And I smile because...

..i get to be mom to this gorgeous ballerina!

..this little man is adorable and has started saying "love you mom" anytime, anywhere!

...when the skies look like this, i can't help but smile.

---this pic was taken from my front porch! love it.

...i am blessed to have these two guys in my life.

...my girls were super excited to make dessert for father's day! Death by chocolate.

...my kids got to experience what hail was today. 

...they got to see it up close and personal.

...this is our house... the shingles got delivered today!

... i am blessed to be a part of this family.

 I am loving summer - rain and all!! Summer dresses, flip flops, freezies, playparks, watermelon, shorts, gorgeous evenings, summer tv shows (my favorite right now, I will admit is,  so you think you can dance!), runs outside, BBQ's, new books to read.....it all makes me smile & am so thankful for each day.

have a great rest of your weekend!

Blessings,

Candra

Part 2...The decision

I have been wanting to share our adoption story as it has unfolded in our family,in hopes that it will continue to encourage others in their adoption journey and/or their walk with Christ. he has given us our stories to tell! To find part 1, go here.

In October of 2009, my husband & I (sans kids)  were amazingly blessed to get to attend Catalyst 09 - a conference  of about 13000 people in Atlanta, GA that is all about godly leadership. Its focus is on young leaders, which I love cause rarely do young leaders get the encouragement and support to go for it! It often seems like there is an age requirement  to be a good leader. Maturity is necessary but that doesn't necessarily equate to age.... anyways, it was an amazing, inspiring, crazy, challenging, worship filled conference. Hope we can go again soon!  
Throughout the conference, they had people sharing about their life and a continuous theme (although not directly what the conference was about)  that kept coming up in these people's lives was adoption. Both of their/our adoption in Christ and their adoption of children into their family. They discussed adoption as a way to give a child a family, to be blessed by that child and extend the grace and love of Christ in a practical way.During some of the breaks, as we were walking around we started discussing it again. We had always been open to adoption and was something that early on in our marriage we had talked about. We were both encouraged to hear about other families adopting and started wondering what if? I went to a couple of booths of adoption agencies to find out a little more but because we were from Canada they couldn't really help me. So, I just thought that this is something we should think and pray about when we get home and look into it a little more. The second last night of the conference Mac Powell was up on stage sharing God's story in his life. And instead of trying to rewrite what I wrote back then, here it is written in jan of 2010 before we had little man home..

 At one point, Mac Powell (singer for 3rd day) was on stage and brought his wife and new son on to join him. He spoke about the gift of adoption and the gift that his new son was to him. What can only be described as a God moment came next - Riley and I knew in an instant that this is what God was asking us to do. With great excitement and anticipation, we committed to having our fourth child through adoption!

Now, if you know Riley and I, when we commit to something there is no going back. Even on that trip, we began the process of praying and researching adoption agencies, finding out procedures with Saskatchewan and Canada and beginning a to do list (my favorite thing to do!). On a side note, I have to say that I have been amazed and blessed by the leadership and willingness of Riley to do a lot of the leg work through this process thus far! It has grown my love for him to watch him parent our expectant child, even in these initial stages.

On returning home, we spent many late nights and many emails and phone calls, narrowing down the agency we would work with. We knew that we wanted to adopt internationally from Africa (another whole story on its own) but also knew that our options were limited. On speaking to some agencies, we found out the wait or some countries was up to 4 years. This was a little discouraging but also knew that we were committed. We came across a smaller agency based in Ontario that upon reading their website, we felt immediately encouraged by. It is a Christian based agency who works with several countries, but the one that stood out to us was South Africa.

After speaking with the director, we knew this was the direction we were going to take! So, we are adopting from South Africa, a child between the ages of 0-12 months! Then, the process we had to go through began. We were recommended a wonderful home study practitioner who completed our home study in 5 weeks! All of our other dossier requirements were processed very quickly - reminding us to thank God even during the process. Our references  came in very quickly and thanks to all of Riley's computer wisdom, were were able to put together our personal profile, the final part of our dossier. We were hoping to have our part done by the end of December and it happened! Yay! Riley and I were talking one night and felt strongly that anything we could do on our end to make the process go faster, we would. We did not want our child to have to wait on us to complete our paperwork.

