Where We Are Now

I know I just posted an update from our agency, but I wanted to post a more overall update of where we're at with everything else going on with this adoption. 
We received a HUGE financial blessing this week. We had already decided back in fall that when we filed our income taxes, we'd put the total we got back towards our adoption (minus 10%). My dad filed our taxes for us and when all was said and done, we will be getting $9,842 back! We were not expecting an amount that big! This puts us just over the $30,000 mark for money raised! Also, we had a lady put on an online Lia Sophia party with some proceeds to go to our adoption. The party closed last week and I haven't heard yet what we're getting from that. We do have another fundraiser coming up as well. We're having a Soup and Bun lunch after church on April 13. If you live in the Saskatoon area and would like to support us, we'd love to see you there! I'm excited to see where we'll be at after these fundraisers!
In other news, we have been accumulating baby stuff like crazy! I still can't believe all the stuff babies "need". When we brought Cassidy home, we also brought home a crib, playpen, high chair, exersaucer, bouncy chair, stroller, change table, carseat... a lot of stuff! It's been really nice as she's gotten bigger to slowly be able to move everything out of the house, but I gotta say, I'm looking forward to putting it to use again! Along with all that, we now also have a bassinet, swing, baby tub and we will be getting a double stroller, all given or loaned. I've also been getting some baby clothes/towels/blankets off the buy and sell and I've got a nice little stash already. We will still need an infant carseat, but I'm waiting until we know a date, then I'm hoping to borrow one. I'm going on a girl's trip to Edmonton this week and I'm hoping to get a dresser for the baby room and a couple other things. Shopping is going to be hard when I don't have money to spend!
So to sum it up, we're pretty much ready for this baby! As ready as we can be, I guess. I don't think I'll ever be prepared for the lack of sleep that will come along with it! Each day that goes by brings us one day closer to meeting our little one. I just can't wait!! 

3!

Today Cassidy turns 3! This is so hard for me to believe, although she's been ready to be 3 for a long time now. I wanted to write a post about what she's like at this age, because I know that it won't be long and I'll have forgotten a lot of these things. I already find it hard to remember what our first days together were like, and that makes me sad. So, in honor of Cassidy turning 3, here is a post all about her! I hope you enjoy getting to know her better!

Things Cassidy Likes:
-dancing
-reading (favorite books are Franklin, Dora, the Pigeon books, any books about Christmas)
-movies (specifically Veggie Tales, Despicable Me, Dora and lately Bambi)
-going to the park
-hugging Maya when she is sad
-singing (favorite songs are Precious Girl, Jesus Loves Me, and anything from last year's VBS CD)
-Dominic and Jarrett (Dom and Jerry)
-church
-waking up
-painting
-going on trips
-all of her grandparents
-teaching piano to Mommy
-Flintstone vitamins
-Christmas. And really any occasion where presents are involved

Things Cassidy Doesn't Like:
-sleeping (although she sleeps very well, it's just the going to bed thing)
-missing goodnight hugs from either Mommy or Daddy
-when Maya growls at her
-sitting still
-needles
-listening (most of the time)
-cleaning up her toys
-potatoes and especially mushrooms

Favorite Foods:
-cereal
-yogurt
-broccoli
-Kraft Dinner (or any kind of noodles)
-chicken nuggets
-dessert of any kind
-crackers

At 3 Years Old, Cassidy can:
-go the bathroom by herself (with the aide of a stool)
-sing her ABC's
-count to 13 (sometimes 15)
-get dressed by herself 
-memorize songs fairy quickly
-say her full name (Cassidy Christine Adele Lekadim!). Ok, she can properly pronounce 3 out of 4!

