A Birthday Challenge

This Sunday (April 20) marks Caleb's 10th birthday.  In 10 years we have never once had a party to celebrate his birthday.  He has been to parties for friends (we minimize those to just the closest friends due to costs of birthday presents) and seen lots of pictures on Facebook of kids having parties with fancy cakes, cool decorations, treat bags for all the kids, and of course tons of presents for the birthday child.  Yet despite seeing the fun celebrations of other kids Caleb has never once complained about not having a party for himself.  He knows we don't throw parties because of the cost and our need to save money for all the adoptions we have done.

This year to celebrate Caleb's birthday I want to throw him a "virtual party."  Everyone is invited!  For a gift all you have to do is give a tax-deductible donation to Reece's Rainbow to help bring home Caleb's newest brother.  Here is the link:  http://reecesrainbow.org/75910/sponsormurray

People often asked what Caleb (our bio son, the first child in our family) thinks about us adopting "so many" kids, especially special needs kids.  Some people even suggest that by spending so much money to adopt these children and then both time and money to raise them once they are home we are taking too much away from Caleb.

The fact is Caleb LOVES what we are doing!  In fact, he has already asked if we could "go ahead and choose another child to adopt after we get Jonah home."  As to what he thinks about the fact Jonah has Down syndrome he asked us after the Buddy Walk last year when we would finally adopt a child with Down syndrome so he is really excited about having a little brother with Down syndrome.

Caleb is a very tender-hearted and loving child.  He has tons of energy just like any other little boy, but he also has an amazing heart with lots of compassion for those in need.  He cried when we visited Micaelyn's orphanage in China and he saw all the children left behind.  Likewise he has cried when seeing homeless people on the streets, even going so far as to give his own money to them and begging me to give them more.  He also has a great desire to help children with special needs.  At his last school he was specially chosen to be a buddy to a child with special needs (I'm almost certain the child has Down syndrome), and even when the other kids made fun of the child with special needs and also of Caleb for being a friend to the child he stood firm in his friendship of this special child.  When Caleb changed schools he was very concerned about his friend not having him there to help him, and he started asking right away if he would have an opportunity at the next school to help kids with special needs.

So this birthday I wanted to honor Caleb by having people donate to our account on Reece's Rainbow to help get Caleb's little brother home.  We are very close to having our travel approval, but we can't travel until we have the money for the $6,000 orphanage donation and the money for the travel expenses.  If just 100 people give $10 each we would be $1,000 closer to bringing Jonah home.  Just $10 for his 10th birthday to help get his little brother home - how great a gift is that?  And of course the more people that give the closer we get to travel!

Once again, here is the link to donate:  http://reecesrainbow.org/75910/sponsormurray
Don't be thrown off by the fact Jonah is known as "Breck" on Reece's Rainbow.  He was listed for quite some time on Reece's Rainbow before we committed to him, and "Breck" is the name he was given for his photolisting.  Remember, your donation is tax-deductible!

 

 

Let's get this little angel home!!!

Introducing Jonah!

We are so excited to announce the newest member of our family, our precious little Jonah!  Jonah is 3 1/2 years old, lives in China, and has Down syndrome.  He had been listed on the shared list since 2012, but he is no longer waiting to be chosen!  We can't wait to bring him home.  Because Jonah was featured on Reece's Rainbow we have a family sponsorship page there where you can make a tax deductible donation to help get little Breck home if you so wish.  Please head over there and take a peek at our little sweetie!
http://reecesrainbow.org/75910/sponsormurray

Welcome home, Hannah!

Since my computer was fried by a lightening strike to our house I wasn't able to blog for many months, and now that I am back to it I wanted to finish out the series on BWS before moving on to current news.  Now that I've finished the series I can happily announce our little Hannah is now HOME where she belongs!

The process to get Hannah seemed to take forever.  It's incredibly frustrating waiting on other people to do their jobs so that your daughter can come home, and we seemed to continuously find ourselves waiting much longer than expected.  There was 17 very long months from the time we were matched with Hannah to the time we got her home.  Needless to say her arrival was long anticipated and full of great happiness and excitement!

We chose to have only one parent travel to save money, and since we felt the kids at home would do best with mommy being with them (especially with one of them being a 1 year old extremely attached to mom) Ernie got to be the one to travel.  It's a good thing he has "been there done that" before because Hannah was NOT happy with the transition.  She screamed for a long time but soon settled in and attached to her new daddy, and as an added benefit Ernie gained new found respect for my role as a mom.  :)

After 2 weeks it was FINALLY time for Daddy and Hannah to come HOME!!!!  We have an incredibly wonderful church family, and we were so excited many of our friends from church showed up to welcome them home.

My kids were happy to have their best friends show up at the airport to help pass the time while waiting for Daddy to arrive! 

Joshua doesn't like to have his picture taken.  Apparently his friend doesn't either, so this picture is more amazing than it looks!

Looking for Daddy

The plane has landed.  Daddy and our little Hannah are HERE!!!!!

 

Watching for Daddy and Hannah to walk off the plane.  They were the last ones off.  :)

Waiting for them to appear.

THERE THEY ARE!!!  THEY'RE HERE!!!  THEY'RE HERE!!!

 One of the happiest moments of my entire life!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love this picture - the way my husband is looking into my eyes!  We are so focused on each other, I'm holding little Hannah for the first time ever, and Ernie is holding Elianna for the first time in over 2 weeks.  Such a special moment! Naturally little Hannah was ready to go back to her Daddy since she had gotten so used to him over the last 2 weeks, but I couldn't wait any longer to hold her and Elianna was ready to let Daddy hold her. (Once we were home Hannah took right to me.)

I was feeding Hannah little fruit snacks to help her get accustomed to me, but Elianna wanted to feed her new sister herself.  It was the sweetest thing ever to watch the first moments of bonding between the two girls who will grow up together as "virtual twins."

Micaelyn's first moments with her new little sister.

Even at her young age Elianna understood that Hannah was scared and upset and wanted to make her feel better.  Such love!

Our first family photo with Hannah (but missing Christina).