My Little Sawyer Crew

I just got to spend 4 precious days with my sweet, 4 month old grandson. He is getting so big and is so adorable. Laughing, cooing, talking, rolling, grabbing at stuff and giving the sweetest, little looks with his eyes.

So, look who has the cutest grandson ever!!! I am the proudest Amma ever...

Our Sweet, Feisty Little Girl

Adelia has been with us for 17 months now. It feels like yesterday but then at the same time she was always here. Funny, how love and time make it feel like a person belongs in your life.

God is so gracious and kind to give us this sweet and feisty girl. Adelia, or Addie as she is most often called, is so smart. She has learned English so quickly and loves to do school. She definitely has strong opinions about everything. She is a peace maker (well most of the time). She loves to worship God. She has a beautiful voice. She is strong. She is kind-hearted. She has the most amazing smile and sparkling eyes. She is a fighter, in the most positive ways, she stands up for what is right and she works hard at doing the things that are hard for her to do. I truly love this girl with all my heart.

I am so thankful to have her big hugs and sweet words. We have been "writing" notes in a journal to her foster parents. She has been grieving them something fierce. Yesterday she told me to write that she loved and missed them (which is typical) and she added that she has a new friend. I asked who was her friend and she said "mama, you are my new friend". Oh, I felt such love toward her and our God, for helping she and me to bond. I am attaching the video I finally completed of her adoption and days here with us these last months. The photo you see at the airport with me meeting her, for the first time she held onto me is monumental. From that moment forward, it has honestly been that way. I am so praising God for doing that and answering my prayers so abundantly in our relationship. I am not saying there hasn't been hard days. We have had some difficult ones for sure. I already worry about her teenage years ahead sometimes LOL. But she is My Daughter, through and through, and I give God all the glory.

Adelia Adoption Video

Support Our Adoption

We have two fundraisers we are running for our adoption.

 1. Unique Butterfly Jewelry This jewelry maker has graciously offered to sponsor us and support our adoption. Each sale of her Butterfly Jewelry will have 20% given back to our adoption. There are some absolutely beautiful pieces she has, which are very affordable. They would make great gifts too. If you go to her site and make a purchase please put a note "I want to support April's Adoption." She is selling some other items on her store but only the Butterfly jewelry gives us the financial support.

* I did ask about how she acquires the butterflies and she said they come from Butterfly Sanctuaries all over the word, living full lives. They were not hunted :)

 https://www.etsy.com/shop/Art4Justice

2. Fund The Nations T-Shirts

We have a personally designed, awesome t-shirt,  Voice For the Voiceless. 

We picked this verse from Proverbs 31:8-9."Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."
It is a great unisex shirt.  We are asking for a $25 donation for each shirt, which includes shipping. We will have sizes from YXS to XXXL. They are softer tshirt material and not preshrunk. XXL and up, do cost another $2.  We will be running this order for only a couple of weeks. I will let you know when it gets closer to our closing date so we can get the order in.

 If you would like to order a shirt please go to Voice For the Voiceless for credit card orders. If you would like to pay by check, send me your email address in a Post and I will email you my address. Once the order is closed I should have shirts in less than 2 weeks.

Thank you so much for considering these two fundraisers. 

Also, please show your love and support by passing along this information to your friends.. Thank you!

April (and Jay and family)

New Photos and Adoption Update

We have recently received some new photos of our little guy !!

I am so happy to see him smiling and all his cuteness.

He is still on the smaller side, and not crawling or walking. But he seems like he has grown a lot and turning more into a toddler.  From our update questions we are told his heart is holding okay. However, we were told the same before we brought Isaiah home and he was not doing well when we adopted him. So I just think sometimes they don't know. We also found out today that our dossier in China has moved out of translation and into Review. There is 4 stages of dossier processing. The first is Translation, the second is Review, third is Match, and fourth is Approval. The first is generally the longest and it took about a month. So I am so hoping we have our approval in about 30-45 days, which means we can very likely travel in February or March like I had been hoping for.. I know it will all be in God's perfect timing. However, we are anxious to get him home.

