Mom's project

Twenty days until we leave for Bulgaria.

I've been sharing the progress on Matt's project; tonight you get a glimpse of my project.

 I've made a quilt for each of my children - just a small one - bigger than a "crib size," but not really bed sized, either. Owen's was finished before he was born, and hung expectantly on the side of his crib for months. Leah's I started and didn't finish until AFTER Reuben was born when I decided that since I now had a third to make I'd give the one I'd started for her to Reuben and make a girly one for Leah. ;) Somehow I managed to get Rinnah's done, AND finish Krassimir's before he got home. Evania's finally got finished up last spring a few months after Gloria was born and we knew we were bringing Bogomila and Tsvetomira home.

 That means this year I've got three quilts on my agenda!! I had an idea, so got a good start on Gloria's in the spring and summer. I'm currently on the quilting stage of that one. Tsvetomira's I started in the early fall, and although I have everything for her cut, and the more complicated part of the piecing sewn, I put both of those on hold once I settled on a color palette and design for Bogomila's. She, after all, is the only one of the three who will really notice if I have it done or not! She is also the only child who is going to be getting a quilt big enough to fit on a twin size bed.

I'm really hoping, in an odd nesting sort of way, to have this quilt finished for her before I leave on the 20th to bring her home. I've been cutting and piecing all the various elements, and tonight took the time to lay it all out!!!

Her favorite colors are turquoise, black, and gray. Pulling in some purple and green from the fabric she chose (out of three options) for her bedroom curtains provided a nice analogous color scheme, which I accented with a touch of complementary orange in the form of foxes on a turquoise and purple background.

All stacked up and ready to sew start sewing into long strips tomorrow...

And what does this have to do with adoption? Well, not much, and lots all at the same time, I guess. ;) I don't know if Bogomila will understand the significance of the work I'm putting into this, but *I* know it's a labor of love for a daughter of mine who's going to find out all sorts of quirky things about being part of a family!

~~~

Speaking of quirky, I wasn't originally going to post this, but it fits in the "quirky" category.

What's Krassi standing there smiling about?

Well, I can tell you, he never saw anything like this while he was laying in his crib for years at the orphanage! And plenty of our conversation tonight circled around what Bogomila's going to think when she comes home and finds us doing this:

Chad doesn't just provide the manual labor support around here, but also the comic relief. He and his family came over with [an amazing] supper tonight AND their new game of Pie Face Showdown.

Dad's project

Matt spent much of the day down in the basement bedroom, with the following results:

Look - no temporary wall! And the kitchen is still upstairs where it belongs.

Up near the ceiling on the back wall you can see the controls for the well. That will be covered with a panel, and the space underneath will become a shelf for books and Legos.

And this is the framing for the soffit to cover the duct work that comes below the joists in part of the room. One of the definite downsides of a lower level bedroom. But Matt's made it as low profile as he can, and as cohesive as he can.

Tomorrow he hopes to finish up the framing! It's really a shot in the dark if it will be ready enough when the girls come home. It won't be *done* - we can pretty much guarantee that. But we're still holding out hope that it will be done enough that we can move the boys' beds into it! Because Bogomila's going to have a bedroom to come home to, and NOT the couch in the living room.

The new bedroom: summary to date

So, we've only been planning for a year to finish off a bedroom in the basement of the original house. The plan is that since Krassimir does not get himself into bed anyway, that he doesn't need to have an accessible bedroom as much as Bogomila does, so she will get the room he and Owen are in right now (the only one on the main level of our home) and they will move into a new one in the basement.

Matt and Owen started digging the window well for the egress window, and building the retaining wall around it back in the summer, but then other projects in the yard took over, and Matt and I could never get beyond cleaning stuff out of the room itself. For years this was my sewing room back when I had a custom sewing business - I had all three of my sewing machines down there, as well as racks in the rafters for hanging fabrics and partially completed draperies, boards for test mounting and stringing roman shades, and a lovely, large 5' by 12' table with a 4" grid across the top of it that Matt made for me for cutting and laying out fabrics.

