Luke Chapter 2-Welcome Saviour!

And unto us a Savior is born!

Read it in Luke!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas~

may your celebration be filled with awe, wonder and true worship!

May His Presence be the best gift you receive!

Adoption Update

And today...

the Dossier

(which is the all the paper work required for an international adoption)

went off to Washington to be Authenticated.

Next step once we get it back...it goes off to Ethiopia to be translated and gets submitted to Court (in Ethiopia).

After this... we get our court date...(which should take about 6 weeks). And then several weeks later...we GO to Ethiopia to get our beautiful daughter!!

(no time table with adoption is set in stone...

but we know the One who makes the stones, so no worries!!)

Praying for favor and for our finances!!

A Thought Filled Day

...Times of Reflection...

Swing sets remind me of friendship and laughter...

Playhouses remind me of times of great joy...

My silly dog Hunter, reminds me of faithful companionship...

His eyes tell me he is waiting for me and wants to be with me...

and that he is always right by my side. Always. Without fail, faithful.

Sometimes hard time comes and the winds of life whip in and take your breath away ....

Sometimes cold days keep you inside.

Sometimes those same days make your heart reflect.

Today I find myself without words, and the words I do find aren't words that I want to write.

The words that come to mind sting my heart. Those words, stab at my eyes, as I hold back the salty waters.

Friendships have proven difficult to me. Entering into them I have become cautious. Unfortunately cautious is not a good word to be associated with friendship. It is so hard for me to open myself up, difficult to put myself out there, knowing that so many times before it has brought very real pain.

But then I remember the richness of true friendship; the kind that you can be who God made you to be and it's embraced. The kind where you don't have to question what you should say or how you can make small talk. Honestly, real friends never have to think about those words, "small talk." They move beyond that sphere, into the depths of love and trust. Beyond the outside fence that keeps true friendship from forming. They move to the realm where even in silence there is peace and joy.

Friendship is love, it is commitment, it means giving, it is a willingness to trust, it takes great courage and fortitude, it doesn't quit when life's trials come hard, it opens up to being able to accept in return and it truly isn't for the weak of heart.

So truth be told, yet will I love and yet will I trust.

I guess I still have much to learn in this lesson of friendship. I still find it very difficult to receive, mostly because it makes me more vulnerable to pain, to hurt, to heartache that I have shaken hands with before.

I have taken it again and again to God, prayed through the tears and asked for wisdom as the tears trickled down. Oh, how it seems to be easier to not have a heart, to not care one way or the other. Alas, my blessing is a tender heart and a spirit that is easily inflicted.

So if you find me~ I may walk with a hesitation to my step, be it a slight limp, from past inflicted casualties of friendship, but yet will I seek God who is gladly holding my heart and is gently reminding me that He is a friend like no other. Maybe tomorrow I will open my eyes to the possibility of giving my heart in friendship- today I'll just pray.

Psalm 42:5

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Saviour and my God.

...afterall....prayer is a cry of Hope.

Prayer Request Sunday

Happy Sunday Friends~Welcome To Prayer Request Sunday!

Today is the day to give me your prayer concerns and together this week we can take them to the Lord! What can we pray about this week? Anything that you've been carrying...that you are ready to bring before the Lord. I'd be absolutely delighted to walk into the Throne Room with you and lay it before our Father.

Glad you stopped by...so glad God has brought us together through this blog. I pray you have a wonderful rich celebration of our Lord and Saviour's birth. May your Christmas be Merry and may your heart's be Glad dear friends.

Thank you for being my friends, my life is richer because of you.

From My Heart:

And, if you think of my family

...would you pray for our daughter in Ethiopia? Would you pray God would give us wisdom about picking a birth date for her. We've never been given this opportunity before. And can you pray for our finances. In a few days, we are hoping to hear from Sue (director of Celebrate Children); who will be back from her trip to Ethiopia, bearing a child for a waiting family in Maine!! We hope to get details on the possibility of a second child (a baby)-which we need to lay before God to hear His answer of yeah or nay.

A Friend Jumps into Fund~raising!

My friend Angel , has kindly offered to help us raise funds for Princess Sweetness's adoption. We are so excited about another way to bring in the MUCH needed money;

so we can go to Ethiopia and get our girl!

Angel has just begun to sell Avon, as a way to raise money for her family's new home they are building. She graciously offered to share her profits with us, as she wants to come along side of us in this adoption! She will give us 50% of what she makes on her online store. Isn't that so sweet of her!

SHOP AVON IN ANGEL'S Shop!

Please hop over and see if there isn't something that would be perfect for you or someone you love. And hey, please spread the word- we are praying so hard for the rest of the $20,000 to come in! Angel's shop is full of all kinds of sparkly, pretty things -have fun shopping!

And remember, it will help us get our daughter home from Ethiopia...she has been in an orphanage for 5 years too many already!

Thank you friends, so very very much!

Handmade Felt Angel Ornaments

Instructions for Making Hand Sewn Felt Ornaments:

Craft supplies:

• felt various colors (craft supply store)
• embroidery floss
• embroidery needles (sharps...meaning a pointed needle tip)
• stuffing

Taking two pieces of felt, cut out your desired shape. Making sure that as you cut, your top and bottom pieces are identical.

Take one of the two pieces and begin embroidering it. Always leave enough floss, so that you can stitch several stitches in one place before cutting the floss, this will prevent your work from unraveling once cut.

