One Day I'll Look Back on this Time and Laugh

One day, a long time from now, I'll look back and laugh at all that's transpired these last few weeks. But for right now, I'm wallowing in a big pool of self-pity, not to mention being a bit overwhelmed.

First, I'd like to congrats all those families that received court dates this week. But if I am to be brutally honest, and those of you know that know me well, know that I am honest to a fault, I'm not dealing with it all too well. One of these days I'll learn to tame the tongue, but today that just doesn't seem to be in the cards for me, in spite of all the prayers I've prayed. I'm having a pity party......you know the deal: woah is me.....blah....blah...blah....it's not fair,,,,,blah...blah..blah. You get the the point. Miserable and pathetic.......that is how I feel. Not to mention heart broken.

Althougth I've tried, honestly from the bottom of my heart, to be happy for those of you, inside my heart is breaking and aching for my children waiting for me. Knowing they are old enough to understand they have a new family; but not old enough to grasp WHY we aren't there yet, it is incredibly hard from an ocean away.

One day I'll look back on this and be able to see God's perfect plan. But today, I can't. I've tried, oh, have I tried. The well wishers have told me "all in God's timing." And if I must be boldly honest, I really don't want to hear about God's perfect timing. I can't hear that without my heart breaking because in my earthly heart, I don't understand WHY we are still waiting after 11 weeks and others are not. Selfish, yes, I know. But I would be doing a disservice to anyone out there to tell you that I'm OK....because I'm not OK. And I won't be OK until we get through court and are on our way to them.

I wasn't going to write this....I was going to go into blog hiding and pretend all was well. But I can't.........and others that have waited longer than we have know how we feel. There are no words of comfort, no bible passages that can take away the pain in my heart.

And as if this wasn't enough.....we've taken on a big undertaking in finishing up the outside of our house. What a nightmare..........I live in the MONEY PIT! It's like peeling an onion, not quite knowing whether the onion is bad until you peel the layers off. And every layer we remove, there is a smelly, dirty, and usually rotting wood underneath. So, we've totally blown our budget; I'm overwhelmed with how much more this is going to cost us and WHERE the money is going to come from. Honestly, we can't stop now.........Today we found out that we have another rotten rafter........at least three feet up from the soffit. Solution = tear off two layers of shingles, rip off the plywood and repair yet another rafter to stabilize the roof. Hmmm.....that wasn't in the budget. Did I mention we already did this over the garage???????? The garage...oh what a mess the garage was. I can't even begin to go there........

So, you say, we have a lot of stress in our lives right now.....Enough to bust most people. But God.....he's got a sense of humor. My Mom used to tell me that all the time.....and she was right. On top of all this, David's elderly aunt (never married; no children) has supported herself her entire life, saved for retirement, went to college....did the "American Dream." And then the bottom of the credit market dropped out, the stock market crashed, and what was left of her entire portfolio was Bank of America stock. Do you see where this is going?????? Let me sum it up by saying she didn't qualify for Medicaid initially because she made too much money. If anyone of you have voted for a liberal Democrat, you might want to stop reading because I'm about to get on my soap-box.

How is it that a deserving woman who's supported herself for her entire life, paid into the system...blah...blah...blah, is now not qualified because she makes too much money in her Social Security check????? I'm having a difficult time getting my arms around the 'system' we've greated in this country that enables those that feel they are "entitled," or worse yet, those that continue the cycle living off the welfare system. What is wrong with us? How did we get so far off track from the American Dream....of working hard.......sweat labor.......sacrificing to get ahead. Or, worse.....what happened to helping our neighbors? Do any of us really know our neighbors????? OH my goodness....I am angry.....and disgusted....and fed up....and frustrated......and just plain disgusted.

What happened to having pride in ourselves and taking care of our families????????? What is happening to our country?????????? I know.....we've created a society of entitlement and government subsidies. Honestly, I pay into the system and have always paid into the system........I'm paying my taxes, and working hard for someone else to get a free ride. And I'm mad....I'm really mad. And I'm tired of it. How can we let this happen to a sweet 82 year old woman??????? Where is the justice in our country??????? It's OK not to work, get pregnant on purpose, and have the baby delivered on Medicaid????? Back in my day, you don't plan a pregnancy you can't afford. Accidents, surprises, OOOOPS pregnancies happen all the time...I get that...But to purposefully plan a pregnancy when you know you can't afford it, yet do it anyway????? And who pays????? I do.....and every hard working middle class American pays.....that's who bales them out.

Yep....I'm angry.........and I'm entitled to be angry. See how much they like that.

Monthly Update From Gladney on the Kids - REVISED

Still no court date, but we should get one this week....Whoeoee!!! That will be a nice relief to get that behind us!

About two hours ago, I wrote this post with lots of hope that we'd hear something this week on a court date. I sit here, on the verge of crying, after my phone call with Mary. It seems that it is our lot in life to have paperwork issues for our adoptions. And this one is no different.........there is a document that is incorrect and it'll take three weeks to get it redone. Local courts are closed for a few weeks, and our case has to go through local courts again to correct the document, then we can submit it to federal court. So, what does that mean???? It means that it will be another 3 weeks before our completed file can be submitted to federal court for the final court date. I was not aware there was more than one court date, but there is. A successful local court date must occur in order for your file to be considered complete for submission for a federal court date. What complicates the situation is the local court is where the orphanage is located, and the orphanage that our children came through is a few hours away from Addis, the capital of Ethiopia. And a few hours away is not like a ride down the interstate like it is here in the US......So we wait........................

