Isaiah knows he has a family!!!

Today we got an email saying that Isaiah was told that he has a family and then they showed him a picture of us. He remembers us and is very happy to be a part of our family!!! We were so happy to hear this!! We were pretty sure that he would remember us, but there are a lot of families in and out of the TH, so we wondered if he maybe forgot us. It does our hearts good to hear that he is happy about being in our family too!! Praise God for bringing our family together!!!!

Blogging

There have been almost 400 people that read the post about our growing family announcing our newest two sons! I had no idea that many people read our blog. CRAZY! Sometimes I think that I am blogging just to document our life and adoption process for ourselves. I have recently started filling out Jacob's baby book and I am thankful that I have blogged about all the important things, because its amazing how you can forget some things.

I'm thankful for so many blogs that I get to read and follow other families journeys. And its nice to know that people are following our journey too! Several people have asked if they can share our story with others or share our blog. Yes! It's God's story that He is writing through our lives!! May God be glorified!

11 months old

I'm running a little behind this month! Jacob was 11 months old on October 8th. He is at such a fun age!! I might have said this about every stage he has been in, but it's true- he keeps getting to be more and more fun. He is constantly on the move, crawling and pulling up on everything. This month he started to walk around furniture while holding on. He still says "ball", "dadada", "baba" (bottle), and his animal grunts. He added the pig noise this month too. Every once in awhile he will cry "moooooooom" but he doesn't say mama yet. He loves to give kisses, play peek-a-boo, and patty cake. He started to peek through his fingers while playing peek-a-boo and laughs so hard. I have been giving him the soft part of popcorn since the first day he has been with us and two nights ago he decided he was done with that. He grabbed a handful and chewed it up just fine. I guess thats one way to tell his mama that he can handle it!

We moved this past weekend and I was concerned how he would handle the new environment. He has been fabulous. No waking up crying and he loves to play with all his toys in the new house too!
Here are some pictures from the last month. We went to the pumpkin patch/apple orchard for cousin Kylie's birthday and J went for this 1st horse ride. He didn't last very long, but it was fun while it lasted!

Our Family is Growing- It's a Boy AND a Boy!!!!

Yep, Jacob's going to be a LITTLE BROTHER!!! He got so excited when we showed him the picture of his brothers!!!!

Today we got the official call for the referral of our 2 newest sons!!!! They are 10.5 years old and 1.5 years old and we LOVE THEM!!!! Our adoption journey is a constant reminder of God's Perfect Timing!! If we haven't learned that now, I don't know if we ever will. We were reminded constantly during our journey to Jacob, but God's perfect timing and plan for our lives is even more evident now.
We had decided to stay in country between court and the Embassy clearing Jacob to come home. We knew that our time in Ethiopia would be precious bonding time with Jacob and also an amazing time of getting to know his birth country. What we didn't know was that we also had met our soon-to-be newest children. The older boy, who we are naming Isaiah, spent a lot of time with Brad. Brad would often go play soccer or some games with the older kids, and Isaiah was always by his side. After a couple weeks of getting to know Isaiah, we asked the in-country staff about him. We found out he had a baby brother, who we are naming Kaleb. But we found out that they weren't adoptable at the time. We were sad to find this out because Isaiah kept asking us why his friends were leaving with families and he was still there with no family. We hate that some older children had to stay there and watch other children go home with families while they just continued to wait and wait and wait. This was the first day that we considered adopting older children. Up to this point we were open to children up to age 4. We met so many wonderful children and we knew God was stirring our hearts and opening them up to new possiblities. So exciting and scary!
At this time AWAA had a policy that you had to be home with your child for 6 months before you could adopt again. The week we came home with Jacob, AWAA changed their policy and now you have to have 6 months between placements, not applying. The whole time we were in Ethiopia we knew we would be starting the adoption process again and building our family this way next, we just didn't know how soon it would be happening. So we came home and started updating our homestudy and got it all done pretty quickly. Then we sent it out to be approved by our state. We wanted it done right away, of course. But God's timing was better! While we were waiting to have our homestudy approved we saw a couple different sibling groups on our agencies waiting child list. We were trying to be open in this adoption and accept anyone that God put on our path. If our homestudy had been approved, we would have reviewed their files. But God's timing is perfect and our homestudy wasn't ready yet, because our sons weren't ready yet. Our homestudy FINALLY got approved last Monday. We were so excited! On Thursday several AWAA families started posting and emailing about new cute brothers on the waiting child list. I, of course, had to check them out. I about fell over to see THE BOYS that we knew and loved on the computer. We were told that they might not ever be adoptable and HERE THEY WERE. I sent Brad a text message about checking the WCL and I quickly got a phone call back from Brad. He was sobbing saying "They are our sons. They are really on the WCL." God's perfect timing- they were paper ready THE SAME WEEK we were approved!!!! God is AMAZING!!!! Brad imediately called our family coordinator to ask about them and if we could review their file. We were told we would hear something next week. (What a whole week of waiting????) Thankfully it wasn't that long. That part coming soon...
As soon as I saw the boys on the WCL, I started praying "Lord make it clear that I am their mom, fill my heart with mama love for them". We have spent a lot of time with them in ET and I didn't know I was there mom then, so I didn't love them like a mom. I loved the boys as I love many children, but it was different to me at that time. So all day I was praying for the Lord to make it clear and fill my heart with mama love. I got several phone calls and emails from friends we met in ET and they all said "your boys are on the WCL". Then a friend called me in the evening and said that another family posted online that they were interested in them. It made me sick to my stomach, but I immediately changed my prayers to "Lord put them in the right family, whether its ours or not. These boys NEED and WANT a family and I want them to be with the right family." The sick feeling was what I needed to know that I was totally in this and I did love these boys as a mom. I emailed several adoptive friends about them and asked that they pray for these boys to go to the right family.
So Friday all kinds of emails are going back and forth between our family coordinator, the program director, and several friends that were praying. That afternoon we got the call that we could review their file. We didn't really care what it said, we knew they were our boys. On Monday we emailed our family coordinator and said that we wanted to accept the referral, but we wouldn't have the money until next week. You see, we need almost $10,000 to accept the referral for two kids. We JUST finished paying for everything from the first adoption, we don't have any savings. So lots of praying again on this issue. We called places and begged for a loan or anything. Lifesong (we had a tax deductible account through them last time) said we would hear something in 3-8 weeks. Hmmm, thats not going to help with the referral fees. But they called back the next day and approved us for a fundraising tax deductible account. God has been working in all the details!!!! We have had a few people ask about giving gifts through a tax deductible account and now we have one! Praise God!!!
Here is our Lifesong information:

Lifesong for Orphans
Mowen Adoption #2363
PO Box 40 / 202 N. Ford St
Gridley, IL 61744

So after telling our family coordinator that we wanted to accept the referral , we found out they need us to answer some more questions. So after all those emails, today we got the official call that THESE ARE OUR SONS!!!!! PRAISE GOD!!!!

As if this isn't enough excitement for one week, we are also moving. We are moving to a house that already has four bedrooms! We decided this summer to try to move to buy a less expensive house to save money for this adoption and for when our children are home. After talking to a realtor, we decided we would lose too much with realtor fees, closing costs, etc. Then without our house being on the market, we got an offer that will cover what we paid for the house and the fees. What a God thing!!! We were able to find a house (actually a friend was flipping a house) that will cut our house payments in half and already has four bedrooms. God's perfect timing again!!
We are so excited about this next stage of our life and I'm so happy to be the mama of THREE BOYS!!!! I see lots of matching outfits in their future!! HAHA!
We have no idea what sort of timeline this adoption will have, but we many memories with the boys that we can cherish until we are with them again! Isaiah knows some English and he read some books to Jacob and Kaleb while we were in ET. Such precious memories were made and we didn't even know how cherished they would be in the future. We are so blessed to be back in this journey and we can't wait to be back in Ethiopia again! We are looking forward to holding our boys as their parents and telling them we LOVE THEM and we are a FAMILY!!!!

Featured Family- Give1Save1

*UPDATE* We were gifted $279.07 this week! What an incredible gift!! Thank you to everyone who donated!!

We are being featured on the Give1Save1 website this week!!

Beth is an adoptive mama who has a heart for helping others. She wants to help other adopting families raise money for their adoption journeys. She is blessing so many people. We really appreciate everything she is doing for our family and all the other featured families too! She features a different family each week. Check out her site and please consider signing up to donate $1 per week-this week is goes to us and everyother week it goes to another adoptive family. Every $1 really does help and its really appreciated.

http://www.give1save1.com/

Here's our story:
We are on the journey of following God's plans for our life by building our family through adoption. We are so excited to see how God continues to work in and through our lives!! We were married in 2006 and excited we became parents in 2011.

Adoption has been something that we both always dreamed about, but we were scared to take the first step to get started. The financial aspect of adoption is scary. It is expensive. But one day while eating lunch with some friends in Nov. 2009, our friends said her sister and brother-in-law have adopted 3 times. Brad and I at the same time said "How have they afforded it?" Our friend simply said "God has provided." That was the little push we needed to step out in faith and start the adoption process. We have been truly blessed along this journey, because we started the adoption process with just enough money for the homestudy and we were blessed with just what we needed when we needed it!! We are so thankful for all the people that have allowed God to use them to bless us!! Every penny of our first adoption was paid without a loan- Praise God!