Cassidy Catchphrases:
-"I don't think so!"
-"That makes no sense"
-"Well, actually..."
-"Good enough!"
-"This is how we dance!"
-"You can play with me, if you want"

What I Want to Remember:
-she sings all day long, usually just snippets from songs mixed together
-from the moment she wakes to the moment she lies down at night, she is talking. Talking to me, to Maya, to herself in the mirror, just talking!
-she is very good at playing by herself and making up games, yet she much prefers when I play with her
-she likes to call people on the phone and ask them to come to her house
-when  she prays for her meals, she points at all the items on her plate and calls them "this". "Dear God, thank you for this, and this, and this, and my cup, and my fork, Amen!"
-she has to take off her shirt when she does her exercises
-if the baby is a boy, she wants to name him Carson. If it's a girl, she wants to name her Suey. Carson is good, Suey not so much.
-the times when she stops what she's doing to come give me a hug and say "I love you Mom." 
-how fiercely independent she is. She insists on doing everything herself. She is brave, yet cautious, a wonderful mix!

Cassidy is just at the best stage right now. It's so nice to have an actual conversation with her that make sense. We are able to reason with her (most of the time) and she is incredibly bright. She usually only needs to hear something once to understand. She is a very caring little girl. One day during Sunday School, another kid was crying and Cassidy stroked her arm and said "It's ok sweetheart." One thing both John and I really see and are amazed by is her ability to charm anybody. It's hard to describe it in words the effect that she has on people. I have already recognized that this is a gift she's been given, and I'm excited to see how God will use this in the future. John and I pray every day that she will grow up with a deep desire for God, to know Him and serve Him, and that her life will reflect Jesus in every way. Cassidy loves reading the Bible with us at bedtime, and the way she already knows how to pray blows me away. Often I feel like I'm I make so many mistakes with her, but when I hear the way she talks to God, I know I must be doing something right. We are so humbled and blessed everyday that we get to be parents to this amazing girl. We love you Cassidy!! Happy Birthday!

3 Month Update!

We've now been on the waiting list with our agency for 3 months. These have been some of the longest and shortest months of my life! Every day I seem to get more and more anxious for this baby, yet these months have just flown by! I cannot believe that winter is practically over already. I hope the months continue to speed by at this rate, except I wouldn't mind if time slowed down over the summer ;)

As it nears the end of the month, I start checking my email twice as much as usual, because it means an update from our agency is coming soon! This morning was the day, so here's what I have to tell you. Our profile was shown twice this month, and they've had an increase in birth moms so they are expecting that we will get shown again soon! This means our profile has been shown a total of 4 times all together since January. I wish they could give us more information about these ladies, but I understand why I can't. I'm so glad that God knows who they are, and that I can lift them up in prayer to Him and He knows exactly who I'm talking about. I find it hard to know what to pray. Obviously, I want one of them to pick us, but I also want them to make the right decision for their child. So I'm just praying that God's will would be done in their lives, and that whatever they decide, that their baby will be raised in a loving home. 

Would you join me in praying for these women? I recently read a fiction novel about a girl who got pregnant in high school. She decides to give her babies (twins) up for adoption and it was fascinating reading about her visits to the adoption agency, and how she picked the family that she did. I got to have a glimpse of what it's like on the other side, and it broke my heart even more for these women who wind up with an unplanned pregnancy. They desperately need our prayers. 

Thank you for all who have been praying and supporting us. I was really hoping for a phone call this month (I guess it's not quite over yet). It sometimes feels like it's never going to come, but God knows and I have to remember that His timing is better then mine. I have no idea how I'm going to react when that phone call does come! I hope I don't faint! 

Why Does Every Post Need a Title? I Suck at Titles.

Today I feel overwhelmed. I have been experiencing a period of huge spiritual growth and while it is exhilarating it is also overwhelming at times. Like I don't even know how to handle everything that God is trying to get through my thick head. I have a dear friend that likes to ask the question "What is God teaching you right now?" And right now I feel like it would take hours for me to answer that question. So. Much. Stuff.

Thursday mornings are my favourite because I get to go to a wonderful women's group Bible study. I never fail to leave challenged and encouraged. Today is no exception. We just finished up a study on Satan and the different ways he tries to gain access to us and manipulate and seduce us away from God and everything we know is right. It was heavy. Today we were talking about sin and she said something that really stuck out to me: The sin that is different from ours always seems worse.

