More May pictures!

Jackson turned two the end of April!
Yummmmmm

I ask silly questions, like, “Where’s Mama’s ear?” when I want kids to look at me for pictures.

We’re quite the bunch when we all get together.

Anna’s face was about like this at her second birthday party.

I tried and tried and TRIED to get a beautiful picture of my beautiful girls by the beautiful tulips. These tulips had people slowing down and taking their eyes off the road for weeks this spring! Ahhhh – sweet, beautiful spring.

I had the brilliant idea to try making my own pasta for fun. I think having a pasta machine to roll it out and cut it would make it worthwhile. Doing it by hand is not as easy as I’d hoped. 🙂
See what even thickness and length we created? hahaha

Helping me roll it out:

Cute!

We also got a chance to go to Pregnancy Resource Center’s Steps for Life this year. We had so much fun riding the max train and trimet buses down to Portland. Maggie was pretty overwhelmed and hiding her face on Papa’s shoulder the whole time. It was fun, though!

What I have to clean up before A&M come to visit. (the garage sale/goodwill pile)

With the sun out the last week, we spent SO MUCH TIME at parks! We smelled like Coppertone sunscreen this week! I think we had a picnic at the park 4 times this week????

All for now!

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May Catchup

Hello! We are still waiting on our travel dates… we’re hoping to travel to meet our boys in June.

Now, for a BOATLOAD of photos from the month of May. And a beautiful, wonderful, spring May it has been!

Firstly – yummy baked doughnuts. Texture lighter than a soft pretzel and the flavor totally different.

Garden pictures!!! Our yard is lush and beautiful this time of year. I love it! And I don’t mind the weekly lawn mowing necessary… Brian and I both like mowing the lawn since it’s not so huge that it wears you out.

We planted tomatoes and peppers the very end of April:

The “big” garden beds the end of April.

The big garden beds a week ago:

Back yard, right:

Back yard, left:

Pea sprouts (and a few other things like radishes and lettuce that I hope to harvest before the peas grow up and cover them)

The peas are in one of the the “small” garden beds by the house. Brian built an awesome pea trellis for them!

Look what other beautiful things my husband has done to our yard! (and the poor guy never seems to have enough time… maybe because he has so many wonderful things going on!?)
Do you see the stone walkway?

Here’s a better picture of the back bit… to where we dream squash and cucumbers will someday grow. (This is the part of gardening season when we still have hopes and dreams!) (those big leaves are rhubarb)

Grapes’re growin’

Another cool thing Brian built… that is working great for the four chickens!

We let them out to play and graze when we’re out playing. They are such chickens, though, they stay very close to their coop and run back in when we try to catch them. (That’s a good thing, really!)

Here’s Anna making “Chicken Salad.” It’s a salad for the chickens. Complete with grass, clover, weeds… worms and centipedes.

Mmmmmm

More pictures tomorrow!

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It’s Jordan’s Birthday Today

It’s Jordan’s birthday today. I wonder if anybody will make his day special and treasure him for me…

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Waiting

We are so close to meeting our boys that I can smell it. There are only a few little steps between where we’re at now and having the go-ahead to buy airplane tickets.

Currently our last documents are in translation.
After translation is authentication. Then submission. by May 9?
Then getting registered as an adoptive parent. May 13?
Then getting referrals. May 20?
Then receiving written referral. June 10?
Then translating referral. June 15?

Somewhere in that process we get to buy airplane tickets! And somewhere in/after that we meet our boys! Hoping to meet our boys mid June!!! Ok, honestly, I’m hoping for even earlier, whether that’s realistic or not. Not knowing the process 100% allows me to hope I just don’t understand something and things might happen sooner.

I’ve thought a little bit about what the purpose of this trip will be. The official purpose is for us to accept the children’s referrals after visiting with them for a minimum of five days. We hope and pray that all will go according to plan. There is the possibility that we will not be able to bring both boys home. That will be up to us after we meet the boys and confirm more about their health status. I believe God has led us to both boys and I pray that we bring them both home.

But… more on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour basis, what will our time with the boys be about? Bonding? No! I don’t want them to bond with us. That may seem strange, but how terrible would it be for them to bond with us and then for us to abandon them for 4-6 months. I know that I will bond with THEM some amount… but I’m a grown up. I already know I have to leave for 4-6 months and that will be hard enough.

So I’ve thought of a couple goals. While with the boys, my goal is to learn as much about them and their living environment as possible… so that we can prepare for them more effectively and transition them as easily as possible when they come. What is their clothing size? What do they eat? How are they fed? What are their beds like? What sights and sounds are they used to? What words do they understand? How do they communicate? What do they enjoy doing? What are some of their “trouble” behaviors? Maybe we’ll get a glimpse of their personalities. What can the director tell us about their birth families, background and anything else?

When we’re not with the kids, we’ll do what we can to learn about the culture and history of their country. And we’ll enjoy their food. At least, I’m praying we will. One part of me that often reacts to stress is my tummy, so it’s possible I will feel ill while traveling. Hope not. Probably will to some degree or other. I wonder how long take-out lasts… can I bring it home? 🙂

Hoping to have updates for you all soon! And more pictures of Jordan!!! That single picture of him is totally unsatisfying. 🙂

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Orphanage Fundraiser

Here is an email I sent to our Bible Study group at church… thought I’d let the world wide web know what was going on and why there is a chipin button on our blog:

Grace and peace to you this morning.

Sometime… as soon as possible after June 2nd, we will be traveling to Bulgaria! We’ll meet our sons for the first time and initiate the second phase of Bulgarian adoption paperwork so that we can bring our boys home this fall or winter, God willing.

It was the desperate need of special needs children in former Soviet bloc countries that mobilized us. We were first drawn to adopting a sweet little boy named Jacob, who was about five years old and only sixteen pounds. Since then, a family has been working hard to adopt him, but he passed away two days before Mother’s Day, never meeting his mother. (His family’s blog: http://moretulipsfromholland.blogspot.com/) A little girl named Hailee, who was just fifteen pounds when she came home at five years old is blossoming now after a year home!!! (See amazing before and after pictures here: http://www.nogreaterjoymom.com/2011/05/my-inspiration.html)

Thankfully, our boys appear to be growing well and are currently healthy. But orphanages are short-staffed, underfunded and regularly short on necessities. When we arrive at the orphanage in a few weeks, we will ask them if there’s anything in particular that we can buy for them. Diapers, formula, toothbrushes, medicine…. they name it and we will buy what we can!

I’ve set a goal to bring $500 to buy donations for the orphanage. I set up a chipin on our family blog that is tax-deductible. If you would like to contribute this way, go to, “breezysunday.com/blog” and contribute with your paypal account there. Please note in the paypal comments section that this is for the Davis-3 family. We can also easily accept contributions by check or cash.

Thank you all for your prayers and support! We are very blessed to be “planted” here with all of you.

Love,

Brian and Rachel Davis

p.s. We will post updates and photos on our blog even as we are traveling. We’ll include details about the orphanage donation there, hopefully with pictures of the goods. The blog url is: http://breezysunday.com/blog

p.p.s. We were asked if there is any way to support us personally. Hollie Swart has graciously offered to host a baby shower for us this fall to help us purchase many of the items we need/want for the boys (including a triple stroller). If you have boys clothes to pass down, we are collecting. 🙂 We also need a newer camera soon to bring with us that takes both video and photos, since our camera is pretty dated… anybody have one for sale?

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