Update on our Children & Haiti

From what we have heard so far, both David and Christella are ok.  The orphanage is ‘ok’, the buildings did not collapse, but they are unstable and everyone has been sleeping out on the ground.  Adoptions are at a standstill (obviously), and it’s likely that our paperwork has been destroyed as it was just delivered to the IBESR right before the earthquake.  At a time when the need couldn’t be greater to have these children safe & home, unless God will intervene on all of our behalves, things are looking very bleak. 

We have written letters to Senator Snowe and Senator Collins and the Office of International Children’s Issues to ask for the possibility of Emergency Humanitarian or Refugee Visa’s – but we are not sure if that is even an option.

We know of so many buildings that have collapsed, and some of the people we know and have met are among the casualties – but we do not have much more information than that right now. 

Due to the decrease in food, water, no electricity, likely no working sewage system, and the issues that will come with so much of the death and destruction – the worst is yet to come.

We are working on pulling together donations from local stores of non perishables and money, and we will be bringing them to Boston to fly out with the formula on Tuesday – Pray that we will be able to help make a difference in this endeavor.

l’Institut du Bien-être social et de recherches

As I was about to put down the computer for the night, I received a “blip blip” from our Lawyer on Skype who was down in Haiti working at l’Institut du Bien–être social et de recherches.  l’Institut du Bien–être social et de recherches is also known in most adoption circles as IBESR, and is the “Social Services” of Haiti. 

IBESR is the monumental first step of the adoption process – and we have just entered it!!!!  Our journey has just officially begun; and our most worrisome point is still to come that is the Haitian National Palace where we shall petition to receive a waiver to adopt (despite the fact that we already have biological children, and we are under age 35).

Any parent reading this blog will perhaps understand what it might be like to have your children separated from you and be so far away, out of your loving arms and protection, but worse, that it is not within our power to bring them home.  I’m not sure what it was, but in Church this Sunday both Amanda and I broke down as we started to sing “Knowing You”, we both almost had to leave the sanctuary as we had a hard time pulling ourselves back together.

So – we have just officially, after a full year of preparing with paperwork, started out on the long, long journey of adoption.  Our daily family prayer is that God will empower and guide Clifford (our lawyer) to work efficiently in the legal system to bring our children home, and that God will strengthen Chris, Hal, Junior and HIS Home with the ability to provide the love and protection for our children while we are separated from each other.

And if you have it in your heart, for us, please bring this request before the throne of The Almighty. 

Little and Big Miracles…

 

What Faith Can Do – Kutless

If you close your eyes when you walk the road of life; you may miss a lot of little miracles, sometimes overshadowed by the big ones!

 

From: HIShomeforchildren@yahoogroups.com [mailto:HIShomeforchildren@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of ******@comcast.net
Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2009 2:52 PM
To: HIShomeforchildren@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [HIShomeforchildren] double praises

I just wanted to share with everyone how GREAT our God is. I am sure as you watch the news you have seen the bomb attack on the airplane in Detriot?  My cousin and his wife were on that plane. They were on their way home from Ethiopa with their new daughter they adopted! So God stopped the bomb and brought a new little girl into our family on CHRISTmas day. What a Blessing.

Praying for great adoption news for all of us this up coming year.

Happy new year,

Natalie

A letter from Santa Claus

This morning, I found this in the mail; I guess I must have missed it back in October.

 

October 15, 2009

From the Offices of:

Santa Claus

The North Pole

Dear Friends,

As you know, the Christmas season is soon upon us. Due to the economic down turn of the global economy, I regret to inform you that this year, I must change our Christmas traditions – only slightly.

Last week the GPS went bad in the sleigh (what, you don’t think Santa knows how to use technology?), and that my friends was awfully expensive; I swear the dealerships are intentionally making things harder to fix on your own sleigh – it’s a racket!

The day after the GPS was fixed I found that moths had eaten through my Santa suit – if dealerships weren’t bad enough, I had to go to the local department store to get a new suit – bleeding hearts of the world unite!

Later on that day the toilet in office #10 backed up. Once the plumber got done giving our pipes the shaft (and our wallets too), he announced that Christmas tree roots had infiltrated them; and we would need to hire a backhoe to come in and dig up and replace the pipes.

Well, as you know, in the North Pole it’s pretty cold – so we had to hire some specialists (i.e. the U.S. Government) to come in and handle it.

While the U.S. government doesn’t actually believe in magic and Christmas and for sure Peace on Earth, what they do believe in is taking money from anyone and everyone they can get their paws on – so needless to say, while over charging us for the work they were doing they also snuck in some tax assessors and slapped us with over a million dollars in back taxes (who knew that we had to pay taxes on all the toys that WE make and give away!).

If that wasn’t bad enough, because of the shortage of the flu shots, Mrs. Claus came down with a variant called the reindeer flu. As you know, we are self-employed, but we do not qualify for Medicare, and between the government and the insurance companies, and now the medical bills we have had to sell a few of the reindeer to make ends meet.

So, in the spirit of Christmas giving, this year, I must ask that you give a small donation in appreciation of the time, money and effort we all put in here at the North Pole. This money will be used to pay off medical bills, legal bills, and repairs, as well as paying our 2010 insurance premiums which have just gone up as the insurance company found out that I am a bit overweight!

Due to the restrictions placed on the North Pole by the United States Government, who has now decided that we are all Americans and under their sovereign rule; I ask that you give donations of monetary value less than 200 dollars at any given time, and more importantly, in cash only.

I appreciate your understanding,

Santa Claus

This is the house that Jed built…

This is the mouse that lived in the house that Jed built… but let me not get ahead of myself.

We built a house out in the country in the middle of a great big field – and needless to say we have been fighting the introduction of field mice into our house since we first moved in.

