'Tis the season (for throwing up)

The arsenal. No, not all at once. Are you crazy?!?!

Crackers, Pedialyte, a vomit tub, and big sissy reading to him. What could be better?

Sick lunch menu for Adelyn: crackers and plain ramen noodles. Yum!

Well, a happy happy Halloween to you! On this lovely fall day we find ourselves battling the worst of all ghouls--germs. Lots of them. They've been steadily invading our house the last several days. Colton is on day 3 (or is it 4?) of throwing up. Today Adelyn has joined the fun. And they both have explosive diarrhea. Fun times. Adelyn also has a pretty bad cold complete with coughing, a rattling chest, and copious amounts of green snot. Natalie is the last holdout...only time will tell. Despite the fact that the kids are sick, we're actually having a pretty pleasant day. Maybe it's because I inhaled a little too much Vicks Vaporub when I put it on Addy's chest a while ago perhaps? Or, more than likely, it's because sick days can actually be pleasant. Colton has let me read him a 100 page storybook about trains...twice. Adelyn keeps crawling in my lap to hear a story, and Natalie is happily plugging along with her schoolwork. Sick days force us to take it easy, stay close to one another, and of course clean up a few bodily fluids as well (that's the less glamorous element of this otherwise pleasant day). My point is, if today wasn't a sick day, I would have dropped Colton off at school, taught Natalie, went to Walmart, cleaned the house, etc. Instead, we're enjoying one another's company.

On another note, the kids are insisting on trick or treating tonight still. Would it be in poor taste for them to throw up on someone's doorstep and then ask them for candy?

Introducing Easton Si Hu Walker

LOVE!

Love this sweet smile

That's quite the hairdo Easton!

I think he's 4 days old in this picture

Without further ado, I'm thrilled to share pictures of our adorable new son. His birth mother named him Si Hu, which we will be keeping for his middle name. He is 9 months old and perfect in every way. All glory to God!

Beauty

This is common ground we walk to near our home. We've dubbed it "The Secret Garden."




It's beautiful!






The kids and I have been spending a lot of time here enjoying the stunning beauty of God's creation.

I love watching the kids play here--seeing where their imaginations lead.

Exploring.

Wandering.

Playing with leaves.

(Hi honey! Wish you were here with us in the "Secret Garden.")

Studying.

Marveling.

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." Psalm 19:1

"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?" Psalm 8:3-4

Thank you, Lord, for the world you've created. The works of your hand are beautiful. Being outside feeds my soul and I know it's because I'm in the presence of the Most High.

For Daddy, with love

Hi Daddy,

It's us. Your three little monkeys. Here is a video of us from tonight right after Mom surprised us with copious amounts of Dairy Queen deliciousness (sundaes all around)! We miss you. When Mommy put us to bed tonight, she asked us what we miss about you being here. Some of the things we said were: snuggling with you, having your read us stories (the recorded Daddy stories are nice, but "in person Daddy" is better), laying in our beds wtih us at night, tickling us, making silly faces at us, wrestling, climbing on you, and praying on our prayer mat together. We listen to our Daddy dolls every night and tell you goodnight. We can't wait for you to come home.

Love,

Noodles, Spiderman, and Addy Bojangles

One month down!

Well, today is a happy day in the Walker house. Why you ask? Because Matt has been gone for one month. Now, I'm not dong cartwheels over the fact that he's not here. That would be strange. I am excited because we're making progress. One month down, six more to go.

I've found that keeping track of milestones along the way really helps me to stay positive. Every three weeks, I go to Starbucks and get a "10% through the deployment coffee." Of course, I've only been once so far. But I already have the dates marked on my calendar of when I get to go back for the 20% coffee, 30% coffee, etc. Each month, I change the shirt of Matt's that I sleep with. Yes, I sleep with one of the tshirts he wore the week that he left. No, I don't wash it for one whole month. Don't judge me. Every Friday, we mark off one more week since he's been away (which means we're one week closer to his return).

All in all, life is good. Matt and I skype twice a day (one in the working and once at night). The video quality is pretty bad in the sense that his eyes looks like black holes and his face is grainy, but it's a whole lot better than nothing! The kids and I have sent a couple of care packages to him already, and he sends an occassional letter to us in the mail as well.

Another key component of thriving during the last month has been staying VERY busy. The kids and I have something on the calendar 6 days a week. Saturday is our only day that's free of somewhere we have to be. Ordinarily, the pace might not work for our family. With Matt away, though, it's been great to stay busy. It's better than sitting around feeling lonely.

Dear deployment,

You stink, but you aren't stealing my joy.

