Meeting Moses

Here is a quick 1 minute video of 1st day meeting Moses while in Ethiopia. He is a sweet little guy and had a few smiles, lots of yawns, and a little crying. Looking forward to going back in a bit to bring him home for good.

Officially a family of Six!!!!!!!!

We wanted to update our famiy blog to let everyone know that finally after 3 court appointments- Moses is officially our son!  We have no idea as to when we'll get to pick him up at the US Embassy but the estimated time-line is about 8 weeks.  Here are a few pictures of our time with him a few weeks ago.

New blog - Change Your World For One

This site has been mostly devoted to posting of family pictures, updates, etc. If you follow this blog in any way, you'll know that we haven't updated recently.

In light of our current adoption, we have started  new website and a new blog, http://www.changeyourworldforone.com/


We will be blogging, writing, updating there far more consistently than we ever have here.

Thanks,
Dustin and Heidi

Greenup Life Update, Camille's half birthday, and Adoption

Our little Camille is 6 months old today. She is a sweet little bundle of joy and we are so blessed to have her in our family. She smiles, cuddles and screams. She came out with the most perplexing dark hair, but it is slowly getting lighter and lighter each and every day. She can now turn over very easily and is really trying to crawl. Probably only a few weeks away from that.

Camille lights up with smiles when Ezra and Olivia get up in the morning, full of smiles and excitement for the dayy ahead. Ezra and Olivia both love Camille, though there have been a few times Olivia has thought Camille was ready for the toy helicopter to fall on her head. Both kiddo's are ready for Camille to be able to crawl, walk, run and play.

* We celebrate our 5th anniversary on the 30th of July!

* Ezra turns 4 on September 1st.

* Heidi keeps the ship running. (This is Dustin writing). Heidi is a priceless jewel. Her life is consumingly wrapped up with little ones running around her, over her, under her, etc. and she is a faithful wife who loves the Lord, her needy husband and her children. Her longing is that her children would come to know the love and forgiveness found only in the Gospel desire to train up the children to love Jesus and others with all their heart and lives.

* Real Estate has taken a hit (which is no suprise), but we are thankful to the Lord that along with continuing to work in helping people buy and sell property, Dustin now also gets to help train the new real estate agents who come to work at Windermere. This has been a pretty signifiant year of change for Dustin in terms of eating habits and exercise. If interested, he blogs aout it over at a little website he made up at Average Dad Fitness. Down 30 lbs since January 1st, and feeling a lot better and has far more energy.

Adoption from Ethiopia

Now that Camille is 6 months old, we can jump into the adoption process from where we left off last July when we found out Heidi was pregnant. When we put the process on hold last year at this time we had just completed our dossier and sent it to our agency and to Ethiopia, which means that we are now in the 'actively waiting' for a referral of a boy under 3 years old. Although we don't have a referral yet, we are going to name our son Hudson.

We don't know how long it will take to get a referral, but we are thinking that it will be somewhere within 30 to 90 days. We wouldn't travel to Ethiopia until late late fall or winter or maybe even next spring.

Within the last year, some laws have changed and one of those laws that will be impacting us is that we now have to travel to Ethiopia 2 times before the process is completed. That might not sound like a big deal, but originally Dustin was going to be able to travel one time (approximate cost $2,000) and now both Dustin and Heidi will go one one trip ($4,000) and then Dustin will go on the 2nd trip (another $2,000).

Over the course of the next 8 to 10 weeks, we are praying, planning and working to raise the remainder of the approximately $8,000 to $9,000 needed to complete the adoption.

We are going to be having a HUGE community sale on August 21st. If you read this and have items that you'd like to contribute to the sale, wed gladly come pick it up. (Of course it'd have to be in Spokane).

Also, we are in the process of having home shirts designed that we'll make available for sale as a means of helping fund the adoption. We'll keep you posted.

Also, we're in the process of creating another website in which we will be using as the main means of communication about our adoption.

Adoption, Babies, Logic & 3 Year Old's!

A few days ago a friend emailed us her conversation she had with her 3 year old.







Context

* Ezra & Ben are 3 years old and are in Sunday School together
* Ben's mommy is pregnant

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Subject: Ezra


Hi Heidi,
I wanted to share with you a fun conversation I had with Ben this morning. As we were cuddling on the couch and reading some books this morning, he pet my tummy and asked, "Momma, do you think the baby in your tummy is black?" I said, "no honey, the baby in my tummy is white like you and Jack are white." He thought for a couple of minutes and then said, 'well, momma, Jesus makes all kinds of babies..." I explained to him that because his mommy and daddy are white the baby will be white. Again, he thought for a minute and then he said, "well momma, my best friend Ezra is black and his momma and daddy are white...so I am thinking that maybe God will give us a black baby too!" Wow, I was out logic'ed by a 3 year old! I thought you would enjoy that! Katie

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Isn't it amazing how perceptive 3 year olds can be!

