We'll miss you Danielle

Last Sunday we said good bye to our good friend Danielle, who took care of our children while John and I and Jonah went on the first trip to the Ukraine.
Last year she came to stay with us when I gave birth to our youngest, Aidan...
which was a great blessing for all...and she said she would love to come watch them if we adopted again...Little did she know that God had that in the near future, so not quite a year later, she graciously agreed to come back and care for our children during our trip.
I know there may be people out there who can not understand how we could travel so far, so long away from our children. I know, because I don't know how either. In fact, years ago when I had my first child I thought I would NEVER travel away from my children. I just never wanted to be away from my kids and as a homeschool mom, I am with them 24:7, except an occasional date with my husband or homeschool support group ...so when we were considering adopting overseas, this was a HUGE obstacle for us. For SEan's adoption, we were able to leave Elsie and Annabelle our youngest with my parents and take the other 3. This time, our family is bigger by 2 with a very active special needs son and a 9 month old too, so we decided it would be better if the big girls stayed home to help with the younger children, whom they help care for every day. We also thought it would be best for them to stay at home--and stay together. Since grandparents are far away and not in a position to watch all the children (jobs, health, etc) we all thought of our good friend Danielle, who our children love as a big sister.

It was a tremendous blessing to have Danielle here. Our children had so much fun playing, doing learning activities, devotions, outings to the library and park, and even chores are fun as she makes up games to encourage them. My daughter Haylee would take pictures each day and put them on a separate family blog and tell me about their day...so each day in the Ukraine I would get to see their smiling faces and see all the fun they were having. That was a great encouragement to me and helped keep me going over there, so see how well they were doing.

I know alot of it had to do with the positive attitude, faith, encouragemnt and loving care that Danielle gave our family...what a blessing...
so we give thanks and praise to God for how He abundantly provided for us through her. He is so good!

We'll miss you Danielle!

And a big thanks to Audre and Dan for letting us have her for so long (again!)
as well as to Andrea, Nick, Gracie and Asher, Justin and all her Tae Kwon Do students for giving her up in our time of need!