Saturday, September 29, 2012

Photo Challenge

I found out about this photo challenge off another blog,
and decided to enter. 
The theme is portraits, and that is my favorite kind of picture to take.
 
What do you think about this?
 

Friday, September 28, 2012

An Amazing Discovery

Another fun day with our Grandparents!
 
We are truly blessed to have such fun grandparents as we have!
Everyday this week we have done something fun, interesting, and of course, educational:)
Today we went to New Bern to the Tryon Palace.

At the museum we got an amazing surprise.
It all started with a nice older man working there who gave us a challenge to find a list of things in the museum displays.  By the time we left this man felt like a third grandfather to me!  We were the only people there so he was able to give us his whole attention.  He would tell us what to find, we would go look for it, and go get him when we found it. 
When I was trying to find a portrait of John Roberts someone started calling me, and I went to see what it was.
My grandparents were staring at a display with a picture.
"Guess who this is," my grandma said pointing to a man in the picture.
I though  I recognized him, but before I said anything she told me,
"It's your great grandfather!"  I studied the picture.
There was an African American man, a lady, and a man with his head turned.  They were standing in a flower field working.  The lady was bunch of tulips.


Brandon ran to show the man, and my grandfather started telling him the family history. (the simple version)
My great grandfather came to America from Holland,
 and helped to found Terra Ciea. 
He grew flowers, lots and lots of flowers!
It was so amazing seeing that picture, it made so many stories come to life.  That man also has Holland ancestry, it was simply amazing!

 

Thursday, September 27, 2012

I Never Realized What a Wonderful Sight the Ranger Station Was

Our grandparents are in town, and we have been having a really fun time with them!
Yesterday we went to a state park to walk on the trails.  It was a lot of fun!
 
But then we got lost.
No, we were not stranded out in the wilderness able to be eaten by bears,
we just couldn't figure out house to get back.
First of all we looked at a map and saw a fun 1 mile boardwalk path, and decided to take it.
We saw frogs...
and flowers... and butterflies...
And best of all a snake!
                                  
 
At the end of the boardwalk we looked at the map again and saw a 2 mile path that would take us
back to start.
Or so we thought.
At the end of the 2 mile trail we took another that brought us here:
to a river.
We walked back and took another path that brought us here:
to a road.
We walked on the road for about three miles to here
and then to here
where we saw this
 And took one last trail
to
here.  Never knew the ranger station was such a wonderful sight!
 
 
 
 



Monday, September 24, 2012

The God We Serve

God does amazing things.  He is showing me so much of His power that it blows my mind.
Today I had a couple co-op classes that I go to on Mondays, my last class is photography. 
Today we didn't have a lesson, but went outside to practice what we had learned
 the past couple of weeks. 
I use my dad's camera for this class, because it is a little nicer that the camera I usually use, and someone from his work had worked with the camera a few days before, and I hadn't messed with it since.
When I turned the camera on, something popped up saying the memory card
needed to be formatted, and it couldn't record, etc.  The rest of the class was already out taking pictures, and I ran to my teacher and embarrassedly told her the memory card wasn't working, and asked if  I could go in to get my spare. I ran inside and put in the other card.  To make a long
story short, that memory card was also refusing to work.
I tryed to put the contents on my computer and erase it off the disk, but still it didnt work.
By this time I had been gone about half and hour, I ran back out the rest of the class.  My teacher couldnt figure out what was wrong with the card either, and so I decided to give it up and
watch everyone else take pictures, but I was kind of bummed. 
"You can make it work," I prayed, "I know you can.  Please will you make the memory card work?"
I turned the camera on and the same message popped onto the screen - for 0.5 seconds.  I didnt press any bottons, I did nothing, but the memory card started to work, and I was able to take pictures normally.  The camera was working as if nothing had ever happened.
Sure, you could say it just happened to work, but no. I spent half and hour "trying to make it work"  and it didn't.  God showing me that He is bigger.
He has amazing power.
He can move mountains with faith the size of a mustard seed.
That's the God we serve.


We Feel Them

People are praying for our family, we know it.  We feel them.
Things are going great, please keep on praying!

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Wow

Wow, so must has happened since I wrote that post about waiting.  I know that God was teaching me about waiting, and now I am learning about things happening very quickly. 
Things are happening so fast it seems overwhelming, but we are all very excited.  I can't say too much for safety reasons, but we'll have two more little people in our house soon!

Saturday, September 15, 2012

We Wait In Hope For the Lord

UPDATE:
Bethany and Kaden are now home!  To read more of our story go here.



The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him,
 
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
 
to deliver them from evil
 
to keep them alive in famine.
 
We wait in hope for the Lord; He is our help and shield.
 
In Him our hearts rejoyce, for we trust in His holy name.
 
May your unfailing love rest upone us, O Lord
 
even as we put our hope in You.
(Pslam 33:18-22)
 
I was looking up some Bible verses for school one day and noticed something I had highlighted earlier and forgotten about.   
 As I read it the truth in those verses became so vivid and real.  They spoke to me, reminding me of things the Lord has and is teaching me.
"We wait in hope for the Lord".  Wait.  That is one thing I have trouble with.  I want things to happen now.  I want my siblings to come home now.  I want that science lesson to be over now.  But what about God's timing?  His timing is perfect. 
He knows why, he knows how, he knows when.
We are in a place in our adoption journey where things are taking a little bit longer than hoped, not too long, but still long enough to make me wish things were happening quicker.
Maybe the God wants to teach me about his timing during this part. 
I'm learning it.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Loving it

The weather is finally cooling down, wahoo!
It has been beautiful here, the temperatures are in the 70s, and we have done a
lot of our school out side. 
Inside, the windows are open, and the breeze is blowing through the house. 
We are lovin' it!
 

Monday, September 10, 2012

Picture Perfect

I'm having fun with photo editing! 
Brandon and David have helped me out with being my subjects, and they love to see the finished product.  Here are some favorites:
 






 
Which is your favorite?
 
P.S.  We have some exciting news to post on Wednesday!
 
 

Friday, September 7, 2012

Thank You!

Thank you so much to everyone who has donated baby formula!  We were able to pack one or two big trunk load of it! 

 
So right now we are enjoying being this family....

 
and are looking forward to being this family.  Really looking forward.  A lot.
 
sorry, we still cannot show you their beautiful faces for a couple more weeks:(
 
We are also doing a lot of getting ready, and we almost are... I hope.

ready to travel!
 
 
 
 

Numbering the Days ~ 1 March