We are also doing some fundraising. I am going to post a separate post about that next. Please consider buying a personally designed tshirt we are asking for donations for. Or purchase some beautiful, unique butterfly jewelry that a sweet etsy, adoptive mom is helping us raise funds with.

My Heart....

I had the blessing of visiting my new grandson, Sawyer a few weeks back. I missed my kiddos greatly, but little baby boy stole my heart. I got to love on him and help his Mommy and Daddy a little. 

Can you just imagine the sweet bliss I had for 5 days?

Look at this face...

I didn't get to see his first smiles (although he was so close) but here is the first captured by his Mommy!

I am already counting down the days when I get to see them all again...September is coming quickly.

Blessed Beyond Measure

Not sure why or how this happened, except for Jesus. I am blessed.. I pray I never forget that..

Makenna, Addie, Eliza, Lenea, Me, Ellie and Moriah

Jacob, Toby, Asher (front) Jay and Isaiah

Calling All Cowboys and Cowgirls....Big Birthday Bash

When you turn "5" in our family, we typically allow a first big kid birthday party...
Well, this year all of our littles were turning "5" and it just seemed like a better idea to do one all out party. We would have the same guests likely and it would be much easier on everyone just to do one party (especially Mommy).

So we reserved our neighborhood gazebo at the park. Our neighbors brought a horse and pony. We played carnival games. We ate yummy food.

Thank you to all our friends who could celebrate with our Little Birthday Group.

Asher turned 5, February 23..

Elliana turned 5, June 5..

Adelia turns 5, July 31...

Isaiah turns 5, August 28....

Sweet boys!!

Horse Cupcakes !! Yummy..
Thanks Makenna for making this.

Mommy, with all four kiddos. Happy Birthday 

Moriah blowing bubbles with Ellie.

Addie rode the pony!

Lenea with friends.

Isaiah blowing bubbles.

 Our family..so blessed.

Intruducing...Sawyer Crew

On June 24, at 12:41 AM our son, Tyler and our daughter in Love, Emily welcomed their first baby, our first grandchild into the world. Little Sawyer Crew, weighing 7 lbs 6 oz.

He is just perfect and beautiful. It has been so hard not to be with them at this time. But I just booked my flight to go there on July 21st for 4 nights and I can't wait!! It will not only be a get away for me by myself (which I haven't done in a LONG time) but I will get to spend all that time with Ty, Em and Sawyer loving on them.

Anyway, here is my sweet grandson. God makes wonderful gifts..

James 1:17 "Every generous act of giving and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father who made the heavenly lights, in whom there is no inconsistency or shifting shadow. "

Adoption..

It was with joy and great anticipation to announce that our family is back on the adoption journey to another little boy in China.

We will  name him Silas Christopher Yuan..

He just turned 1 year old, April 24th and we just completed our homestudy. A travel time about March or April 2016 is anticipated.

Our children are SO excited about him. Even Addie, who has been home with us one year is already asking when I am going to China to bring home baby Silas. I am not sure how excited she really will be once I leave for two weeks though LOL. but at least she is processing it early.

Anyway, here is his sweet little picture. We just heard he had heart surgery as well, but our cardiologist who reviewed the reports isn't sure if he will still need more upon coming home.

Adoption....

Finally, two years later, I have a video for our precious Elliana and Isaiah...Feeling so blessed and honored to be their Mommy.

A Fun, Refreshing, Week of a Wish For Isaiah

The time had finally come for Isaiah's wish to go meet Mickey Mouse at Disney World in Florida.

It was December 28th, with a couple kids in our family finally seeming to come down with the flu we were trying to hard to avoid. So the many prayers, extensive hand washing, masks on the faces for the healthy people, vitamins galore and homeopathic remedies went into full swing, all in the hopes of a short existence for those who were sick and a non-existence for those who were healthy. It was only 3 days until our flight to Orlando.

December 30th came and Toby was still extremely feverish along with Addie. The rest of us were holding out. We went ahead and traveled to the hotel by the airport, in faith that things would turn around by morning.

We were all up bright and early. Toby's and Addie's fevers were both broken. Addie was doing remarkably better, but Toby had a cough. So we kept him in the mask for the entire travel day. We also kept Isaiah in a mask so he would not pick up the virus still.

