#LoveAtFirstSight
China Trip Day 3
Category Archives: Life
China Trip Day 2
We made it to China!
I love this picture because it pretty much sums up how I felt at that point! The actual fourteen hours weren’t so bad, but it’s not easy to sleep on a plane, and I was exhausted by the end. Okay, it’s not easy for me to sleep on planes. But I can’t sleep in cars or anything either!
Just one more plane ride to Lucy’s city. . .
And my first view of China outside an airport! So foggy–so beautiful–so exciting!
China Trip Day 1
The day our adventure began!
Here we come, China!
Tomorrow!
My blog, one year ago:
Are we going to China tomorrow?
I don’t think so. It isn’t possible, is it?
Come on, people, give me some grace: I haven’t convinced myself yet that we are going to CHINA!
During our first adoption, I never would have guessed that we would ever do an international adoption. We actually wanted to do a second domestic adoption… but that door was closed–God closed it. Because he knew Lucy was out there for us.
He knew she needed us… and we needed her.
We weren’t thinking China either, it was just an open door. It was just the option that seemed like it was the best fit for our family.
Lucy was born in 2006… the year we went to Florida as a family (at the time, which was without M and Lucy 
)
I wonder what my little five-year-old self was doing that day when, on the other side of the world, things were happening that would change my life–forever.
Forever and ever! More than I ever dreamed when I wrote that!
Throwback Thursday came just in time for this! Tomorrow I’m going to start a series of pictures and re-posts to recap our China trip, this time last year. I’m going to post every day we were in China, if I can manage it!
Happy Thursday!
Today is Orphan Sunday! This is a video Spencer made of all the families at our church who have adopted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-Xm9vd4aFs
If you want to hear more of my thoughts on adoption, read this, this, this, this, and this.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
-James 1:27
Adoption is God’s command to His church. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have never seen anything that can be so ugly, but it can be so beautiful–so beautiful.
But real beauty always goes hand-‘n-hand with ugliness in this world.
Adoption can be sad. It can be convicting. It can be humbling. Because every one of us needs to be adopted. Every one of us needs to be redeemed.
We love, because we are loved.
We give, because we have received.
We care for orphans, because we were orphans.
We adopt, because we were adopted.
Archery
Mom and Dad gave me my birthday present early last Thursday:
Is she a beauty, or what? Somebody loves me!
(And knows me very, very well! 😉 )
Happy Saturday!
??? {Mystery Quote #24} ???
One sweet big sister got back from China late Sunday night!
Welcome home, Becca!
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Last week’s quote was from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Chapter 13: “Castles in the Air”.
Mama and Ellen guessed it right, and Ellen got the chapter.
I realized after I posted it that last week’s quote fit in with my new October theme. I wanted to find another sunshiny one for this week, but nothing felt right, so I just went with a random quote from one of my favorite books:
‘They say that you breathe so loud that they could shoot you in the dark.’
Happy guessing!
P.S. Our “Random Writing Challenge” has been going for more than a week now. I’m officially making the deadline this Sunday, the 25th. I’m going to try to do a post with all the stories in it on Monday or Wednesday since “Mystery Quote” will be on Tuesday.
October Sunshine
It’s mid-October and Halloween decorations are popping up everywhere–and it’s driving me crazy. I’ll just be honest, I don’t like Halloween, and we don’t celebrate it. Costumes are all up my alley, but I don’t have any desire for ghosts–partly a moral issue, and partly because I’m more susceptible to creeps than most people. 🙂
And this year I decided that I was just tired of darkness and ugliness, and I was going to fight them in the easiest way: celebrating sunshine and beauty.
And what better way to celebrate on a story-packed blog than with quotes? And what is the cheeriest, sunshiniest book on our shelves? The answer was obvious for me: The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne.
So, on all the rest of the Thursdays in October I’m going to post a Winnie the Pooh quote, starting now:
“Oo, Tigger,” he said excitedly, “are we at the top?” “No,” said Tigger. “Are we going to the top?” “No,” said Tigger. “Oh,” said Roo rather sadly. And then he went on hopefully: “That was a lovely bit just now, when you pretended we were going to fall-bump-to-the-bottom, and we didn’t. Will you do that bit again?” “NO,” said Tigger. Roo was silent for a little while, and then he said, “Shall we eat our sandwiches, Tigger?” And Tigger said, “Yes, where are they?” And Roo said, “At the bottom of the tree.” And Tigger said, “I don’t think we’d better eat them just yet.” So they didn’t. (229)
–The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
The drive to the airport
Almost a year ago Becca drove Mom, Dad, and I to the airport to get Lucy. Very early this morning the three of us rode with her to see her off on her flight to China, on her first trip out of the country!
Love ya, sister! Can’t wait to hear your stories from this place I love.
??? {Mystery Quote #21} ???
Dad ordered a hamburger one night in China that had egg and cheese and probably something else on it, and he let me taste it. It was the best hamburger I’d ever eaten. . .
. . . until Sunday night, when we had this for dinner.
Dad felt like a burger, but we didn’t have hamburger buns, so he fried bread and butter on the electric skillet instead. And then we added egg, and cheese, and bacon, and fried onion–just for kicks. This is a good house to live in! 🙂