At one point a few years ago we finished off the stairwell a little bit, putting up a wall instead of just the curtain that his grandparents had there (you can see it in purple on the left of the photo below), but the rest of the room was just concrete floor, painted block walls, and rafters above. Very 1939 basement.

So, this is what we have to work with.

 Once we got travel dates and realized that the girls were really going to be coming home in late January instead of late February, we realized we had to kick it into gear! So...Matt proceeded to spend every hour at his desk finishing up a project for work that has been the bane of his existence since it began. That project was finally sent out on his birthday, December 21st.

The next day he was down to work in the basement. First step was to build a temporary wall just outside of where the new windows are going to be installed to support the joists when we cut out the wall they are currently supported on.

(This is the same photo I shared from last week's post on the first day Matt got going on the work. If it looks familiar, it is - it's just such a good shot of that stage in the game.)

 Next step (which thankfully came a few days after we had a day where the high temperature was 20 degrees below zero...Farenheit!) was to cut out the block. Chad's always up for a project, despite his own many projects that he's got running, so he came over to help Matt with the work. Nice, too, since this is the kind of job that's nice to have two people working on!

 Some left over 1.5" rigid insulation fills the hole at the moment, and Matt went to work building the rough framing and the new header for the opening. Because this window is on the front of the house, and if we're going to go to the work of putting in a finished room in the basement, we wanted it to be a nice window, so the boys will have two egress sized windows in their room, which, since it faces south, should really make for a pleasant bedroom, even though it's in the basement.

 This is a shot of the area under the stairs. You can see the other side of the purple wall. Owen's been dreaming of making this into a really cool bed space, so we're going to kind of custom build a platform into the area that's just the right size for a mattress. This is the kind of thing my sister would have drooled about as a child - probably still would, now! There are going to be a few quirky angles and transitions to deal with to make this space work, but hopefully it should be worth it, and since the labor is free, I think we can pull it off.

 Below is the view from Owen's bed cubby toward the new window (still hiding behind the temporary wall - Matt figures since there's room to work around it, he'll let it stay there to let the new concrete reinforcing the empty block cavities around the window cure as long as they can). The window opening itself is still filled in with rigid insulation because of the setback with the wrong size windows.

Since then, Matt's been framing, framing, framing, occasionally calling either me or Owen down to help him hold furring strips up to the existing joists. Framing is always such a rewarding part of any project. One day there's nothing, and the next, there it is!! Here you can see the treated bottom plates around Owen's closet. (Owen's, because Krassi and Reuben share clothes, which we keep upstairs because that's where they get dressed! Krassi also doesn't have as many Nerf guns as Owen does...) I love how the flooring underlayment and an old upholstered chair are sitting in the space of the closet while the walls get built up around them!

And now there are walls around the closet! (This means the chair has been moved out. Don't need that stuck inside the closet!!)

Matt continues to work at the room every day, with a routine that follows the little girls' nap times. Build when they're awake; work at his computer when they're asleep.

Three weeks from tomorrow I leave for the girls...will it be done??? Or will the boys be sleeping in the living room? Only time will tell.

[September Review] Visiting Tsvetomira

Although I've got photos of the basement bedroom to share, I've got to get photos of Tsvetomira, our little pearl, up for you to see first!

On two of our four visits with Tsvetomira, I walked up those stairs to her orphanage (which, by the way, looks slightly updated now from this photo which was taken three years ago - there's a new sign, new windows and doors) with trepidation inside - can we really do this? What are we getting into?

 

 Matt and I just learned a few days ago from our Bulgarian adoption lawyer that since the children's files became active at Krassimir and Tsvetomira's orphanage about four to five years ago, that there have been two or three other families who have committed to Tsvetomira, and then backed out for various reasons. 

