Friday Five Dollar Friend Challenge!

Can you give us $5? Today is Five Dollar Friday Friend Challenge! We are helping to raise $1k for the adoption fund of a little boy with Down Syndrome through Reece's Rainbow. We have many readers to this blog as well as those who receive it directly to their email inbox. 100 friends giving $5 today and again in two weeks will help us meet the goal. Ivan L. is desperate for a family and has waited four years in an orphanage already! There is not a lack of families will to adopt, just funds to help cover the costs of adoption! Thanks for helping!

Eight Months Home-No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

O has been home with us for eight months now. She truly has settled down and for the most part feels at home. Of course, we had to rock her boat by throwing her a huge birthday party for her 16th birthday and we have been dealing with repercussions all week. Do we regret celebrating her like we did? Nope. But so many of you have emailed that you liked the idea and were going to try something similar I wanted to warn you-YOUR NEWLY ADOPTED CHILD WILL HAVE A BACKLASH in one way or another to this stress.

I would say O has regressed about 3 months in progress due to this past weekend's events. She could have done it anyway because in her mind "16" was a milestone from passing from little girl to young lady. She doesn't want to grow up yet and is fighting to remind us that she is still very much a scared little girl.

Pray for us. We have some major life decisions to make in the next couple of days and we are still clueless as to what God wants us to do about so many things. I keep thinking one day soon God will let me share all that is going on, but not yet. It's been months of God asking us to "go deeper with me still". We are not guided by what we see or the situations around us, but by the Holy Spirit. Thank you for continuing to lift us up and support us. And for those of you helping behind the scenes and giving us wise counsel, you are truly appreciated and loved!

Finding Ivan a Family for Christmas

****Keeping this post at the top to remind you to DONATE TODAY! NO DONATION IS TOO SMALL!****

Thank you for all who voted on our poll for fundraisers! O has been working hard on various art projects for us to give away on behalf of Ivan L. from region 13 in Russia. He is an orphan with Down Syndrome waiting for a forever family for several years now. If he is not adopted by the time he is five he will face a lifetime of institutionalism. Our goal is to raise $1000 for his adoption fund.

For each of you who donate at least $20 between TODAY and December 4. We will send you one of O's wax etchings.
If you donate $35 or more you will get a Christmas ornament from RR with Ivan's picture on the back.
For ANY donation, your name will be added to the drawing for O's sand art. This picture is of Ukrainians in traditional dress done in the sand art that is only done by people of the southern region of Ukraine. It is truly a unique piece!Note: Your donations are TAX DEDUCTIBLE because the Chip-In is set up to donate directly to Reece's Rainbow. Be sure to put "IVAN L. 13" in the "Comment to seller" section so the money goes to his account. Chip in should send us your donation notice as well, if you give directly through the RR website for Ivan, just forward us the confirmation at j e r d e b w a l k e r @ hot mail dot com (remove spaces and add the dot!) and you will be added to the drawing!

THANK YOU FOR HELPING SAVE ONE MORE LIFE!

Alls Well That Ends Well

We made it through the weekend and through today-O's actual 16th birthday. The party was a hit, but that evening she had some behaviors. Saturday was a reverting to pushing buttons to see if she could get us to fight with her. It ended with her hitting J and he took away her MP3 player. That set off a huge fit with her storming outside at 10:30PM in her PJ's to sit in the rain on our front steps. After twice getting her in only to have her storm back outside screeching at the top of her lungs, I did what any sane parent would do and took off the accessible door handle and locked the front door so she couldn't exit independently again.

Was this a true meltdown? No. It was an emotional child trying to manipulate her environment. We refuse to talk with her while she is screaming-and left without an audience she is able to control herself. Now, just like the couples that like to fight because they like making up, we think she gets pleasure out of the conversations that occur when she is done being bad. So we didn't reward her with that either. At almost 11PM she wanted to talk all night about her feelings and we just simply told her we forgave her, we love her and tomorrow was a new day and put her to bed. She was hopefully disappointed enough to nip another episode in the bud.

We were worried about today and sending her to school so we kept it mellow in the morning. She had a fabulous day at school so we went ahead with our plans to give her our personal gifts this evening. They were a hit! The biggest one was the age regression photo we got of O at the age of one year through PhoJoe (Thanks Annie for the tip!) I thought the finish product was obviously a computer generated image but O lit right up and said "That's my eyes, my forehead and my nose!" She even asked that I now place this photo in her "baby book".
So now my newly 16 year old girl is sleeping peacefully in bed, and we are forever grateful that God caused our lives to come together to join on this journey called family. Thanks for your continued support and prayers!

Celebrating O's 16th Birthday

We had O's 16th birthday party today so we could have her friends and family come to celebrate together. We are deeply grateful for J's parents who graciously opened their home to 20 teenagers and more!

During R's last birthday O was a little saddened as we reminisced with R her past birthdays. She expressed wishing she had been with us always to have happy memories and photos for each birthday. That got me thinking that we would celebrate all 16 years for her first American birthday party. Several people helped me make 16 cakes and everyone brought gifts that a girl would want or get at each age. Now we can say "Remember that cake you had for your 5th birthday?" or "That's the teddy bear mom and dad gave you for your second birthday."

We weren't sure how it would go and how O would respond to such a big party so we chose not to make it a complete surprise. O got to know when it was and help invite her friends at school and church. It far exceeded her expectations, and ours as well!

Thank you everyone who helped make it so successful! She did get a little overwhelmed this evening and have a small temper tantrum, but we were impressed with how she recovered and kept focusing on the good. Her actual birthday is Monday and we have some personal gifts we want to give her without everyone around so I'm looking forward to another day to celebrate our girl!

It's Midnight

And I should be sleeping! J and I spent the evening at my in-laws decorating. Tomorrow we are having the biggest birthday celebration for O with her friends. We are celebrating all 16 years of her, including the 15 years of birthdays without being together. We even have 16 cakes and presents for each year. I can't wait to love on my girl and share the joy that is having her in my life!

So why can't I sleep? Why am I searching the waiting child listings and wondering what else I can do to help one more "O" find a family, one more "Z". Just one more Lord, help me help just one more. And after that, every one you bring my way help me to touch some how with the spirit of adoption.

Amen.