Updates for the sick ward

I don't have much time, but I wanted to give a quick update on the happenings around here.

-We have ALL been sick at some point last week.  For Josh that point was all week.  I don't know if it was the flu, or just the worst cold ever, but I am glad to be on the recovering side of it.  While we were in the middle of it all I was thinking, "I can't handle one more illness in this household!!"  We are hardly ever sick.  Seriously.  Josh gets the sinus stuff from time to time.  Ray has some allergies that flare up her asthma, so we deal with that sometimes.  And of course, kids get the puke-bug every once in a while.  But other than that, we are generally pretty healthy.  We have had atleast one person in this house sick since right after we commited to adopt Daniel, over 3 months ago!  Uh, ya think it might be Satan trying to gum up the works?  Yeah, my votes is on that too.  I have to admit, it did rattle my cage for a while.  I really got to worrying about what if Luke or Ray gets sick while we are overseas.  Or what if me, Josh, or the baby gets sick while we are in a foreign country.  I was really stressing.  Then I decided to stop letting Satan win this one.  He'd love nothing more than for our adoption to be a complete failure.  He'd love for my Daniel, Parker, and Josslyn to die without ever knowing the love of a family or the saving love of Jesus.  And if he can't stop me, then he would love nothing better than to make me miserable every step of the way.  I'll confess, I had been letting him steal my joy.  But once I realized what I was doing, I said, "Sorry, you big dumb-dumb.  You can't have my kids and you can't have my joy.  THIS battle belongs to the Lord, so just butt out."

Yep.  That's pretty much what I said to Satan.  Out loud.(because you know he can't read minds)  When you have a 3 year old, it doesn't at all seem weird to call Satan a "big dumb-dumb".  Not that we permit name calling in our home.  But sometimes it happens anyway, regardless of whether or not it is allowed.
Moving on...

-I did our taxes.  We are expecting a refund, and since I e-filed, I'm hoping that we will get it soon so that we can apply it towards our adoption.  We still have somewhere between 10,000 and 11,000 dollars to go for our adoption to be fully funded.  I have a few more fundraisers in the works though, if we could just get well around here!  At times I get a teesy bit stressed about not being fully funded yet, because there is a very real chance that we will be traveling 6 weeks from now.  But then I remember how God has provided so far, and I choose to trust him.

-We got our immigration approval paper in the mail!!!!  It was the last document we needed for our dossier!!  It still has to be notarized and apostilled, but after we are DONE!  It came in the mail yesterday(Saturday), so I won't be able to get it notarized until Monday.  Then it will need to be faxed overseas to be checked.  If it passes that check, then we can send it off to Austin to be apostilled.  I hope to send it off to Austin on Tuesday.  I am going to include a pre-paid overnight envelope when I send it, so hopefully I will get it back on Thursday.  As soon as we get it, we will be packing up all our papers and sending them overseas to our facilitator, who will then translate them.  The SDA(Secretary of the Department of Adoption) in EE re-opens  to receive new dossiers on Febuary 10th.  I don't know if our's will be translated in time to be submitted on opening day, but if not, it should be within a few days of that.  I am so excited!!  This huge paperchase is coming to a close!  I almost can't believe it.

Tomorrow will consist of some notarizing(I always bring extra copies because 9 times out of 10 atleast one is done incorrectly...), faxing, and hopefully overnighting some papers to Austin to be apostilled.