Luke is 1!

Luke - 1 Year Old!

March 10th

Woohoo! I am one! My first birthday rolled around a few weeks ago and I finally got to see what all of the birthday hype was about. It was fun being the center of attention for the day (my sister usually claims that spot). Here are some pictures from my big day:

Mom seemed happy to have survived my first year!

I rode the carousel for the first time (not impressed as you can see on my face).

Later in the evening, we had some friends over for pizza and cake. Check out my cool cake!
And my very own smash cake.
Turns out, I didn't care a bit about the smash cake. Everybody was staring at me saying something about "digging in" but I just wasn't feeling it. Mom was recording the whole thing but it is too boring to even show you. I put my finger in the cake one time and was done. Talk about overrated. This next face sums up my feelings on the matter of the smash cake.

I did have fun with the presents though and loved getting some "boy" things to play with around the house.

Hitting the one year mark turned out to be pretty cool and I am enjoying my new found maturity. I weigh 20lbs 12oz and made it a whole year without cutting any teeth (pretty impressive I think). I like to play peek-a-boo, clap my hands, play with balls, chase my sister, and swing outside.
My newest interest almost gave Mom a heart attack the other day. She walked through the playroom and found me like this:
Up on top of the play table eating my Cheerios. I figured out how to climb up the chairs and chill out up there. It must not be that big of a deal because Mom grabbed her camera to snap a picture before she made me get down. It stinks because now she moves the chairs away from the table when I am playing in there.

That concludes my monthly updates! Now that I am one I will probably be too busy to maintain the blog, so I'll be turning it back over to Mom. I'll try to remind her to keep you posted on what's happening with me.
Signing out,

Luke

We should be friends

Chad and I have a running list of famous people that we are convinced we should befriend and hang out with all the time. They are people that just seem so genuine and real and generally point us straight to Christ while acknowledging their own sinful humanity. People that follow Christ so hard that it makes you want to be a better follower as well. Steven Curtis Chapman and his family are right at the top of the list.

This SCC admiration is not a new thing, as both Chad and I grew up listening to his music. We also know the Chapmans as adoption advocates and founders of Show Hope, an organization that helps Christian families reduce the financial barriers to adoption. They brought three sweet girls from China into their family and have worked tirelessly to promote orphan care. More recently, through the tragic loss of one of their daughters, my admiration of and respect for the Chapman family has grown. I remember the day I heard on the radio of their loss, in the car traveling for work, and have followed their story of grief closely. Mary Beth Chapman published a beautifully written book, Choosing to See, that gives her personal story from childhood all the way through her journey of mourning and grieving for the daughter she lost. She is refreshingly honest and hides no detail of her own struggles through her life. I would highly recommend her book (as long as you have kleenex close by). God most definitely used her book to speak directly to me about His will for our family and adoption.

Chad and I were able to attend SCC's Songs & Stories tour with Andrew Peterson and Josh Wilson here in Jackson a few weeks ago. It was AWESOME! Now, we were positive we would LOVE the concert before we ever went, but it was one of those experiences that you didn't want to end. Not only were the three artists featured incredibly talented, it was so neat to hear the stories behind the songs they had passionately written throughout different times in their lives.

A portion of the concert was devoted to sharing about Show Hope and its mission. SCC shared the song "When Love Takes You In." It is a song he wrote after their first adoption journey during the formative time of establishing Show Hope. While he sang the song, the screens showed clips of families (including his) meeting their adoptive children for the first time and welcoming them into their families. Talk about emotional for the two of us! It was so beautiful and made me even more excited about the time coming when we will hold Lottie in our arms for the first time! Although that exact video is not available for me to share with you, I am including the music video of his song as well as the lyrics so beautifully written.

I know you’ve heard the stories


But they all sound too good to be true


You’ve heard about a place called home


But there doesn’t seem to be one for you


So one more night you cry yourself to sleep


And drift off to a distant dream

Where love takes you in and everything changes


A miracle starts with the beat of a heart


When love takes you home and says you belong here


The loneliness ends and a new life begins


When love takes you in

And somewhere while you’re sleeping


Someone else is dreaming too


Counting down the days until


They hold you close and say I love you


And like the rain that falls into the sea


In a moment what has been is lost in what will be

When love takes you in everything changes

A miracle starts with the beat of a heart

And this love will never let you go


There is nothing that could ever cause this love to lose its hold

When love takes you in everything changes

A miracle starts with the beat of a heart


When love takes you home and says you belong here


The loneliness ends and a new life begins


When love takes you in it takes you in for good


When love takes you in

If I haven't said enough about SCC and his family, check out the comments written by Andrew Peterson who has been on tour with SCC these past few months. He says it much better than I can.

http://www.rabbitroom.com/2012/03/what-i-learned-from-scc/

I am so thankful that God has used, and continues to use, the Chapman family to encourage others like me.