I can sympathize with the uncertainty! It's pretty clear that she will have the opportunity for better medical care in the U.S., but how much that will do for her is unclear. Matt was very much the leader into this adventure to make her our daughter, and it is my joy to follow, but I have to honestly say that when I printed off photos of children from Krassi's old orphanage to pray for until they got families, *I* had already decided I'd be willing to adopt the young, cute one with relatively mild needs. It never occurred to me that Tsvetomira might be our daughter.

 But as I look at this picture now - the first one we have of us with our peaceful little flower, my mama-heart aches to be with her again. On both of those visits (the first and third) where walking down that sidewalk and up those stairs filled me with uncertainty, those doubts were erased as soon as I was there in that room with our girl.

On paper she is very frightening.

Look at that precious girl looking at her Daddy. It's hard to tell for sure, but there were multiple occasions where we were both quite certain she was looking at us.

 In person, she is simply that - a person. A tiny, needy person, yes, but a real, live person. A person who needs someone (or more than one!) to love her. To LOVE her, not just care for her.

That's kind of a monumental task. But I've got the best Teacher anyone could have about what it is to love someone. Christmas is an appropriate time to think about the One who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son... And that Son came and took on everything that it is to be human and lived with us - knows the struggles we go through, knows the struggles Tsvetomira goes through.

I hope that when I come she will remember my voice, and my touch. Not long now, baby girl!

Merry Christmas...

...from our family (minus two daughters!) to yours!

Discipline

It's rather humorous that Matt was writing about discipline last night. There are many ways that people use the word discipline. I snipped this from merriam-webster.com:

While people often think of entry #1 when thinking of discipline (particularly in a parent-child situation), we prefer to look at #4, and this is, I believe, the type of discipline that is being talked about in the 12th chapter of Hebrews that Matt was talking about last night. God's discipline of us as his children can not relate to punishment because there is no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ, but there is absolutely, without a shadow of doubt, plenty of training that is still required in us - correction, molding, perfecting - the definition above could come straight out of any number of places in the Bible instead of just Merriam-Webster!

Matt's spent the last two months working (along with other projects for work) on a contract job that's been one of the bigger headache's he's had in all of his years of working in the architectural field. The final drawings were finally due yesterday, and he sent them off telling me he hopes the whole thing comes in so far over budget that it never happens because he doesn't even want to think about having to deal with the shop drawings and RFIs (request for information) that are going to come up if it goes into construction. Nevertheless, it's been consuming his time and mental energy for weeks, and today is the first real day he's had to devote to building the basement bedroom for the boys so Bogomila can have the one main level bedroom in the house.

First thing this morning he realized that the windows we'd received last month are the wrong windows! They're too narrow to meet egress. He looked back at the order, and although we told our rep the right size, the purchase order we approved had the wrong size. Four inches too narrow means the windows we have in our basement don't meet the egress requirements! That's a big downer on the day you have a friend coming over to help you finally cut out the foundation wall and install the windows!! But what are you going to do? Call the rep, leave a message, and keep working forward on other smaller pieces.

There's one more piece of paperwork we need to send to Bulgaria - a power of attorney form allowing me to travel alone and gain custody of the girls, and go through the USCIS stuff and all that without Matt along for the pick up trip. It needs to be, like everything else, notarized, and then run down to the Secretary of State office for an apostille. Not hard, just time consuming. So, Matt got the forms signed yesterday (only one needs an apostille.) This morning after I dropped the boys off at their therapy sessions, Gloria, Evania and I ran down to the Secretary of State with one of the notarized forms, dropped it off, and sat down to wait with a few books. When my name was called, it seemed quicker than usual - what a delight! - only to find that the apostille was rejected because the notary stamp was not fully imprinted on the page. Ugh. So a whole morning wasted. Now Matt's got to go down to the bank for another notary, and we've got to get back to the S of State before we can get the form sent off to Bulgaria.

