Blog Addition

I've added a box at the top of the blog to let you know what we're waiting on next before we travel to Albania to meet David Reni. If you read our blog via a "feed", this is something you will only be able to access through visiting our site.
Thanks for your continued prayers for the process!

Ellie's First 5th Birthday Party

Gjyshe, Gigi, and Aunt Hannah came to Kentucky on Sunday and we had a little party...

Yay! A pool for the apartment in Tirana!

Ellie was enraptured with her very own bird's nest. She was waiting for the eggs to hatch. Great gift, Gjyshe!

Gigi brought sparklers. I think the photo below says it all.

Cake time! (We think this is the first year she's actually eaten her own birthday cake!)

We think David Reni is going to have a hard time keeping his sister out of his toys...

Els had such a hard time saying goodbye, that she ended up jumping in the car with them! She's been in Illinois since Tuesday and we drive up there tomorrow to pick her up! (Hence all the blog posts this week ;-) )

Ellie also got a very cool John Deere wagon which we got on video, but not on the still camera. We'll have to post a photo of that later...

A bit of immigration news

Go ahead and yawn and skip to the bold print to get the gist of this post. However I know that some of you wonderful readers have walked this path before and are familiar with this jargon and know the state of bated breath anytime you open the mailbox to find that white envelope with a blue eagle seal in the return address.

We got our fingerprint appointment today. It was set for July 6. Thankfully, we had a conversation last month with our friend Amy Kinnell (also an adoption social worker) who told us that we could request an appointment online with the Louisville USCIS office. So we did. For May 24. We showed up and begrudgingly (after a couple of phone calls by both them and us with the National Benefits Center in MO), with five minutes to spare, they fingerprinted us in spite of not having an 'official appointment'. It really came down to the fact that they didn't know what to do with us since a lot of rules changed in April removing responsibility and authority from the local state offices and centralizing it somewhere else.

We saved 5 weeks.

Now, you can join us in praying that our May 24 fingerprints (aka FBI background check) get connected with our I-800 that should hopefully be processed sometime soon! This waiting and state of 'unknown' is getting painful!

Summer Saturday Picnic

The park was very busy, but I thought we snagged the best picnic spot on site.

I love this image of Els, taking a rare moment to be still and enjoy her surroundings

Ellie has an expressive face, but I must say this look of concentration is not an expression with which I am very familiar. She was really interested in mastering these levers and I was very proud of her effort.

Many have asked for an adoption update. To put it briefly, we are still waiting upon the return of our I-800A (a request for an immigration extension and approval of our home study update to adopt "special needs"). The average turn around time has been about 4 weeks. If that holds true, we should hear something at the end of this week, or sometime early next week. We will then need to hear a reply from our I-800 before a court date can be set. We're hoping to travel at the end of this month to begin the requisite 2 week bonding time before two appearances in court (which closes down for the month of August) so we really need to hear something soon! Thank you for your prayers!

Location Scouting

The month of May found us going and going and going, so when we saw a weekend approaching with no plans, we literally breathed a sigh of relief. The past few summers have found me shooting a wedding nearly every weekend I didn't have blocked off for other commitments or trips. This summer, however, I am pleasantly enjoying a bit of a reprieve from the hectic wedding season. With an impending international adoption, I knew I would have to space out weddings to accomodate international travel, whenever that might occur. So as Saturday approached, I suggested a little excursion. I needed to scout a couple locations for my June 19th wedding in the beautiful, quaint little town of Versailles, Kentucky and thought Saturday might be an ideal time to accomplish that task.

The first location was a "cottage-y" farm/B&B outside of Versailles. The bride said the owner welcomed me to explore the grounds, even if she wasn't home when I dropped by. Upon our arrival we quickly determined we had the place to ourselves so took our time to explore. (Sidenote: I really miss the farm when summer rolls around, so it was hard for me to leave when our stomachs grumbled to remind us it was lunch time). I found the pastoral scenes very refreshing and thought you might too...

Enjoy a glimpse of this little part of the Bluegrass:

A little garden artwork...

Not really sure what this piece of artwork is called, but I thought it was colorful and dimensional.

This converted tobacco barn has a "hay" mow quite different than what we have in our barns in Illinois... I didn't include the photo which showed all the timbers for drying the leaves.

There were two very friendly Percherons that Els loved, but didn't want to really pet. In her defense, they were rather large...

Ellie loved the fluffy chicken roaming around this barn...

This is as close as I could get to the family of peacocks which also call this home (above)

Those are blossoms all over the ground. What is it about twiggy furniture that invokes thoughts of rest and quiet?

When we first arrived, we thought the owner had spotted us out a window. As I walked around the house, trying to determine exactly which door to try first, I heard a voice calling out, "Hello! Helloooooo!" Ellie thought a talking bird was HILARIOUS! She didn't want to leave and tried to get him to talk back to her.

I think this pretty tree-lined drive will be a cool, shady place for some wedding photos on a hot summer afternoon!

I hope to post photos soon from our subsequent picnic! Thanks for checking in!

PreSchool is Over!

Ellie with her teacher, Ms. K
Oh cool! Presents!

with Mr. Russell, the special ed teacher for her room (she has gotten into a very UN-cooperative stage with the camera!)