How true is that? This really resonated with me because this has always been a struggle for me. I know very well that I am a sinner, but I tend to go around comparing my sin to other people's. Like "Ok, I argued with my husband today but at least I don't swear like he does." Or "I gossiped about someone today but at least I'm not sleeping around like she is." I like to find someone who's committed a bigger sin then I have.

But wait a minute. There's no such thing as a "big sin". Sin is sin. Period. My gossip fest is just as evil in God's eyes as the woman over there cheating on her husband. We looked at the story of the adulterous woman in John 8 and I realized that more often then not, I'm like the Pharisees in that story, dragging someone before God and shouting "Look what they did! Condemn them!" I hate to admit this, because I don't want to be like the Pharisees. I want to be like Jesus. He chose not to look at her sin. He chose not to condemn her. He chose to love her.

I'm not trying to say that we should overlook sin. God doesn't. In fact, Jesus told the woman in John 8 "Go now, and leave your life of sin." There is a time and a place to lovingly call someone out on their sin. But instead of going around finding faults in others that seem worse then mine, I need to look on them with love and forgiveness. I fall so short, every single day. Yet God is constantly forgiving me, showing me mercy and loving me. And He asks that I do the same. Who am I to condemn? This is something that I am trying to work on. I want my life to resemble Jesus as best it can. I have written on an index card in my Bible 10 things that being a wise woman looks like. One of them is being Beautiful- displaying the attractiveness of the Gospel. Jesus is so beautiful to me, and I need to display that beauty in the way I live, so others can experience His beauty for themselves. It's a work in progress. I know I'll never get it perfectly right this side of heaven. But I'm going to keep pressing on.

Just wanted to share with you some of what I've been learning and ask for your prayers. We're still patiently anxiously waiting for THE CALL. I'm trying to be present in the here and now, and not just look expectantly to the future. I don't want to miss the blessings in my life now. As always, thanks for reading. I'd love to hear what God's been teaching YOU lately!

Thankful

Why is it that I get caught off guard when God answers my prayers with a yes? It's happened time and time again in my life, and yet it usually comes as such a surprise. 

I last blogged about John's accident and how we didn't know what was going to happen with our car. If you follow me on Facebook, you know that it got written off and we didn't get a whole lot of money for it ($4100). Yesterday I spent all morning car shopping online, hoping to find a decent car for close to what we were getting for our Aveo. I was fully expecting that we would have to dip into our precious bring-baby-home fund to pay for a new vehicle. I found a few promising cars that were only a few thousand over what we had. After lunch yesterday John texted me and said he prayed that we would find a car for under $5000. My instant reaction was Yeah Right! We needed a reliable, safe, family car that preferably had low kilometres on it and my morning of searching yielded no results lower then aroud the $7000 mark.

I immediately apologized to God for my lack of faith. I mean, of course He could provide a car for us for under $5000 that would be suitable for our family! But I doubted. After spending some time in prayer, I decided to check Kijiji one more time. I found 3 cars under $5000 that would work for us. 3! They were all there last time I checked too, but somehow I missed them. John came home and we narrowed it down to the top choice. It was a 2005 Ford Focus, selling for $3999 with under 100,000 kms on it. We went and test drove it last night and decided to sleep on it (not literally on it!) John just texted me a half hour ago today and said he just picked it up. We got it for $3700! That means we ended up with $400 in our pockets. That's $400 to put in our baby fund! 

I was not expecting that! That's what I mean by caught off guard.

I'm going to miss our Aveo. It was newer then the Focus and nicer looking. The Focus is about the same size, but right now we have one child so we only need a car to hold one child. It will even hold two children just fine. We don't need a bigger vehicle at this point. All we needed was something to get us from here to there (and before Friday, because that's when we had to return the rental by!) 

After I wrote my previous post about trusting God, I have to admit I found it hard to practice what I just preached. My faith is still a work in progress. I have good days and bad days. God is patient with me, however, and I am learning. Right now I am just plain thankful. Thankful that we found a car. Thankful that our baby fund gets added to and not the other way around. Thankful that God is good all the time, even thought I don't deserve it. Thankful.

(Oh, and our Focus has air-conditioning. Our Aveo did not. For that I am also thankful!)