Merry Christmas! (2011)

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Welcome to our first video-enhanced Christmas letter with the help of our blog.  (No, they're not 3D videos, maybe next year...)  If this is your first time to our blog, feel free to browse through past posts for a more detailed look at our 2011 or you can just take a gander at the two videos we made to sum up the year.

Our first video sums up our journey to bring our little girl, Sarah, home from Ethiopia.  We just got home with Sarah in early December.  As things kept getting delayed this year, we kept having to push out our "plans".  I just hope we bring her home by her 1st birthday.  Well, maybe by Thanksgiving?  OK, not Thanksgiving, but can we PLEASE bring her home by Christmas?  Yes.  Yes, you can.

We are SOOOO thankful to have Sarah home for Christmas this year!  While we waited for Sarah, life didn’t stop here in Dallas.  Henry and Owen are now in 3^rd and 2^nd grade respectively while Meghan is enjoying her last year of pre-school.  Henry has dropped soccer for the moment and is focused on his love of basketball.  Owen is still on his swim team and is experimenting with sled hockey.  Meghan loves her ballet/tap class.  In order to showcase our children’s amazing musical abilities, we put together a brief “music video”.   I know you may be thinking “Hmmm, home video of piano and ballet recitals that look like they were filmed during an earthquake.  I’ll watch that after I get done watching this youtube of a hamster that gets stuck in his exercise wheel.”  But don’t let your fear of home videos scare you away.  Check this out.

I’ll give you the straight scoop on Laura and I.  This has been a tough year.  We never expected the process to adopt to be this emotionally draining.  Good friends warned us that it would be difficult.  But who listens to those people anyway?

If you’ve ever read any Christian book, article, or blog post about adoption you’ve seen all of the parts of the Bible that talk about how much God loves orphans.  In fact our decision to adopt was largely based on the fact that God loves us, we love God, God loves orphans, so we should love orphans.  Makes perfect sense, right?!?

So here’s the question Laura and I struggled with this year “God – If you love orphans so much, why is it so hard to adopt one?”  But when I said “hard”, it was probably more like “HAAAAARRRRDDDDDUH.”  My perspective on this question started to change when I read this blog post by Jen Hatmaker.  I began to realize that we aren’t fighting against God on this.  We’re fighting along side of Him and He has been fighting this battle for a lot longer than we have. God isn’t surprised that the life of an orphan is not fair and that the processes that are designed to protect orphans also end up hurting them by keeping them from being with families that want to love them.  Nothing about an orphan’s life is fair, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t in control or doesn’t care.

God loves us enough to allow us to choose and unfortunately for all of us, we don’t make good choices and we end up with orphans, genocide, rape, war, and other things we don’t like.  God isn’t crazy about them either.  I heard Gary Haugen, CEO of the International Justice Mission, say something along the lines of “We are God’s plan for solving injustice in this world.  There is no Plan B.”  I’m not crazy about this idea because it puts too much pressure on me, but I think he is right.

The point of all this is:  This has been a very tough year but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  Not only because the end result is Sarah being in our family, but also because God used this to expose us to a world outside of our little bubble.  That world is broken and messy but guess what?  God is out there fighting and we want to be there with Him because in the middle of pain and heartache we found true joy.

I’ll close with some lyrics from “Don’t Waste Your Life” (the rap song we used in our music video…)

Your money, your singleness, marriage, talent and time
They were loaned to you to show the world that Christ is Divine
That's why it's Christ in my rhymes
That's why it's Christ all the time

Merry Christmas everyone and we’re praying that everyone has a great 2012 that completely rocks your world like our 2011 did!

Love,

the Lakeys

Gotcha Day

We've tried emailing pictures and that didn't work very well, so we're trying the blog. We'll send out more detailed updates later. For now, pictures..

It's time...

This is Eric... I remember during the pregnancies of our other children that after we hit the 37 week mark, I would always secretly hope that Laura would wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me “It’s time.” She of course would say it in a really calm voice and no matter how much I had rehearsed it in my head, I would jump out of bed like a madman and start running around the house trying to find suitcases that were already packed and ready by the foot of our bed. As you all know, we are in month 30 of our adoption process or “paper pregnancy” and are currently waiting on approval from US immigration office. A US immigration team from Nairobi, Rome, and the US has been in Ethiopia since Monday processing cases like ours. Based on the timing of events related to our adoption I did not expect to hear anything this week so I have not been checking my email in the middle of the night or even first thing in the morning. But this morning I woke at 5 which was an hour before my alarm was going to go off. After laying wide awake for a few minutes I felt as if God was telling me “I woke you up for a reason. Go check your email.” So I did. After checking it, I nudged Laura while she slept and in a very calm voice said “We got an email.” At which point Laura jumped out of bed like a madwoman and ran around the room. The excitement quickly mixed with fear because the email could contain bad news as easily as it could contain good news. The letter itself was in a zipfile that I couldn’t open on my phone, so we went downstairs together to find out whether or not we were days/weeks away from bringing our daughter home or months away… I then couldn’t open the zipfile on my Mac and the tension mounted while I rebooted into Windows. After what seemed like hours of waiting and Laura repeating “LORD, no matter what happens we know You are with us.”, we got to read the following words… “The visa petition you have filed has been approved.” We haven’t gotten any good news related to the adoption since early August so we of course had to keep reading to make sure there wasn’t a “but” anywhere in there. And there wasn’t!!! Then there was more jumping, laughing, crying, etc. :-) We are now waiting for a final decision from the US Embassy and a date for when we can go bring sweet Sarah home. We could hear from the Embassy as early as Monday and travel within the next few weeks. God was good before we got this email and He is still good now, but we are so thankful to Him that we’ve made this big step towards bringing Sarah home.