On January 27, 2011 we received our referral for a 2 month old boy!! We were in love from the moment we saw his picture!! We were able to spend two months in Ethiopia between our court date and being cleared by the Embassy. We brought Jacob Jafar home on May 20, 2011. Adoption #2 has been in the process since April 2011. During our two months in Ethiopia we met so many older children that literally begged to be a part of our family, or really any family. We loved every minute with Jacob but we couldn’t stop spending time and loving on the older children. They tugged at our hearts every day. Before we even left Ethiopia we had already contacted our Family Coordinator at America World to see about starting the process again soon. We were told that we would need to wait until we are home with Jacob for six months to apply to AWAA again. But the week we were leaving Ethiopia to come home, the rules at AWAA changed-now we are able to fill out a concurrent family building plan which eliminated the six month wait. We felt the nudge from God to start the adoption process to adopt an older sibling group. Everything about this adoption is the opposite from last time. Our journey to Jacob was perfectly orchestrated by our Heavenly Father and we are so thankful that we have the opportunity to raise Jacob as our son. But this time we are leaving our request wide open. We are open to an older sibling group of 2 or 3 kids, healthy or special needs- including HIV+. So basically everything that scared us in our first adoption is in our request this time. God has a funny way of changing your hearts for awesome things to happen in life!
We are expecting this adoption to be over $50,000 and we have no idea how long the process will take. Sometimes families are matched with older children very quickly, but sometimes it still takes several months. We are so excited to be on this journey again. God taught us many things and changed our lives during our last journey, and we know this journey will be amazing and life changing too! Thank you to each one of you that is helping us become one step closer to bringing our children home!!!!

Ten Months Old

Jacob is 10 months old today! I can’t believe in 2 months we will celebrate his 1st birthday! I have already ordered a really cute cake for him and started planning the party, haha! Can you tell he is our only child right now?? We are really busy in the Fall, so I didn’t want to run out of time to plan something cute! This past month has been really exciting! Jacob has begun to crawl!!! He is all over the place. I was worried I would spend my time keeping him out of everything (and I do that sometimes) but he really enjoys getting to chase a ball or move from toy to toy, so I am loving that he can crawl to whatever he wants. He also has a total of 7 teeth now. He continues to love table food and eats well. He loves tomatoes from Gramma’s garden and really almost everything we give him. He continues to say “da da da da” for almost everything and also says “ball” when he sees a ball. He came to my tennis match the other day and he couldn’t say “ball” fast enough-there were too many of them! He makes different grunting noises for a cow, puppy, and lion. Very cute!! He continues to love going to the babysitters and playing with the other kids. I miss him while I am working and coaching, but I’m so thankful that he enjoys the sitters too.




visiting Mommy at a tennis match
a quick trip to the hospital
family day at the zoo

He can pull himself up in his crib now

he got a hold of the Bible and was chewing of the bookmark string

African Paper Bead Necklaces

These beautiful necklaces just arrived from Ethiopia!! A friend went to pick up her kids and was kind enough to go shopping for us! These paper bead necklaces are BEAUTIFUL!!!! Women in Africa make them from recycled magazines. The necklaces are available in solid colors (red, blue, purple, green) or some multi-colored. I LOVE mine- I have 8! I have collected them from different peoples fundraising, gotten them as gifts, and I got a few while I was in Ethiopia too. And they are all different. We are selling them for $15 each, plus $1.50- if needed.

Thank you for supporting our adoption!!!

Look Who is On the Move!

Jacob started crawling all over the place this week. For the past month he has been scooting backwards a little bit, then for the last week he would go forward one or two times then sit down, but on Wednesday he took off from room to room. He shrieks and laughs with every move he makes, too cute! I recorded him as he was headed for the dog food :)

Look at This Hair

This morning I brushed out his hair. Look how long its getting!! I'm thankful for products that keep it under control most of the time.

Re-Adoption Day

August 15, 2011 was Jacob's Re-Adoption Day in Illinois! It was such a quick and simple process. We met with our friends mom who works with a lawyer about a month before and filled out a few papers and then showed up to court on the 15th. Brad went up on the stand and answered a few questions. "Yes we love Jacob and really want him in our family. Yes we know he is forever part of our family and we will treat him the same as any other kids we might have in the future. Yes we will take care of him and have bonded with him." That was about it. I'm glad it was a courtroom that Jacob didn;t have to be quiet in because he "talked" the whole time. :)

Our adoption was final in Ethiopia, but it makes things simpler when they are readopted in your state and he will also have an Illinois birth certificate. And now his legal name is Jacob Jafar Mowen.

