Red, White, and Blue

 Ric-Rac Hair Clips ("Red")
My sister recently pinned these cute hair clips on Pinterest (tutorial here), and I have made a few for Calla recently.

This version is for the 4th of July. There's still time to make one for your cutie! These clips take a little time, but I find them fun to make.


Love her.


Here is the plain red one (I like it better overall). Can you tell Calla was really excited to model it for you? ;)

Festive Flour Stars ("White")
The kids and I decorated the front lawn today with stars (idea from here).

Made out of flour. Calla and I thought it was so cool. Ori just kept asking if he could have a bowl of flour to play with. ;) I made a star stencil out of a pizza box, filled a bottle up with water, and got out some flour and my trusty flour sifter (I think I have sifted flour one time in my 7 years of marriage).


Calla loves using spray bottles (note her cute little tongue sticking out), so she sprayed the grass inside the star shape.


Since Ori really wanted to play with flour, I let him sift flour over the star after Calla sprayed it with water. We had fun. I think it will be even more fun to do next year when they are a year older and don't dump out so much flour. ;)

 Adoption Update ("Blue." As in "feeling blue".)
 Today marks Day 83 of our LOA wait (letter of approval from China that officially matches us with our daughter). A week away from the current average wait of 90 days. I feel like I have handled the last couple weeks of waiting well, but today I feel an urgency again. Probably because I found updated pictures of our little one on a website this weekend (one was taken just last week!!). I stare at those precious pictures all.the.time. It's pretty much all I do: Just ask my husband. ;) My heart is aching to have her home!!

It's hard to wait. I want to travel in September (that is probably almost impossible at this point). There is a Trade Fair in China during a good part of October that causes the prices of hotels to triple (meaning we could pay $3,000 just for a hotel room for a week!). And if we waited until November to travel? Well, that just seems too far away.

God is in control. I desire to be preoccupied with Christ and not "what-ifs" and worries. Maybe we will have to pay a huge amount of money for a hotel. Perhaps we won't travel until November. My worry will accomplish nothing. There is grace for tomorrow.