Seashells and Holly

Hello again! December sure did fly by. We were blessed to travel to Texas to visit my parents for Christmas and had a wonderful time celebrating with them. Our time there was packed full of food and fun. It seems like every time we go we try to do everything and eat everything in Rockport and the surrounding areas. Our time there went something like the following...

DAY 1 Picked up in San Antonio by my folks, treated to "the best bar-b-Que in Texas" at the original Rudy's. Good food, interesting atmosphere, I expected a restaurant, was surprised to see a gas station with a smoke pit and some picnic tables. This was followed by a rousing 3 round game of laser tag where we discovered why the pack of teenagers we played with wore black. We stepped into the "briefing room" to discover they couldn't be seen under the black lights, meanwhile we were all glowing like Fourth of July fireworks. Needless to say- we lost, but had fun doing it.

DAY 2 Fishing for the boys out on the bay, they caught lots of sheep's head and a few other varieties as well. Girls went to the city "Corpus Christi" shopping, grandma bought Emma a new Christmas dress.

DAY 3 Christmas Eve The girls were treated to pedicures. That evening we went to Candlelight service at the church, followed by our traditional finger food dinner, Gram pa read the Christmas story out of Luke and we opened gifts.

DAY4 Christmas Day We went to the National Sea Shore and found more cool sea shells than we could count, among them more than 30 sand dollars! Walking along the sea shore and seeing all of the beautiful and interesting things the Lord has made for us to enjoy was humbling. The God who made and possess all of that, humbly came to us more than 2000 years ago, to live in flesh so He could sacrifice Himself on our behalf that we might have a relationship with Him. Oh, how He loves us!

DAY 5 Time to re-group. A much needed day of R&R, hung out at home.

DAY 6 Sunday - We went to church with my parents and were encouraged to worship with other believers who we had never met, some who have been praying for us on our adoption journey. After church we went to lunch and headed out into the gulf on dad's boat. We spent some time fishing for sheep's head and caught a few, what a strange fish! There were some dolphins that swam close to the boat, maybe because we were chasing them, but hey it was fun. At one point we noticed a bunch of birds and dolphins on a feeding frenzy and decided to take a closer look. Only we got a little too close and hit a mud bank that resulted in James cartwheeling off the boat into the water. Needless to say he was the only one who swam in ocean this trip! That afternoon we celebrated Emma's birthday with an ice cream cake, she is growing up so fast, can't believe she's 8 already!

DAY7 Our last day in Rockport we went to the Aransas wildlife refuge where we were sure to see lots of coastal wildlife, and we did! Deer, alligators, wild pigs, all kinds of birds, whooping cranes, and even a tame-wild armadillo. James and Clancy ended up petting it, that was weird and unexpected.

DAY 8 We began our long trip home. Mom and dad took us to San Antonio to catch our flight home. We had intended to go to the zoo, but the cold rainy weather didn't cooperate. So we spent some time on the River Walk and went to the IMAX. Afterwards we said our goodbyes, and mom and dad dropped us at the hotel and headed home. We couldn't help but think about our next trip to Texas, Lord willing we will have grown from 426!

To Adopt or not to Adopt that was the question...

Well, here we go. Thanks to my mom I finally got a blog set up and am going to attempt to keep family and friends up to date with happenings in our neck of the woods. Although I have to warn you, don't expect anything too exciting, I did not inherit the "techi" gene from mom. I don't even have a good handle on emailing... maintaining a blog is definitely a reach for me! I will do my best and hopefully keep in better touch this way.

As you may already know our family is preparing to grow by 2! Hence the name Rogers 426, we are a family of four growing into a family of 6. The Lord impressed upon James and I His plan for creating families through adoption. With it came a love for two children in Ethiopia whose faces we long to see.

Our two biological children Clancy and Emma-Grace, are a great joy in our lives and daily remind us of the love our Heavenly Father has for us. I have often heard women say things like "After little ____ was born I knew our family was complete". For me after Emma was born I knew I wouldn't give birth to any more children but wrestled with the feeling that our family was not complete. However the desire to adopt began in me much sooner than that. In fact as soon as I new I wanted to be a mother I was filled with a hope to adopt.

A couple of years after Emma was born the Lord again stirred in my heart the desire to adopt, so I prayed. James knew my heart to grow our family in this way but he wasn't ready to consider adding any more children. We asked the Lord to unite our hearts whichever way He willed. James committed to pray about the possibility of our adopting. A year later James came to me and said, "God has changed my heart completely and filled me with a desire to adopt, and," he added "I think the Lord wants us to adopt 2 children". God is SO amazing! I however was dumbstruck. Waves of fear and excitement flooded my mind, the world of adoption seemed so big and I felt very small...

In the beginning.......