Last few days of summer recap...
and a huge Thank You for loving us!!

This was in my brothers pool.  We visited them before everyone started school and had our last dip in his pool.  The kids love it.

Ya gotta love this bike organization.

Thank you Jasmine for hanging with the kiddos and loving on them this last week.  We appreciate all you do.

Bad photo but Olivia and her good friend break dancing and jamming out. 

This little star loves to help with everything. 

Gabe got moved to the back seat so Abraham can sit in the middle seat.  

Washing their feet before bed...dirty little rascals

The kids were in heaven with this big coast guard ship.  Odin still wants to be in the coast guard.  They were wishing they could go hang on there for a bit.

Watch out for the hammock ninja.

The kids watching a pine cone burn around the fire.  They love throwing things in there to see what happens.  Their not piros or anything just being a kid.

Slugs.  They are so slimy and fun. Gabe loves slugs too...just like the other kids did.

She is such a marvel girl..I love it

Where did summer go?  It flew right by and we had a great time.  What a way to end it...just add a newborn baby in there that we have been praying for, for almost 6 years. Completely amazing. 

  God is truly faithful on his word and all in his timing.  Abraham is doing great for a fussy baby.  Took him to the Dr. for his first check up and he's almost 8 lbs.  He's getting up about every 2 hours and is eating good.  Just a tad fussy from 1:30 in the morning until 5 in the morning. He is doing great on the Nutramigen formula which of course is the most expensive one out there.  I called the company and asked for some coupons.  

All the kids are over the moon with him.  They have also waited and prayed this long.  They love kids. We have the timer set every 30 minutes so everyone gets a fair turn with him.  The timer gets a little old with this momma.  They were arguing about the baby more than anything these past few days.  

 Thank you so much for your continued love, support and prayers.

Thank you for all of your donations, meals, diapers, clothes, gift cards and gifts.  Thank you all for loving on us.

We greatly appreciate all you do and are so blessed to have you all in our lives.

Please keep praying for:

good sleep for Abraham

for Jeremiah to feel better

God to keep providing

gofund.me/rru3xd5

 

 and for a hearing date for this little guy.

 Love Wins

Abraham Jacob Funkhouser

So this little man came into this world fast and he had kind of a rough start.  Abe was born on Friday August 21st. We were told he would be coming 2-3 weeks later but obviously Abe had his own plans and arrived less than 24 hours after we said we'd adopt him. Wow! Crazy how fast God works. 
Abe weighed in just under 7 lbs. and about 20 inches long.  He came out with the cord wrapped around his neck and he also swallowed a little merconium so he started his life with a sore throat. Poor kid.  The days after his birth were followed by lots of suctioning and 24 hour watching.  I stayed over night but then he had to stay in the monitored nursery with the nurses in isolation for the rest of his time.  The nurses were amazing. They were all so kind and loving.  They have a really tough job with all those little babies in the special care nursery.  If I worked there I would want to take all the babies home with me! 

Abe was having problems eating for a few days.  Just couldn't get the bottle thing down so they tube fed him for a few days. He's doing much better now. We were stuck in a waiting period while they conducted lots of tests. Praise God the tests all came back negative for any problems or drugs. He was a little fussy which they believe was nicotine withdrawal.  By Monday the feeding tube came out and he was doing great eating with the bottle but still a tad fussy yet. 

The nurses noticed that he seemed kind of smelly by his cord so they did 2 blood tests to see if there was something else going on.  One test came back positive for staph infection.  They treated him with an IV filled with antibiotics.  A few days in the hospital under 24 hour care and more love. Finally on Friday we got to bring him home! Praise God. The kids were waiting in the driveway for us to arrive and cried when they saw him. It was awesome. We actually have to put a timer on for each of them to get equal time holding Abe and loving on him.  They had switched formula 2 times in the hospital and really didn't see a difference in his fussiness.  So we switched him to Enfamil Nutramigen and it's making a world of difference.

Thank you all so much for your continued love, and support.  Adoption is a long journey yet so wonderfully beautiful.  Could you please keep praying for a few things for us?

