she's continued to make progress. Probably 70% of the time she now tells us when she has to go, and the other 30% I try to either ask her or put her on the potty. She went to church nursery this morning (with pull-ups on) and told the nursery worker she had to go, but I think wanted me to take her and so she held it until I got there. Then the next hour she told a different worker who took her and she went in the potty! So enough about the potty, all this to say we're making progress but will potentially need a "poopy intervention" as that's NOT happening on the potty at all.

Last night we hung out with some dear friends in town. The weather was awesome and perfect for a little time outside. They have a great little hill in their backyard so we came to do a little sledding. My mom got this little snowsuit at a garage sale, and this is the first time we've put in on Liv. I laughed so hard at how fluffy it is around the middle. Poor thing. You'll notice on Liv an overall lack of enthusiasm. Not super thrilled with hanging out in the snow or sledding (this was her first time sledding). She's not being raised by a very "outdoorsy" mom...

Here's the girls all bundled up.

Again, this is about as excited as she got. Hopefully next year she'll enjoy it more.

AND I got a new camera for Christmas. This was my first chance to try it out - and by that I mean turn it on to the automatic setting and let it do the work while I just tried to get a few shots of moving targets :). I love how it can do the work for you though, and I'm looking forward to experimenting more.