Anyway, we got our monthly update and picture of the kids.

“Big S had a huge smile when I told him I was writing to you. He is doing well. Along with the other older children he works hard on his schoolwork during the day. He was very excited to have his picture taken but was very serious about getting it taken. He got Little S and put his arm around her. Then he waited patiently, standing very still, for the flash. Little S and I have become good friends. She is very cute. When the kids go outside to play she loves to get a soccer ball to herself and let it roll a few feet away and then chase it. She also likes to roll the ball back and forth with someone. She talks a lot, I don't understand any of it but it's really sweet to listen to.”

What suprised me most about the newest picture is how tiny Little S is...I mean she is REALLY TINY. Smaller than Pickles and we know how BIG Pickles is. She's not quite 2 and wearing 3T clothes already!!!

Drew & Carey are leaving Saturday for Addis to pick up Tigist. They are taking a package for us for the kids. Little S has her third birthday coming up in late March. We were hoping we'd be picking her up in late March, but we know now that's just not going to happen! We send both Little S and Big S a gift bag with coloring books, crayons, some ABC books to help both of them learn their letters. And Little S also got a Dora the Explorer Matching Game!!!

The construction on the house is going well. The mason started today to build the foundation for the front porch. The contractor is working on framing out all the windows with pvc = no maintenance EVER!!!! The house basically looks the same as it did last week, so I'll post more pictures when we can see a noticable change!

Did you notice that I was practicing with the new fonts .... not sure which one I like yet!

Construction Updates

Front of the house with seal fixed below door and wood siding put up where original front porch was.


















Front showing fixed seal under front door and wood siding put above door.






















Partial poured footers....the contractor made a mistake and has to repour the footers against the house later today.

Repoured a non-existant footer at the corner of the garage....the garage was added after the original house was built. We don't know exactly what year it was built, but we do know there is basically no footers around the entire perimeter of the garage. Nice, huh???? Instead of demo-ing, we are gradually adding the footers. The cement footer you see in this picture was where the worst of the settling was -- approx 1-1/2 - 2". When I came home from work on Monday, a jack was basically holding up that corner of the garage.

2nd pour -- of the front of the garage.

Whew..it has been a week! David has been detained in Indiania through Friday....and the contractor is working really hard. The mason is starting on Monday to do the block work for the front porch and retaining wall against the back side of the driveway.

Overall, the work has been going well. I have to take pictures of the retaining wall footers in he back of the house. When I went home at 1:00, they had the upstairs bathroom window out and were replacing the rotted wood before they reset the window.

I know it doesn't look like much has been accomplished -- that's what I thought before I became experienced in construction (not by choice!!!). Next week, things should move at a much more visible pace!

When we get the call on the court date, I'll post. As of right now, we don't expect to hear anything until next week!

Update on Court - REVISED

No...we don't have a court date yet, but we just got word that our file is now complete and submitted to court for a court date. We should hear within the next two weeks when our court date is. We were told that another family received a court date this week for the end of April, so ours will probably be in mid-May.

The timing will probably work out better -- I won't have to take Squeeker out of school. I wish it was sooner....like tomorrow, but it isn't and I just have to deal with it.

So, what have we been doing during the wait for a court date. We've been connecting with other families that have adopted from Ethiopia. This is the best part of waiting....and adoption -- the friends you make along the way. Here's my friend April's kids:

Little Bit

Little Bit and Pickles, aka Drama Girl

Little Bit & Buttercup

Buttercup and Peanut

Peanut

Peanut and Pickles running......

Other than having fun......we are working on a total overhaul on the outside of our house. Our house is an 1940-1950ish Cape Cod farmhouse. When we bought it in 2004, we gutted most of the inside of the house, knocked out some walls, added a master bath with a huge jacuzzi tub (funny story there....we only have a 2" well -- it takes 3 tries of filling up the tank and 45 minutes to fill up the tub), redid the sunroom (our favorite room in the house), redid the kitchen. Inside, the house looks brand new. Outside...well, that's a different story. We planned on siding the house a few years ago....we bought motorcycles instead. Then, we were going to side the house, but felt God leading us towards adoption (and we all know how much that costs!). We did manage to put a deck on the back of the house and redo the shed going into the cellar. And finally, we have enough money AND the time to do the rest of the work. So, we are adding an 8' wide front porch on the front of the house, fixing all of the rotten wood, putting a retaining wall against the back driveway, and finally cementing part of the driveway for a basketball court!!! I was going to wait and post the before and after pictures, but since we have at least a few months before our court date, I thought I would journal our lastest project.

Here's the "before" picture, before we removed all of the masonite siding and little front porch over the steps.

Here's after we removed the little front porch and masonite siding.

This is the sun porch, after we removed the stairs and shrubs.

Gotta love this one -- footers dug out for the 8' wide front porch.