More Pictures of Sarah....

We are really ready to hold her rather than just look at pictures of her. We are very weary from the wait. We continue to hope that we will be able to go and get her this fall. Our new dossier is en route to Ethiopia as of late last week and should be there any day. We are praying that it will be reviewed with favor and that there will be no complications. In the meantime, we enjoy the pictures but they are bittersweet to look at as she continues to grow up. Enjoy.

Popcorn Anyone?

Here are Henry and Owen dressed in their scouting uniforms. This is Owen's first year as a cub scout. He is a wolf and has several friends in his den full of other 2nd graders. This is Henry's 2nd year and he is a bear. They are both very excited about cub scouts. The very first thing that cub scouts do during the school year is sell popcorn to raise money to support the pack (and pay their dues so their parents don't have to!). If you are interested in knowing more about popcorn and how you can support Henry and Owen, send me an email and I'll give you the scoop.

So far the entire family has spent two 108 degree afternoons knocking down doors in Lake Highlands and selling to our neighbors. Of course, the cub scouts make it into a huge competition with all sorts of prizes to win. Meghan, Mommy and Daddy are currently thinking that we deserve a portion of any prizes earned because we have to stand out there in the heat while they charm their buyers.

Enjoy the pictures.

New Sarah Pictures!

We received new pictures of Sarah this morning.... isn't she cute! Looks like she is standing and crawling and her smile will melt your heart. Can't wait to bring that girl home!!

As many of your know, all of our original paperwork (called our "dossier") was lost in the process this summer. The entity within the Ethiopian government that lost it was willing to write our opinion based on a copy of the dossier and therefore our case was able to be closed before the court closed for the 10 week rainy season. But they are requiring us to create a whole new dossier. Originally, the new dossier had to be completed in time for us to bring it with us when we travel.

Last week, however, things changed a little and now the government there is no longer willing to move forward with processing our case until we fedex them the new dossier. So we are scrambling to collect all the necessary pieces we need. We are almost done gathering up our documents and hope to begin the authentication process tomorrow or weds. Our dossier has to be sent several places to be authenticated. I don't know a whole lot about this because it is all handled by a woman that we hired who specializes in preparing and authenticating dossiers. She helped us the first time we did this (2 years ago) and she is helping us again as we do our "dossier do-over."

Anyway, after we get things to her this week she estimated about 2 weeks until our new dossier is in Ethiopia. Please pray that things go smoothly and that it gets there as quickly as possible. Within a few weeks of the dossier being received in Ethiopia, Sarah's papers can be released to Gladney and submitted to the embassy. Then we wait for the embassy to approve us and give us our travel dates.

Sled Hockey

Owen tried sled hockey for the first time tonite. If you have never seen sled hockey before, it is basically ice hockey played in narrow sleds on skates. The players sit in the sled and use short sticks to propel themselves across the ice. It is ALOT of work. Owen did so well and really seemed to enjoy it. There were several older players there who helped him along all evening and gave him lots of encouragement. I was just so proud of him for trying something new. It was very fun and we are hoping to do it again soon. Enjoy the pictures.

O_skates from Eric Lakey on Vimeo.

Gulf Shores: Sarah!

Next year, can I come too? Here she is, our sweet baby girl who is patiently waiting for us in Ethiopia. The news of our finalization came while we are in Gulf Shores. I suppose since she is officially part of the family now that we owe her a return trip. :)

Gulf Shores: Part 3

Even more pictures!

Gulf Shores: Part 2

More pictures!

Gulf Shores: Part 1

We enjoyed a week away on the gulf coast in early August. The average temperature was about 10 degrees cooler than here so that was a nice change. We had so much fun as a family for a couple of days and then the extended family arrived and the week just got funner by the minute. We enjoyed playing in the sand, riding the waves, playing in the pools, taking a boat ride in search of dolphins, eating in some new restaurants and spending time together.

In the pictures you will see Owen's "beach wheels" which we rented for the week. This made getting on, off and around the beach so easy. The wheelchair was basically a power chair with huge wheels. He had so much fun driving that thing around..... it was a real highlight for him.

Also note in the pictures that we "dug a hole to China" right there on the beach. We also created other sand animals.

We had alot of fun playing with Uncle Chris, Mimi and Papa, Bret, Brooke and our sweet 1 1/2 year old cousin Elizabeth. When asked about the best part of the trip Henry said "all the time that we spend with family"..... and boy, was he right.... it was a blast!

Of course, the week was made that much better by the fact that on Wednesday (8-10) we heard news from Gladney that our adoption was finalized and that Sarah is officially a Lakey.

Enjoy the pictures.

Lake Highlands Spray Ground

We have a spray-ground or spray park (whatever you want to call it) nearby. One morning this summer we decided to go to do something different other than just the pool. When you live in Dallas and you want to play outside during the summer, it almost has to involve water. Anyway, the kids had fun and we had the place virtually to ourselves for the first 45 minutes or so. We played for a good 1 1/2 hours and then what did we do? we went to the pool, of course!

A Somewhat Shorter Perspective

Meghan loves to get ahold of my camera or phone and walk around the house and take pictures. I usually know she is doing this and tell her it is fine but ocassionaly she will get sneaky and take some pictures without me knowing. It is always funny to download the pictures from the camera and phone and find some unusual ones taken from her perspective. She has even managed to capture herself in many of them... enjoy! You can tell she is roaming the house with the camera by all the clicking sounds and also the faint "cheese, say cheese, cheeeeeeeeese."