It's a wonderful life.

When a family's adoption story grows silent, I always wonder how things are. If everything turned out okay. Now that we've been absent here for over a year, I thought I'd return with a quick update, just in case someone else delving into the adoption world, looking for any information they can, happens upon this space.

Our Christmas cards last year read, "It's a wonderful life." That's really an accurate summary. Of course there are hard moments and days and weeks, and there are tears shed and raised voices and frequent need for forgiveness, for all of us. But more than that, there is joy and fun and togetherness and adventure and celebrating. There is love and grace and more good things than we can count.

We're homeschooling again this year, as it continues to be such a good (if sometimes difficult) fit for our family. We have two independent readers and two boys eager to learn, and are filling many of our days with many good books, as everyone in this house loves a good story more than almost anything.

We are happily awaiting the arrival of baby number six (!), another little sister, who we're expecting in the next few weeks. We're also enjoying the last few weeks before James's first deployment. This year holds big, new things for all of us, that is for sure. If there's one thing we know, it's how little we know of what God has planned for us in the days and months to come!

Finally

See the people in this photo?

They're all named Figueroa now! We went to court yesterday, and the boys' adoption is now complete and final! It was relatively quick and easy. We had to answer several basic questions from the judge, who was a very kind man. He granted all of our requests, which included a change of birth year for our oldest boys.

We've been together for just over eight months now, and it's hard to imagine life any other way. These five bring such great joy to our home. Adoption, of course, isn't easy for anyone, but it is so worth it. The wonderful times have surpassed the hard in spades. We're so very, very thankful for this family of ours!

Settling In

We're approaching four months since returning to the U.S., and in many ways, it seems like we've been here much longer than that and much shorter than that, all at the same time.

Our days have been full since our return, both as a family of seven and as first-time homeowners.

We put an offer in on a house while we were in Africa, and it was accepted. We'd spent weeks searching for  a home in Mississippi, where James was transferred to, and finally found the one we were looking for. While we'd never seen it in person ourselves, our realtor sent us more photos from her visit, and a friend came to look at it with the inspector. That, coupled with the virtual tour on the listing, gave us the confidence to move forward.

And...we love it. It's better than we'd imagined and has been such a great place of rest, and life, and togetherness for our family. We closed on it and moved in just two days after landing in the U.S. What timing! We're learning a lot as we learn this new area and this new home, and we're steadily making it our own.

Here's a peek at what it looked like last month. The bushes had been trimmed and the cracked doorbell had been replaced, but otherwise the front looked the same as it did when we moved in. Since this photo was taken, we've taken care of a few more things, the most noticeable of which was replacing the broken vertical blinds in the big window. I'm glad and thankful every time I see that big empty spot isn't there anymore and see the wide, horizontal wood blinds that are in their place.

This house has a wonderful backyard, which we'd been enjoying daily - until the boys' bikes got fixed, and the big boys taught themselves how to ride without training wheels (in about two days!). Now they spend most of their outdoor time racing around the cul-de-sac.

Life is feeling normal now, as we settle into new routines and learn what works best for each of us. There are, of course, plenty of hard at times, but so much more beauty and kindness and grace and growing.

What a story we're living... Thanks be to the Author of it all!

In the photograph below, James and the kids are checking out a box turtle that frequents our backyard after a heavy rain (and subsequent yard flooding, which you'll see in the following photo).