25 years!

happy 25th birthday to hubby! so thankful that he was born 25 years ago today...because we get a break on our car insurance! ha! just kidding. here are 25 reasons that i love my hubby.

1. he loves Jesus first.
2. he loves family (mine, his) and spending time with them.
3. the way he loves our baby girl. it really is beautiful.
4. the way he wanted to pursue adoption NOW rather than later (he initiated.)
5. that he will rinse poopie diapers for me when the day has been crazy (and when the day hasn't been crazy.
6. the way he provides for our family (even when he doesn't love what he does.)
7. how he supports me in my endeavors (sewing, baking, whatever other thing i want to do.)
8. that he is so stinking good at running (seriously, he could not train for a year and still run 5 miles!)
9. that he loves to try new things (train for a triathlon, anyone!?)
10. that he shares my love for ikea :)
11. his heart.
12. his beautiful blue eyes.
13. that he is so quick to give me a break when he gets home from work even though i know he has had a long day himself.
14. that he loves to serve.
15. the he works so hard so i can stay home with our babies (and would work 3 jobs if he had to so i could stay home.)
16. that he is always ready and willing to hang with boo so i can have a girls night with small group or mops or whatever it is!
17. that he is willing to wake up with boo when she wakes up.
18. he loves me unconditionally.
19. that he loves sports and knows whats going on with his teams even though we don't have the channels that show the games (and never once complains about not having those channels.)
20. that he is so outdoorsy (remember part of the reason i fell for him is because he was taking a kayaking class :)!)
21. that he is willing to be a dog sitting family just for a little extra money (i always get us roped into dog sitting! its great!!!)
22. that he is willing to go where God leads us, no matter what.
23. that he is so committed and loyal to his friends.
24. that he will drive to the store down the road to get me a sprite when i get a craving.
25. that he wants to have lots of babies with me!

happy birthday sweet husband. thank you for all you do for us. we are so thankful for all 25 years of you!!!! we love you!!

one piece at a time

sweet friends, i am very excited to share with you another way that you can help bring our sweet baby home...one piece at a time.

we have purchased the world map puzzle above. it is a 100 piece puzzle. we are putting each piece of the puzzle up for sponsorship. when you sponsor a piece of this puzzle, you will have the chance to put a message to our sweet child on the back of the puzzle piece. (if you have children, you may want to sponsor multiple puzzle pieces so they can write a message to baby jochim too!) it is our hope that, when finished, we will be able to put the puzzle together and have a back full of messages to our sweet baby, before he/she even comes home! we will modpodge the puzzle together and hang it in his/her room as a reminder of God's faithfulness in providing a way to his/her forever family. it is our hope that our sweet baby will one day look at the messages from friends and family and see that he/she was loved even before we had seen his/her face.

the suggested donation for sponsorship is $10 per puzzle piece. please consider joining us, and helping us meet our second child face to face.

if you would like to sponsor, email us at thejochims@gmail.com or write me on facebook. thank you again for traveling this road with us.

adoption update

i've been a slacker blogger lately! partially due to laziness, partially due to lots of playing with my girl, cleaning, baking, and getting paper work together for our home study!

so here is a little update of what is going on in our little world. we are still doing crafts for congo (but it has slowed WAY down!) we completed our 2 mini photo session fundraisers. and we have a few other fundraisers in the works. but with just those 2 fundraisers, we have our first agency fee!!! that is a HUGE step forward, but we still have a long road ahead of us, and a lot of money to raise! (of course, you will be able to hear about all of our fundraising endeavors, right here!)

we had our first home study meeting last week and it was wonderful! we were only a little nervous going in, but it went off without a hitch. our social worker is FANTASTIC (as we heard she would be!) and we are very excited to say that our final home study meeting will be may 24 at 530 pm! so in the meantime we are gathering lots and lots of paperwork. once we send our agency fee in, we will gather even more paperwork to compile our dossier-which will eventually be sent to the congo. we are making progress here, people!

if you have questions about our adoption process, please ask! we will be as real and honest as we know how to be. here are a few questions that we have heard a lot of!

Q: how old will your child be?
A: we have requested that our child be younger than bella joy (born after march 15, 2010). our home study will be written for a baby 14 months old or younger.

Q: why does your sister already know she is getting a girl? are you getting a girl or a boy?
A: lara and nathan requested a girl. we are very excited about having another niece and meeting sweet lydia face to face!! we did not request a specific gender. so we could have a boy or a girl. it will be a surprise upon referral! :) (i had a dream about our baby the other night, and in that dream, it was a boy...not that i'm a prophet or anything).

Q: what are you going to name your baby? will you keep his or her name the same?
A: we are not opposed to letting our baby keep his or her african name. we will always be open and honest with him/her about where he/she came from. the adoption will not be a secret (obviously--i mean, you can't really hide it when your skin is a different color!) so the idea of keeping the african name is kind of fun to us. however, we do not want our child to go through life with everyone mispronouncing his/her name. so we will likely give them a first name and possibly keep the african name for a middle name. if our baby is a boy, his name will be micah timothy and if it is a girl her name will be...well, thats still up in the air. (we like cora and eliana...but we'll see :)).

