More Paperwork and a Child's Prayer

I feel at times like I am chasing an endless paper trail.....

The good news is that our homestudy is almost complete and the written words completely reflect who Isaac and I are and our life together almost as if I had written it myself. The not so great news is that we found out that we have to get a KY child abuse clearance in addition to our FL child abuse clearance because we have not lived in sunny FL for over 5 years. The wonderful KY people are going to expedite this for us...no wonder Gov. Fletcher called KY the "Friendliest State." This process has made me really appreciate people who are just kind because they care.

And, thank goodness for our dossier assistant because she caught some mistakes that we obviously didn't know were mistakes in our stack of papers (pictured below) and now we have to correct those and start having everything notarized again by us as the custodians of the paperwork. I think this is just the beginning of the last paper chase and I plan to chase that paperwork all the way to Ethiopia as fast as I can!!!

As I've been losing my mind over all these little details, I've been reading a book by Melissa Fay Greene called There is No Me Without You. This book is a must-read, in my opinion, for Ethiopia adoptive parents and their families. This prayer from the lips of an adopted Ethiopian little girl puts it all in perspective:

"Thank you, God, for my mom. She's a good, good mom. She knows how to be a good mom. Even when I mad, she love me. Even when I sad, she love me. Even when I do bad thing, she love me. My mom, she so cute. My mom, she not ugly. But she ugly, I still love her. Even if she ugly, I still love her. Even if she really, really ugly, I love her. And she love me, if I ugly. But she not, she cute. Thank you, thank you, God, for good and cute mom."

Progress!

Isaac went be fingerprinted at Immigration last Monday and then took me to Immigration Tuesday morning for my fingerprinting. We have been waiting for these appointments since February, so it was a huge relief to mark this step off of our list.

Can you tell that I was happy to have this step behind me? We are now waiting on our homestudy report to be finalized which we expect to happen this week. Once this happens, we should have the missing pieces turned into the adoption agency and then will be "Gladney approved." At this point, our dossier (documents sent to Ethiopia) will be complete and ready for authentication.

This picture is of all of the dossier documents I sent in on Friday for our dossier assistant to start organizing and getting ready for authentication. The lady at FedEx knows our "story" and asked me if it was a relief to be sending in all this paperwork. I told her that, yes, it was, but looking back it wasn't that bad. The mountain of paperwork was overwhelming at first, but when you break it down and work together to get it all done, it is completely manageable. I would encourage anyone and everyone who has ever considered adoption to DO IT and not let the paperwork stand in the way-it is totally worth it!

My hope is to be on the official waiting list by Mother's Day and then the countdown will really begin.

Visit with Josh and Kelly

Last Saturday afternoon, Josh and Kelly stopped by for a quick visit on their way back to KY. Josh had been at a medical conference that week in Bonita Springs and Kelly took the opportunity to get away for the week too. We were so excited to see them! Isaac and I debated about where to take Josh and Kelly for dinner that night because they haven't been as adventurous of eaters as we are in the past. We settled on The Acropolis and they loved it as much as we do.

We sat outside by the fountain and the weather could not have been more pleasant. After dinner, we took them on a mini-tour of our life including driving by my office and our church.

Josh and Kelly enjoying their last evening in FL...they were excited to go back home and see their baby girl Hallie and her new swing set that her grandpa built for her while they were gone.

The four of us...we miss you all so much! We are hoping that Josh will do a fellowship at USF in a couple of years...it would be so fun to all live close to one another again.

Amelia Island Getaway

Over Easter weekend, Isaac and I spent the holiday vacationing on Amelia Island. We met up with Isaac's brother Gabe the first night to celebrate Gabe's birthday a week early. We dined on the outside patio of a great restaurant and had a really good time. We spent the rest of the weekend days on the beach and our nights downtown eating out at the town's fabulous restaurants. It was a much needed vacation from work and the adoption paperwork! We decided that this next year we need to take advantage of all the free time that we have because our life will be very different in about 12 months!

My Bubble has been Burst!

Tonight we finished up our homestudy for our adoption. This means we are another step closer to the waiting list...what a blessing! Our social worker talked to us tonight about "bonding and attachment." She totally burst my bubble and ruined my party! I have been SO excited about bringing my babies home and throwing a huge "Welcome Home, IRT and ERT" bash. In my mind, I had the whole party planned right down to the KY tea punch and invites with pictures of their little feet announcing their arrival and had chosen the professional photographer for the event. But no, the social worker (whom I really do love, by the way) told me that my party was not a good idea. Apparently, having tons of people in my babies' faces will be too overstimulating for them. And, here's the real kicker...I'm not supposed to let anyone hold the babies except for Isaac and I, like that's really going to happen! Basically, that's like telling my parents, "Look, but don't touch." I told my friend Kelly tonight that I'm struggling with this idea of keeping my babies to myself for the first few weeks because from the beginning of this process I have wanted to treat my adopted babies as I would have had I given birth to them. And now I feel like I'm already treating them as though they are different. I'm going to have to pray alot about this...I figure, God created these boys to be Treeshes, so I know they're going to love to party!

Life Care of Brandon Ladies' Tea Fundraiser

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of hosting a table for the Life Care of Brandon Ladies' Tea Fundraiser. Life Care of Brandon is an organization that aids women in crisis pregnancy situations, provides post-abortion care and Bible studies, and offers parenting classes and marital counseling. This wonderful organization operates off of donations and I was so happy to be a part of this special day.

