Picture Recap

Hello!  I hope after the Holidays I can begin to update more frequently again, but here is a pic recap of a little of what we have been up to.

Please also check out our update on the adoption blog and a prayer request for our son.  www.itsgodsgospel.blogspot.com.

Kitchen Snuggles...The two melt my heart!

 

Dressing up for the Blessing Meal at her School....

Of course Mo wanted in on it too...do you like his new way to smile....

 

(Still) Working on potty training...everyone does it in their snow boots, right??

 

 

Time spent with friends who are family from Texas and Florida

 

 

Annual decorating of the tree in our jammies....

 

Packing snacks, wearing our jammies, and touring lights around town...we do this at least twice a week and they love it!

 

 

Last but certainly not least...We celebrated this beautiful young lady being in our Family.  We cannot believe it has been in five years.  You are a beautiful joy EJ and the funniest girl ever.  We love you forever and thank God for you every day and pray that you grow into the woman he purposed you to be and that you take the hard in life and give it all to him so he can make blessings abound for you and the people you touch.

 

 

Purse made in Guatemala.  Helping build families for special needs orphans in Guatemala.  (more on that in the future)

 

 

 

 

Pure Love.

 

 EJ- 5 1/2

 MO-3 1/2

 

This Just makes me smile

 

 This Just Makes Me Smile Really Big

 

Can't WAIT to add more to these pics and have even more imperfect, but perfect photos....

"God sets the lonely in families....."

Kindergarten

I many reasons for not blogging lately. One reason is the canning season, but that will be over after the weekend. There is lot to update, but for now please be happy with this. :)

My sweet girl started Kindergarten. I have a love/hate feeling about this, but she is loving it and is in great care all day and is being encouraged to grow for the Kingdom while we work. That makes my heart happy. Isn't she cute?



Mr. Mo had to get in on the pic taking too...I love my kids so much



A lot has been going on; hopefully I can sum it all up soon. God Bless.

Bananas

Yep that's right....Bananas

Who knew my next post after such a serious hard and joyous post would be about them, but it is...trying to get back in the swing of things after so much and still so much going on..so we are going light on the post for today.

I started freezing bananas not that long ago. Best thing ever! The grocery around here will have them every once in awhile crammed into these bags for $1.25! It's because they are starting to turn brown and most do not want them. I love them. So for $5 I filled up 4 gallon bags! Cheap y'all!



So far we only use them for smoothies, but they are a great filler and give a very sweet taste which helps stretch my more expensive fruit. Plus I have a child that only eats apple sauce and raisins, so this is a great way for me to get different fruit in him. He thinks they are shakes.



The smoothies are really simple and I hardly measure anymore. We start with vanilla yogurt or plain, raw honey or agave nectar, cinnamon depending on the frozen fruit we use. Throw in fruit....we use bananas, peaches, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. Put a little milk in and blend. YUMMY! A warning on blueberries though; do not use too many and mix them with other fruit. If you use to many they make the smoothie consistency really funny and jelly and not good. ENJOY!

A Hard Decision

In case you do not follow or adoption blog, I wanted to post this big news here too. Thanks


So I have been pretty MIA in a lot of things lately and it’s time to share one of the reasons. Our family has lot of changes being talked about, being made, and waiting on the Lord to reveal, but one decision we have made just recently has to do with our adoption journey.

If you note our timeline for our journey to adopt from Ethiopia we started thinking in Feb of 2011, and officially signed on in May of 2011. We have been on the wait list for 9 months now, and that wait is still a very, very, long one. We were initially ok with the wait, but felt another path being pressed upon us. We tried to request a change in policy with our current agency about allowing concurrent adoptions, and that became a complicated path. There were times of hope that this could work and we could stay the course as we wait, but it simply didn’t work out.
The short of this all is that we are in the process of terminating our contract with AGCI and stopping our Ethiopian adoption, and then at the same time in the beginnings of starting a new adoption journey domestically. This is the short and simple of it.

To be honest I am not going to share all of the painful, hard details of the change here, but our decision was not made lightly or easily. It was hard and painful, but we know we are where God wants us to be.

A friend of mine who is adopting for the second time said something like this when their journey took a completely different turn…”Sometimes God leads us in one direction only to take us in another.” At the time I read this, this statement made sense but also hit me at a level I didn’t completely understand at the time, until now.

I do not doubt that we will indeed return to Africa to adopt again; in fact we plan on it, but right now God has us here on a journey that is unknown, and to be honest, a little scary.

There are some of you who will no doubt have questions, and I will gladly answer them. I invite you to leave a comment or send me an e-mail at carriestamm@gmail.com. There are just too many things to try and write out and explain on the blog.

Truly I want to end this very sad and hard post with pure joy. Joy in our next step, and request for prayer as we are completely laid bare before our maker and trusting him in this with everything we have. Thank you for your support and love; truly means so much.

As things progress more we will keep you updated on our domestic journey.

Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.

~ Philippians 4:6

And the winner IS.......

OK, the winner!!!

Our friends, the lovely Ripke family won the $500 give a way!! Plus, Our Awesome friends are splitting the winnings between 3 families adopting, AND they are adding $25 of their own to make it an even split! Seriously, how cool is that??? Love it.

This just warms our hearts, and I have been so excited to see what the Lord was going to do with this money. Just Awesome!

I will IM the families they have designated, and Thanks again for all the support and prayers!

Ryan And Sarah, may God bless you abundantly more for what you have given to his children....

Jeremiah 29:11

Give A Way Update...

There is still a little time to enter if you want or missed out. We will be compling the list of entries later today and then annoucing the winner.

GOD HAS BLESSED US WITH $1,040.00!!!! Thank YOU doesn't quite seem enough, but Thank You.

We still have another $1,960.00 so please prayerfully consider donating.

Check Back later for the winner!

Thanks, and God Bless!