Please pray for Abraham to be healthy and to sleep peacefully

Please pray that God provides the money we need for this adoption

www.gofundme.com/rru3xd5

 

Thank you so much!

Great week coming >>> We start school tomorrow! 

Update...... on Big news!
from my husband

This isn't about me...its about a boy. A beautiful baby boy named Abraham. It's about Abe's mother who made a courageous decision to keep her baby and give it up for adoption. It's about a family my family who suffered through 3 failed adoption attempts in the past 7 years and a brutal fight with stage 4 cancer which by God's grace we won. Abe's mother selected a family for her son but they rejected her at the last minute. Now what? So on a chance the social worker thought of us. Would we take this child? We got a call. That call came on a Wednesday as we set up our campsite for an end of summer camping trip. Could we take this child? The baby was due in two weeks. Holy cow...two weeks and a baby will be here!? We said yes to the child. No way were we leaving that child alone. We said yes to Gods call. We have room in our home and in our hearts. Two weeks to get ready...nope. Baby Abe arrived less than 48 hours later. We have a new born baby boy coming home hopefully today. 

We need help. 

Our adoption fees and costs involved will total $15000. We're still paying off debt from our cancer fight. We're in it to win.  We know this is God's plan. If you can help click the link and donate.

www.gofundme.com/rru3xd5

 If not that's OK too. Just pray for Abe. He's with us now. He's beautiful. He's here. He's going to do big things. God is good.

Thank you.

Dave

Love Wins

(pictures coming soon)

 

Big News

  God had started this journey back in 2009. Those of you that have been around since then know the ups and downs we’ve had and the hard truths of adoption. Those of you that don’t I will give you a short summarization. We started in Africa in 2009 and that’s why we started to blog. To keep everybody in the loop. Two years into that African laws changed and we pulled out along with many others due to concerns about fraudulent behavior occurring in the African adoption process. We lost money that we had saved and worked hard for during that process. Then we switched everything over to process a domestic adoption and a couple years later we were matched with a birth mom in California. Turned out she was a con artist and scammed us (and others!) out of a lot of money. We lost $15,000 which we had raised over two years doing 6 rummage sales, bake sales, t-shirts, jewelry and donations. The woman fled and he trail was lost in Nevada. We ended up in quite a mess with the agency who refused to do their part and take responsibility. The pending legal battle would be too hard for us financially and wasn’t worth fighting emotionally.
     We have a huge heart for children and we just want to love on them. One in a half years after Gabe was born Dave gets his cancer diagnosis. Stage 4 neck/throat cancer and he was told he had 50/50 chance of surviving. Dave had three tumors removed in multiple surgeries including a brutally painful neck dissection, 30 rounds of radiation and a long road to recovery. A ton of medical bills later and Dave is a walking miracle. Healthy and full of life. We knew after the cancer that we would have a slim chance if any of getting pregnant. So we started praying about what we should do regarding more kids.
     We have always kept up our foster license with an agency in Milwaukee. We were matched again with a birth mom in 2013 but she lost the child only a week before birth. Yet another emotional disaster for us. After many long months of nothing happening in our adoption process, we were in the process of switching our foster license over to another great organization also out of Milwaukee. Then out of the blue our social worker called and said she has a mom due in two and a half weeks. It was between us and another family and we were chosen after much prayer and consideration.
(2.5 weeks..... seriously)
      We are in need of funds quickly. We need $4,500 in 2 weeks when we get to the hospital for one half of the agency fee. In 6 months we will need another $7,500. That money is for the legal fees, licensing, final adoption and agency fees. We are trusting God on this journey.
     Thank you all for being a part of this journey with us. We are so blessed and so grateful. Thank you for all of your love and support. If just 600 people donate $20 we will make our goal and provide a loving home for a newborn baby. Please help spread the word by copying and pasting the link www.gofundme.com/rru3xd5

     All in God’s plan. All in God’s heart. All in God’s world. Love Wins.