Our growin' girl

Yeah for some smiles. She always smiles right after her feeding as if to say, "Thanks for doing that mom."

She looks a little like she just woke up suddenly

Mommy with her big girl

It's hard to believe that Camille is almost 6 weeks old now. She's really staring to smile and watch what is going on around her. It's funny because the pediatrician advised cutting down on the amount of stimulus she gets in the later hours because she gets colicky and I thought, "Hmmmm, now what could that stimulus be? Perhaps her brother and sister who like to touch her and yell constantly around her. " I don't think anyone could sleep around the amount of noise and laughing those two little people make. ;) Anyhow, these are some pictures of how big Camille is getting. She's now well over 9 lbs and her hair always sticks constantly up in the back. Too fun!

A Growing Family!

So we are now officially a family of 5 with the addition of baby Camille. She is quite the little eater and loves to cuddle and sleep all day. Ezra and Olivia think she is very cute and like to give her kisses. The adjustment to having a new sister has been hardest for Olivia as she doesn't understand why this baby keeps getting all the attention. Now that we are into the 2nd week as a family of 5, we are all learning to adjust to a new 'normal'

Ezra likes his new baby sister a lot.

Ezra and Olivia's first time meeting Camille. They were pretty excited but I think Camille was a little overwhelmed.

Camille's first moments after birth. She started out sleeping and just hasn't stopped. Heidi was praying for a cuddle bug and we think she got one. Camille was born at 7 # 3 oz and after only 4 days she'd jumped up to 7#5.5 oz. Currently she's going 4 hours between feeds so Heidi is thankful for that. Life is just beginning to get back to this new normal and we're excited to see how Camille's personality shows itself.

.

A few things God taught me today

Clicking here will take you to the page.

A surprise Birthday Party!

Yeah! Mom was really surprised for her 60th Birthday. Dad arranged for us all to meet at Anthony's for a Sunday Brunch.
Julie and I comparing our belly's

A girls pic

Thanks Dan and Sue and Gary and Izzi for coming all the way to Spokane for the surprise. We all had a lot of fun!

The World's Children

This photoblog shows pictures of just a few of the world's impoverished children. CLICK HERE.

(HT: Challies.com)

How 'Where's Waldo' can help me understand the Bible

My 3 year old son loves books & more specifically, ‘Where’s Waldo?’. He loves observing, searching, & looking for Waldo as if he was Sherlock Holmes in search of the missing clue to solve a mystery. There are countless people, doing countless things, with countless things occurring on each page. Ezra tells me, ‘Daddy, look. That man is throwing a baseball [not just a ball], she is holding a green purse [not just a purse], the boy is crying because he got hit [not just crying]. He observes with intense detail.

As a book lover myself, I am overjoyed in Ezra’s love for books. Yet, after reading “Agassiz and the Fish” I realized that my son observes Where’s Waldo? with greater inquiry, depth, and intensity than I often do when I open the very Word of God in search of His illumination, understanding, and God-given insight for the good of my soul.


At 3 years old, Ezra is learning how to observe pictures & words and eventually sentences, which are within in paragraphs with are in complete letters which fit into the whole of Scripture. I am grateful and exhorted with this privilege to help him learn to observe, read, and understand the Bible in the God-wrought hope that he would, by the grace of God, comprehend and have illumination of the ‘sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus’ (2 Tim. 3:15).

What a privilege to have the Scriptures, and may I chew upon, dig into and study the Scriptures as my 3 year old son does with Where’s Waldo?!

Fall photos & Costumes

Heidi took the kids to a fall festival party tonight. They gave the kids some cupcakes and lots of candy. Here is a pic of Olivia sharing her cupcake with Ezra once they got back home. Oh yea, she ate all of the frosting off and then wanted to share the cupcake with Ezra.

We picked up lots of leaves today. I put Ezra and Olivia in the garbage cans to help smash 'em down. They had lots of fun...Ezra thought he was Oscar the Grouch. (The house we recently moved into is in the background).

Ezra the Pumpkin and Olivia the Clown. They loved dressing up and having some fun together.