Survived Week 1

After almost 5 months home with Jacob, I returned to work this past week. I am so thankful for the 5 months we had together as a family before crazy life has started back up. Jacob started going to the babysitters for 2 hours a day the week before. This eased Jacob and mommy into the daycare thing :) He did great everyday and seems very comfortable with the sitter. This week he did great and started adjusting to her schedule easily. He doesn't want to eat the baby food that she tried the first few days, but now he is eating whatever the big kids eat. He is even napping on her schedule pretty well. On Thursday morning he reached for her from me-this almost made me cry. But then I decided I am thankful he likes her and is comfortable with her too. On Friday morning I handed Jacob to her and he reached back for me (this also made me thankful) :)
I am also coaching girls tennis at the high school, so I will be extra busy for the next 8 weeks. This season sure is different when I have a baby waiting for me at home (or at practice with me!) Tomorrow night we have an away tennis match so I won't get home until after Jacob is already in bed. This will be the first night I am not there to help put him to bed. Thankfully I have a wonderful husband who is extremely helpful and he is ready to step in when I am at work.
Overall everyone is adjusting to our new normal pretty well. I'm very thankful for that!!

Are You Crazy?

That is a question we have been asked ALOT the past month. As we have begun the adoption process again, most people think we are crazy. They really think we are crazy when they ask what our request will be and we answer, “We have gotten approved for 2-4 kids ages 0-15 with special needs”. With our last adoption we requested a healthy infant. We felt that was the right choice as we started our family and Jacob is perfect for our family. He brings joy to our lives daily!! But this time we are just saying YES to God as he is stretching us out of our comfort zone and we have COMPLETE peace about it. We are leaving our request wide open and trusting God and His perfect plan for our family.

We have also gotten the “How in the world are you going to afford another adoption? Are you crazy?” The simple answer is “we don’t know”. God provided for every penny we needed for Jacob’s adoption expenses. It was amazing that we didn’t need to take out a loan-AMAZING!!!! God used many people coming together to pray, donate, and to help fundraise to get every expense paid for. We are so thankful for all these amazing people that helped in every way to bring Jacob home! We are trusting God that He will help us raise the needed funds for this adoption too. We are also prepared to take out a loan at some point too.
Most people think it’s crazy to potentially go from 0-5 kids in less than 2 years. We think it’s exciting. People told us that we can’t afford a big family on two teacher’s salaries. We know there will be sacrifices to make, but we are willing to do it. This may mean that I can’t buy as much Stampin’ Up! stuff or the new Thirty-one bags (GASP! :) ) But we will be investing into our family instead-much more important. We live in a very materialistic world and we get sucked in ALL.THE.TIME. I am so guilty of that. There are people starving with the famine and drought in Africa right now, and we have enough food in our house to last all 3 of us at least a few months. Makes me sick, but it’s true. We will make sure that they are involved in activities and sports. But I'm sure there will be some sacrifices at times. We also believe that the important things in life are teaching our kids about God and His love for us and others. By having a large family we will be teaching our kids about compassion, sharing, loving, helping, caring, teaching them about priorities and most importantly to love Jesus and love LIKE Jesus.

As we were talking about how it might affect our children if they aren’t involved in everything, I came across another adoptive mama’s blog with this verse, James 2:5 “Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?” It’s just another reminder to invest in our children’s lives, not the material things. We are trying to live our lives like Christ and say YES to Him! This is not to say that we are going to be so poor our kids go without, I’m sure our kids will be plenty spoiled! But we know there will be sacrifices from time to time.

We have received many comments about how adopting older children is too hard and they will have too many problems. We know that there will be additional hurdles with adopting older children, but it’s not the kids fault. It's true they have experienced more trauma in their little lives that I ever will. We have been reading books and talking to other families and we know that God is the Ultimate Healer and we will help our children through anything they need. We know the road is difficult, but with God on our side we are willing.
We have also heard that its crazy to be open to children with special needs. Someone actually told us “that will ruin your life”. What???? Special needs children are just that-special! Beautifully and wonderfully created by our Heavenly Father. Special needs children need loving families too! We are again trusting God with this part of the journey. He knows better than we do! So thankful for that!!

"We care for orphans not because we are rescuers...we care for orphans because we are rescued." - David Platt

God doesn't pick out His children based on who is going to have an easy road in their faith. He picks all of us, because He loves all of us. We are ALL His children. So we aren't scared away from whatever issues our kids might have, but we are in daily prayer- praying that we will be equipped to help them heal.

We are so thankful God chose adoption to build our family. We are blessed by it every day! We are the lucky that we are living this journey every day! God is so faithful and we are trying to be faithful and obedient too.