OK, so its been a long time. I regret this greatly. But it took me this long to get the mood back. The mood to journal. This, too, I regret because I've missed many things I'll never get back. But that is ok. Forward, we move.

Yes, when the twin adoption fell through our fingers in November, I came onto blogger and deleted all the references to the babies and also lost a lot of good stuff too. I had to do that. Each sentence about them was just too embarrassing of a reminder that we'd been duped.

For months now I've said to myself that I ought to start over. After all, the only reason I ever blog is my own selfish goal of remember all the little things about my boys in their little years. I'm so glad I have those old posts from xanga to go through and laugh at now because you do indeed forget 80% of it.

So, here Jonah is almost 3 and a half and I feel I've cheated him, and us, because I haven't written down as much about him. He is at that glorious stage of imaginary play and hilarious questions and phrasing that goes by so quickly. I hope that starting today, I can record it.

Tonight after reading to the boys for about 45 minutes (during which, btw, Jonah was only half listening and half playing his own game which included patting me with a spiderman ice pack and saying 'hold still, honey' - a bit distracting during story time) and saying good night to them, I laid down in Jonah's bed with him for a bit. He immediately asked me for a story (I'm really really bad at making up stories but he doesn't care yet). I stumbled through a story of Jonah leading a battle. He then proceeded to tell me a story and it went on and on and on and on..until I drifted off to sleep! It also included Jonah on a battlefield but in his version he and his troops had an abundance of chocolate milk.

A delightful little thing he does right now is replace 'I' with 'my' in all sentences. May my have a cookie? My can do it by myself, etc. My will be a chocolate tree. Today he accompanied Joe and I to a short meeting at an office downtown. The man with whom we were meeting had a bowl of Tootsie Pops in Jonah's line of sight and temptation. Finally he asked, "can my have a wowwypop?"

Anyway, enough about him. For now.

The Lord has been sweet to grant us eyes to see good reasons for not bringing two babies into our family right now. Not that He wouldn't have given us the grace to get through; He surely would have. But it has allowed us to devote more attention to a couple other things. Joe is serving on the board of our school now and is hoping to be a good blessing to that board and really plug into serving the school. This is a challange with a job that takes him out of town quite a bit but he is determined to try.

But on a bigger scale, our church has begun to slowly but surely...grow! After two long and frustrating years of questioning whether we should have ever jumped into this endeaver and whether or not we should (personally) throw in the towel, the Lord has brought some new folks to bless us. Not that this is any guarantee that He plans to continue to truly plant a work here that will be a light in our town for generations to come, but we are learning to not despise the day of small beginnings indeed. Each time we've been ready to call it a day, the Lord has dangled a wee carrot in front of us to stay committed. We've been hugly blessed by a man who has provided steady pulpit supply over the last few months (while our pastor candidate search has waned on) and a young man with whom we've been friendly over the years here, has started to attend and tell all his friends. Add to that a couple others from town and a family who has moved here to join our church!

This has begun to translate into lovely fellowship after church. Suddenly on Sundays we are beginning to see the fruit of our desires over the past few years to have a festive and joyful Sabbath full of people, food, wine and song. For a long time its been three local families and a couple longer distance families loving each other and hanging tight and it is sweet to be able to welcome others into that fold. If there were two new babies in the house, I don't think it would be quite so easy to host 10-20 people on a weekly or semi-weekly basis.

So, although the sting of the adoption fail is still there, sting of feeling we were lied to and manipulated (although we'll never know if it was a scam all along or if she really did have a heart change at the end), there is a relief as well and a thankfulness that God allowed it all to happen for reasons we'll never know and somehow He was glorified through it, at least we pray thus.

Other things I learned today:

From Joseph: "Mom, did you know that Ben Franklin wanted our national bird to be the turkey instead of the bald eagle?" Me: "No, I didn't know that...must be because we're all a bunch of turkeys. haha." J, not getting my joke: "No...I'm pretty sure it was because turkeys taste better."

From Jacob: "There is no better way to butter a man up than to feed him a big, juicy steak!" (upon hearing steaks were on the dinner menu because dad had invited one of his employees over for dinner)