Did you know...

~Each year November is designated National Adoption Month by the President of the United States. This was first declared in 1990.

~There are approximately 143 million orphans


~Every 15 seconds, another child in Africa becomes an AIDS orphan

~Over one-third of Americans have ever considered adopting, but no more than 2 percent of Americans have actually adopted. Somewhere between those percentages lies the number of people seeking to adopt-that is, those who have taken concrete steps to adopt a child.

~Each year 14, 505, 000 children grow up as orphans and age out of the system by age sixteen

~Only 34% OF CHRISTIAN FAMILIES CONSIDER ADOPTING and ONLY 1% OF CHRISTIAN FAMILIES ACTUALLY DO??

~ Just as a side note...According to Planned Parenthood's latest report, abortions increased to 305,310 abortions up from 289,750 in 2006.

~We are home study approved and praying for another baby girl to join our family! Just wanted you to know, I will post more about this at a later date...

My heart is for adoption. However, in a perfect world, there would be no need for adoption. Biological families would stay together, children would be raised in their homeland, surrounded by their culture and connected to their roots. But we do not live in a perfect world. Adoption is not the answer for solving the underlying issues of poverty and disease and famine and war. It won’t stop the cycle of more children becoming orphans. It is a life-line thrown out to a precious few. The tough question is what is the solution to the root of these issues?… how do we make a difference not just in one child’s life(or 2!) through adoption, but in the lives of the thousands left behind… and ultimately how do we stop the cycles that turn innocent children into orphans?

I don't know. I just know we have so much to be thankful for. And a whole lot of work to do. We each have a part, and I by no means state all this to say... "Yay for me, I have done my job." Oh no, I have to and want to do so much more. Those statistics break my heart and blow my mind. It is just as a reminder that something ~ lots of things ~ have to be done and if adoption is "not your thing" then find what is and do it!

James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Now, off to celebrate Thanksgiving with lots of food, Black Friday shopping, and getting our Christmas tree...talk about being polluted by the world...UGH!

Oh one last thing, you NEED to see the movie Blind Side, it is awesome!

whoa, long time no post....

First of all, thumbs up for Ryan, he shot a nice buck last Friday night with his bow! The boys helped with the short tracking job, thus the cute picture, they were pretty excited!

And a great big thumbs down for me, who has been super busy doing SEVERAL things other than blogging! But, I am happy to report some of those things are finally finished! One of the things I was working on was a photo album of our trip to Guatemala. Yes, I am aware that was well over a year ago, however I had over 500 pictures to deal with and let's just say it got a little overwhelming for me. I go into shut down mode when I get overwhelmed, but I got a 20% off coupon plus free shipping that had to be used by the end of the month, so, nothing like a good discount to get me moving, and I finished it up. All 208 pages of it! I also put my blog in there for that period of time, I am so happy it is done, it didn't cost me a fortune, and we will have a nice big ol' coffee table book of our time spent there!

Anaya has been playing with her babies so much lately, so I hauled all of my old babies out and she was thrilled! The doll with the bib is wearing one of the outfits Anaya wore on our first visit trip! It was tight on that doll!

The look on Easton's face says it all! That is a LOT of mandarin oranges ~ the sick thing is they ate almost all of them in ONE sitting! WOW! I don't want to see our grocery bill in a few years!