My whole ride back to pick up the boys was filled with a repeat of what I read in Romans last night: be patient in tribulation. (part of 12:12). Now, yes, I fully understand that wrong size windows and rejected notarized documents are not exactly tribulation, but I think that's part of a father's loving discipline - you get practice with the little things so you're better able to handle the big ones. One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. (Luke 16:10) Isn't that the same way I discipline my own children? Every morning they're expected to make their beds and tidy up their bedroom floors. This is discipline. It's not punishment for wrong doing, it's not a meaningless exercise. It's my attempt at developing internal discipline in my children. If they can learn to do this small task well, boring and rote as it is, it will prepare them for greater tasks and responsibilities as they grow up. God is doing the same for me and Matt. If we are to be patient in tribulation, what better place to start than small, with windows and apostilles, to better equip us to be patient in bigger tribulations as they come.

In the meantime, Matt and Chad (anyone who's read through the first big addition knows Chad!!!) are going to cut out the wall today anyway, and just cover the opening with plywood. What you see there is the temporary wall Matt put up after lunch today to support the joists until the new header goes in. Right now they're at Menards, and once they get back, the fun begins. ;)

Birthday [by Matt]

Today was my birthday. Growing up I recall anxiously looking forward to my birthday and thinking about what I was going to get or what I was going to get to do with my friends or...It was all about ME. Even in more recent years, I can still recall times when it was my birthday and for some reason I thought that entitled me to a nap or just getting to take it easy in some way or another.

This year my reflection on my birthday is a little different. My birthday started early, around 5 AM when Reuben had a seizure and I was out of bed to help comfort him and get him resettled before climbing back into my own bed to try to get a little more sleep. Then sometime before 6 Reuben crawled in to our bed, as is often the case in the mornings, especially after he has been having seizures.

At 6:30 the alarm went off and it was time to get Krassi up. Get him changed, get him dressed, do his "brushing" routine, get his compression sock and braces on and get him fed, pack his lunch and get all of his winter gear on and loaded into his wheelchair in time to catch the bus.

By 7:20 he was on the bus and I came back into the house where Andrea had the monitor on Reuben as he has just had another large seizure and was wiped out on our bed. Shortly after that, he started moving around, so I went up to get him and bring him downstairs where we could keep a closer eye on him. He was pretty shaky, so I just sat with him on the chair in the dining room. Over the next 30 minutes or so, he cycled in and out of partial and tonic-clonic seizures and his little heart was racing and feeling like it would pop out of his chest. Andrea and I decided this run of seizures had been going long enough and it was time to give him his "rescue" med. After that the seizures slowed and stopped and he fell asleep in my arms.

It was while I was holding him during the seizures that I was thinking about how a birthday, or any day for that matter, that we are given is an opportunity to serve God by being obedient to what he has called us to do. For me, rather than being upset that Reuben was having seizures on MY birthday, I could thank God that I have been granted another day of life to love and care for Reuben and all those that I have been called to love and care for.

I am almost certain that those thoughts this morning have been flavored by the study of Hebrews that I just wrapped up leading this past Sunday at our church and the many nightly conversations that Andrea and I have been having as we wind down before going to bed. The whole book is about how Jesus is better than everything that came before him and how he is the only way that we can draw near to God. Then we have the whole "hall of fame of faith"in chapter 11 about all the examples that we are supposed to learn from and imitate how they lived by faith. How they saw the reality of God and believed that the promises he had given them were true and "by faith" they lived lives that proved that they believed God and were more concerned about obeying him than conforming to the patterns and logic of this world. (Who would be willing to sacrifice their only son, through whom the promise of descendants as numerous as the sand on the seashore, was supposed to be fulfilled? That makes no earthly sense whatsoever!!! Yet that is exactly was Abraham was doing because "by faith" he believed that God could raise Isaac from the dead.)

I warned my class that the term "hall of fame of faith" makes me a little nervous because it makes us have the tendency to put these people in a different class of  people with "super faith" and that for the rest of us with just "regular faith" we shouldn't expect so much. On the contrary, I think the point of that chapter is to show us what faith looks like. If you have faith, there will be things about your life that can't be explained apart from Christ/God, your life shouldn't make sense to the outside observer.

