Snags

Well, it's been awhile since I updated everyone about how our adoption process is going. Mostly I haven't posted much because it's just been mounds of paperwork, a lot of waiting, and more paperwork. A lot for us to do, but not much of interest to report. Well, things got interesting this week. I don't know if you all have heard about Putin banning US adoption in Russia, but 100's of family have lost their kids because of this. People who had already visited their child several times can not finalize their adoptions because of this decision. Their is a big uproar in both countries about this. Well, while the doesn't directly affect our adoption, it has indirectly affected it. Our adoption agency is a small agency. Over half their adoptions are through Russia, or were until the recent changes. So our adoption agency made the difficult decision to close their doors. So now we have to pick a new  agency and a new direction to go with our adoption. While it is frustrating for us, I am very saddened for the 80 other families effected by this as well. Many families in our agency's Russian program had just made their first visit to their child before the adoptions were shut down. We were just at the point of getting our immigration approval from USCIS. We had not yet applied to the country or gotten a referral for a child. This gives us more options in deciding what direction we want to go. Most other adoption agencies do not have children 2 or under available in their Ghana programs. We still feel very convicted that we need to adopt a child 2 or younger for the best interests of our family so we are looking at other international as well as some domestic programs. We will transfer our file to the agency who did our home study. We're considering several different programs with this agency because we think that it would be easier to transition with them since they already know us and they did our home study. However, we just want to stay open to where the Lord is leading. So please just pray for us as we make a decision. Though we know this is all in God's plan and timing we have obviously still experienced some anxiety and frustration over the situation.
Though the adoption stuff is frustrating right now, God has really blessed us lately. We sold our house in Ft. Collins and we were able to pay off all our debt except our mortgage on our current house. We are planning to enroll Maddy in Montessori school next fall. Long journey to that decision. Maybe I'll write a future post about it. Maddy is having Spanish tutoring from a DBU student while I teach my class on MWF. She has learned "oso", "gato", and "mono". The other day she was watchn thing a cartoon with a bear and she said, "The oso is my favorite." It is amazing how they pick things up at this age and her accent was flawless. Aaron's consulting is going well and he is planning another trip to NYC over spring break. Maddy is doing great in therapy and can now jump and kick a ball without holding onto something for balance. We are getting more concerned about her hearing. We've been trying to get here to wear her hearing aids at least a few hours a day and probably need to take her back in for some testing at some point in the near future. Small group is going great at our house and we are so blessed to have the people who meet with us in our church family.
In other news, we've been busy working on expanding our garden and Maddy has been keeping us entertained. Here are some pictures just for fun:

Dug post holes for the fence we want to build. My little helper enjoyed stepping in the holes.

Planted the cool weather crops

Aaron tilled up the rest of the yard that we want to put into a garden last night. 

Our new futon. The cat loves it.

Dressed up as Daddy.

This girl is so busy. She always has a project or an idea going. This is a picture of Maddy and Bethany's house. :)

We went to Stock Show a couple of weeks ago. We had a great time seeing all the animals, going to the petting zoo and the children's barnyard, watching a milking parlor demo and visiting several museums.

Ft. Worth Museum of Natural History. They had an interactive kid's area and one of the activities was hoola hoops. They had all different sizes. Of course Maddy picked the biggest one available.

We've had gorgeous weather here. On Saturday we went to the park. Maddy wanted to walk Abbey. S he told Aaron, "I know how to do this because I'm a girl."