Picture Day!

It has been 2 weeks since Grace first got home.  Today we had our friend Faith come and take some pictures.

Now I fancy myself O.K. with a camera (Shawn) but Faith is a much better photographer than I am.  We are excited to get Grace's photos done as we can start printing them out and hanging them along the wall in our house where our boys pictures are.

Here is a shot that I took.  We will upload some of the ones Faith took later after we get them from her.


Still Praising God for how gracious He is!

Shawn
servinghimalways@gmail.com

Our Daughter Grace!

A blessing to have our daughter home from Rwanda!

It's on its way!

Found out our paperwork has been sent out and is on its way to Rwanda!

Praise God and continue to pray as it travels!

Lots more waiting involved but still so many prayers needed for God's will and the protection/health of our daughter!

~ Shawn

In the mail!

Well today was the magical day where we trust FedEx to deliver our Dossier to our adoption agency.

It is hard to believe that so much work fit in such a tiny little box. 

We are very thankful to God and all our friends and family who have helped us along this journey and now have to wait on God to be with our daughter till we get to bring her home!

Here are pictures from today!

~ Shawn

Twas the Night Before the SoS

Tomorrow I am heading to Austin with my middle child to go and have all our papers certified.

It has been a crazy week as we go over our check lists 20x's to make sure we have everything we need, and that all the "T's" and "I's" are crossed and dotted.

We are very thankful to God for His blessings and what He is allowing us to do.  It has been an amazing process so far and are looking forward to the day we have our little girl!

~ Shawn

I-171A Joys!

Well we got our I-171A from the government this week!

This means just a few more things and hopefully by the first week of February we should have our Dossier on its way!

It is so amazing to think that we are getting closer to having a daughter!  It will still be a long journey as it often takes about 5 months once the Dossier gets to Rwanda, but we know that it will go quicker than we can imagine. 

Jen and I still laugh when our boys ask us 'how many more sleeps till we get our sister?'  They are excited about having a sister and talk about how they are saving their quarters so that she can have a toy.  Isn't the kindness of children great?

That is all for now and will update more in the coming days :)

-  Shawn

New Room For The Boys

Well in prepping for our daughter, we decided to give up our master bedroom and let our two oldest boys share it. They have more room in there for both of their beds as well as their toys.



Our oldest son "C" asked if he could paint a wall red. We decided to let them do it and boy was it a blast. They had a great time, and picked out a great color from Lowe's.


Here is a picture of the painting fun!


- Shawn

The Night Before He Was Born

As this night comes to a close, I find myself wondering what the night before Jesus was born was like for Mary and Joseph.

Imagine as they had finished their long journey and found that the only place they could stay was a stable.  I often wonder if they felt excitement at just having somewhere 'semi' private to have their child.  After a 19 mile trip by donkey, I am sure Mary was happy just to lie down.

As a husband who has had three kids, I must say my first one was difficult.  I 'knew' about the process, had doctors and more there to assist, but here was Joseph with no doctors, possibly no mid-wife, and not a clue on how to boil water.  To make it even more so, he was charged with helping to deliver the Son of God...  no pressure at all.

While we continue our traditions each year: baking cookies, Christmas Eve Service, the Christmas Story, and more, I try to remember how blessed we are.  It is not because of what we have, or where we live (even if all that is really a big blessing) but it is instead the fact that Jesus was born 2000+ years ago, lived a perfect life, gave up his life willing, and rose from the dead three days later, so that I might have Hope, Love, Joy and Peace all in Him!


- Shawn

Finger Printing Day!

Well today was our day to go get our fingerprinting done!

It was not that much fun getting up at 4am so we could make the trek to Dallas and be there by 8am.  Now we did learn something that would have been helpful:

Our appointment time on our sheet said 8am, so we made sure to be there by 8am.  It turns out everyone has the same appointment time, and it is a first come first serve.  So really we could have arrived at 9am or so and been just fine.  While it is always better to be safe, that extra hour worth of sleep would have been nice :)

We are excited knowing another big step is down, and are anxiously waiting to get our papers back so we can proceed with the next!

All in His time of course, but we sure do like it when God has it planned for a quicker turn around :)

~ Shawn

~Picture from the train~

Another picture of the boys in Santa's workshop @ the North Pole of Texas.

North Pole of Texas

We took our boys to the North Pole of Texas and had a great night.

It is a free event that the owners of the land puts on. 

They have transformed their yard, built a bridge over a road (with permission from the county of course), and set up an amazing ride for kids and families.  There are lights, 'trains', hot chocolate and more that make for great memories.  The great part about this whole thing is that the family has TV's setup along the path and tell the story of Christ's birth and the importance of it.

Our boys loved it, and so did our friends that went with us.  It has become a family tradition we have done over the past few years.

So remember this Christmas to remember that it is all about Christ and his coming to Earth to save us!


- Shawn

Gingerbreadfest 2009

We had some fun this week with the boys doing a Gingerbread House.  They were excited and had a blast putting it together.  However, being boys, they got a little too rough with it, and we soon had a sun roof in our Gingerbread House.

One thing that makes me wonder is how the 'example' picture on the box was done.  I don't know if its really even possible to make it look like that with what they gave us. :)

Shawn

Meet the Wilson's

Well it is our first day of doing this blog.

      We are currently in the process of adopting our daughter from Rwanda.  Our eldest two boys refer to their sister as a 'girl' sister.  We are excited about how God is alowing us to grow our family through this adoption proccess.

     When Jennifer and I first started the dating process we talked about adopting.  Last year both of us felt that it was God's timing for us to start the process.  Currently we are scheduled for our FBI fingerprinting on Dec 22. 

     We have been praying for the day we hold our little girl, and our boys daily pray for their sister.  We hope that you will enjoy following our adventure through this blog.

In His Love,

The Wilson's