The Davis Family

Okay – I don’t actually have the time to write a detailed post right now, but I wanted to share that our homestudy is complete and in my hands! I just need one last document and I can submit our application with immigration (USCIS). It’s exciting! I am hopeful that we will be on trip one to meet our son this summer. And I’m praying he will be home before the end of 2017. We will see.

I have a bunch of great family photos and I’ll be putting them up soon. Hmm… let me see if I can just upload them really quick before somebody needs me for something….

Here is Hurya doing a friend’s hair, Ethiopian style!

My family, my life.

Outside.

Sooooooo pretty!

Darling girl.

I love the rosy cheeks on my cheeky four-year-old!

The first snow…. it was quite cold and too powdery to build a snowman…. or even to sled properly, but we tried!

So pretty!

The chickens didn’t leave their roosting area much.

Even our steep little hill needed a pull to get moving.

Anna and her friend acting like preteens.

One night, Brian applied the necessary energy to make the powdered snow into a snowman. It was just a little warmer this night and it worked! Until the dogs ate the nose and chewed off his arms, poor fella.

A friend invited us to sled on their hill! So we put on chains and headed over twice!

Fun!

Fast!

More friends.

She went SOOOooo fast and I laughed so hard at her breathless, afraid, but having fun face the first few runs.

Wheee!

It was good we had chains. It is a steep, windy, packed snow AND ice road to get there.

The sledding hill.

Off course!

Knocking snow off the branches

Yippeeee!

Flying!

Sledding videos!

First day sledding:

Blast off!

Maggie….. then Carrie!

Elli and Anna over the jumps:

Easily my favorite video…. Maggie…. jumps… she said the second jump hurt. I was not at all surprised!

Brody and Carrie:

I got permission to share the photos and unidentifying information about the other children who made it onto our short list. These children ARE still orphans and do NOT have anybody coming for them.

Will you pray for them?
Will you share their information… maybe somebody you know is considering adoption.

Seeing children in need is a hard thing. I won’t be upset if you can’t look at their faces.

But if your heart is broken by their story, your emotions are not wasted.
These kids deserve somebody to care. If all you can do is care… then CARE!

I fell in love with this little girl last winter. My heart has not been at rest since and she’s part of the reason we’re adopting today. But my heart still hurts to know she also needs a family. Her listed special need is “microcephaly.”

This little girl stole my heart. She’s nine years old like Anna, but heartbreakingly tiny. She has cerebral palsy and limited mobility. She may have epilepsy. Her gaze is gentle and aware in her video and her smile is beautiful. She weighs just 24 pounds. She’s just 33″ tall.

http://reecesrainbow.org/101643/olie
These two boys are brothers and both have Coffin Lowry Syndrome. From their videos, big brother (age 5) is running all over the place. Little brother (age 3) was interacting more quietly in a baby bouncer.

http://reecesrainbow.org/94738/jesse-11-51
Sweet little guy has a hard time working up the strength to hold his head up in the videos. But he does succeed and is aware and so sweet. He has hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy. But I think his main struggles have to do with his environment. Three years old. 21 pounds. 35″ tall.

http://reecesrainbow.org/105424/sawyer-4-5
This little boy has the same diagnosis as Daniel (arthrogryposis)! He’s seven years old and playing and talking. His legs are severely affected and his arms and hands are affected also. It didn’t stop him from holding, manipulating and playing with a variety of toys. He weighs a measly 22 pounds.

And little Kadrie. She is only two years old and has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. She appears the “least able” or “least aware” of this group. Does that mean she is the least snuggly? I am willing to wager she is the opposite. Consider this sweet soul and love her.

Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

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Requirements for adoption:
Meet minimum income requirements
Be a US citizen
Some more info: http://reecesrainbow.org/new-family/newfamily

I can tell you more about the adoption process for this particular country if you ask. You can email me at davis.adopt@gmail.com. Total cost for adoption (including homestudy, agency fees, international expenses, airfaire, etc.) is somewhere around $28K. You’d need around $4K to get started. There are grants and fundraising resources. Be prepared that the entire process can only be about a year long.

I’m really rotten at keeping secrets. I figured out I can share Daniel’s profile page on Reece’s Rainbow! “Drake” is his pseudonym. “Daniel” is the name we will give him. I cannot share his birth name publicly at this point.