Our house is a two story ranch; the first floor is exposed on 3 out of the 4 sides, and we have always been able to contain the mice to the first floor (at least neither we nor our cat have found evidences of mice on the second floor).

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However, over the last couple weeks we have been seeing indications from our cat Zia that there could be mice in the upstairs part of the house now. 

As a quick aside, Zia is another animal all together; we warn all friends and family that come over that she is a little schizophrenic; she can be sweet and loving, and begging to be pet one second; and then the next second she will dig her claws into you and claw & bite.  No one ever believes us; until after they have been hit.  Zia is a royal pain in my rear – even though I’m the only person in the house she doesn’t dare to attack – however; she still has some value as a mouser apparently.

Anyway, yesterday was the first time we actually saw signs of the mice upstairs (mouse poop in a drawer) so the war began.  While we believed there was more than one mouse, we only had one trap – and so we set it.  Here is where the story really begins though.

This morning we were woken up to Braeden saying “Oh that’s cute, Zia has a toy mouse”; and it was then followed up with something to the effect of “Bella throw Zia her mouse” (I couldn’t quite hear, because I sleep with earplugs on mornings that I don’t want to wake up at 6 AM by our children).

Scrambling out of bed we found this:

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That was the most lifelike toy mouse we have ever seen.  We didn’t have the heart to tell Bella that she was tossing around a dead mouse though.  🙂

Are animals aware of their own mortality?

If you had asked me this a couple weeks ago, I would have said no.  However, I also realize that most of the pets we have had over the last 10 years, we either did not have until they died, or they were too small to have much interaction with.

Today, our pet rat of two years died.  She had cancerous growths that started earlier this summer; but over the last week we found that she was getting really, really bad; emaciated, loosing some hair, not moving much, not eating much.  We started giving her crackers with peanut butter on it for the last two days, as she would actually eat it – but would eat nothing else.

Today, when I went to give her the food, she took it, put it aside, and then dragged, and pulled her tired body down one cage flight, out onto the door and up against my chest.  She continued to start to climb up onto me, which she had no strength to do.  She hasn’t tried to climb out onto me in a long time.  But today, despite almost no strength she made the unbelievable effort, and she was determined.

I helped her up onto my shoulder which was her final aim; and she tried to climb into my shirt, as she had always done as a baby rat.  I couldn’t let her into my shirt, because she was very sickly and it kind of grossed me out.  However, I stood there for about 15 minutes petting her.  And she started to brux – a sound rats make when they are very happy – they grind their teeth together.  Eventually she stopped bruxing, until Donovan came back over, and started petting her, and she started bruxing again. 

Donovan was upset because she seemed to be crying – he was right – either it was the amount of effort she put into climbing on me, or she was actually crying.  After she got on my shoulder she sat there for a short while, and tears started to come from her eyes – but just a short while later, her eyes were dry again.

It was time for me to go back to work; but I knew she wasn’t going to last the rest of the day; Amanda held her for a while, and then let Donnie hold her.  It was unbelievable to see how calm she was (apart from her very labored breathing) once she got into our arms.

I let Amanda know that she should have the kids say goodbye, and a short while later, stormy died in Donnie’s lap.

The kids of course are devastated; they have never experienced death for something they were very close to.  Amanda told Braeden that we would bury her and she would turn into a flower.  Braeden kept saying to me, “Papa, I don’t want a flower, I want stormy” – a couple times he said “Papa, can’t we pray to God and ask Him to give stormy back to us” – “I know God can bring stormy back, why don’t we just ask”. 

Wow – it was really hard as a father to experience the sorrow of my children from their lost…

But Stormy’s death had a profound impact on me; she knew she was dying and she wanted to spend her last moments with her family – rather than in her cage… profound….

Christmas Irony

There is nothing that brings out my nature as a fallen human more than being dragged out shopping around Christmas time.  If you want to cure a humanist – send them Christmas shopping with me.  It becomes very obvious very quickly that I’m not “inherently good”.

And that’s the most ironic part of Christmas, I think.  The weeks leading up to the celebration of the birth of our Lord, seems to make the most obvious, exactly why I need a savior.  

I think I just heard an amen coming from at least one other person in the crowd… it must have been another Logiodice.

When they passed out the brains…

So this morning I awoke to a sound similar to the sound of someone dumping a bucket of legos down a set of stairs – very loud crashing, followed by very loud crying.

“Braeden, are you ok, are you ok Braeden?”

Well, I’ll save you the drama except to find out that Braeden had taken the whiteboard, put it on the top of the stairs and slid down on top of it (and rumor has it Bella was on it too – because I heard her say “I didn’t get hurt”, to which Braeden replied “that’s because you’re feet didn’t stick out”.. 

Amanda had decided to let them watch Dennis the Menace this morning without parental supervision.

I am so used to our children’s dangerous antics, that I lay in bed thinking:

“Well, if he is crying he is still alive.  If Donnie isn’t screaming, then there is no blood”.

Braeden came wandering into the room crying:

“Donnie said it was safe.  Donnie said I wouldn’t get hurt.”

So, I said to Braeden:

“Braeden, you have to learn to use your common sense.”

To which he replied:

“What is common sense?”

I said:

“Braeden, if Donnie told you it was safe to jump off the roof, would you do it?”

He replied, “No”, between sobs.

“And why  not”, I asked?

“Because I would get hurt” (whimper).

“Well, that’s what common sense is”, I replied.

Braeden went quiet…

A few minutes later he said “But Pappa, how would I get on the roof anyway?”.

OMG! I thought, he sat there the last couple minutes thinking about jumping off the roof, and his only concern was how he would actually get up there.  This boy is scary!

 

As my mother always used to say to me; “When they passed out the brains, Braeden thought they said drains and said ‘Give me a little one with a lot of holes in it’”!

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