Luke is 11 months old!

Luke - 11 months old

Hello people,

I am finally getting around to my 11 month post. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am actually pretty close to 12 months old now, but please accept this tardy update on my last month or so.

So, I gave Mom fits trying to take my monthly photo for this post. You can see some proof below. I just can't be bothered with stopping to flash my toothless smile (yes, still no teeth) whenever Mom wants me to.

I had a rough start to the month when I came down with a double ear infection topped off by RSV. Mom and Dad put some strange mask on my face every six hours for a week, stuffed me with medicine, and filled my ears with drops and ...

POOF! I felt better and was back to my old shenanigans acting goofy with Dad and Abigail.
Mom and Dad talk a lot about who they think I look like. Our friends all seem to say something different. I am including some pictures of a few of my different faces to get your opinion. Who do you think I favor?







Next time you hear from me, I'll be one! Can you believe it?

See ya,

Luke

Love for Lottie Garage Sale

The t-shirts are in and (most) have been delivered!

We were blown away with your response to our t-shirt sale! You all have helped us sell almost 125 t-shirts so far. We still have a few left over if you are interested in purchasing one. See this post for information on how to order.

If you bought a t-shirt, we would love for you to send us a picture of you wearing your shirt. We plan to keep a scrapbook of our adoption journey to share with Lottie one day and want your picture to be included. We want her to see everybody that worked hard to help bring her home to us. Just email me your picture at glohunsberger@gmail.com .

Where are we in the process?

Well, we are diligently working on all of the paperwork and pre-adoption education credits right now. We have completed all four of our home study visits with our social worker and hope to wrap up the home study in the next couple of months. Wow, there is a lot to be done, but we have some awesome people at both Lifeline in Birmingham and New Beginnings here in Mississippi helping us out.

What is next in our fundraising efforts?

So glad you asked! We plan on having a garage sale to benefit our adoption on Saturday, March 24^th at our house. If you feel like doing a little cleaning out, we would be happy to take any junk treasures off your hands. We can arrange for pick up and storage for those of you here in the Jackson metro area. So, let us know if you have anything you would like to donate to the sale (glohunsberger@gmail.com) . One thing you can all be doing is praying that March 24^th is a beautiful day!

Thank you again for your support. We give God all the glory for the way He has provided for these first major steps in our adoption journey. We can’t wait to see what He will continue to do! We will keep you updated about the garage sale and any progress in our home study.

Let's Go To The Movies

Last week, Abigail and I got to go on a fun date together. We went for pizza (her favorite) and to see the movies to see Beauty and the Beast. We have the movie and have watched it what seems like 1,000 times so she was super excited to see it on the big screen!

Here we are about to head out on our date.

She is beautiful, even with pizza all over her mouth.
She was excited to wear her Belle dress to the movie.
Abigail and I had a blast at the movie! There were only four other people in the entire theater so she was able to sing and dance in the aisle throughout the show. I think her favorite part was the entire bag of M&Ms I let her eat!
She was great and I can't wait to take her to the movies again!

Luke is 10 months old!

LTH - 10 Months Old

That's right, I'm ten. Two hands, double digits. I love life as a ten month old these days. I can get wherever I want to go, play with all of my new toys from Christmas, go to school now two mornings a week, and am trying some new foods that I get to eat with my hands. What could be better? They even gave me juice in a cup a few weeks ago!

I still have nothing to report on the teeth front. That's right, not one tooth yet. I am holding out on Mom so that I can cut six at once next time Dad goes out of town. That's my plan anyway.

Dad took a video of one of my newest tricks. I have started using my push toy as a walker recently and feel pretty good about myself these days. Maybe by next month I will learn how to turn it around on my own.

See you next month,

Luke

(P.S. Mom says there is a new blog post below)

We Didn't Skip Christmas

It's pretty sad that I haven't blogged about our Christmas yet. So sorry! We had a very merry one, as you will see from this picture recap. Enjoy!

Princess Olivia and Princess Abigail with their "Tangled" hair.

Luke tickling the ivories.
This is the face Abigail made over EVERY.SINGLE.PRESENT. I loved seeing Christmas through her eyes this year.
Her flashlight from Luke was a hit.

Her new Dora toothbrush was by far her favorite gift of the season!

Although her cool new bike was a close second.


What was Luke's favorite part you ask? The boxes and wrapping paper of course!