Smashing leaves down for daddy

Oh my the kids were so excited when they figured out if they worked together they could give mommy a ride in their wagon!!! Mommy was pretty excited about it also!

Need I say anything about this.

She absolutely loves her bath time

Ear to ear smiles!!!

A trip away from the chaos

So a few days after moving into our new house we decided to get away from the chaos and make a trip over to Bothel to visit Nick and Julie's new place. (And to celebrate Heidi and Julie's birthday since they're so close together) We had a great time relaxing, catching up, seeing where Nick works as the new manager, and visiting Canyon Hills Community Church with them. We actually stayed with a Sawatzky family friend, Jeanne Ryan, because she had more room to house us. It's funny because Saturday we all took naps and watched college football. We didn't go out and visit any place, we just kicked back and relaxed indoors. It was just what we needed after having to pack up and move with one weeks notice. By the way, thanks to all the people who graciously helped us move!
Heidi and Julie with Jeanne. She used to babysit the girls when they were little and is now like another sister. We love you Jeanne!
Pictures of the new house to come soon. . . . . . . . . . .

'Do Lord, O Do Lord, O do remember Me'

Ezra loves the sound 'Do Lord'. He was putting on a little concert for us. Sometimes he sings is very softly and it sounds great...and then other times he kind of 'screams' it...this is one of those screaming times. It is really fun to watch him like to sing so much!

Modern Day Foot-Washing

Ethiopian Orphan Video

2 years ago today & a prayer for our son

2 years ago today was the day we first met our son, Ezra.

This was one of the first pictures we received from our adoption agency in December of 2006. Ezra was about 3 months old when this picture was taken.


Our first chance to hold our son
Tearful thankfulness of the Lord's goodness to us

Back at our hotel, Ezra was fast asleep and we were staring at him wondering, 'Is he always going to sleep like this? Is he always going to be this calm? What is his personality going to be like?' (2 years later: No, he will rarely sleep like this, he is rarely calm and he has a lively personality)

Heidi holding Ezra after he had woken up from his first nap with us.

Ezra first experience with Heidi's baked french toast

Ezra loves the sprinkler

Ezra's penetrating eyes

Ezra and Olivia during Christmas time in 2008.


This is a good picture that sums up Ezra's personality on most days.

A Prayer for our son:

2 years ago today the Lord graciously blessed us and placed you 'Abera' into our family. We renamed you Ezra and kept Abera (Amharic meaning for Abera: Lightning, and/or Shining) as your middle name. We named you Ezra because it is our prayer that you be a man of God who studies the Word of God, obeys the Word of God and teaches the Word of God in your pursuit of God. Ezra in the Old Testament was blessed by a close walk with the Living God of the Universe because 'the good hand of His God was on him'. (Ezra 7:9).

Ezra, our prayer for you is that you would become a man 'who is humble, contrite of spirit, and trembles at the Word of God.' (Is. 66:2) For, God will look upon you with favor and will reveal Himself to you if you cry out to God for humility, contriteness of spirit and an awe of the Word of God. We pray that you would be a man of God who flee's the tempations of this world and a man who delights in God Himself. God has given you an electrifying personality, a winsome smile, a vigor for life unmatched by but a few (your sister rivaling you in this area :) ). May the Lord bless you, keep you, and cause His face to shine upon you. May the Spirit of God dwell within you from a young age, even as the Spirit dwelt in John the Baptist from the womb. May you be drawn to Christ and may your life be spent living for, breathing for, and dying for our Great Redeemer Jesus.

2 years ago today was the beginning of our journey together. We pray you would be a boy and soon a man 'of whom the world is not worthy' (Heb. 11:38), a man who 'risks his life for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ' (Acts 15:26), a man 'who turns the world upside down' (Acts 17:6) because of your undying alligence to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, our Savior Jesus. We are humbled God has made your our son and we pray we would be daily examples of treasuring Christ and living in a way that displays to you that Jesus is our highest joy, our greatest passion, our all-consuming zeal, and the purpose of why we live and die and that we would be able to look you in the eye and say, 'Ezra, follow us as we follow Christ.'

We love you, cherish you and are so thankful you are our son,

Dad and Mom

A little refreshment from the hot weather

Olivia grabbing for the camera
Popsicles for everyone! They were a "hot commodity" in 98 degree weather

Hmmmmmm. . . how does this work?! Every time the water turned off, she'd look around with her hands in the air asking who had done such a thing.

Ezra's getting more and more brave in the water. He's finally starting to catch up with his sister who is fearless.