Lucky 13!

Well, we have now slowly but surely moved to #13! I never thought I would like the number 13, but now I find myself enjoying it! There have been a lot of things going on here lately. Emma has been asked to join the gymnastics team. She is so excited, but what a commitment for a 6 year old. It is 4 hours of practice a week, and somewhere around 4-5 competitions in a year. I haven't made a decision on this yet. Max is starting baseball season and we have his first game coming up soon. Samuel just continues to be an ever present and constantly happy 3 year old. As for our other daughter, we still have no idea! It is interesting trying to speculate on when she will or has been born, when we will hear about her, when we will become a family with 4 children..... so much to think about. Fortunately I have the other children to keep me busy so that my head can only dwell for so long!

So Kent was a part of the Charleston International Film Festival over spring break. He did a great job, and we got to spend an evening on the red carpet!! How exciting. His animated short film Al

fred Noyes' The Highwayman has been involved and entered into many a film festival the last few months.

Most exciting and newsworthy for me was an event I was privileged to volunteer for here in Knoxville, TN called Hope in the Dark. It was an event to benefit Africa and orphans. Wow, what a journey. Almost two years ago when adoption was put in my heart, I would never have thought that we would be involved in something like this here in Knoxville. I am so greatful to God, Mike and Beth Hamilton (UT athletic director who has 3 children from Ethiopia), Watoto Children's Choir from Uganda, Steven Curtis Chapman and family and B

lood Water foundation for making such a wonderful evening. I am sure it was a real eye opener for a lot of people who attended! They raised $230,ooo dollars in table donations at the end of the night alone. If you don't know anything about these people you should definitely look them up! Hopefully next year, our daughter will have been here with us for a while, and we will be able to sponsor a table in honor of her birth family and country. The amazing thing about this is that God seems to know exactly the right moments when I need a boost or confirmation that we are headed in the right direction. This event was yet another sign of our wonderful saviors presence in this world. So thank you God for making these opportunities available to all of these wonderful people to be advocates for orphans and Africa. So on that note I will try to leave you with a few recent photos of our crew!

Peace and Blessings!

Thats right, we are now in the teen digits!! Hopefully we will be surprised how quickly this spot will change as well!!! The new news is this: as of last week, you now have to make the trek to Ethiopia 2 times!! We will actually have to go appear before the court to state that we want to adopt our daughter and then leave her at the orphanage and return home:( Then we can go back when we have an embassy date to actually bring her home.

We are not excited about this change, but we will do anything needed to bring our daughter home. Emma says, "you will go for a few days to Ethiopia, and then you will go for a week and that will be scary!" I am sure this whole process is really hard to realistically understand when you are 7,6, and 3 years old, but someday they will forget all of this and just be happy to have a sister!

I am one of these people that sees the bright side. I think it will be very awesome that Max, Emma and Samuel will be able to see videos and pictures of us holding their sister. I think in some ways it will make it more realistic to them. All I know for sure is this: God has a plan, and I am sticking with it!!

Fourty- three!!!

We are now officially number 43 on the list!!! Although things will change again soon I am sure. Our consultant restated that referrals for infant girls remain around 14-15 months so we will possibly be looking at a referral this summer!!! We have been waiting eight months now and are getting very excited!!!

Look at my timeline!!!

I cannot believe that we have been waiting on our little princess girl for 7 months. I don't think anyone really reads these updates. but when I created this blog, I was looking at other peoples counters and thinking of how we had just begun the wait for our daughter. Now I look at it and think 7 months!!! How did this happen?? We are so excited. Samuel enjoys going into his baby sister's room, oh how this may change when she actually gets here!!

5 Months Waiting!!

Today is officially 5 months waiting on our referral, the way I see it, we are reaching the half way point. Man, it is amazing how quickly time flies with three children to chase after here! It is hard to explain the way I feel about time, but I will give it a shot. In a way I am so ready to know our little girl, we already know our family is in a transition. Everyone knows this in not the way our family will remain as we all grow and mature. I am so excited to have another little princess in the house!! On the other hand, every day that passes, means that we are growing older and our children are growing older. I am so happy to see them mature, learn new things and reach new goals, but it is going so quickly. Just tonight, I had to unload the van of three sleeping children. Samuel was pretty easy so he went first, Emma is getting quite heavy, but she sleeps so hard, I knew she would never wake up and walk. Now when I got to Max, I contemplated attempting to carry him in the house and up the stairs. Shortly after my contemplation, I realized I could hardly lift him to standing in a dead sleep. He is sooo big..... not in a bad way, but he is growing up so quickly. I almost had a moment right then and there, when I realized I could not physically lift and carry my first born child. It seems like just the other day I was dreaming of what he would look like and act like and now he is seven years old. How in the world could he now be too big to hold in my arms??