- Sarah :-)

Adoption is hard

I'm feeling pretty frustrated today about our adoption process. So, I'm going to use my blog as a "dear diary" of sorts. When I updated on our adoption process last month, I shared that we were expecting a referral SOON given that our agency was starting to have children come into care born in January of 2011 (the arbitrary month of birth for our future child that our agency chose as being acceptable in order to put 8 months age difference between Adelyn and our future child) . Well, I logged on to our agency's waiting child photolisting and I immeidately noticed three new children added to the photolisting. Interesting. Children are only added to the photolisting if a family for them can't be found amongst families working with our agency. In other words, listing a child on the photolisting is used as a secondary means of finding a family when a familiy can't be found directly amongst the agencies existing families. Well, guess what? All three of these sweet babies were born in January of 2011. And our agency definitely didn't call us to ask if we would be interested in adopting any of them. We were skipped over for reasons unbeknownst to me. I'm so frustrated I could scream.

HOWEVER, I continue to believe that God knows who our child is. Without a doubt. This is one of those cases where I can't see the forest for the trees. I'm only able to see the situation from my limited, finite perspective. I can't see what God is orchestrating behind the scenes. And, to be 100% honest, that is a hard spot for me to be in right now. I am forced to submit and simply trust in His good plan. I have to resist the temptation to try and manipulate the situation and become bitter with our agency.

Whew! I honestly feel better just getting that off my chest. Alrighty then, back to child rearing...

Busy week

Well, I just realized today that I had completely neglected my blog this past week. We had several days that sort of threw me off this week I guess you could say. First, Colton had some *digestive* issues last Monday throughout the day (and evening). On Tuesday, I took Natalie to the homeschool academy she attends once each week (an hour away). It was picture day and she was also student of the week. It was also show and tell day. Getting out of the house that morning by 7:45 was no small task! Then, the little kids and I spent the whole day with a friend and her two little girls until it was time to pick up Natalie at school. Wednesday morning we were supposed to head to a pumpkin patch with Colton's preschool class. He had been anxiously anticipating the field trip for many weeks. I went to wake him up to get ready for school and within ten seconds of waking up he started throwing up...forcefully. Poor little guy was so disappointed he couldn't go to the pumpkin patch with his friends. He threw up several times in the morning (even out of his nose!) but by the afternoon he was completely back to normal. Strange little virus! On Thursday the kids and I went to a playgroup on post, ran errands, had Pizza Hut for lunch, went on a nature walk to collect leaves, and perhaps most noteworthy, I started reading The Help. Oh.my.goodness. It was an amazing book. The past 48 hours I've had to squeeze in child rearing, sleeping, and eating around my desire to read this book. I finished it this morning. Have you read it? I stopped reading fiction several years ago for this very reason. A good book is like a black hole to me. If I start reading good fiction novels again regularly, my kids will likely turn into undisciplined little monsters running in the street willy nilly while I'm inside sitting in stretchy pants and a tank top with my nose buried in a book amidst a houseful of clutter. Yes, it's true. I have been known to neglect my parental duties almost entirely in order to read a book. In case you haven't read The Help yet, go read it. Now. You will thank me later. And now that I've finished it, I really should go see the movie. And then I can get back to life as usual.

The eagle has landed!

Hallelujah! Matt has arrived safely (as of this morning) to the location he has been assigned to in Afghanistan. It's been a bit of a stressful last 24 hours. I knew he was leaving one location and headed to his final destination yesterday. I also knew the trip would involve one short ride in an aircraft followed by a short ride in an armored truck. So, when I didn't hear from him for TWENTY FOUR hours, I began stalking CNN, MSNBC, my email, and generally becoming quite *nervous.* I was up most of the night clutching my phone just willing the darn thing to ring already. Shouldn't he have arrived many, many hours ago? Finally, my phone rang at 5 AM with the caller id showing "unknown" which meant it was Matt. Can I get an AMEN?!?!!? While the last leg of Matt's journey was the shortest in terms of mileage (hence me expecting the "I made it safely here" call much sooner), it was also the most dangerous. Thus, my nail biter of an evening waiting for his call. What I didn't account for was the 10 hours Matt sat waiting by himself for various modes of transportation to, you know, transport him. Nor did I account for the fact that once he was actually picked up by the armored truck that he would be the last stop as far as drop offs go (even though the truck actually passed his base at one point on the way to drop someone else off elsewhere). So, Matt was afforded the rare opportunity to tour the Afghan landscape and locals via the view from the truck.

I'm OVERJOYED and incredibly THANKFUL that Matt is finally done being in transit. He has arrived! To God be the glory! He can settle into his tiny jail cell room and get this thing started. We can establish a routine for communicating with each other. He can get some sleep, start developing some friendships, and make the best of his deployment. And I can stop worrying about where he is and what on earth he's doing. I feel like we're really getting started now, which means we're one step closer to him coming back home.


While we're on the subject (sort of), I'd also like to say that the kids and I are doing great. They have their moments when I can tell they're grieving and missing Daddy, but overall we're all happy and doing well. I've adjusted to parenting them without Matt's presence and it's really not so bad most of the time. We're staying very busy and spending lots of time out of the house and with friends and family, which has also been tremendously helpful. We miss him like crazy, but we're thriving.


Thank you so much to everyone who has and is continuing to lift us up in prayer before the Father. We would be lost without his grace poured out in our lives.