Then in chapter 12, we have all those who have gone before us as a "cloud of witnesses" testifying that God is faithful and that we can finish the race just like they finished. Then the example of Christ who endured the cross for the joy set before him. That is a huge statement and it ties back to Hebrews 10:24.  "For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one." They did these things because they believed that what they had to gain in heaven with God for eternity far outweighed the things they were giving up on this earth. If they and if I understand and believe that, it WILL change my life like it changed theirs.

So, getting back to the birthday topic. By loving and caring for those that God has called me to love and care for, I have certainly given up other things. Yet, I have not done that for the sake of being hard on myself or out of altruism. Rather, I think about it as a form of delayed gratification. God has ways that he wants us to live, things he wants us to do and those things will bring about difficulties in this world. As his children, he is disciplining us in this life (and as he says, that is not pleasant at the moment, but yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness for those who have been trained by it) so that we may share his holiness. And ultimately so that through his loving discipline of us, we can escape the judgement/punishment to come and rather have LIFE eternally with him!

It was a good birthday after all.

Supply

And my God will supply all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)

This adoption has been so different on the financial side of things than Krassimir's was. We went into Krassi's knowing that we had nowhere near what we needed - for those of you who have been reading this blog for that long, you know that the ~$30,000 adoption was the small expenditure of that year. The big one was the large addition we put onto our house when Matt's mom decided she would live with us after her husband died. At the time, the total we needed for the adoption and the addition to the house was almost five times our yearly income.

That was an exciting ride - God used a great variety of different means to cover us, some of them obvious (gifts from people), some less so (when parts of the project were delayed by circumstances out of our control, thus giving us another month to save up a bit to pay for the next big chunk). Some were large and immediate, some were gradual (our yearly income, for example, is higher now than it was then.)

This time around, doing only an adoption, (oh, and finishing a bedroom in the basement, too!), didn't seem nearly as daunting, plus, there's nothing like having seen God provide what we needed when we needed it in the past to boost confidence that he can do it again. Still, we knew going into this adoption a year ago that the numbers still didn't all check out unless God intervened.

As we approach the end of the adoption process (which is, of course, just the beginning of life after the process!), we're seeing some more obvious ways that God is providing for our practical needs. I feel the need to post about this because I'm hoping somebody reading will be encouraged to not let fear of the unknown stop them from being obedient to whatever God is calling them (you??) to do.

Last Thursday morning we got to video message with Bogomila after the court hearing. What joy to see her happy smiling face. I am so looking forward to when she is more fluent in English and we can be a part of her great sense of humor without a translator in between! Less than three hours later the mail arrived with a unexpected check of a significant dollar amount from a person we know of, but do not know personally. The timing of this does not go un-noticed by us! It's very possible that the person sending the check was aware that Thursday was our court date, but regardless of that, I know God knew our court date AND the mail schedule for the week!

Today the mail brought another similar gift, and although the dollar amount is less than last week's, the number on the check doesn't matter so much because it's just simply another reminder that all of our needs will be supplied at just the right time.

This has nothing to do with the subject matter of this post, but a post with photos is always nice, right? Can you believe what Leah found halfway up our Christmas tree this afternoon? He sat there nicely through a few photos, and then obligingly jumped (almost) into the plastic container Matt brought to catch him in. Owen and Rinnah found him a new home...outside...and as far as we know we're back to our normal rodent-free living again.

We may have "Room for More" around here, but not, Little Mouse, for you. At least not in the house. You can make a home outside in the yard somewhere!

[September review] First visit with Bogomila

These will be mostly photos, and who knows how quickly they'll come, but hopefully they'll be a good introduction to our girls for those of you who are praying us through these last weeks apart, and then our new lifetime together!

This is our first photo of our oldest daughter! It's nothing fantastic as a photo, but it will always be special to me because it is *our* first photo with her. She adored Gloria from the very start.

