Shelton Shenanigans

It is safe to say that the Shelton family is now basketball crazed - especially the twelve and under crew!  If the big boys aren't practicing or playing an actual game, they're getting their virtual fix with NBA 2k, watching a game on TV, or keeping up with the stats on my phone.  We are now just over halfway through the basketball season and any given weekend you'll find Steve and I warming the bleachers somewhere, cheering for someone, and keeping the concession stand in business.    Don't ask me how it happened, but I somehow have turned into a basketball mom - purely by accident, I assure you!  As much as I would like to deny this, I did show up to work on a Monday morning a couple weeks ago with a Gatorade and a kid's jersey in my purse - and no make-up.  Oh the humanity! This is the first time we have had all three boys playing a sport at the same time - and in two different leagues at that.  Two are very competi...

     Four and a half years ago, I began this blog, announcing that the Sheltons were adopting, which was a surprise to most of our readers.  I wrote pretty regularly for a while there about our decision-making progress, life events, working through a home study, fundraisers, and the like.  And then....well, there just wasn't anything to say.  We had done all we could do and were waiting for the paperwork to move from one place to another.  Today, however, I am very pleased to tell you that the dossier has completed its journey and has at last been formally submitted to  the IBESR - meaning we have moved officially into the line of families waiting for a referral!  We are no longer waiting to wait in line, we are actually in the line!      Enjoy that bit of good news.  Savor it and chew on it a while, because there won't be any other big news for a long time.  Currently, it takes eighteen to twenty ...

     Several people have asked me recently how things are going with our adoption, which says to me two things: 1) some sweet people actually read this crazy thing; and 2) I really should get around to updating it!      Truth be told, not a lot of movement has happened in the Shelton adoption saga – at least not insofar as the official paperwork and referral process are concerned.   Due to a long and complicated legal reason (which I’ll be happy to tell you sometime if you actually want to know) there is a rather large log jam in the Haiti adoption world.   Wait times are seemingly ever increasing and families are waiting a long, long time to meet and ultimately bring home their children.   In all seriousness, I expect our daughter to come home in 2020, or later.   We are still waiting for our dossier to be officially submitted to the Haitian government, having now completed two home studies, and a ton of other paperwo...

Mersi Jesus      We did it!   We went to Haiti; we took cold showers; we didn't drink the water; we ate new foods; we played with kids; we toured villages; we experienced traffic like you'll never find in the US!   We shopped at Papillon Enterprises; we learned about sublimation at Life SA; we saw the sewing centers and walked through Pathways Academy. We worshiped with the local church, played with a lot of kids, made some life-long friends, and we made it home safe and sound!   Now we are grappling with all kinds of questions, observations, ideas, and perspectives on reality that we will never fully comprehend.   I'm warning you now that this may be a very long post, or series of posts, as my mind is racing and my fingertips can't begin to keep up.   So grab your favorite hot beverage and find an easy chair, and I'll do my best to describe our first encounter with Haiti to you.           From the moment our...

Haiti Bound      Two weeks from now I will be in a hotel room, preparing to fly back to the United States with an entirely new perspective on Haiti and our adoption.  I will have experienced Haitian culture up close and personally, willly have held orphans in my arms who may or may not ever have a family adopt them, and I will have worshiped with a local church right in the center of orphan care.  I will meet women who dedicate their lives to scores of children not their own, and I will be broken.      No, this trip doesn't actually have anything to do with our family's adoption.  Our paperwork is still sitting on a desk waiting to be submitted, where it will likely stay for another eight months.  There is nothing I can do about this but pray, which I do, but in the meantime, my heart says I must do more!      If there is one thing I have already learned from our adoption journey, it is that adoption is not "the" ans...

Lately Ive been thinking about how my life has changed since we started down the road to adoption.  We have done an awful lot of work for what doesn't feel like an  awful lot of movement, and my normal looks quite a bit  different than it used to.   Here's a short list to better illustrate what I mean: Prior to adopting never had I ever: Blogged about anything whatsoever Expressed an opinion on Facebook Experienced pangs of homesickness for someone I've never met Sold personal belongings on Craig's List Wept publicly so much that no one even considers it unusual anymore Also, never before adoption did I ever: Know what paper beads were, much less wear them all the time Know that 80% of the world's orphans result  from poverty and feel compelled to do something about it Have a psychiatrist diagnose me as  "despicably healthy" and tell me what a great choice I made in marrying Steve based on his personality assessment Walk a constant tight rope between ...

It took me until I was thirty to realize that I am an encourager by nature.  I'm not sure why that came as a surprise to me; I just thought everyone made random phone calls, sent impromptu texts and emails, and took great delight in surprising someone unexpectedly with an uplifting thought or word.  I now realize encouragement is one of my spiritual gifts  - along with sarcasm and over-complicating things, which I am sure you will find in one of Paul's lists of the gifts of the Spirit, probably in Romans! Anyway, I have unintentionally created a pattern for myself of sending my "just because" thank you notes  on Thursdays.  I'm sure I am extra inclined to be grateful on Thursdays since that is my last workday each week, but what I have discovered is that those little impulses to tell someone they're doing a great job, or I noticed the little things they are doing well, actually matter to the people on the receiving end of the notes.  Again, who knew?  ...