Sometimes God takes you on a different path then the path you wanted to be on. The path that looks easy and doable...your path. God's path = you may think it is hard now, but what I have in the end for you is the prize! The best path for you to take. The path that God has laid out before us before we were even born. This is what I'm realizing about our adoption. Our move to Puerto Rico. What is God doing in our lives, in our adoption? How is He working in all this? I wish I could truly know and and I'm trying to seek out these answers. All I can say that through all this and every other option we have looked into, God has put a burning desire in my heart for Ethiopia. I know that we have a child waiting for us in Ethiopia. I don't care if it's this year, next year, or five years from now. We will not give up on you daughter. I promise that we will fight for you, do anything we have too to get your here. We think about you everyday and what it will be like for you to be with our family. Your brothers talk about you already, and they like to talk about the things they want to show and teach you. We love you already and pray for you! We will wait until God gets us to you, to bring you home with us. We will not give up. God has a plan in all of this. We will have faith. God is going to use this for his glory because He loves you, and He won't leave you as an orphan. We will be there soon!
Love,
Your family
Daddy, Mommy, Kaid, Keegan, & Keano

Nothing is easy in Puerto Rico

The boys are watching PBS kids in Spanish...the only cartoons that are on....Scott got recalled because of Tropical storm Irene..which is now turned into a hurricane warning for Puerto Rico....oh and his plane leaves at 5:00pm tonight. I will be home with the boys to wait out the storm. Filling up the bathtub and getting last minute supplies ready. We don't have anything because we are still in guest housing. ughhh...

the ants, the ants, thats go marching in

Living in Puerto Rico opens our eyes to a whole new world we've never lived in before. The beaches, the rainforest, the lizards, iguanas, hundreds of stray dogs (satos), horses at stoplights, horses in the back of pickup trucks, horses on the side of the highway...yea horses pretty much everywhere in the strangest places you will ever see. Anyways we have also been introduced to the pesky little critters that crawl around that you can't always see. BUGS...yea have you ever heard of sea lice? Yesterday we had an army invade our back porch and attack Keegan (our almost 4 year old). I was upstairs with Kaid going over his take home folder from school and I hear Keegan start screaming and crying in the back screened in porch (which is open up to our living room). We was crying, "The ants, the ants are biting me!!!!" My poor little Keegan got attacked by fire ants. It's not like he stepped into a nest or anything. He was sitting in the porch playing with his dinosaurs and they came in. I traced their path to a nuttela sandwich I made Keegan sitting on the floor. That is what attracted them in the porch, and on the way they started biting Keegan's legs. So note to self...don't let the kids take food outside unless it's on a plate on the table..and buy some stinkin ant spray. Keegan is doing good and we just had to run his legs under water and he was fine after that. Oh and they boys found a baby lizard in our kitchen last night. Scott was sweeping the floor and swept the little guy right up. We put him back outside but the boys were thrilled to find one in the house.

Fight the Good Fight

a quote from Brandon in New Jersey

There is comfort in the fact that I don't need to know anything other than the fact that God knows what's going on.

The Good, Bad, and the Ugly

I'm not going to say that getting PCS'd to Puerto Rico has been easy. In fact there has been nothing easy about it. In fact..it's been down right difficult and emotionally draining. I never wanted to blog about the bad and ugly. Just wanted to cover it up with the good. Well here goes....Kaiden starts Kindergarten next Tuesday, August 16th. An early start compared to the states standards. Not to mention he is going full day and his bus picks him up at 6:30am. Is he ready for this? I don't know..I hope so. Am I? No way! I offer to drive him to school but he insists he wants to ride the bus. So I will let him and see how it goes. I have never heard of a 5 year olds getting on a bus a 6:30am. If we were in New Jersey his bus would pick him up at 9am. Frustrating. Number 2..we are still living..LIVING..in a hotel. I'm thankful that we have a roof over our heads and this is a selfish complaint compared to 3rd world country standards. So this I'm ashamed I'm even complaining about. Is it too much to ask though that we can move into our house soon? Can't they have them ready for the families that are PCS'ing to Puerto Rico instead of keeping them in hotels for months? My kids are emotionally drained. Keegan claims, "this is not Puerto Rico." Kaid crys to move back to New Jersey or Michigan. It has been hard. Our homestudy was done. Finalized and complete in the state of New Jersey. We were almost over the first large hump in our adoption. Now we are back to almost square one. We need a homestudy update. We have a meeting with a social worker here in Puerto Rico on August 14th. I hope we are in our house before then. Number 3 thing that has been emotionally draining. We left friends that were like family to us. And an awesome loving church family. How will we find those things here in Puerto Rico? I don't know. I don't know at all. I'm sick of being stressed. I'm sick of not knowing Spanish. I'm sick of being in a hotel. It feels like a long drawn out vacation since we've been here, and we're not going home. Not for three years. I hope someday I figure out the reason we were moved here. Oh wait..my husband signed the Coast Guard's dotted line...maybe there is a greater reason then that though that I can't see right now. I pray I see it soon. So there you go..the bad and the ugly. Also my brother is in Afhganistan right now with the marines in a bad area. Please keep my brother Spencer Kubiak in your prayers. There has been some guys in his unit injured and lost. Please keep his company and their families in your prayers. Thank you.

How He loves us....spanish version..check it out! amazing!