And Gloria, amazingly, who at this time would not let *anyone* else hold her except me, sat happily on Bogomila's lap for a notable period of time! Bogomila just soaked it up. Those two... ;) One of my favorite parts about our Skype calls with Bogomila is seeing these two react to each other - Gloria sees Bogomila and squeals with delight (it could be that it's the only time we let her see moving digital media, but I prefer to think she sees someone she remembers and recognizes!) and Bogomila's response to Gloria's excitement is just as good to watch. I am so looking forward to when the two of them will get to see each other again!

This was our "family" shot from the end of the first day. Not knowing if we'd have a good opportunity to get photos to leave with Bogomila while we were staying in Lukovit, we wanted to be sure we had a good one when we went to Pleven, because we knew we could get pictures printed in Pleven, having done it before when we were with Krassimir.

It was at this first visit that we talked with Bogomila about names. We did not know at this point if we'd have the opportunity to communicate with her in between trip one and trip two, so we wanted to get some critical things out on the table. Matt and I had talked about a number of options, all of which depended on her opinion of the matter! We were open to her keeping her birth name as either a first name or a middle name. We were open to her middle name as well, (which Americanizes very easily), but wanted to give her at least one of her names besides her last name. She can be very decisive at times - she knew she wanted to keep Bogomila. And we like it, too. Name meanings are important to us, and Bogomila means "sweet to God" (roughly).

After learning on this first visit that Bogomila she was and Bogomila she would be, we gave her three options for a middle name, and told her to think about them over the weekend for when we saw her again on Monday.

Once again, her decisiveness came out. As soon as we asked her on our next visit, she told us, "Brianna - strong," in confident, clear English. ;) It's still one of the few English things she says to us! We love that she is so pleased with her new name from us. So that's our girl - Bogomila Brianna.

It's official!

Court is over, and we are now the proud parents of two more daughters!

We are delighted to introduce Bogomila Brianna Glewwe:

and Tsvetomira Pearl Glewwe:

We're looking at a pick up trip at the end of January, dates to be determined as we look at schedules (our own and those coming to help us out!)

These photos are from our trip in September. Now that they're legally *ours* I'm hoping to go back and share more of our memories from the trip WITH photographs!!

In the meantime, rejoice with us that these two are no longer orphans, but our very own dear oldest daughters!

A court date!!

And, just like that, we got an email this morning saying we have the court hearing for the adoption of our girls this week Thursday!!!

B will be at the court hearing because she gets to have a say in the proceedings. Our BG agency tries to make it into a special day for any child, taking them out for lunch at the big McDonalds in Sofia and celebrating their new belonging to a family!!

We don't get to be part of the celebration, but I'm so excited to next week be able to share about girls who are legally our very own daughters!!!

A whirlwind with nothing to show

It's hard to believe I haven't posted anything since the day after Thanksgiving! Partly, that's because nothing has happened.

We did not learn what our court date was going to be that following week.

Nor did we hear anything last week.

So maybe (maybe?) this week we'll hear something. And we wait.

Even the package we sent to B is waiting in customs. We knew there was a dollar value limit we needed to stay below in order to avoid customs, but we were not told about a weight limit - if we'd known, we could have easily sent this in two packages! But we didn't know, so our package is waiting, and B, who knows we tried to send her something, is also waiting. Her group home director is going to look into getting out there to pick it up, and we've emailed with our agency over there to see if there's anything we can do to help it along, but at the moment, it's stuck - has been for nine days!

No eye has seen a God besides you who acts for those who wait for him.

Waiting for him, by necessity, kind of means having to, well, wait! He does the acting; we do the waiting.

In the meantime, time feels like it's flying by at a crazy pace. We still haven't done anything else in the basement bedroom for the boys (besides some more cleaning out of stuff!) and at this rate are thinking we'll ask my dad to help Matt cut the hole in the concrete for the egress windows when they're up for Christmas.

So there you go - it's an update, but doesn't really tell you anything more than my silence has for the last two and a half weeks. ;)