Here is the URL of his Reece’s Rainbow profile: http://reecesrainbow.org/113696/drake-1-53

I’ll cut and paste the info here also… I’ll answer questions it’ll bring up later.

An orphan for awhile longer… a son already in my heart.

Age: 3
Diagnosis: arthrogryposis
Medical report indicates contractures are at knees and 4 fingers

Videos from November 2016 show him sitting unassisted, making sounds/verbalizations to express pleasure and react to desired toys, playing appropriately with toys (taking blocks apart, interacting with stacking cups by putting them in/out, and shaking a shaker toy. He has full use of his index fingers and thumbs with a well-developed pincer grasp. He uses his other 4 fingers on each hand to help cup objects while he holds/manipulates them. He moves around on the floor on his back while swinging his legs to get to a desired location. The video shows him moving across the room to get to a desired toy. He interacts appropriately with staff. He is in an orphanage where children often have a lack of exposure to toys and developmentally appropriate activities. Drake’s developmental delays are believed to be a result of living in an orphanage.

Paperwork is still moving along, pile after pile. The homestudy is wrapping up… hopefully we’ll have a final copy in our hands within a couple weeks. We will then send that off to USCIS (immigration) for approval. Waiting for that approval takes about two months. Then we combine that with a bunch of this other paperwork we’re doing to Europe. Sometime this summer, we should be able to meet our son for the first time!

That’s right – it’s a boy! We are heading back to the exact same orphanage Jordan was adopted from… not just the same country, the same orphanage! As soon as our commitment documents are processed, I’ll share more information about out son here. That’ll be a couple weeks.

Let’s see… what else is going on here.

I am preparing to go on a mother-daughter retreat with Anna, who is approaching 10 years old. I purchased Passport 2 Purity to guide our time together and am trying to read and prepare that. Homeschooling is going on. I am still training for my first ever run-the-whole-way 5K on March 19th. After that, I want to focus my exercising on developing increased full body strength. Having another child to lift and move will make that valuable. I don’t know if I posted on the blog, but we hosted an African refugee and her toddler son for a month, from mid December to mid January! So I have been getting back into the swing of things now that she’s moved into her own apartment and I’m trying to get her some more support in her home in Vancouver, WA now too. Let me know if you’re interested. I don’t know what else is going on, but it’s been a fast-paced trot around here lately. For fun, I’ve been playing Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic on the computer and reading The Stormlight Archive books. All for now!

Carolyn during the snow.

In 2011, we brought our son Jordan home from his orphanage in Eastern Europe. It’s been five years since Jordan entered our family and this year, we are preparing to bring home a new son or daughter from Bulgaria.

Jordan in his orphanage – June 2011

The process to adopt from this country is, in brief:

-Complete a homestudy (1-3 months process)
-Get immigration/USCIS approval to adopt (2ish months)
-Send our pile of paperwork (dossier) to Bulgaria and have that processed (don’t remember how long)
-Travel on trip 1 to accept child’s referral (we will know the child by photo and medical history before we travel)
-Roughly 4-6 months for Bulgarian adoption process to complete before we bring our child home.

Our family posing for our adoption paperwork over five years ago…

There are many other details… with the dossier preparation, with training requirements and with the process of connecting with and sharing our hearts with our closest family and friends. We covet your prayers as we walk this road. International adoption is never a completely smooth process and unlike our first adoption, the parameters for the child we will adopt are not completely set (age, special needs, etc.). We are a few steps along in the decision process, but are waiting on the Lord a bit on this one right now.

You may also see some fundraising from us this time around. The total cost, including legal fees, agency fees and all the plane tickets is somewhere around $30K. We WILL complete this adoption even without fundraising. However, that’s a lot of money and it’s not easy to come up with it (particularly the second $15K) despite saving towards this adoption for some time. I don’t have a special fund set up yet, but at some point I probably will have one to make it easier for some friends to join in with us.

One of my favorite parts of adoption is the miracle of an orphan becoming a son or daughter. I want to share this with you. There is nothing like the hope of redemption. The lifelong process of parenting is harder to share… so I hope you hop on to witness the miracle that is adoption. One of the main drives behind our family pursuing special needs adoption again is the acute need of these children. They didn’t ask to be born with their bodies and/or minds different or broken, they didn’t ask to be left in an orphanage. We cannot leave them when we have the capacity to help. Even imperfectly. Even just one.

Well, pray for us! Here we go!

European city from when we picked up Jordan