Blessings

Every single day I am in awe of the support that we have received on this journey. As anyone knows, having children is not cheap. We went from a couple to a family of five literally overnight. All of the extra financial responsibilities that we suddenly had should have caused a panic in us. We were suddenly responsible for the actual costs of the adoptions, travel, having to be away from home for three weeks, getting these kids home and having to buy furniture, bedding, clothes, personal items, food, etc.  People would ask if I was worried about it and I had to say that I was not. Sometime I felt like "they" thought that I wasn't being realistic about the extra costs coming our way, but I knew that if God was placing these children in our home, He would provide. He came through in a big way! We were blessed with a grant from Sacred Selections. This along with monies from 1213 and donations from One Stone paid for our adoption! We were told not to worry about the money... just to take care of those babies! Once we knew that the finances were taken care of it was easy to focus on our new children.

We have had family, friends and friends of friends who have helped to clothe our children. So many people were willing to do whatever they could to help. I got boxes and bags of gently used clothes that were perfect! These hand-me-down clothes have been such a blessing! A year ago these kiddos were a lot smaller than they are now. They have all grown at least two sizes since we brought them home less than a year ago and one of them has even grown four sizes! If we had to go out and buy new clothes every time that something didn't fit, I don't know what I'd do. I know that there will soon come a day that I DO have to buy new clothes for a rapidly growing boy or girl, but the help that we have had in this department in this first year has been a tremendous blessing! 

We have been blessed in so many ways. So many of our friends and family have blessed us monetarily. I was surprised at Christmastime when we randomly received generous checks from a couple of unexpected places. Without these blessings, our first Christmas together would have been good, but because of a few caring friends and family we were able to do a little better than that. Before we even came home as a family, a young lady from the church that we visited handed me a check and told me that she and her husband so appreciated what we were doing. We had only just met them that day!

The extra expense of suddenly being responsible for three children was definitely a shock to our systems! There are still moments that I am overwhelmed at how much more I spend at the grocery store. I get a little stressed when shoes start shrinking or all of the boys' socks disappear. The electric bill is higher than ever and we cancelled our very basic cable plan (who cares about that anyway?).  I buy lots of toilet paper, soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes and wonder why we go through those things so fast. I didn't ever have to buy diapers, but I do buy nighttime pull-ups and those puppies aren't cheap! No matter what, we have a lot of love in this house. Although we wouldn't be considered wealthy by many other Americans' standards we ARE. We are blessed with everything that we could possibly need and lots and lots of what we want.