Ms. Janie (an aide in the room) did a lot with Ellie from her first days of school nearly two years ago... I think they're special pals

I think Ms. Mildred (the other aide in the classroom) was caught off guard by the intensity of this hug!

Ellie and the bus crew. Next year she moves up to the big kids bus with no monitor! (gulp)!

The Road to Elbasan

We had hoped to be in the air today on our way to Albania, but we are currently waiting on some paperwork to go through here in the US (see previous blog on waiting J). God knew we needed this extra time though. We have been so busy in May, that had we left today, we would have spent much of our time in Albania worried about what we didn’t get done in Wilmore before we left. The road to Elbasan is longer than we anticipated, but God is teaching us along the way.

David’s orphanage is located in Elbasan, Albania, so “The Road to Elbasan” is partly the description of our journey of this second adoption. Also, it is a reference to the story in Luke 24 about the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Our pastor preached on this particular story recently, and again, God spoke to me personally about our adoption. Actually, He began to work on me during the praise and worship at the beginning of the service. With all of the uncertainty of timeline and paperwork, I have been scrambling to work though every possible scenario in my mind. Should we book tickets and just go as soon as we can, so we can meet David in person and hope that the paperwork will move through smoothly. But if the paperwork doesn’t come through, it could force three extra round-trip tickets for us to go back later. Every day we wait to book the tickets however the prices go up. I have been awake in the night thinking through all of this and even rehearsing our time in front of the judge. I have scoured the USCIS website and chat boards of other adoptive parents to try to get an idea of the new processes and timelines. 

These questions and others have been all consuming at times, but God reminded me that he is in control though the simple chorus:

Peace be still. Jehovah God is with you.
Peace be still. Jehovah is Lord.
Peace be still. Jehovah God is with you.
Jehovah is Lord of all.

I have had the confidence that God is working, but I haven’t been acting like it. Cydil and I have done what we can for right now. It is time for me to be still, and rest in the peace that God is working.

I could have gone home renewed then, but there was more for me to learn. The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize Jesus when he was walking right next to them and carrying on a conversation. Why? He appeared in a way they weren’t expecting. Since my dad is a doctor, he is often recognized by patients around town, but sometimes he is so far out of context that they doubt it is him. Does a doctor drive a 1948 Ford tractor through town or shop at Odd Lots? It must have been someone who just looked like him! 

It was sort of like that with Jesus during his last days. Nothing had gone as expected. The disciples were sure that after the triumphal entry Jesus was going to set up His kingdom and restore Israel. But then days later he was dead! They had already heard the good news from the women at the tomb saying that Jesus was alive, but they apparently didn’t believe it because their faces were downcast. “…we had hoped..” How sad is that past tense statement! A loss of hope! Could their disappointment be because they were hoping in the wrong thing? We aren’t too different if we are honest. Sometimes we pray for Jesus the Great Physician and instead he shows up as the Great Comforter and we don’t recognize Him. In those situations, we often are discouraged and say, “We had hoped.” But Jesus was there all along walking with us. 

Thankfully we can often look in the rearview mirror to see Him more clearly. The disciples expressed this when they said, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" Cydil and I can already see Jesus in our ‘rearview’ mirror in this adoption. From the day we first learned of David Reni, he has been our provider. On top of our great pediatrician who specializes in internationally adopted kids, He provided colleagues of my dad’s who were willing to look at the information we had and help interpret if for us. One even currently has a patient with the same rare condition! A Shriner’s hospital that specializes in orthopedics is located just up the road from us. Faith Powers, a good friend and previous Asbury student who worked with us at WGM is now a social worker at the Shriner’s hospital. Her Master’s research – a study of the psychological adaptation of children with limb deficiencies! We were already in the process of updating our homestudy were able to include the information about Reni before it was filed, saving us money and time of a second update. We were able to get our fingerprints renewed without an appointment last week which will potentially cut weeks off our timeline.

We don’t just want to see Jesus in our rearview mirror though. We believe he is walking beside us through this process and through the mundane of every day as we prepare to bring David home. Would you pray with us that during these next few weeks as we journey on our road to Elbasan that we recognize Jesus daily. It would be easy to get discouraged while we wait for paperwork to come through. We ‘had hoped’ that we would be on our way to Albania today. While in a real sense I am disappointed, Jesus has already used this time to teach me more about him, and I look forward to more of the walk.

Sunday Afternoon on the Kayak

We have been mainly posting about David Reni recently and because a lot of what we are experiencing doesn't lend itself to pictures, our blog has been more 'wordy' than normal. This past Sunday afternoon after church (while Cydil was shooting a wedding), Ellie, our friend Mark and I decided to take advantage of the beautiful day and take the kayak out on the river. It was great to unplug from life for a while and enjoy God's creation. I hope the pictures from our waterproof point and shoot camera allow you to enjoy a little of it as well.

Ellie thought my hat was hilarious!

If you ever hear Ellie talking about 'going boating' she is talking about this, not some impressive schooner.

Elisona is becoming all legs! That life jacket seemed way too big for her when we got it, but I think this is our last season before investing in a bigger one. (By next summer it should fit David!) :-)

Mark is one of Ellie's favorite 'students'! He is great with her and she loves it when he is available to baby sit. When he comes over she says, "You can go now. Bye bye mommy and daddy!"

I know summer hasn't officially begun, but the mist rising off of the very cold water near the Lake Herrington Dam was a great way to beat the heat.