In short when days pass, and seasons change, I am so happy to see how different individuals my children are becoming. But in exchange for this, it means I loose the past all to quickly. I guess this is what my parents were talking about when we were kids and they seemed to think time flew by, as I thought a weekend without seeing my friends was an eternity.

So for now, I will patiently wait for God to determine who the next little sister in our family should be. I will savour the seemingly long, yet short fleeting days that pass. And maybe, just maybe, I will try to pick up Max and carry him somewhere tomorrow, just for old times sake.

We are still alive!

Well, I figured that those two people that read my blog were deserving some attention. If you haven't noticed that the lag in time between my posts directly correlates with summer break from school. I have had my hands full with the three kids this summer and really have not even been on the internet much this summer. So we are now in our first official week of school, so maybe I can keep this updated better. Although we are just waiting so there will not be much to say about the adoption.

Max is in second grade this year. He is growing up right before my eyes! Here he is at the beach with a treasured clam.

On a very sad note, Emma will be starting kindergarten on Monday. What a day that will be. She recently lost her first tooth! I am still not mentally prepared. Something about the change of sending my second born to school is really hitting hard. The good thing

is

that she will be with our beloved Mrs. Moore. (couldn't do this without her) We went to build-a-bear yesterday to take advantage of their August special (bear/outfit/shoes= 29.99) which was a pretty good deal. We were celebrating here last days out of school.

Poor little Samuel, he is not going to know what to do with himself!! He is going to miss Emma so much, but this will give us some much needed mommy/samuel time. Life is full of changes, it just takes some adjusting. For everything there is a season! Samuel is just enjoying being two for the last month. I can hardly believe he will be three years old next month.

Alright, I know what this blog is about so I will get to it. Adoptions are slow processes. We heard from our agency this last week that we are #77 on the list. "The list" includes all of the waiting families, waiting on a boy, girl, both, older child, younger child, siblings, etc... So we are still on the same mind set that this is going to take around one year to hear of a referral. It also depends on how many referrals our agency receives. In May there were 20 something referrals. If every month were that good, we would be well on our way. So since we started at 108, I don't feel like it is moving too slow. The hardest part is trying to explain the wait to the children. Max said the other day, "mom, are we really going to adopt a baby?" Yes Max, we are, the problem is, that in all of our dossier preparation, home study, kid furniture swap/move around in our house, I left out explaining the time situation to a bunch of children who don't have a good concept of time. So that is the newest information in the McQuilkin household.

Just loving the ride!

So a little late, but this is a Mother's day photo, I am praying for another addition to our family by this next Mother's Day!! We are so richly blessed! We have been very busy with the end of the school year. Max is now 7 and officially a 2nd grader! Emma is 5 and officially a kindergartener!! Samuel is 2 and when I have to say he is 3 it is going to hurt bad. We are having a great start to our summer. We have been keeping track of all of the activity or non-activity in Ethiopia. The courts are still not approving any adoptions of abandoned children in Addis Ababa. We are praying for all of the families that are caught up in all of this. In good news, our last updated number (and probably will be our last official update due to agency changes) was 93. We have moved from 108 to 93 very quickly. We know of several other referrals since this last update, so our best guess is that we are around 88. It is interesting to see how we progress, so that we will be able to make educated guesses on when our daughter will be born. It is possible she is already born, but we are guessing her mother may be pregnant right now, worrying about how she will take care of her child, maybe she is ill, malnourished or poverty stricken.We are thinking of this family and other families that have to give their children up for adoption, for reasons beyond their control. It is hard to place ourselves in their situations, looking at our children and thinking of having to go on living without them is inconcievable. We pray for all of these families. Maybe our daughter has not been concieved as of yet. In any circumstance, we already know that we will never be complete without you! Many well happy healthy wishes to everyone!!!