Tuesday's Best: Catching up

the sun is out.

it's finally spring.

70 degrees.

i'm sitting on the front porch with my computer and a cup of coffee.

the birds are singing away.

and it's tuesday's best.

doesn't get much better than this.

i'm long overdue on a tuesday's best update.  we've been finishing our home study and working overtime to save up for the adoption expenses that are about to start flooding in.  as someone who spent their 20's investing in the contents of their closet i'm shocked to announce that i have never been so excited to empty out my piggy bank.  and by piggy bank i mean josh's yazoo brewery growler.

we've been busily dreaming these last few weeks and holding tight to the hopes we have for the weeks to come.  

hang tight, my four favorites.  we're coming for you.

  

four favorites

geraldine said her abc's for us today all by herself.

auntie kelly taught gerald how to throw a peace sign.  word.

looking at pictures of mom as a kid is hilarious...

... but not as funny as pictures of dad and granddad!

last week we surprised the kids with three special visitors...

their friends abdul, mabinty, and sorie!

these three came home to america a few weeks ago after a long three years of waiting for their parents, jason and erica rust, the founders of the raining season.

they spent the night with us monday so they could get up early and skype with us tuesday morning.  

our house has been way too quiet ever since...

surprise!  mohamed and mamie were so excited to see their friends.

happy tuesday's best,

m

The Welcome Wagon

over three years of waiting.  

over three years of fighting.  

2 different families.  

2 different cities.

2 different news crews.

1 lacrosse team, in uniform.

dozens of welcome home signs.

11 children altogether.  

one giant homecoming.

some of us stayed in nashville and some of us drove to kentucky to evenly disperse TRS love, but we were all in it together.  checking each airport's arrival times, texting updates and pictures and videos, and placing face time calls to allow people across the country to join in the celebration.

stories of abuse are now stories of love.  histories full of oppression are now futures full of hope.  childhood's are being handed back to children who deserve them, and families are slamming shut chapters of resistance.

i am overflowing for the pyle and jones families today.  you can breathe now.  they are home.

welcome home jones family!
that's 8, yes 8, children coming home to make an even jones dozen.

josh at the nashville airport anxiously awaiting the the great 8's arrival.
these kids make up 4 of the 5 nashville rust children.
all adopted out of sierra leone, the youngest 3 just a month ago!
left to right:  nash, capri, jayda, maddox.

welcome home pyle family!
lori jumped so high off of the ground when she saw her children walking toward her!  her oldest son sam took off running straight toward her and hugged her so hard i thought they were going to fall over.

the louisville welcome wagon

waiting on his brothers and sister!

Tuesdays Best, Happy Campers, and the Number 3

this tuesday's best was quite the party.  guest appearances included: 

aunty melissa

 her mom, aunty pattycake

uncle jason

aunty geraldine (baby girl's namesake)

we had 4 very happy campers today.  they are loved and they know it.  

we turned the computer around to show them our disaster of a living room that we are in the middle of painting.  the furniture is squished in the middle of the room, tape and plastic sheeting everywhere, and dust bunnies are freely blowing around... but that didn't stop mohamed from proudly declaring "that is my house!  that is mine and gerald's house."  ignoring the fact that he completely left his sisters out of this equation, this struck me as new thought from him.  we have never spoken to the kids about our intent to adopt them.  until it is so real that we are sitting together outside of a courtroom, waiting for our turn to speak to a judge, i will not breathe a word of it around them.  if anything were to happen that ultimately would prevent us from bringing them home i couldn't bear for them to be as heartbroken as i would be.  i'm not sure i could live with letting them down to that extreme.  so no, we haven't uttered a word to them about it.  but things are beginning to change for their friends... and mohamed is figuring out what that might mean for he and his siblings (errrr brother).

uncle jason and his wife, aunty erica, are the founders of the raining season.  they adopted from sierra leone years ago, and decided that the things they saw were not ok with them.  they have fought, tooth and nail, for everything that i am a part of when it comes to sierra leone.  jason and erica are currently on the ground at the covering and will return to their home in nashville next week with fanfare that will surely have me bawling like a baby at the airport.  after 3 years of tenaciously fighting for their family, jason and erica will arrive home with 3 additions in tow.  i am already working on the sign that i will be holding at baggage claim.  i am also already practicing my you've-got-this-pull-it-together-don't-cry-like-that-it's-ugly face.  it's a work in progress.