Each hostess provided her tablescape and had freedom to use whatever design she wished. Every table was unique which made the event really fun.

My table design began with the napkins which were a Lilly P. design with pink elephants and lime palm trees. From there I carried on those colors with the table cloth, flowers, and placemats.

I wanted the ladies at my table to have a favor to take home with them to remember the day. On Heather Bailey's website I stumbled across the cutest pattern for these elephant pincushions. I used Amy Butler fabric that matched the table decor for their bodies and added the pink flowers for the final touch. They were very labor-intensive to make, but well worth it.

Me with my table...notice all the tables in the background and how each is so different. There were very traditional china-wear tables to Christmas themes to animal print.

My friends who joined me to support Life Care...Thank You!

The Secret is OUT!!!

I haven't posted in a while because we've been keeping a secret...we are becoming parents through the miracle of adoption!!! Grab a snack, drink and a box of tissues because this post is going to be a long one! We'll start at the beginning...the very beginning...

I struggled with where to begin our story and have come to the conclusion that our adoption story started over 2000 years ago, when our Lord and Savior Jesus was born to a virgin Mary and was adopted by his earthly father Joseph. Isaac and I were fortunate to be born into earthly families with both a mom and a dad to care for us. However, spiritually we were orphans. We were both adopted into the family of God when we gave our lives to Christ as children and our lives have never been the same...this acceptance into a new family ignited our passion for adoption.



Isaac and I met for the first time the day before the official start of my freshman year of college. We met at a BSU progressive dinner...Isaac was there to meet the freshman girls; I was there to make friends. We didn't reconnect until the following Spring Break on a mission trip through our church and we've been together ever since. Very early on in our dating life we discussed tough issues that face married couples, such as: "what would you do if you and your spouse were unable to have biological children?" We both answered that we would choose adoption. We fell in love and married on July 10, 2004. During the first couple of years of marriage we often talked about adopting our youngest child, my China baby girl. This discussion then turned to thoughts of adopting more than one child if we had a biological boy and girl first. Then the summer of 2007 came and with it the big move to Tampa Bay, FL. Around the time of our move I started dreaming about a little black boy with big brown eyes and in my dreams he was my child even though he looked nothing like me. I began to pray more about adoption and I prayed that God would open Isaac's heart to the possibility of adopting our first child. In December of 2008, Isaac and I began seriously discussing starting our family and he stated his desire for us to start trying to conceive a child the following December. For whatever reason, this fueled in me an even greater passion to adopt! We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary in July 2009 with a trip to Savannah and Hilton Head Island. We looked at each other on this trip and both said, "I'm not ready!", and decided to postpone starting a family for a long time. As Christmas approached, the thought of "what if we were ready" kept playing in my mind. I also started dreaming about that little boy again, except this time his picture was on a Christmas card. He was sitting in front of a Christmas tree beaming with his arm around a little Asian girl and the card read "Treesh Family" on the bottom right-hand corner. Right after Christmas 2009, my adopted children were born in my heart. I just knew that adoption was God's plan for our family, but convincing Isaac was another story. I continued to pray, began sharing more of my heart's desire and quoting scripture from Isaiah 43:5, "Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the East, and you from the West." Through many scripture verses, circumstances and prayer, God confirmed over and over again to Isaac that this was His perfect plan for the start of our family and he could not deny it any longer. It was time for us to step out in faith.



Isaac agreed with me to submit an info sheet to Gladney Adoption Agency on January 24th, 2010 after seeing a picture of an Ethiopian baby girl flashed on the big screen at church who was being adopted by one of our fellow church families (again, confirmation!). Two days later, I got the first call from Gladney to set up our 1st interview which occurred on February 3, 2010. Debra put us at total ease during that call and we knew that we had made the right choice in choosing Gladney to help us navigate this road to adoption. When we hung up the phone, Isaac looked at me all misty-eyed and I knew that he was totally on-board and excited to become a father to the fatherless.



We officially started the mound of paperwork on February 5, 2010 to adopt from Ethiopia. We've requested a baby boy 0-12 months with the possibility of twins. If we adopt one boy his name will be Isaiah Roberts Treesh...if two, the second will be named Elijah Roberts Treesh. Roberts is a family name and it is important to us that our adopted children have family names to solidify their permanence in our family. Isaac fondly refers to them as "IRT" and "ERT". We are praying about requesting twins-only at this time. We've since begun sharing our big news...our family and friends who we've told have all been incredibly supportive and excited for us...it means so much that everyone would rallying around us, pray for us, laugh with us, cry with us, and look forward to the future with us. We are going to need all the encouragement we can get since this road is at least 14 months long and we only completed the first 6 weeks!



The adoption process hasn't been all peachy though, last week we got the bad news that we will be required to travel twice to Ethiopia. The first trip will include a court date and meeting our child/ren. The second trip will be to bring our child/ren home! I cried for 3 days over this change, not because I mind traveling twice or am worried about the extra expense but because I cannot imagine meeting and loving my babies and handing them back to the orphanage, getting on a plane, and leaving them for weeks until I can return to bring them home permanently! I told Isaac that I might have to leave him there during the interim and he can work remotely from Africa and visit his sons everyday. Poor Isaac knows that I'm halfway serious too! I'm praying that this rule will change back to only one travel week and that all of the families that are facing a huge financial mountain over this change will be comforted and that the funds will be provided.



Thanks for letting us share the beginnings of our next big adventure with you! If you have questions, please leave a comment...I'll do a Q&A post in the future. God bless!