Q: so, is it really expensive?
A: adoption is a long and costly process. we are not buying a child, we are paying for the services of the agency staff/country staff. if you are interested in adopting, i would love to give you more info! if you are just being nosy...well you can honestly find this info on your own by looking on any adoption agency's website. but yes, its expensive. no, we aren't buying a baby.

what else ya got?

please keep praying for our journey, for our baby, for our baby's biological family. and thank you so so much for your support so far! lets bring this baby home!

another way to help!

we have been having an awesome week on the adoption front! saturday we had 2 big fundraisers and both were a HUGE success! we also got our first home study meeting scheduled! it will be may 4th at 530 pm and we are so excited and maybe a little nervous! anyway, back to the task at hand! :)

we have another awesome opportunity for you to partner with us (AND LARA AND NATHAN!!!!) in our adoption journey(s). our incredible and generous daddy was thinking one day and had a vision for a child sized park bench. he called me and told me his plans. when i agreed that it was an awesome idea, he excitedly hung up and called my sis. we are so thankful for his creativity and excitement for bringing his grand babies home!

as i said, our dad designed and built these benches and he is ready and willing to make MORE!! would you like one for a little one in your life? maybe to put in your garden? or to spice up your landscaping? (i should also mention that these babies are STURDY! they do indeed hold adults.) if you would like to help us bring some sweet babies home from the congo-please contact us (me or my sis). the suggested donation is $65. thanks in advance! a sweet little boy we know on his bench. he says "baby bella gave me my bench" but actually his daddy won it for him in a silent auction we had at the tc cherry craft bazaar!

bella's bff modeling the bench at the craft bazaar!

bench in an herb garden.

imagine your little one in the place of leo the lion and polly the pig :)

elsie ann hughes

our 2nd niece made her debut on monday morning. she entered this world at 703 am weighing in at 7 lbs. 8 oz. and she was 21 inches long. sweet elsie ann hughes had a very traumatic delivery and came out with the cord wrapped around her neck which caused quite a scare. after a few quick snuggles from her momma and daddy, elsie was whisked away to the neonatal intensive care unit.

as soon as i found out about my dear niece's breathing problems, i quickly texted my small group and a few of my best friends and asked them to begin praying. amanda and andrew did the same. after talking to the nicu doctor and the nicu nurse on monday afternoon, amanda and andrew were pretty certain that they would be spending their time at the hospital without their brand new baby in the room with them and that they would be dismissed at least a day before her. we are confident that because of the prayers of God's people-sweet elsie ann was able to go to her momma's room last night AND she was dismissed at the same time as amanda this afternoon. tonight they are home for the first time as a family of 3 (or 5 if you count the spoiled pups!)

we are already certain that God has big plans for elsie and boy is she a CHAMP! oh, and her momma and daddy. yeah, they are pretty much rockstars too. they handled her stay in the nicu with such courage and grace. i am so so proud of both of them. and i'm a pretty proud aunt too!

today when i got to see her in person for the first time-i, of course, cried! :) God is so good. and you know, even if elsie was spending another night in the nicu tonight-God would still be so good. but we are forever thankful that he chose this route for her life, and that she will be sleeping (hopefully!) in the pack-n-play in her momma and daddy's room at her very first house tonight!

welcome to the family sweet elsie ann. we prayed hard for you--for 2 years! we cried when we found out you were coming. and then we cried when your mommy's water broke. and we prayed for a smooth delivery. and then we cried when we heard you were here. and we cried when we heard of your breathing problems. and we prayed that God would heal you. and He did. and i'm sure we will cry over you many, Many, MANY more times and we will pray for you many, Many, MANY more times. you are such a blessing. and you are really lucky to have one awesome momma and poppa! :)

happy family of 3!
sisters-in-law with their baby girls.

sisters-in-law with their nieces! :)

the difference a year makes

my oh my the difference a year makes. last year on april 15th i photographed a very fussy 1 month old! today i photographed a very wiggly and happy 13 month old. my oh my.

(sorry about the not turned picture. i turned it...but blogger didn't agree.)

our cloth diaper dilemma

so our sweet girl turned one and started walking full time. when she became more mobile, she developed a rash. a really bad rash. each time that it came, we switched to disposables so we could use heavy duty diaper cream and then when it went away, we switched back to cloth. well the rash kept coming back. let me remind you that our girl (whom i love more than i can even begin to describe!) is and always has been high maintenance. (breech, messed up tongue, sensitive skin that reacts to johnsons baby wash/lotion/shampoo, etc.) so i just knew that it was just some cloth diaper thing that we wouldn't be able to recover from. on the third round of rash, i wrote the diaper shops team on facebook. i figured that if i was going to get help, that was the place to start. well a sweet lady named stacey responded almost immediately! she asked which diapers we had in our stash and what detergent we used. after i told her, she said that the same thing had happened to her daughter and it was a reaction to the microfiber in some diapers (some of our diapers have that microfiber, some have no microfiber). so she suggested that we strip our non-microfiber dipes and try using those exclusively. well, wouldn't ya know that it solved our problem! so now, we are exclusively using prefolds (econobum and flip) and 6 bumgenius organic all-in-ones. we are SELLING 10 bumgenius 3.0's and 1 bumgenius 4.0's if you or anyone you know might be interested. we would like to sell them to get a few more prefolds and covers so i don't have to wash every other day :) have any of my other cd-ing friends run into any problems like this?!