Miller Plus One

I think I may have mentioned the book "A Mother for Choco" in another blog.  Do you have it for your kiddos? I would highly recommend it.  I found it at our old church's consignment sale last year and we've read it to Amber Joy since the day she came home.  I'm going to quote parts of the book here and then tell you what Amber Joy does nowadays when I read her the book (which lately has been every night):   "No matter where Choco searched, he couldn't find a mother who looked just like him." Amber Joy strokes the picture of Choco and says, " ok, Choco, ok ."  *melt my heart* "Choco was so sad he started to cry.  'Mommy, mommy! I need a mommy!' Mrs. Bear came running to see what was the matter.  As she listened to Choco's story, she sighed.  'Oh dear. If you had a mommy, what would she do?'" Amber Joy looks up at me and shakes her head, furrows her brow, and says, "no."  *call me biased,...

Isaiah 43:19 (The Message)  "Forget about what's happened; don't keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new. It's bursting out! Don't you see it? There it is! I'm making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands." I have been completely moved by verses like this one lately.  Something new.  Something brand new.  Justin and I have been searching for what comes next for our family over the past six months.  In September, we moved in with my parents in their home in Murfreesboro.  It turned out to be a Providential move, since my dad had two falls and two knee surgeries in the time we've lived here.  But now, it's time for us to move on.  We miss having a place to call our own.  We miss being "just the three of us."  We decided to stay in Murfreesboro, since Justin gets to work from home three days a week and works in Franklin the other two days.  We were looking at existing h...

  (from last January) It is December 21 and one year ago on the 29th, we boarded the first of four planes that would take us to this sweet and fiesty little girl!  I absolutely can.not.believe it's been nearly a year.  We will celebrate our family day on December 31...that's the day she was placed in our arms and we became forever a family.  We are super excited to celebrate Christmas this year, well, I almost wasn't...let me tell you about it. Remembering is a strange thing.  I've been pretty emotional this Christmas season so far, just thinking a lot about where we were this time last year and how sad we were that we would not have our girl home for Christmas.  It was all I could think about.  Literally.  I had even concocted a plan that I would fly to Taiwan and stay there until all the court stuff was worked out so I could be with her. I just could not wait to get my hands on her.  We had known about Amber Joy and seen photos ...

I have talked before about how I feel somewhat ill-prepared to be a mom.  I suppose all of us do.  Or maybe we feel ill-prepared for whatever comes our way in this life.  It would actually be easy for me to accuse someone else for not preparing me for what I need to know: my parents, pastors, teachers, etc.  But the truth is, that is going down a road that is dangerous (the blame game).  And as much as I feel I don't know, there are so many things that I DID learn while I was growing up.  This week, Justin and I have had some interesting discussions about what it is that keeps us from doing what we feel we need to do, when we need to do it.  We have talked a lot about how we trade one "if only" for another...what do I mean?  For me, it's been a range from "if only I were thinner" or "if only I had a Master's Degree" and "if only I had more money."  I may achieve one thing I wanted for myself, only to find I've traded that 'i...

A new season. It's autumn again, my favorite season of the year.  And it's funny...you know how you time your life in terms of 'before college' and 'after college' or 'before we were married' and 'after we were married.'  Now, ours is 'before Taiwan' and 'since we've been home from Taiwan.'  I am constantly blown away at how much Amber Joy is changing and growing.  Right now, as I type, she's in her purple Tinkerbell pj's walking around, hiding a block in the entertainment center, looking at me and raising her hands as if to say 'where did it go?' and then finding it over and over again.  That's crazy to me...she's WALKING, she's PLAYING, she's SMILING and LAUGHING and she's learning new things every.single.day. On Labor Day weekend, we moved from Goodlettsville, and the first house that Justin and I bought as a couple, to my parents' home in Murfreesboro.  The decision was mainly ba...

This blog is becoming like a 'I have to write it down now or I will explode' journal for me.  Today, I attended day #1 of my third straight year of the "Empowered to Connect" conference on adoption and foster care.  My brain hurts.  My eyes are tired and I'm sitting here on the bed thinking of the millions of other things I could/should be doing while no one is in the house but me, and I put the list in the floor and pulled out the computer.  Ever have those days where if you don't write down all the thoughts in your head, you're convinced they will all come spewing out of your ears? I'm not typically a scripture-quoter.  Quite frankly, people who go around quoting scripture all the time tend to annoy me.  But today, I've had tons of them floating around in my head.   Psalm 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.  Lately, I just feel like I haven't been very connected.  Know what I mean?  My re...

Post-adoption It's a funny thing, really.  How we compare ourselves to other people.  I have challenged myself to become a little more "real" in my blog-writing, but the funny part is that I've been reading others' blogs and have decided I need to be more like them (thinking they are more real than me).  Weird, huh?  Today, I just felt like telling the truth about me and this whole "wife and mom" mentality.  The truth is, I am not a cook.  I don't enjoy it.  I don't iron my husbands shirts for work.  He does it himself.  I don't know how to sew.  Not even a button on a shirt or stitch up a hole.  Never learned.  But these days, I'm struggling with guilt because these are things that a wife and mother should do or at least know how to do, right?  I read other blogs of 'super moms' and see that they make all the decorations for their twelve adopted kids' birthday parties and they always meal plan and have something yummy i...