If you do an angel as we did, start with the face details. Once you are satisfied with the details, grab the identical shape and begin stitching around the edge, sewing the two pieces together.

As you sew around the edges, make sure to leave an opening of several inches to insert the stuffing. A pencil (eraser end) can help get into the hard to reach places you want to fill with stuffing.

When you get it as stuffed as you'd like, finish off your embroidery around the open seam. Make a little loop on the top of your ornament with the floss, so you will be able to easily hang it on your Christmas tree or wreath.

My little angel makers are ages 6,7,8 and 10. They need a little bit of help knotting their floss, but everything else they did without help. We used all 6 strands of floss at once for our angels.

King Meemer's angel...(age 7)

Princess Sunshine's angel (age 10)

King Bonkey's angel. (age 6)

I showed him one french knot and then he was able to do the rest himself!

Princess Giggles (age 8)

A Wonderful Gift to Each Other...

Last year we were waiting on our first adoption to Ethiopia. Money was tight. I prayed and ask God how we could make this Christmas special. We didn't have a lot of money to spend and explained that beside a stocking for each, that there would be only one other gift. Everyone agreed that this would be fine.

Enter Holy Spirit. Enter a vision given to the Mama. Enter words spoken from heaven...

"Save toilet paper tubes."

This was right before Thanksgiving. I asked my closest friends to save toilet paper tubes for me...in anticipation of the vision for Christmas. By the week before Christmas we were up to our eyeballs in toilet paper tubes that needed to be stuffed with our letters and adorned in paper and ribbon.

Each tube would be filled with a hand written love letter to each person in the family. A letter of love, of encouragement, of hope and of edification.

We worked hard through the month in our homeschool, writing, drawing and later wrapping each of the 8 letters each had created.

There was 8; as we were expecting another to be joining us shortly. Everyone had words to speak to our sweet coming babe...this year we will be reading those to her...along with her new ones.

Each person gets a pile of tubes from each of us. Wrapped in a beautiful paper, that is just for them. This year there will be 9 ...unless in the next few days, God makes it clear that 2 will be coming home from Ethiopia!

We are enjoying our love letters and words of prophecy given to each other.

Maybe you'd like to do this too...

We sat in the quiet of Christmas evening,

reading, laughing, crying and thanking God

for sharing with us from heaven this special blessing.

We are so thankful!

Homemade Christmas Craft Project...

As a girl, I remember making hand sewn felt ornaments with me mum.

...So it was only natural, to pack up our felt, needles, embroidery floss and stuffing and head to me mum's farm in the country, to make our ornaments!

My mum pulled out her buttons, as she said they would be great tree decorations. The kids loved this project and being able to dig through Grammie's feast of buttons.

Honestly, they worked tirelessly on their trees for most of the afternoon.

They begged to do more once we arrived home...so once we finish up our felt angels, I will be sure to get them posted.

Welcome to Prayer Request Sunday...God bless each of you!

Would you like me to pray with you this week? Leave a comment with your prayer request details or send me a private email. I'll be waiting friend.

From my Heart~

I found myself fighting great discouragement yesterday. Several times I had an overwhelming feeling of frustration and discouragement, in regards to our adoption and it's finances.

We brought our homestudy to our state to have it notarized and the fees since our last adoption (ie-less than 12 months ago) have tripled. How can this be?

Soon, we will have to pay half of the adoption cost to our agency...considering we don't have it; we are truly needing God to come and help us.

We've cut back on everything, including Christmas. My Knight and I have forgone all gifts for each other; there won't even be stockings for us (we will give a small stocking to each child). There are no gifts this year, besides a few small inexpensive things for our 7 children's stockings.

We are not eating out. I cut out Starbucks completely. We are trying to stretch every dollar, so we can put more towards our awaiting daughter in Ethiopia.

God gave me a verse yesterday, it made me cry. I will share it with you. I don't know if you will cry, I am sure just typing it out will make the tears slip out once again. We have given to the very bottom of our barrel...please God come.

Luke 6:38

Give, and it will be given to you.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over,

will be poured into your lap.

For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Christmas Craft Project

It started as a cardboard box from Sam's Club (our warehouse food club), then at 11:00 pm a few nights ago, I saw the box transformed in my mind. I passed my late night vision to my sweet helpful Knight.

My Knight went into his workroom prior to us going to bed, to spray paint those cardboard tags their first coat...yes, at 11:00 pm.

The next morning, bright and early~ the backside got a spray painting and by lunch time we were ready to begin our homeschool Christmas craft! The kids loved this simple recycle project.The stitches around the edge were made with a permanent black marker.

Words used:

Savior, Jesus, Lord,

Emmanuel, God

Love, Messiah,King

Hope, Peace, Light,

Faith, Joy, Christ, Mercy,

Grace, and Life.

We are very happy with the end results and everyone that has come to visit,says how sweet our tree looks. And as an added bonus...it is a baby safe ornament!

Happy Homemaking!

Photo Editing for Adoption Fundraising!

Showing some possibilities with photo editing. The first picture depicts the original taken in low light and slightly blurred from the large lens opening.

Is there a picture I could work on for you? We really need to raise funds for our Ethiopian adoption. Email me or leave me a comment if you'd like me to edit a photo (or a few) for you.

*remember you get to pick the price (but please do remember that this does take my time...I enjoy doing it, but sometimes it is hours of editing to get it just right!)

...just add it to our pay-pal button. It will all go towards our Princess Sweetness's adoption from Ethiopia.

...your friend~Kimmie