but until next week's inevitable tears, there are this week's smiles.

aunty melissa

pattycake (melissa's mom, pat)

the top of uncle jason's head.  super great screen shot, megan... way to go!

aunty geraldine

gerald's muscles

aaaaand mamie's muscles.  

happy tuesday's best!

xo

The Purest Form of Genuine

yesterday the in country director of the covering shared the following letters written by some of our TRS children to the families in newtown, connecticut.

i am overwhelmed at the amount of grace, courage, and love that accompany their words.

there is a tightly bound thread that runs between those who have the deep understanding of loss and tragedy.  we all feel it, but those who have experienced such to it's fullest are instantly members of an inner circle.  their offers of comfort and prayers are the purest form of genuine, their sharing of the grief resulting in the heaviest of hearts.

i am so very proud of these children for offering this sense of community to a community they have yet to meet.

Hakuna Ma-Clavicle

geraldine has fractured her clavicle.

yep.

that's my girl.

just as ungraceful as i am.

she ran into a bed and her shoulder was still hurting her a couple of days later so they finally got it x-rayed.

busted clavicle.

today i wish i was there.  today i wish she was here.  broken babies belong cuddled up on the couch with their mom, tucked under earl snuggs (the first thing josh and i bought for the new house was a giant quilt and we named him earl snuggs... our disgustingly mushy and equally hilarious nod to the bluegrass giant) watching a plethora of disney movies.  

hakuna matata, baby girl.  no worries.  it'll be ok.  and i love you. 

alright, i'm off to scrub my floors 'til they look like the top of the chrysler building (annie quote).  we're hosting the raining season christmas party at our new house tonight because i am a crazy person and offered to serve hors d'oeuvres on top of cardboard boxes.  what new house?  oh yeah.  we finally found one!  forgot to tell you about that.  and it's just plain hard to type when you're up to your elbows in paint and can't find your glasses because you're 30 now and your eyes have begun the downward spiral toward failing you.  i'm 30?  oh yeah, forgot to tell you about that too... we have a lot to catch up on.  my bad.  talk soon.

happy weekend!

m

"I'll take 'hippocampus' for $500, Trebek"

y'all.  my brain is full.

i'm talking the end of a college career full.

this weekend josh and i went to a 2 day conference called 'empowered to connect'.  this equally empowering and exhausting conference was designed to help both adoptive and foster parents better understand their children's history and how it impacts their development.  led by the brilliant dr. karyn purvis, director of the tcu institute of child development, these 2 days were crammed full of 150 hours of graduate student course work.  

trust based relational intervention, spontaneous infantile regression, sensory processing deficits, attachment cycles, sympathetic nervous system, amygdala, hippocampus, regulating, weighted blankets, time in's, strategies for behavioral change ...  and lions and tigers and bears oh my.

the short version is that any adopted child, any foster child comes to their family with varied amounts of trauma.  some more than others, some less than others, but all needing the same things.  we learned gobs and gobs (medical measurement term... but don't look it up, just trust me ok?) of information about how our kiddos' brains function and how we can help them to, overall, trust and adjust.  

so that was my friday and saturday.  my how the time's-are-a-changin', huh?

sunday night the brave and beautiful founder of the raining season, who also happens to be my good friend, Erica, spoke at a church here in nashville about the organization.  i love hearing her story.  that girl is making me dang proud.  she is responsible for getting 120 children off of the streets and giving them the lives that they deserve.  modern day mother teresa?  i think so.

these kids will have the opportunity to change the world, because she changed theirs.

the cherry on top of my adoption filled weekend?  our in country director of the covering (the orphan care center run by trs), Quami, and his wife, Madonna, were in town with their beautiful baby girl, Karen, and joined us for dinner later on in the evening.  look at this sweet little baby girl!!!!!!  good golly miss molly i love her.

how was your weekend??

xo,

m

Go Bling or Go Home

i am currently cleaning my house from top to bottom.  this can only mean one thing.  

party!  even better, a gung ho giving party.

drinks will be poured, munchies will be served, and jewelry will be drooled over.  if you don't already know about stella & dot, today is a great day to introduce you!  if you're already familiar with this gorgeous line of accessories today is a great day to stock up on some new fall essentials.  

either way, go bling or go home.

this particular gung ho giving event will send all proceeds to the raining season, the organization that runs the orphanage in sierra leone where my kiddos live.

