A very long overdue blog!!!

 Our daughters have now been home almost six months and God has blessed our family in such a huge way with an awesome transition for our girls and strong attachment. A lot has happened since our first trip of meeting our babies in November. Brian and I got home and felt such grief from leaving our girls in Ethiopia. It was by far one of the hardest things we've had to go through. Our oldest Nora had such a hard time with us leaving and cried and cried and repeated she wanted to come home to America with us then. Talk about ripping your heart out! Well anyway, in January, Brian and I who were totally preventing pregnancy found out I was pregnant. This my friends was a shocker, I mean really a major shocker. I immediately went into panic mode because I wasn't suppose to conceive unless I was already taking big ole amounts of hormones to keep me from losing the baby. I immediately called my doctor and by evening the meds were being consumed. I had some scares of miscarriage in the month of January and my meds were doubled. We excitedly and nervously made the announcement that I was pregnant and decided to praise God for however long He chose to give us this sweet little life growing inside of me. February came and we got word that we had finally cleared embassy and we could go and get our little girls!!! This Momma and Daddy were on cloud nine! Below on the blog is our coming home video and some updates we had while in Ethiopia. All of our children are doing so well and we can't thank God enough for blessing our family so incredibly much this past year. It has been a very long and difficult pregnancy with many scares and a long time of bed rest as well. However, I'm now almost 35 weeks pregnant and our little boy Pax is kicking away as I type. The kids are all so excited to have a baby brother soon and that Mommy can get off of bed rest this Saturday!!! We can't even begin to say how grateful we are for the Body of Christ that God has placed on our lives. To think when we started the adoption process we were only going to adopt one child and domestically because my pride was too BIG to want to do any type of fundraising at all. Yep, we were all set, we were going to use our savings that we had saved to buy a bigger house to adopt all on our own. Although years ago we believed the Lord was calling us to adopt internationally I just knew that wasn't an option for our very middle class family and I certainly wasn't asking for any help. Well, as most know all it took was a picture of our girls on a blog, and we knew we were being called to be their parents. My pride of finances went out the window and we ended up with an adoption that cost about three times as much as a domestic adoption. What I've learned this year is to never ever limit what God can do based on what you think you can do!!! We are now living in a 1,700 square foot home with three bedrooms and six children with a seventh on the way. This so cracks me up!!! For real we were desperately seeking to find a bigger house when I was pregnant with our fourth that we lost, because we couldn't imagine having four kids in our small house and now we're about to add our seventh. Oh how good God is and how glad we are that we chose to quit looking at houses after we lost our little one and yet another baby after that one and pursue adoption. God's plan is always BEST!!! The Body of Christ and those that God chose to help make us a family gave, gave and gave!!! We are forever grateful!!! All of our needs have been met in such tremendous ways. While on bed rest we've needed help during the three days that Brian has to work at the office each week. Our children have had their adopted grandparents come three days a week for many, many weeks to care and love on them and me. I can't even begin to tell you what a HUGE blessing this is, especially since we didn't even ask.  They knew they were being called by God to take care of their grand kids they said. We've also been provided so many amazing meals, which is by no means an easy or cheap thing to provide for a family of eight and many have made meals for us multiple times. I've been met each week to be wheel chaired in to my doctors appointment by my sweet friend, while Brian has watched our kiddo's.  My toilets have been scrubbed by those that I never would have imagined coming to clean my home, and my underwear drawer is no longer a drawer that only I knew where to put my under clothing, (which is quite humbling especially when your old panties fit like thongs and your new ones still shock you that your butt has really grown that big)... We have been helped out in so many, many ways and our kids have done so well with all the changes and have been loved on by so many during these crazy months. Brian has been such an amazing Daddy and Husband. He has worked full time, cooked great meals, washed clothes like crazy, kept our house clean, kept up the garden and yard work, put kiddo's to bed each night, served me like crazy and so much more!!! What an incredibly blessed woman I am!!! Below is some pic updates and I'm sorry for being such a blog slacker. I've done well updating on FB, but know there are so many of you that keep up with our blog that I'm not FB friends with and see that so many have regularly checked our blog for updates. Please forgive me!!! Enjoy!!!

Our beautiful daughters!

Our handsome sons!

Wonderful meals given to our family!

The girls first Christmas presents!

 

Our family from Ethiopia right here in Nashville!!! 

ET family fun!

More family!!!

Yep, she loves her big brother!

Fun with family!

 

Snow grandchildren

My oh my what a good looking bunch!!!

So blessed!!!

They are all crazy!!!

Daddy's girls!!!

I love my Daddy!!! First thing Nora had translated to us at home was all kids deserve a Daddy!!!

Momma and her beauties!!!

Momma and her cuties!!!

Cousin love!!!

Some of the Wood grandchildren...

First time ever swimming!!!