The Newest Kitten and the Ice Cream Truck

Just a quick update on the Rohrer household: Our bipolar foster cat, Princess Cupcake, found a new home on Friday with one of my clients at the Hudson Veterinary Hospital. I think she's going to be very happy there. About 2 hours after she left the office with her new mom, another client brought in a tiny orphaned kitten in need of a foster family. Of course, I felt sorry for him and took him home with me to bottle feed for a few weeks. His name is "McGriff" after the man who found him. The kitten is a buff, puffy haired, little guy with a lot of attitude and loads of personality. He's already been a lot of fun. I sat him in Caleb's dump truck to show how tiny he really is for his photos. Kensey, our one-eyed foster kitten, thinks McGriff is a great little toy and pounces on him and bats at him every chance she gets.

This evening, Nathan took Caleb and Libby with him to walk Mandie around the block. Just as they strolled back into the driveway, the ice cream truck pulled up at the end of the street with his music blaring. Libby has been all excited about the ice cream truck all summer, but because she thinks you ride around in it. So, Nathan decided to do a little Daddy splurge and walked them down the street to show them what the ice cream truck is really for. Libby was so excited, that she could barely contain herself. She went skipping down the sidewalk with her hand in Nathan's shouting, "We going to the ice cream truck! Yay! Yay!" Nathan bought them a fudgesicle and a giant patriotic pop. Caleb and Libby enjoyed them to the fullest, and did they ever make a mess! While she was eating her popsicle, Libby kept shouting, "Thank you, Ice Cream Truck!" We are hoping that the ice cream truck is done with visits to our neighborhood for the summer now that Libby knows what it's really for!

Click here for more pictures!

Caleb's 1st Birthday!

Caleb turned one year old on Friday, September 14th. We had a little party in his honor on Saturday afternoon. Nana and Grampy Tardif drove all the way from Maine on Friday to spend the day with us. Grandma and Papa Rohrer, Aunt JoyC and Uncle Danny, Cousin Sam-Sam, Uncle Josh, and Karrie, Clay, Reed and Kenna Sackett all came to celebrate with us. We all had a great time.Caleb loved all of the hub-bub. He had pepperoni pizza for dinner and then was all excited to dig into his cake. He was even more excited to grab the brightly burning candle on his cake. I turned away from him for just a second to have little Libby show him how to blow out the candle, and he extinguished it himself by sticking his fingers right over the flame. He cried for just a second until he discovered the frosting on his own personal little "smash" cake. He stuck his burned little fingers into the frosting, tasted them, and then dove in, face first. We got a few good pictures of the event. The official birthday cake was a really cute Sesame Street cake with Big Bird and Elmo toys on the top. After cake, Caleb started opening presents. Libby ended up doing most of the opening for him, as Caleb was more interested in eating the tissue paper and crawling out on the front porch. He got a lot of Fisher Price Little People toys that he and Libby have really been enjoying playing with in our new playroom in the basement.

The weekend before Caleb's birthday, we tore out the old orange and brown 70's carpet, put down new baseboards and cleaned up. On Tuesday the new carpet arrived and voila! We have a new play room! On the day of Caleb's party, Nathan and my Dad worked on building some shelves in the old fireplace area to allow lots of toy storage. Libby was on hand to supervise them. Then she discovered that she could watch herself chewing gum in a mirror that we took down for the shelves to go in. I love the new space for them! Not only do they have their very own space to play and mess up, but I get the living room back to normalcy - no more toy invasion! Hooray!

Here's more pictures of the weekend.

Adoption

The Lord has laid a burden on our hearts for a long time now, and we thought it was time to share it with everyone. Nathan and I are seriously looking into our options with adoption at this time. We have been praying and thinking about this idea for several years now. We both long to adopt a baby (or babies) that needs a mom and dad to love him or her and to raise this baby in a way that would please the Lord.


At this point, we are still in the research stages. We want to learn about all of our options and pray about everything before we make any decisions. We know that this decision will impact not only our lives, but the life of the new baby, the lives of our other children, our family and our friends around us. For a while we were looking only at international adoption, but we are now also considering domestic adoption. We have talked to several social workers, friends, and family members who have experiences with adoption - both good and bad.


We have several reasons for adopting that we want to share. The first is that we have an overwhelming sense of responsibility to help a little one in need and make a positive difference in a little life. All children need a family that will offer them hope, love, and a chance at a good life. It breaks my heart to think about Caleb or Libby being abandoned, orphaned, or abused and without someone to love and comfort them. I would hope that someone would reach out to them and take care of them if I was not able to.


The second reason is the Biblical mandate to look after orphans and widows and those who cannot help themselves. In a spiritual sense, all those who are a part of God's family were adopted into His family, and given the same rights of natural sons - heirs together with Jesus Christ! If God adopts all of us and looks past the ugliness of our sin, than earthly adoption is a picture of His matchless love for us.


Our third reason for adoption is a little more sentimental and silly - we love having little people! For various personal reasons, we are not pursuing more biological children for a while. What a great way to add to our family and what better time to adopt our next little one than now!


It is our prayer that the Lord will clearly show us His will in this matter. We believe that He does want us to adopt, but we are not sure about the timing and the details. There are several things standing in the way right now. I am currently unable to stay home with our kids full-time due to finances, so Nathan is looking for another job that would allow me to stay home. Another hurdle is that we just recently paid off my car. If we add more children to our brood (whether through adoption or not), we will need to consider a larger vehicle, which means another car payment. We may not have a "lot" compared to others, but we have what God has chosen to bless us with at this time. We want to share these blessings that he has given us with children who are not as fortunate.


Please pray that we will follow God's will for our family and that He will work everything out for us in His perfect timing. It could happen very soon or not for many years. We are just excited to see how all of the pieces will fit together. And we can't wait to look into the eyes of our new little son or daughter some day and tell them the story of how God brought them into our family.