Busy Busy Burgess Family!

Phew.  I know that we will be super busy after we bring home our 5 children, but I can honestly say this has been the busiest time in my life, ever.  From sunup to waaayyy past sundown Kevin and I are working on getting things done.  I am busy teaching/helping the kids with their school work, decluttering/organizing, making soap, cooking/cleaning, researching this and that for the adoption and so on.  It doesn't look like too much on "paper", but it sure does keep me busy!  Kevin is actively working on his business and on providing the best service for his clients, making a triple bunk bed, chopping wood, researching adoption related things with me (like apartments and airfare), and reading to the children when he can.  He is not in one spot for long!

We have a big white board in our kitchen, and this morning I decided I had better put a to-do list on it because my brain was starting to get a little frazzled.  I made the list for only the things I need to accomplish before the end of the week, but it sure is long!  It does feel good to get all that out of my head though. 

One of the things on my list is for our family to get a Christmas tree!  We have tossed around not having a tree this year but decided it was a bad idea not to because the children we have in our home now are really looking forward to it.  It would feel too much like we weren't doing it just because we are adopting, and we don't want to give our kids that impression.

As a family, God and Jesus are a part of our lives every day, but I read somewhere online once about how a family stopped giving gifts to one another during the Christmas season.  They were blessed so much already.  Instead, they gathered up multiple gift-giving catalogs from various not-for-profit groups.  Each member of their family would pick a gift out that would be sent to someone who was truly in need.   It may have been Bibles, chickens, goats, blankets, or numerous other items.  I think what they did was wrap up the picture of their gift and put it under the tree.  Christmas morning they opened the "gifts" as a family.  I think this is beautiful and am looking forward to implementing a form of it within our own family.

Speaking of gifts, we have been given a couple of great ones since I last posted!  We were able to get to Chicago in good time this last Thursday to get our Visas from the Colombian Consulate!  I was expecting to have to leave while they processed our paperwork, but they said to just stay in the waiting room.  We were in and out of there within an hour!

Then, yesterday I received a phone call from the FBI (that sounds so official!).  Some of the adoption paperwork we have had to complete needs to be updated every 6 months.  Our background checks were due up this month.  Admittedly, I got a little nervous about getting the results back by the time we traveled because it can take 5 to 6 weeks and sometimes even longer.   Officially, the FBI doesn't expedite paperwork but unofficially they will do what they can to help you.  We were told to send our prints through track-able mail and when we got the tracking number to call them.  I called the day they received it.  A very considerate guy tracked our package through his computer and said he would work on getting it processed faster for us.  A week later, yesterday, we received the call that our background checks were done and our paperwork was being sent on to be apostatized!  That was a very, very nice gift to receive!

The kids and I have been busy working with our goat milk soap.  We have been figuring out the details to a new fundraising sale and hope to get the word out about it soon!  Don't forget to enter our goat milk soap giveaway!  The details are just two posts below!

May God bless you and your family this holiday season.

Karen