nashvillians: grab your cash money/credit card/checkbook and come on over tonight! 

 out of towners: can shop online here through wednesday, september 26 for proceeds to benefit TRS!

remember these sweet initial charms that my friend, jordan, gave me?  stella & dot.

here are some of my other favorite goodies:

swoon.  i can't think of a better way to give to a good cause or your wardrobe this season.

happy shopping!

m

Tuesday's Best and 100 More Children

the kiddos had trouble hearing us this morning... good thing they know a little sign language!

the covering (the orphanage) moved to a new building this weekend.  while we are fundraising to build a permanent home for the kids we are leasing space and, this past weekend, they packed up and headed to a new building that i had the privilege of touring while i was in sierra leone this summer.  we asked the kids if they liked their new home and they all seemed pretty excited about it.  mohamed said his favorite part about the new center was the wall.  wait, whaaaa?  did i hear that right?  a wall is your favorite part?  yep.  the outside wall in the courtyard.  probably because he can bounce balls off of it.  you know what this means, right?  josh and i just hit the jackpot.  someday we are going to be able to get him cardboard boxes for christmas that we will most likely score for free outside of a liquor store and make him the happiest kid in the world.  merry christmas to us!

moving to this new building means that the raining season now has the capability to house up to 100 more kids.  i mean, think about that.  100 more children will have homes.  100 more children will have three meals a day.  100 more children will have someone to care for them.  100 more children will be told that they are not forgotten and will learn what love looks like.  the raining season is about to double it's impact in west africa.  

  this also means that we here in the states have some work to do.  sponsors, forever families, the dollar spot, chuy's creamy jalapeño dressing to drown our stresses in... we need it all.  our nashville fundraising committee has some work to do, and i couldn't be more excited to get my hands dirty.  its going to be a busy fall!!!

happy tuesday's best,

m

Gerald and Geraldine

today is the day.  today is the day i can finally talk about these beautiful, perfect little nuggets i've been posting about.  remember when i said it was bigger than country music award show hair?  i bet you're gonna believe me...

one night in october i couldn't sleep so i spent the night online researching different orphanages in africa that i could volunteer at.  the next day i had lunch with my bestie, melissa spillman.  turns out she too had africa on the brain.  the day before she had lunch with 2 women from spring hill, tennessee who founded an organization called the raining season (TRS) that runs an orphanage called 'the covering' in sierra leone, west africa.  melissa asked if i would be interested in taking a trip to the orphanage with her someday.  i cried in my greek salad and said yes.

fast forward a few months and i am now a mother to twin two year olds that were taken in by the covering.  yep.  read that again.  mother.  to.  twin.  two.  year.  olds.  due to the atrocities of human trafficking there has been an adoption ban in sierra leone since 2009.  this means that in the foreseeable future none of the children at the center will be placed in permanent homes.  to counteract this TRS started the forever family initiative.  a forever family is matched with each child/sibling group to provide emotional, spiritual and financial help to these kids for the rest of their lives.  we are, essentially, a family that just doesn't live together.  we skype weekly.  i can visit the center as much as i like but am required to visit at least once a year.  and i have every intention of bringing my sweet babies to live with me the very moment that ugly adoption ban goes away.

i'd like to introduce you to my favorite little nuggets.  meet gerald and geraldine :)

so, i am a mother to twin two year olds.  if that doesn't produce an instant anxiety attack i don't know what will.  but the steady anxiety attacks have given way to heart bursting amounts of excitement that are only occasionally sprinkled with anxiety filled moments.  and the anxiety filled moments have given way to tremendously overwhelming periods of faith.  and the periods of faith have shown me what it feels like to be a follower of God.  and it turns out being a follower is the biggest, bestest, most awesomely powerful thing that i have ever experienced.  turns out... i like what i look like as a follower.  i like what it feels like to say yes with my whole, terrified heart.

i have an entire box of clothes sitting in my office that i will bring with me when i travel to see them in july.  i spend nights scouring blogs of anyone who has ever taken a trip to the center in search of baby pictures of g&g.  i have been known to watch a 7 second video of gerald waving for 45 minutes straight.  my mom put their faces on a coffee mug.  my dad adds every tuesday's "best of" skype photo to his screensaver at work.  they call me mommy.  i call them little man and baby girl.  they are mine.  i am theirs.  we are a family.

we are a family.