Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Moving forward from painful

I have one of those gadgets on my computer side bar that randomly circulates photos from my vast collection stored on my hard drive. Lately, this photo of Candace has been showing up a lot. It was taken about a week or so after we got back to the United States.

This picture is almost painful for me to look at. This is the face of a child who is trying desperately to please someone she can't communicate with, she doesn't know and who is making her wear this horribly ugly dress (in her opinion... I myself thought it was adorable.) Tom and Emily were away for an overnight trip to Iowa State for orientation, adding some uncertainty to the mix as far as the twins' minds were concerned. I was trying to take pictures of the twins to use on adoption announcements, and after about fifteen minutes of trying, I think we were all in tears.

This is about when it sunk in to me how challenging these girls were going to be and that our family was forever altered in a drastic way. It was a very low moment, and there were many more over the next months.

It has now been not quite two years since the twins were added to our family, and we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our son. I think we are all more prepared this time. How couldn't we be? I am a little afraid. But I also feel stronger. Most of the time, my pictures of Candace these days look more like this one:

It was a long hard, journey to get to this point. It is still an upward climb... not just for Candace and me, but for Sarah and Tom and all of our family. There is still pain to manage and understand. It was, and is, so worth it. I am grateful to God for setting us on this path and giving my life a new purpose. I am eager to embrace Feyissa Thomas as my son and to continue to work on just being a family, all of us together under God.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Easter

Candace and Sarah with their new Easter bunnies.


Spears kids ready for Easter Mass.


Tom and I are dressed for Mass too.
We don't usually look this crazy; I blame the fact that
the photographer was less than four feet tall.

May the many blessings of the day be with you and your family.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Pictures I love

Four sisters and a mom.
This is at my sister Laura's house in 2003.
From left to right: Johanna, Laura, Mom, me and Teresa.


Sunday, April 17, 2011

The birthday girl goes to prom

Anna, the youngest of our three "bigs", turned 17 on Friday. We celebrated with dinner and cake at home, then she went to the movies with two of her friends. Here she is with her birthday cake, little sister Sarah and good friend Jessica:



It was a big weekend for Anna. On Saturday, she went to the prom with her friend Bobby and several other kids from school. Here they are at our house before the festivities:


It's hard for me to believe that my darling little Anna is 17 years old and going off to the big dance with a date. Seems like hardly any time at all since she was as young as the twins... I know it will be the blink of an eye before they are doing the same thing. Bittersweet, for sure.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Introducing our new son!

We passed court today. Here is our beautiful new son,
Feyissa Thomas Spears!



Our first photo with Thomas, taken at the care center when we were in Addis last month for our court trip:

We are eagerly counting the days until we bring him home!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

A taste of summer

With temperatures in the upper eighties today, we got a summer preview... well, okay a late spring preview, it will be much hotter in the middle of the summer! Summer at our house means swimming, boating and playing on the trampoline. The lake is still far too cold for swimming and the boat isn't quite ready, but Daddy put the "jumpoline" up today.

Jumping!

Anna does a back tuck flip

Candace does a straddle jump

Sarah's front flip

Sarah's straddle jump

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Moving in the right direction

I got the news today from a reliable source (our agency caseworker) that our letter from MOWA has been issued. She said we would still need the court order signed by the judge on April 15th, but all of the paperwork is done. With the drama surrounding the slowdown of paperwork processing by MOWA (which is actually MOWCYA now) I was afraid that our case would be delayed by months.

So happy to report that isn't true. Just nine days to wait. :)