Pruning Time!

In John 15:1-11  My all time favorite speakers is speaking.  To paraphrase Jesus says that He is the vine and the Father is the vinedresser.  God takes away the branches that don't produce fruit and prunes those that do so that they may produce more fruit. Ultimately Jesus tells us in verse 11 that all this pruning and abiding is happening, "that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full".  I want full joy.  I want heaping amounts of glorious Jesus joy!!!  I mean really, who doesn't want joy?

Well it's time for some pruning in our family. George and I took a look at our lives and asked:  What are the things not producing "fruit" in our lives and our children's lives?  Galations 5:22 tells us that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfullness, gentleness, and self-controooool" (the extra oos are not Biblical but necessary for me to remember the verse in song;)  Well that's the "fruit" we are looking for.  So we started making a mental list:  TV, movies, facebook (pruning hurts people, it's done with shears!), magazines, internet.  In short, secular media.  So we're whipping out the shears.  Everything MUST go!!!!! 

Ok, so were kinda giving ourselves an out.  We're calling it an "experiment."  We're going to cut these things for the next year.  During that time I'm going to keep a journal of our observations to review and blog (or write?!?!?) about later   Our start date is August 1st!  Monday!!!!

What do we hope to gain by this craziness? 
1.  Better relationships with God!  (FRUIT)
2.  Better relationships with each other.  No media= more time together talking, playing games, reading, playing, etc.
3.  More real and better relationships with family and friends.  If we want to know how someone is doing we will have to ...........wait for it...............CALL THEM!
4.  A better appreciation for the types of media that we should use.

Now before you panic we do have some exceptions:
1.  In order to be on board George required that a Phillies/Eagles clause be written in.  There was much negotiation but ultimately we agreed that these things would be ok and used as family time. (at all other times the TV will be unplugged)
2.  Email.  We literally NEED email.  It's the way our adoption agency communicates.  Also, we will use it to send pics to family and friends.
3.  AWAA yahoo group.  The information in our group is just too invaluable to give up.
4.  This blog!  We're going to stick to blogging about our adoption.  There are so many wonderful people who have invested in our adoption and you deserve to know what's going on!
5.  Christian Media: ie: focus on the family:)

So there it is.  Our crazy one year UnMedia Experiment. 

One final note.  If your concerned about staying connected and our main form of communication is facebook please email me your info and I'll be sure to keep you in the loop:)

Pictures!!!!

Ahhh!  I so wish I could show you all pictures of how cute our little guy is!  Our lovely friends Debb and Jeff Marquez loved on him and took some pictures for us this week.  Let me tell you he is one handsome little dude:)  His eyes are the kind of eyes that you can't help but be jealous of.  Gorgeous eyes surrounded by awesome lashes and topped off with great eyebrows.  Any girl would pay big money for those eyes:)  And his smile?  OH MY HEART!  So sweet:)

Seeing these pictures has suddenly made it very real to me.  I admit that I didn't feel immediately connected to his referral pictures.  I was happy (thrilled!) and I loved him but it wasn't like he was MY baby.  Now I feel I must go get him, like yesterday!  I don't want to miss another smile.  I want those adorable little hands in mine and I want to kiss those toes!

Please pray for a miraculously quick court date IN AUGUST!  It seems impossible but we serve a God who specializes in impossible!!!

The Referral Call!

So I realize that most of the people who read this blog have heard the story but I wanted to write it down so I don't forget a thing!

First let me go back to last Thursday.  George and I were in PA at the Creation East festival when at 2pm my phone rang and I saw those three little numbers 7 0 3.  "This is it!!!" I thought!!!  It was not.  I'm not sure why but for some reason our family coordinator called just to confirm our request.  I hung up the phone ran to my room tent, flopped on my bed air mattress and balled my eyes out!  I was so disappointed!  Then Friday came when I got a text from a friend asking if we had heard anything and if we knew the offices had closed early:(  I was so very sad.

Skip ahead to Wednesday July 6th.  The day we officially had been waiting for 11 months!!  That day was supposed to look like this:  get up early, pack for shore, pick up mom and Joel, head to OC, stop halfway to pick up lunch, frolic on the beach, get cleaned up, walk the boardwalk and enjoy massive amounts of horrible for me but oh so good food.  Well we made it as far as "stop for lunch" at that point Christin threw up her breakfast in the WAWA bathroom (if you don't know WAWA I'm so very sorry for you:)  After many tears (mostly mine but I had my sunglasses on and refrained from screaming so no one knew) we decided to head back to moms and relax by the pool until Dad got home and could take Mom and Joel to the Boardwalk for the evening while I went home:(

At 3pm I check my phone and there is a missed call from CAITLIN!!!!  I FREAK out and with shaking hands call back but don't get a hold of her.  There is no message:(  So I call George after 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or maybe more than I will admit George answers and says, "That was Caitlin calling me back about a question I asked about updating our homestudy.  She said she is so so sorry she accidentally called you first and she knows how stressful that must have been."  I somehow manage not to cry and accept the fact that the call won't be today:(

At 3:45pm I head home.  At a stoplight I start to text George and ask him if he wants coffee when my phone rings!!!!  I can see it's those three numbers again 7 0 3 but in my excitement and because I have a new phone I can't answer and instead hang up!!!!  AHHHHH!!!!!!!  I call right back and Caitlin says, "Hi Shannon!  George hung up so he could try to call you.  Let me try to conference him back in."  I say, "Ok" but what I'm screaming in my head is "OH MY GOODNESS THIS IS IT!!!!!!!!!!"  and I promptly start balling.  Once we are all on the phone Caitlin says, "Well I have great news for you!  I have a referral for a 5 1/2 month old, perfectly healthy baby boy with the most beautiful brown eyes!  Congratulations!  I'm sending you all his information now"

George patiently waited the 20 minutes it took for me to get home so we could all look at his pictures together and then we spent the next 2 hours making phone calls:)  Here is the video of us seeing his face for the first time:)

Finally we went out to eat to at PF Changs to celebrate (I know not the right cuisine but we figured Christin shouldn't be eating more than white rice)

Now we wait for a court date.  Please join us in praying that God would work a miracle and we would somehow get a court date before the courts close on Aug. 7th.  It would take a miracle but we are going to pray for it anyway and trust God to do what's best!

Thank you so much for the prayers.  I'll leave you with some pics of gifts we've gotten for our boy (who's name is still a little up in the air:)

Nana and Uncle Joel bought him his first OC and Phillies t-shirts on the boardwalk!

A gift from our wonderful babysitter Miss Ashley:)

And the bedding for his room that Nana and Big Daddy bought and have been saving for referral day!  Yay!!!!