Onto Orlando we went. We picked up our 15 passenger rental van at the airport and drove to our resort. We arrived in the evening to our amazing resort, Give Kids The World. It is a lovely, little place designed for Make A Wish children and their families. It is staffed by thousands of volunteers. There is a a carousel, train ride, arcade, swimming pool and splash area, mini golf, special visits with Mickey, horse back riding, ice cream to eat all day, and parties every night, all free! We could have spent our entire week just here, but we were also given free passes to Disney World, Sea World and Universal Studies. We hope to return to Give Kids The World as volunteers some day as the younger kids are older.

The weather during our entire week in Florida was beautiful. We even went to the beach one day, which was about an hour drive. I think that was one of the favorite days for all of us. Not only is the beach the most favorite place for many of us in our family to go, but it was just peaceful and relaxing. In spite of the annoying seagulls that kept trying to snatch our food from our bag.

This was Addie's very first time at the beach. She wasn't so sure about the water, but she LOVED the sand.

This was Ellie's second time at the beach and she LOVED the water and the sand!

Isaiah and me on a train ride at Animal Kingdom.

At Animal Kingdom there was a safari jeep ride that was very neat. These rhinos were on a road right next to our jeep.

Our first day to the parks we went to Animal Kingdom. We had a lot of fun there, however Jay stayed back at the hotel with Toby as his cough was wiping him out. Jay kept Ellie by default, as we knew she would have the hardest time in general at the parks, so any day she could get in her nap and hang out would be a bonus for her.

The next day we went to Magic Kingdom, our entire group. There were 13 of us. Our 12 in our family and we also brought along one of our helper young ladies, Charis. She was a huge blessing and we were so thankful to have another pair of hands and eyes to help navigate our crew around.

Magic Kingdom was my favorite park. That was also the day that Isaiah had a special meeting with Mickey Mouse. He was quite apprehensive to be close to Mickey. He looks a lot bigger than on the television. All the other kids did great and gave him hugs and high fives. It was really neat that this Mickey was able to talk to us with a real Mickey voice even.

Fun meeting with Anna

Our family just arrived at Magic Kingdom.

Meeting Donald at Epcot

Epcot was very neat

In front of the famous Castle at Magic Kingdom

We also had the wonderful opportunity to see my father, his wife and my half-brother James. They were taking James to the airport to head back to TX to finish up his tech school for security forces in the Air Force, just like Jay was. Anyway, they haven't ever met any of these children, only Tyler, so this was a privilege all around. They live about 2 hours away from Orlando, so they drove up and had breakfast with us in our villa.

Some of the younger kids had never been on a horse. We got everyone up except for Ellie. She was going to but when she saw the horse she just kept shaking her head "no, no"..No way, was she going to get on that animal!

Isaiah on a horse for the first time, the volunteers were so kind and caring to all of us.

One of our favorite parts of the time in Orlando was going to Sea World. My older kids convinced me to ride something called the Mantaray....Uhm...I like roller coasters for the most part, but this one was what I would call extreme. You sat in the seat that put you face down and your road the roller coaster like you were flying. I could not open my eyes the entire ride and I was laughing and screaming that I did not want to be on it either. I am glad I gave my kids a good laugh. Makenna loves roller coasters and was laughing so hard at me the whole ride. Sorry. never again. When it stopped I asked Eliza, who was sitting right next to me, "What did you think, did you like it?" She just shook her head "No" She had no words....point made.

Anyway, we enjoyed the Killer Whale and dolphin shows, we went on a few fun rides and got to feed the stingray and dolphins. It was a wonderful place. Lots of memories were made that day.

Here are a few photos from our adventures at Give Kids the World. We got to spend 6 nights and 7 days on this wonderful trip. We had a very long travel day home and got home at midnight, which felt like 2 AM to us due to the time difference. We were so blessed and can't thank everyone enough for making this trip possible for our Wish Kid. We are so honored and humbled.

Hugs from Miss Mary.

Ice Cream every night!

Thank you Charis. We love you and so appreciated all your help!

We had a cute little Christmas Tree in our villas.

A Candyland Play ground. One of the daily gifts we received was a Give Kids the World Village Candyland Game.