God's timing is always incredible; it may seem insane or unmanageable at the time but He knows, which is a great source of comfort to me.  Following Atlanta, we had 4 more days of holiday in Florida where we were able to pray through this decision and enjoy the moment. All of our paperwork was officially into the agency in January of 2010 and we were offically in the waiting stage of becoming a family of 6! To end with on Part 2, this song has been incredibly meaningful to us...enjoy!

Have a great weekend! Part 3 to come...our referral!

Blessing, Candra

Happy birthday #2 & a few other random thoughts!

What a wonderful weekend to celebrate the birth of a beautiful boy...we are so thankful that little man is our son and thank God for him each and every day. The festivities started with his favorite breakfast...

scrambled eggs & toast!

We all then went to get slurpees (at 10 o'clock in the morning!). What can I say, it was party time!

it is back...blue shock slurpee. 

Off we went in the afternoon to my oldest's ballet recital. I feel like I am getting very old when I look at this picture...she does not look 7 to me - she is growing up way too fast! Little man sat through about 3/4 of the performance - not bad for a 2 year olds!

trying to be like her big sister!

in motion

I digress - I forgot to mention that my husband was away for 2 weeks at a church conference in England - so of course I got treats when he got back. Amazing!!  I added to my Starbucks mug collection - I cannot believe I am collecting mugs but they are awesome. And he got me chocolates....literally a whole box of fruit filled chocolates!!! My favorite!

Thorton's chocolates...divine!

And our favorite treat from the last time we were there together....

Add caption

Sunday brought with it a great worship gathering followed by a potluck. It is so good to connect with people and eat great food! Little man's birthday party followed with a family BBQ with aunts and uncles, grandparents & cousins! It was perfect!

presents waiting...

the birthday boy with a BIG smile!

cake!!

blowing out the candle - he did it all by himself!

happy birthday!

opening presents...and lovin' it!

with the birthday boy and his new ball!

we love you - even with Uncles' glasses on!

Happy Birthday little man! We had a great weekend celebrating that you are 2!! I can't believe my baby is 2 - we love you and are so excited for what God has in store for you this next year!

And I digress one more time!

A little reminder of why I love where I live...I may not have an ocean or mountains but I get to see this almost every evening. lovin' Saskatchewan!

Blessings,

Candra

Quiet. Risk. Hope.

This weekend has been very different for me. Because I have been by myself. My kids were at their grandparents and my husband was at a conference. My whole goal for the weekend was to get some decisions made about the house build and to go to lots of places and look at lots of different things...My mind is spinning with all things house! I also registered the kids at their new school for next year. Crazy! And we have begun looking for summer daycare on this side of the city...if you know of anyone, please pass their name along!
So I had a list of what I needed to get done and it literally took me half the time I thought it would! I have been conditioned to plan according to one or more kids in tow! So needless to say I had more time than I thought I would...I cleaned the house top to bottom, finally organized my closet (yay!) and spent some time with God.

It was so quiet in my house. Too quiet. it reminded that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my husband and my kids! I am so blessed to be a wife and a mom! It also gave me time to think and reflect without interruption. And if I am honest, I didn't completely like what that time brought with it.
When I am not in the roles I am most comfortable with. When all of that is stripped away- being a wife, a mom, no tasks to do, no job to go to...

It leaves just me.
Candra.
A woman.

It is an uncomfortable place to be sometimes...being reminded to value yourself because of who you are, not because of what you do. Recognizing where and who you find your worth in. This is what my afternoon & evening looked like today. I thought And prayed a lot about what I am willing to risk for the sake of Christ, for the sake of relationships. Sometimes I don't want to put in the time to develop friendships- it involves risk and effort. And to move further into that concept of risk...a question that kept coming to mind was "are you ready to risk"? As I prayed about it, I realized that it was about my willingness to be about what God wants me to be about. Am I ready to risk for his sake? in relationship, in my actions, in the way I live...

So yes - stripped away was what today was about. Not always fun but necessary. As I climbed the hill behind our house tonight, a verse that kept coming to mind was...
"Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Saviour and my GOd."
In the midst of all of the roles I have and things I do. Between house building, waiting for our next child, gearing up for RUN143 etc... I am first and foremost a child of God. And I need to put my hope in HIm...and risk for His sake!

I hope in this brief moment of time, you too are reminded that you are valued, loved and precious in His sight. Thanks for spending time with me tonight....

Blessings,
Candra